Imagine, you are watching your favorite television show or your favorite movie and all of a sudden, your favorite character dies. Just out of the blue, no warning! Then you hear the emotional music, the slow motion fall, the flashback of their life, and the other characters screaming their name. Then darkness. What do you do?
Do you just move on after getting to know this character after ten plus seasons or after three 2.5 hour movies? Do you forget their friendships, their love, and their struggles? Or do you get teary eyed or start to hold back your tears or finally let your feels hit you hard and you have to just let your emotions out?
For most (obsessed) people, the normal reaction is to cry when a character you have some form of connection with dies. Then when a person who hasn’t watched the show or the movie sees you get really upset, they ask “Why are you crying? It's just a character. Those aren’t real feelings; they are fictional feelings." You just stand there flabbergasted at the fact that someone could be asking whether or not your tears are real. Of course you try justify the fact that you were just crying or you try to hide it altogether. But after a few other season finales and other people asking the same question, you come to the realization as to why they ask. They ask because they don’t understand the connection between viewer and character.
Now as a Tumblr obsessed fanatic of 20-plus fandoms, I have heard this question multiple times and it wasn’t until recently that I understood why. The person asking the question hasn’t gotten a personal connection with the character or the franchise. There are multiple reasons as to why you may get a connection and someone else just doesn’t get the connection with that character. One is the fact that we tend to like people and things that are more similar to us. If you find a character that is similar to you, then you may find characteristics in that character that you find in yourself. But you also connect to a character based off of experiences that you may share, whether it be a good experience such as winning an award or a traumatic experience.
Now attractiveness does have some leeway into the characters you may like, but that is not the only thing that attributes to individual connections. One is music. The power of music lies in its ability to ‘entrain’ our body, causing our heart rate to synchronize with the beat and affecting our mood through pitch and melody. Another is to make other characters care about the characters who you want an audience to like.
But this is all based off neuroscience and human emotion, which changes from person to person. The connection that I have to Bucky Barnes aka Winter Soldier may not be the same connection that my sister has to Iron Man or the connection my friend has to Dean Winchester. So to me and every other fan in the world, these fictional feelings are real and are real emotions based on fictional characters. They may be fictional to other people without the connection but to us, they are as real to me as if I personal knew the character and had known them for my entire life.
