I don’t think so. Stories are very real, and very powerful, and they can be a huge source of hope, of joy, of transformation.
Sometime we see ourselves in certain characters. Sometimes we find and finally understand ourselves through those characters. When something happens and those characters that have saved us feel as though they have been stolen from us, we grieve them. When a writer chooses to abuse a character that we closely identify with it feels personal.
I guess some people might feel that’s unhealthy or immature, but I don’t judge the world by those sorts of rules. There is nothing wrong with finding meaning in stories, and there is nothing wrong with falling in love with them, grieving them, learning from them, growing with them.
Stories have power. They always have and they always will.
There’s something called ‘parasocial relationships’. In this case, it refers to forming a sort of relationship with a fictional character. This commonly happens with tv characters and tv shows themselves.
Parasocial relationships can serve as a kind of therapy, as a coping skill, as a source of comfort. As @sussexbound said, the characters and the tv show itself can give you something you lack in everyday life, be it security, acceptance, reassurance, hope, anything. Commonly, you see yourself in a character and equate the support they’re getting to support for yourself. For instance, if you identify with Sherlock and you’re introduced to John Watson from the beginning – someone you come to know as loyal, trustworthy, as someone who CARES. John Watson – someone who KNOWS Sherlock for who he is and accepts him, believes in him (completely despite his faults), someone who doesn’t reject him, someone who may leave when he gets angry but who always comes back – that can be a huge coping skill, whether you realize you’re utilizing it or not.
And then the problem comes when that gets ripped away from you. When a show ends or there’s a break from fictional reality, from canon, from what makes sense, that relationship gets broken. The characters are no longer what you thought, and that support disappears. Maybe the character you identify with doesn’t seem to have any control in their life anymore. Or the self-worth of the character you identify with has been slowly deteriorating to nothing and no one seems to care.
And when the show itself is taken from you as well, when the show changes drastically with no explanation, when you can’t make heads or tails of something that may have been the only thing that you COULD make sense of in your life, tv show or not, and the support system/coping skill you created is no longer there, of course it’s going to make an impact.
It’s even worse when you don’t get an actual resolution. It’s not just that so much of the universe you know doesn’t make sense, it’s that everything is left in the air and you’re left to make sense of the pieces. If the show doesn’t feel the same, it can leave you feeling abandoned and unmoored, and it becomes hard to anchor yourself to the universe that’s fed into your sense of self for so long. It’s normal. There have been studies on this that actually confirm that a parasocial breakup mirrors the pain and depression of an actual breakup, even though it’s fictional.
It’s not stupid, it’s not immature. Stories do have power. It really is a grieving process. You’re not alone, ok? ❤
Remember you are already doing your best if you have such a coping mechanism over the more self-destructive alternatives, okay?
look…………….. write as much shitty fic as you want. nobody can stop you. you’re learning constantly and it’s better to write hackneyed implausible ridiculousness than it is to not write at all out of fear of fucking up. you’re good
There was an experiment a professor did. I think it was pottery students. He did an experiment of “quality” vs “quantity”. One half of the class he told; you have to make as many pots as possible. Good pots, bad pots, shitty pots, whatever. The more pots you make, the higher your grade.
The other half of the class were told, “you can make only one pot”. But that pot had to be perfect. The quality had to be high; the highest quality pot would get the best mark.
But when it came to the grading, they noticed something weird.
All the best quality pots were in the ‘quantity’ group.
The guys who were literally churning out pots, trying to make as many as possible, not concentrating on the quality. But every pot they made, made them better at making pots. By the end of the month (I think it was a month) – they had some pretty awesome pots coming out, because they enjoying finding all the ways and all the things they could do to make all their pots. Where as the ‘quality’ guys had spent their time reading up on pots, and technique, and researching and planning; which was all great but they’d had no further practice at actually making pots.
The best way to get really good at something, the only way to be really good at something, is to make lots of shitty attempts at that thing several of which will fail. If all you create are perfect things then you won’t improve, because how can you improve on perfect?
tl:dr MAKE YOUR SHITTY POTS.
I will never not reblog this
Accurate.
Writings and Other Strangers 