Fiction makes me more emotional than reality

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I don't feel very much in "real life". I currently have noone I love or even like very much. It seems I just can't have strong bonds to actual people. I have little empathy and don't like physical contact.

However, when it comes to works of fiction, I am totally capable of feeling with the characters, be it movies, games or even books. I've had a lot of crushes on fictional characters (in real life, I was only in love once, and that's years ago), and when a fictional character suffers or even dies it can affect me very strongly.

To give an example: I guess some of you have seen the movie "Thor". Through the entire film, I really felt with the supposed antagonist, Loki. At the end, he falls into an abyss, and you're supposed to think that he's dead.

After that scene, I was very down and melancholic, not only for the rest of the day, but also for the next weeks. It has actually happened a few times that I became depressive after watching a sad movie.

This is actually kind of annoying to me. It seems very wrong and unnatural that I would feel with characters in a movie, but not with my parents or colleagues. You can barely tell anyone, because they'll think you're weird. And the kind of sadness and melancholy I feel after such things is really intense and hard to bear.

Do you know that feeling?

I feel much the same, though I believe it has something to do with the way it's presented.

In books, you are told what emotions the characters are feeling, or it is fairly easy to judge based on the description of actions (although in a lot of cases, I feel I miss more subtle things ) and in movies, the musical score changes based on what you are supposed to feel, and the responses/emotions are somewhat exaggerated, and thus easier to place and identify with.

Maybe that's just me ^_^

I think it's a fairly common thing with aspergers because fiction makes emotions so clear and easy to follow. It's easier to empathize with a very clear cut emotional position than the typically more complex and harder to read emotional positions of the real world.

EDIT: f***in' ninja'd xd

MUAHAHAHAHA

I'm the same. I do care more about fictional characters and what happens to them than real people. I assume it's because I can connect with fictional characters but not real people. I don't tell anyone I know though because I'm sure they would think there was something wrong with me even though I've always been this way.

Last edited by MikaNeko on 26 Jun 2012, 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Reading fiction, apparently, can improve theory of mind:

www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sund ... ction.html

I care about fictional characters more than real people. I think part of it is because they can never hurt me, and they have predictable personalities and only change as much as the confines of their stories allow them to. Another part is, as Monkeybuttorama mentioned, the fact that the characters' emotions are spelled out for us onscreen/on paper rather than having to make guesses about it like in the real world.

I agree with this. There's also the fact that no one in a fictional story is going to hurt you, your feelings, or betray you or bully you. It's all happening to someone else. We can identify with the protagonist without taking the risks the protagonist is taking. It's much easier to let ourselves feel because we know there's no direct injury possible to us. If the protagonist loses someone they love, you may feel it with them, but you know it's a sample emotion, not something real happening to you. You know it's not real, so it feels safe to feel in response to it.

The whole point of fiction is to present a conflict, so yes, the emotional cues are all there, whereas in real life people will frequently hide their feelings either to protect themselves or to protect others, and also sometimes to deceive, and that doesn't happen in fiction in any personally confusing way, only in a way that confuses you about the story, to provide suspense or mystery.

I think in fiction characters have stronger bonds that's why they express their emotions better. The real world is a mess, It's really hard to find someone with a similar "soul" or whatever should I call it.

Me too. Maybe because in fiction the emotions are exagerated compared to real life and much more clear.