How attached to fictional characters do people really get? We know too well that superfans have a serious issue when it comes to replacing the characters they love with representations that don’t fit and are bound to let everyone know about it in the most cringe-worthy way possible. But how much emotional damage does the average fan suffer when their favorite character is either forced to endure tragedy or is simply snuffed out? That might sound like a silly question, but the truth is that some folks do go through a great deal of emotional stress when they see their favorite fictional characters buy the farm at one point or another. It’s still very easy to remember the severe impact that shows such as Game of Thrones had on fans, since the moment that their favorite characters died they either threw a fit or went numb. Initially, the former would have been the emotion that many people shared, but it’s easy to think that many people simply went numb after seeing a few of the characters bumped off or wounded so horribly in the initial season. Yeah, Sean Bean doesn’t count since he dies quite a bit in his roles.
People invest a great deal of emotion in various characters.
This isn’t that big of a surprise, is it? People have been following their favorite characters for decades and have placed an enormous emotional investment in them over the years. Some have done this from their younger years to the current era, while others have laid their childhood crushes and hero worship aside to enjoy life. But for those who continue to idolize one character or another, or multiple characters, it comes as a blow when those characters suffer hardships or are killed outright. A lot of people would likely tell these folks to calm down and get a grip, that they’re not losing anyone in real life, and that they’re crying over a fictional character. On one hand, it’s easy to agree with those folks who speak reason, on the other hand, it’s also easy to tell those folks to keep quiet and let people mourn if they want to.
The emotional investment that many people place in fictional characters is a little too real.
There are different levels of emotional investment when it comes to idolizing our favorite characters. There are plenty of characters I happen to like well enough that I have their likeness somewhere in my office, but as far as hero worship goes, well, there’s a limit that some of us won’t cross. A lot of people enjoy keeping some distance between reality and fiction to keep the two from affecting one another. In other words, people love getting into fiction, but the idea of getting emotional about it is kind of, well, weird. To a storyteller such as myself, it’s quite easy to do since creating one character after another and finding a way to keep them around or rationalizing their demise becomes a habit that can be divorced from emotion, lest a writer ends up becoming an emotional wreck when realizing that by creating a character they’re going to have to say goodbye to them one day. To the fans though, saying goodbye to a favored character is far more difficult since the give and take aren’t nearly the same.
Creators feel loss when their characters die, but they’re consigned to the fact that it’s going to happen.
As I just stated, being a creator is far different since it means that one knows their characters will die at some point, no matter if it’s violently or if it comes naturally. The fans don’t always realize this, however. Fans become so attached to the characters that one might think that they know everything about them, and some might even be able to make this claim. But there’s little to no give or take between a fan and their favorite characters. A creator feels this acutely since they come up with the character, they develop them, they nurture them, and they end up saying goodbye for the final time now and then. The fans don’t have that certainty and therefore are kind of crushed when they have to say goodbye to the characters they’ve loved for so long.
There is a god complex that writers can fall into, but fans will rarely feel this.
Face it, if you create something you have the power to destroy it, from a fictional standpoint. Some writers take this responsibility seriously, while others will kill their creations on a whim if it suits them, or the story. The fans don’t have that luxury, as their desire for one character or another is more like worship or a strange camaraderie that can sustain them. When a character dies, some fans are wounded deeply enough that it affects their everyday lives, while many others are a bit morose but otherwise unscathed in an emotional sense.