Did they make us? or make us see ourselves?
Connecting to fictional characters isn't something we have to grow into and it isn't something we mature out of. Relating to people — whether they are built from words on a piece of paper or from reality — is an innately human experience. However, why and how we relate to these characters doesn't stay the same.
When we are kids reading books and meeting characters, we don't know who we are. We are made up of dreams and ideas of what could be — ideals we want for ourselves, images we want to project. Nothing, when it comes to our identity, is set in stone. We are essentially blank canvases. So when we meet characters in the midst of not having a true sense of self or any sort of guidelines, we are introduced to these grand ideals of people that become our own sort of blueprint.
It's never a direct copy and paste — our brains don't work that way. We don't read The Lightning Thief and then consciously go: "I am going to completely become Annabeth Chase." Well, then again, I did. So maybe every once and a while a character would wander into our life and everything would sort of just pause as we took that deep breath in and thought: "Wow . . . They are everything." And in that moment it isn't just a want to be them — that's too surface level. It's a sort of goal we process and bury deep within ourselves at a level we don't even realize. It's usually not a conscious decision to emulate these characters. Yet, it doesn't stop us from doing exactly that.
These characters become a part of us in all sorts of different ways.
Maybe they make us want to look or act a certain way. Maybe they make us want to have a particular job or live in a specific city. Maybe they give us a bit of our personality.
There are so many things we pull from these fictional characters as readers and each of those things merge together and start to form little pieces of our building blocks.
These are the characters that build us.
For me this was reading Harry Potter in the first grade and meeting Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley. This was attaching to the Percy Jackson series at the same time and loving Annabeth Chase. It was seeing Iron Man when I was eleven years old and meeting Tony Stark. It was Lyra Belacqua in the His Dark Materials trilogy, Leia Organa in Star Wars, James Logan in X-men, and Tris Prior in Divergent. Each of these characters came into my life when I was still building myself into who I was and I subconsciously took bits and pieces of them into my soul as I grew up. It's something we all do.
And then we do just that . . .
We grow up.
We keep reading — maybe life gets away from us, maybe at some point we have to relearn how to embrace escapism and love other worlds. Regardless, though, we do grow up. We become human beings. We hit that mid-twenty mark, we start our careers, and it's not just our lives that start to take shape, but us in general.
And we continue to meet characters.
We are still reading books, watching movies, starting shows, and every once and a while we come across a character, and something inside of us lights up. It sounds a bit silly to word it that way, but that's the best description I can think of.
When you immerse in fictional worlds as an adult, you are who you are. You've had decades of experiences, you've experienced heartbreak, you've survived trauma, you've gained and lost friendships and you've had to come to terms with who you are as a person again and again. Yet, there's no denying it — you are you. And for the first time in your life, you feel as if you have a solid definition and understanding on exactly who that "you" is. Sure, there is still growth
occurring — to think humans reach a certain point in their lives and simply cease learning would be ignorant — but you have a sense of self. Even if maybe you can't pinpoint it within you or put it into words, you feel it.
So now with this idea of who you are, you continue to read. You continue to go to the movies and experience new stories and you keep on hanging on to that bit of escapism. But now when you meet these characters, you aren't shaping bits of your personality after them.
Instead, you're relating to them.
Meeting a fictional character in your twenties or thirties that you relate to is like looking into a mirror from a third party perspective. Part of you is there and you are looking at yourself, and you see exactly what you expect to see. It’s the same ‘you’ that you know — that you’re comfortable with. Yet, you are also one step away from that reflection — looking on from the outside with a bit of awe because you didn't expect to ever see this particular piece of yourself or maybe your whole self just from this angle.
The first time I met a fictional character in this fashion was when I rediscovered a love for reading and new worlds at the age of 25. Now, before I get hit with the very fun "25 isn't fully grown, you're brain is just barely full developed"— I am aware. However, I am also aware that at 25 I was a whole person. Through a collection of experiences, predisposed emotional and mental tendencies and more I had become a whole person. And in being a whole person I was more than aware of my strengths, weaknesses, things I enjoyed, how I would define myself, and things within me that I hated. Then again knowing and accepting aren't the same.
