Separating reality from fantasy is fairly easy. We all know the moon isn’t red and that we can’t levitate our wineglasses or snap our fingers to create meals. We know we’re not superheroes and have no magical powers.
And yet, sometimes we wonder if we can separate fantasy from reality, especially when a character that we play in a role-playing game becomes a person we feel almost truly exists.
Characters do exist – in our minds. This makes them a blend of imagination and of reality. They come from you; they’re part of you.
But the fact that you can almost touch these characters in no way labels you as someone with a multiple personality disorder or a person out of touch with reality. Characters often reflect pieces of who we are. People are very multi-faceted and personalities are rich – and so are our characters.
The best characters are ones that are very close to our hearts. We can relate to their pain. We understand their suffering. We feel joy for the same reasons as the character and we feel sadness, too. We take what we know and feel to pour that into imaginary people we create.
Then we give them life.
So when a situation upsets our characters and we find ourselves walking around every day with tears in our eyes until the problem is resolved, it’s normal to wonder whether the lines between reality and fantasy have blurred.
They haven’t. Trust us. You’re fine.
You know who you are. Your character will never be identical to you, no matter how many similarities you might share. Situations too close to home may cause some introspection and make you feel more than you’d like to, but chances are, you know who you are and it isn’t your character.
Sometimes characters are us but with the ability to have what we never did. Sometimes characters share our past problems, the ones we never overcame.
Could your character be a reflection of you? Certainly. But reflections are never perfect, and they never have the rich color or depth of dimension of the real thing.
http://capturingfantasy.com/separating-fantasy-from-reality
