Everyone's gone through it: the heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, tear-jerking loss, the feeling of emptiness, the mind-numbing absence. We've all felt the pain the death of a favorite character brings, whether it's in a book, a movie, a game and so on. Recently, I experienced this pain for, seemingly, the billionth time. While I won't say who died on what show, as I don't want to spoil it for anyone, I will say this: it happened and it hurt.
Here's the question: why does the death of a fictional character in a fictional show hurt so badly? At least for me, the most simple answer is the feeling like I've lost a friend. When I find a show or a book that I truly love and follow doggedly, I can't help but get overly invested in the characters like they're my own family, my own friends, my own enemies, my own allies. I can't help but identify with certain characters, seeing myself in their actions and their decisions and their motivations. The loss of one of these characters, therefore, is almost always intensely personal. Their death takes a toll on me as much as it takes a toll on the show. With my most recent "loss," I still feel that a part of me has died with them, as I did when Dobby died or when Delphine (from Orphan Black) was shot. It's a very visceral pain in that it lives on inside me, without regard for reality or truth. The worst part: it's hard to express that pain of loss without someone saying something akin to, "It's just a show, it's not real." While this is understandable, it still undermines feelings that I know are quasi-absurd, but feel anyways.
If you're like me, books and shows don't just represent entertainment to you. They are a way to escape life when it gets to hard, a way to dull the pain and immerse ourselves in a different world, with different people and different pains. When I lose a part of that world in the loss of a character, it yanks me out of a place a happiness in the show and back into that world of pain. I feel, in this pain, a sense of betrayal, like the writers created a character just to throw them away. I feel that they should have loved them more, that they should have treated them better because, more often than not, I feel as if that character deserves so much more than they were given.
I applaud actors that portray truth in the death of their characters, as I'm sure it hurts them far deeper than it hurts me. This person they have immersed themselves in I feel must have become a part of them too. They must have lost a part of themselves as well, the part that became the character and the part that identified with the character. Overall, it just seems unfair.
So, to the writers' that kill of characters for shock value: don't. To the people that ridicule those feeling the loss of a fictional character: don't. To the people that celebrate the death of a character: don't. There are people who love, or loved, that character intensely. While that character is not real, the love is real. The emotional investment is real. That's not something to take lightly. So please, respect it. Care for it.
To those characters lost along the way, that manifestation of things we see inside ourselves or things we wish to see, I will miss you all greatly and I'm sure many others will as well.
To the friend I lost in death so recently, I think I will miss you most of all.