I feel like I knew who I was at this time. I don't feel like I accepted who I was.
“So Nesta had become a wolf. Armed herself with invisible teeth and claws, and learned to strike faster, deeper, more lethally. Had relished it. But when the time came to put away the wolf, she’d found it had devoured her too.”
Then I met Nesta Archeron (A Court of Thorns and Roses).
And, no, it wasn’t as if I finished A Court of Silver Flames and this magical wave of self-realization swept through me, I got all warm and fuzzy, and a sense of peace washed over me. That’s not what it means to make peace with parts of yourself through a fictional character. For me, meeting Nesta Archeron — specifically reading her journey through A Court of Silver Flames — was me coming face to face with a lot of pieces of myself that I not only didn’t like, but that I actively hid and ignored. Her story of healing is one that I didn’t think I deserved to ever have . . . and yet . . . there she was: a female twenty-something year old character with the very characteristics and bits of history that I thought made me irredeemable and broken . . . healing. Being better. Functioning.
She was a mirror that I got to look at from a step back and reflect on what it really meant for me to see myself in her.
Nesta Archeron didn’t build me. She didn’t shape me into who I was when I met her. That wouldn’t make any sense. Instead, a mix of different fictional characters I aspired to be, my circumstances, how I was raised and my life experiences formed me into someone who could relate to Nesta.
She didn’t build me.
But she did heal a bit of me that I thought didn’t really deserve to be healed.
A lot of people hear that I experienced this sort of realization via a fictional character and they scoff or roll their eyes. And that’s fine. This type of journey — this sort of self-reflection, learning and personal growth — isn’t for every person. If everyone came to peace with who they were and found strength in the same way, society would be dull and nonsensical. But for those of us that find peace in fiction, this process of connecting to fictional characters is something so innately human and natural.
“Do you believe monsters are born, or made?”
After Nesta, I found Manon Blackbeak (Throne of Glass).
I found Kaz Brekker (Six of Crows).
I found Zoya Nazyalensky (King of Scars).
And Alex Clairemont-Diaz (Red, White & Royal Blue).
Character after character, I was having bits of me reflected back to me and it was as if with each new character I met, I learned more about myself. I made peace with who life had built me into. I embraced who I was. I was able to choose to accept what I saw in that mirror. And I know I’m not the only one. There are so many people who found reading again in their twenties or thirties and they meet these same characters that I did and a spark ignites in their chest and they start to see themselves more clearly and not hate the imperfect sides of themselves. It’s all a part of the process of reading as an adult. Honestly, I used to think I was strange for having such strong emotional connections to fictional characters. But then I found a community online of people who loved reading and loved escapism the same way I did and I saw that my journey was a shared experience.
But then I saw people saying that these characters who they met as an adult built them.
And it made me pause.
To say Nesta, Manon, Kaz and more built me would be a disservice to them. They aren’t characters I aspired to be like. As a kid or teenager, I don’t know that I would choose these characters to grow up to be like. That’s not what they are. They didn’t build me or inspire me or any of those words that essentially mean the same thing.
No, these characters healed me.
They gave me little bits of peace that let me feel as if breathing wasn’t a chore.
The distinction may sound ridiculous or trivial, but to me it’s night and day. The characters that I met as a child and the ones that I meet as an adult are both vitally important to who I am. They all exist inside of me in one way or the other — and none of them are a part of me in the same way as the other. But to say they all built me or that they all inspired me, that they made me who I am or anything along those lines wouldn’t be describing these characters accurately. The characters we meet as children shape us. They inspire us and color the lenses of how we not only see the world, but our world. Those characters build our lenses and shape our perspective. But then our perspective is shaped. And we grow up. And the real world gets involved. And all of a sudden we are real people now — adults. We have baggage and issues and everything that we thought that was black and white within us has turned to gray.
And we meet new characters. And those characters turn that gray into something more than just black and white. They give us color.
It’s the idea of building versus healing.
And the difference is everything.
