Do you connect more with fictional characters?

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This is about how Aspies and those on the Autism spectrum think and view things so this does belong here. Heads up!

I've heard of tragedies happening in real life such as 9/11 and shootings/Katrina etc. I even saw a video of a man in the army being shot at yet I didn't get emotional or upset as others might have. Yet when fictional character die or a tragedy happens in shows I watch I cry or get upset. Does anyone else have this disconnect with society tragedies VS. show tragedies?

On a t.v. show a woman telling her family she has breast cancer!

Doctor Who 2 characters being sent away.

I FEEL sadness I cry and FEEL something vs. real life not much.

Can anyone relate??

Absolutely. I've had very strong connections - obsessions, sometimes - to fictional characters, but never to actual people. I guess that's because fictional characters are "easier to grasp" in their personality. They're not shown doing smalltalk or doing unnecessary social stuff, because it's their story that matters.

Good point. I feel these t.v. characters are people you get attached to. Others might say OH! it's just a show they aren't real but I make a connection with them. I didn't know anyone involved in 9/11 or Katrina. I have no doubt if I did I'd cry and feel sadness but I'm NOT going to feel that for a total stranger!! !! I fealt more for the Dark Knight Rises shooting since I'm a HUGE Batman fan and I love Criminal Justice so I was interested in WHY the mass shooter did it. With Gabrieal Giffords I was interested in SHE SHOULD have DIED! and the medical fascination of her recovery. I look at things from a different perspective than most people.

For me it's probably just the fact that I don't feel connected to actual people. It's almost like they're not real - and fictional characters are much more "there" and defined - which kinda hurts my brain if I think about it too much.

I can relate, but I think there also is a simple explanation.

The whole point of TV shows is to engage the viewer, and the best way to do this is to make them feel a certain way. If you watch a scene of someone getting a cancer diagnosis, then this scene was specifically designed to make you feel sadness. More than that - the producers of the show also made sure that you felt attached to the character beforehand, they made sure you know how devastating it will be in his/her circumstances. You get to know the people they love and are loved by, you get to know their dreams and hopes that then will be shattered in that one scene. They put a lot of effort into explicitly showing you all the pain that is involved. Today's TV consumers are literally trained to identify with whoever they see on the screen, so even if the show does a bad job, it usually still works.

Real life doesn't have this agenda and so it is less persuasive - even though the pain is just as real (wait, did I just write that?). If you see someone suffering in the news, then you usually have no relationship to them. You also don't get to see a close-up shot of them and there is no dramatizing music and lighting. The average person in pain is just not as telegenic and able to convey their pain in a theatrical fashion (and has no reason to).

Other people in real life are just that - other people.
Other people in TV are actually aspects of you, or at least that's what TV is trying.

For me empathy is completely foreign. I know this makes some of us sound cold and uncaring but we are not. I've been told many times that I don't care about things that I should. I just don't have the capacity to care a lot of the times unless it's something that directly relates to me ie losing a parent or seeing someone dying in a hospital of an illness.

Empathy to me is almost like hearing a foreign language. You hear it but you don't understand any of it so it doesn't really register in your head or thoughts. That's how it is for me with empathy. Most of the time i'm just like oh that sucks or something like that. I don't relate to the bad event or feeling.

I feel a strong connection with Sid from Flushed Away, even though he's a punk rocker and I'm a Mod. I have a feeling that the script writer of that movie wanted to make him HFA or something. :O)

I've always connected more with fictional characters than with real people. The characters that resonate with me the most become my imaginary friends. I don't really cry for fictional characters though, because if something bad happens to them, I can just pretend like it never happened to the version of them that dwells within my own imagination.

Fictional characters I have felt connected to:
Cameron (model TOK-715 infiltrator from Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles)
Sheldon (engineer/inventor from My Life as a Teenage Robot)
Sylar/Gabriel Gray (main antagonist from Heroes)
Dexter (serial killer and blood spatter analyst for Miami Metro in eponymous drama)
...there are some more, but it is getting late where I am and this could go on for hours

Yes, very much so - and I also think it is natural to feel that way. As well as what others have already said, for the most part, I don't tend to understand the thoughts, behaviours or motivations of other (real) people. Real people do not share their inner thoughts or true motivations and desires with you. However, with a fictional character, especially in books (I am more of a book person) their thoughts, motivations, flaws and strengths are laid out as clear as can be. You know them in a way you can never know even someone very close to you, because you are almost inside their head, or beside them, experiencing their life alongside them. In other words, with a fictional character, we are able to experience, and often grow to love, a complete human being. This is a difficult thing to achieve with a real person for someone with AS who has trouble interpreting words and behaviour. Real people are a mystery. Fictional characters are fully explained. We know the fictional character inside out and perhaps even how they would react in any given situation. This also provides great reassurance to someone who has trouble predicting behaviour, because real people often surprise us or change or act out of character, which can cause us anxiety.

It is far safer and more easily understandable for us to relate to or love fictional characters. If only real people went about with an explanation of their true hopes, dreams, values, temperament and behaviours pinned to their chest, and explained why they said the things they said instead of forcing others to guess at it, why, the problem might be solved!

I don't think I have felt an even stronger connection with a fictional character than River Wyles from To The Moon.

same for me i feel more attached to the characters in a show than in real life. But in alot of shows i can detach myself from it and say its only a show but sometimes i get tearry eyed and such. like in the latest episode of doctor who.

Also along these view of thinking I feel more romantically attracted towards fictional characters, like simba or nala.

But yeah like with 9/11 I was not "close" to it so it did not affect me that much as other people i knew. Also i live in a small city of around 10,000 people so as a whole people here are more detached from stuff than in bigger cities, like once we were riding in a bus for a school trip to a bigger city out of state we saw a homeless person and all the teens looked but the other people on the bus that had lived in bigger cities were looking at us like "what you have never seen a homeless person before.

The 9/11 and Katrina examples were good to use. In my case I watched 9/11 unfold live and just felt like I was watching an awesome action movie. I still feel so ashamed at that. But when those two towers went down, towers that featured regularly in Marvel comic's New York based titles, those towers I swore I'd visit one day, that's when I started to mourn. It was a long time before I could really grasp the horror for the people in all those planes and buildings that day. Also, yes I get more emotionally invested in fiction than reality. I figure fictional characters are usually nicer to us than real people so we're more willing and or able to empathise? I recently started rewatching the original Indigo League series of Pokemon for the first time since I was in high school in the late 90's. I find I still feel chills at the same parts of the lame opening song as I did back then but most of the rest of my day is just bleh.

I feel deeper feelings for tragedies in fiction than I do tragedies in real life. When 9/11 happened, I felt bad about it happening but it felt so removed from me that it didn't affect me the way it did others. However, if something happens in a TV show I like, it effects me as if it were real.