Identifying With Fictional Characters

[MysterionMuffles]

As a fiction writer who's read a handful of writing guides and took some writing courses in college, along with the primary project of self knowledge, something has always intrigued me about fiction. The idea of identifying with characters whose personal dramas reflect our own in either implicit or explicit ways.

 

I understand that there's a danger of hero worship, but this is sort of different. For me, I used to be all about action and gore, but even when I was consciously chasing after that stuff, I would always get bored. For the longest of times, I wasn't aware that most of the movies, shows, or books I've enjoyed were so enjoyable because I found my self relating to the characters. I became more aware of that as I grew older, especially when I graduated from high school and even more especially when I learned about characterization that is meant to reflect aspects of the self.

 

I don't know what I wanted to ask you guys in particular, just wondering what your thoughts are on that. It seems to me that the media people consume says a lot about their personalities and why they are drawn to it. People who watch The Big Bang Theory are usually nerds, the people who watch action films are macho-bravado kinda dudes. Not all the time of course, and much like the Breakfast Club, within all of us inhabits a variety of archetypes (hence the Mecosystem or Internal Family System), but there are some archetypical characteristics we enbody more strongly, and that causes us to connect with fictional characters that resemble them.

 

So to watch a movie, show, or read a book, I view that as basically having a drama play out in your mind. Yes it's an external experience, but at the internal level, all those characters represent different centres of your psyche that are at war with each other and the outcome of each story basically gives you an open ended answer as to how all these different aspects of you will play out in your decision making.

 

I have more thoughts on this but that's as much as I can verbalize right now. What are your thoughts on this line of thinking? 

 

For me thinking this way has helped my self knowledge, provided that the writing of the media has been written well to realistically portray how certain types of people WOULD behave in the situations they're put in.

 

Just for extra fun, you can click the spoiler below to see why I decided to finally mention this topic.

 

 

 

You can easily tell by my avatar that I'm a fan of South Park, and more in particular the character Kenny McCormick and his super hero alter-ego Mysterion. I didn't care much for Kenny when I first started watching the show, he never said much, he just died a lot and came back the next episode. 

 

Throughout my life, I have come face to face with near death experiences, and twice in my life I've actually BEEN dead for a few hours while going for open heart surgery. I have a congenital heart disease that became apparent when I was 2. I was internaly bleeding and was about to die if it wasn't for my grandma telling my parents that they should bring me to the hospital.

 

Then when I was 16, the stent that was placed in my heart to open the valve up for blood flow was replaced with a bigger one since I grew. And the old one couldn't take all the effort anymore.

 

One example of a near death experience: there was one time while working at a warehouse, a 200lb box was gonna land on my head and the co-worker that was working alongside with me caught just in a nick of time.

 

I can outline a few more, but those seem to be the most apparent for me. For those reasons, sometimes I feel like I'm Kenny McCormick in that I've been dead a couple times and almost died on a few other occasions.

 

And ontop of that, he's usually silent. I read a book called South Park and Philosophy, and it talked about the philosophical aspects of a show...that looks like a kindergartener's construction paper animation. It opened my eyes to perceiving one of my favourite shows under a new light, seeing all the characters represent something about my psyche.

 

In that book, it talked about how Kenny is the silent observer who speaks sparsely, and when he does, it's muffled. It's like how subtle truths and philosophers alike are muffled by the louder voices, and often die as a sacrifice in the heat of ethical drama.

 

Fast forward back to the Coon and Friends Trilogy where all the boys dress up as super heroes. Mysterion has been established in a previous season, but this is the season where they reveal his true identity is Kenny McCormick.

 

I felt even more connected then because Mysterion is basically inspired by Batman, and in the Nolanverse he talks with a raspy voice like he had throat cancer ONLY when he had a mask on lol. The character that barely spoke finally got to say a lot because playing super hero means more to him than his friends. To Kenny, it was his avenue for allowing himself to speak his mind more.

 

That's reflective of me because when I first started writing music, I would scream and growl a lot, saying somet very cryptic, but truthful lyrics. Of course I've calmed down over the years and learned to appreciate my clean and calm singing voice, but anyway. Oh not to mention how as a keyboard warrior I feel like I can voice my opinions even more strongly with my physical identity kept hidden, while my mental one is exposed with much more vulnerability and honesty through my words.

 

I can talk forever about why this character means so much to me now, but I'm spiralling out of control here! Thanks for hanging in there for another one of my long ass posts!

 

I will finish off by saying, I changed my name to Mysterion Muffles to reflect my identification with the character of Kenny McCormick and Mysterion. In the physical world (I don't say real life because I consider the virtual world integrated with it greatly now) I'm a very quiet dude with a lot on his mind. Having different mediums to express my self through, I feel like I sort of put on a super hero costume where what I stand for means more than who I am.

 

[Guest Exceptionalist]

I understand that there's a danger of hero worship, but this is sort of different. For me, I used to be all about action and gore, but even when I was consciously chasing after that stuff, I would always get bored. For the longest of times, I wasn't aware that most of the movies, shows, or books I've enjoyed were so enjoyable because I found my self relating to the characters. I became more aware of that as I grew older, especially when I graduated from high school and even more especially when I learned about characterization that is meant to reflect aspects of the self.

 

 

Exciting idea, I imagined a fictional Anime character on my own. Similar character is unlikely to be seen in aan Anime anytime soon, due to the double standard. It is a Sugar-and-Ice-Personality with much sugar on the ice. A cheery, passionate and extremely empathetic person who can relate to the feelings of other people very well, but can sense evil doers very quickly. A life threatening situation caused by the villian, triggers the ice king who takes care of the situation. It is a reversed Kuudere type. It is like a two-sided coin, a constant stream of energy and feeling who can transformed into what suits the setting, similiar to a prism.

[MysterionMuffles]

Oh good call I forgot to account for story writers on the board who also infuse aspects of themselves into their characters. That does sound like a good anime character. Is there not any characters in anime you think that fits that mould even in the slightest? I would like to write off anime as having really immature stupid characters but I know that's not always true.

Kenichi comes to mind for me. Have you watched that? I don't know about him sensing evil right away but he did empathize with a lot of his opponents. He's basically this scrawny martial arts novice who learns different styles along the way, and fighting dudes of even more different styles than what he learns. Each opponent he would defeat, he would earn their respect for being that small underdog who manages to take them down, and so they would open up to him about their traumatic experiences that caused them to join a gang that terrorizes his city.

They would actually then become ALLIES to help take down the gang provided that opponent has the self knowledge and dignity to look at their ways objectively.