Emotionally investing in the fictional.
I have a tendency to become very emotionally invested in the fates of fictional characters. Today as Brandon and I were watching TV on the couch together, a character in the show we'd been watching unexpectedly met a violent end at the hands of his mortal enemy, and I was incensed. I let loose a string of profanity and wild gestures to express my frustration, and Brandon looked at me like I was a crazy person and told me to calm down, it wasn't real. "I know it's not real," I said. "But it still feels fucked up and shitty." And therein lies a fundamental difference between Brandon and I: he always takes the analytical view of a story, and might disapprove of a certain turn of events, but never loses sight of the fact that it is fiction and therefore, not worth a truly emotional response. I, on the other hand, take the emotional view of a story, because how a story makes you feel is a critical part of the ultimate meaning you will pull from it. So I am perfectly capable of connecting to characters and feeling for them in ways that I might for someone in reality. If someone I have come to care about goes through something awful, I seem to cry whether they're real or not; my heart doesn't fully understand the distinction between the two, though my head does.
I've noticed it the most when I write fiction. Doing so requires dedicating a great deal of thought to who someone is, what makes them tick, why they would take the actions they do and why they would react the way that they will. The fact that I have control over these details doesn't make it any easier to develop a character, because it all has to end up making a certain amount of sense and has to feel real. Real people are flawed, make mistakes, behave badly sometimes, and make irrational decisions. The only way for a fictional character to really feel real is to write the perfect amount of imperfection into them. The only way for a person who doesn't exist to convey something meaningful is for them to feel like they do exist, and matter.
My imagination can be a very powerful force in my world. Sometimes if I'm in the right mood, I can close my eyes and paint beautiful pictures in my mind, and feel my body responding as if the various sensations I'm experiencing are actually happening. Certain smells and physical impressions that stick in my memory can be easily called back up, and I've become practiced at pushing my surroundings away to focus as much of my mind on the feeling as possible. It might be for a few moments at a time, but it can feel just as real as anything I'd experience with my eyes open. The world in my mind is often a world of fiction in its own way; a world of impressions and feelings built from half-formed memories and imagined desires, or fears.
I like the world of fiction, it is a freeing place to be. I like investing my time and energy in other people, and have spent plenty of both on people that have never existed in the literal sense - they existed to me. I am able to derive and convey as much meaning from the various forms of fiction in my world as I can from real life, which makes them just as real as reality, to me.
I've noticed it the most when I write fiction. Doing so requires dedicating a great deal of thought to who someone is, what makes them tick, why they would take the actions they do and why they would react the way that they will. The fact that I have control over these details doesn't make it any easier to develop a character, because it all has to end up making a certain amount of sense and has to feel real. Real people are flawed, make mistakes, behave badly sometimes, and make irrational decisions. The only way for a fictional character to really feel real is to write the perfect amount of imperfection into them. The only way for a person who doesn't exist to convey something meaningful is for them to feel like they do exist, and matter.
My imagination can be a very powerful force in my world. Sometimes if I'm in the right mood, I can close my eyes and paint beautiful pictures in my mind, and feel my body responding as if the various sensations I'm experiencing are actually happening. Certain smells and physical impressions that stick in my memory can be easily called back up, and I've become practiced at pushing my surroundings away to focus as much of my mind on the feeling as possible. It might be for a few moments at a time, but it can feel just as real as anything I'd experience with my eyes open. The world in my mind is often a world of fiction in its own way; a world of impressions and feelings built from half-formed memories and imagined desires, or fears.
I like the world of fiction, it is a freeing place to be. I like investing my time and energy in other people, and have spent plenty of both on people that have never existed in the literal sense - they existed to me. I am able to derive and convey as much meaning from the various forms of fiction in my world as I can from real life, which makes them just as real as reality, to me.