The Hidden World of Comfort Characters

The last year and a half has been an extremely difficult time in many people’s lives. Whether it was losing a loved one, having to deal with the repercussions of national shutdowns, or struggling to maintain their emotional stability while in quarantine — having to isolate left many wondering how they were going to use their time. 

For some, this newfound time quarantine meant rediscovering their favorite hobbies, shows, movies, and books. For others, it meant turning to their favorite characters to find comfort outside of the chaos happening around them. For me, it meant turning to Marvel’s Peter Parker to help me navigate through the year.

This, however, isn’t a new phenomenon and has a term — comfort characters. 

According to Vice, a comfort character is a fictional character people find immense comfort in, either because they can identify with them or wish they could know them in real life. 

In simple terms, these characters are an extension of the person they resonate with because they are loved by them.

This hidden world of people turning to their favorite characters is common on Twitter where accounts, usually called “stan” accounts, are dedicated to their favorite comfort characters.

Although now I know from personal experience, for the longest time, I could never understand why people were so intrigued with characters from anime, shows, or movies.

My first encounter with this side of comfort characters on Twitter was for the character Sherlock Holmes from BBC’s acclaimed show, “Sherlock.” Upon stumbling on a stan account for him, I was immediately confused. This person isn't real, I would tell myself. The idea that someone could find enough passion to create an entire account for a person who didn’t exist, let alone be able to interact with them in some way, was confusing to me. 

And with my newfound time during quarantine, I found myself on social media more often than before. 

Once, while scrolling through Twitter I noticed that the hashtag, #BenSoloDeservedBetter was trending. When I clicked to see what people were tweeting about it was an endless stream of love pouring from dedicated fans of the infamous Kylo Ren, turned Ben Solo in the latest installment of Star Wars, “Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.”

“I identify with Ben Solo because I relate to conflict inside of him,” @driversdulce on Twitter said, adding, “Ben Solo’s story is an extreme legend of smaller personal stories that are happening or have happened.” 

Although I couldn’t relate to Ben or @driversdulce, I could empathize with them. Perhaps I’ll never understand, I thought.

And it wasn’t until I was struggling with my anxiety during quarantine when I decided to turn to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to give me something to focus on. I spent my time rewatching every movie, learning the backstory of each character, playing it in the background while I laid in bed because it would let me know how long I was in bed and when I should get up. It was comforting being able to relate to these characters.

The movie I played most often was Spider-Man: Homecoming because I could relate to Peter’s struggle of identity and self-worth and his feeling of believing he was alone in his journey.

It may sound silly but the truth was that when I was alone and felt like I couldn't talk to my friends, watching this movie let me identify with someone else’s struggles and follow them to the end of their journey — ultimately allowing me to find comfort in them.

Now, after having spent time studying the hidden world of comfort characters and having been comforted by them as well, do I realize the importance of this.

Sometimes all that someone has as a support system is nothing but a fictional character. Sometimes, people who are struggling with mental health issues, trauma, and stories they feel are unheard, see themselves in characters whose stories someone found compelling enough to write about.

Having been isolated only for a few months, I felt like I was alone and had no one to turn to to help me through my mental health. Because of this, I turned to people who were fictional and somehow got a lot of comfort from them.

But is it always good? During quarantine, mental health hardships or difficult times in people's lives, people actively find themselves turning to these characters for comfort, but what about friends? A support system?

The case can be made that relying on these characters for comfort can cause harm. For example, when you turn to something fictional to help cope with your reality, it can cause dissociation between both worlds. People can rely on these characters, searching for something, when the whole world is out there waiting for them. Or, they can pile all their emotions onto a character, who often is an actor putting on a performance, and rely on them for emotional stability. Oftentimes, these actors are not anything like the people they portray on screens.

Yet, this is not new. For centuries, authors have created their own worlds out of words and stepped into them wholeheartedly. They have found themselves in a world between worlds. They have created a reality that does not exist and yet they found themselves in it. There are many things people in this world do that are far worse than finding comfort in something that is not real.

And these people are important too. These characters came out of someone’s writing and imagination. These characters were not rooted in a false fantasy and plucked out of air. They came from the writer too, who could have been inspired by people they saw themselves in.  

For people who are struggling mentally, this can be the only source of comfort without having to pay for treatment as well. 

There has been discourse as to why having fictional comfort characters is ultimately unfavorable but I believe that if it’s not harming anyone, people should be able to have a secret world between themselves and a character they resonate with.

Ultimately, isn’t that what characters are supposed to do at the end of the day? Aren’t they supposed to be a part of something much bigger than themselves, giving hope at the end of a story or helping someone? Especially when they are in need of it?