Character Relatibility Ramble

I’m really not sure if other people think about these kinds of things, but I find myself considering it often enough. Who represents me? Who do I relate to? Who is depicted in a way that is comparable to how I feel about my position in relationships, success, fortune, etc? I believe taking a look into popular media, and media in general to find some character(s) that you live a comparable life to, may be beneficial. 

Let me try to explain what I mean better. Who are you in your group of friends? Are you the leader, do you make decisions for the group? Are you a follower, do you go along with whatever anyone else is doing? Do you feel out of place? Do you feel like it’s your own family? How’s your success in romantic relationships? Are you always single? Always dating? Married? Just along for the ride and there to have fun? Those are the kinds of questions you should be asking of yourself and of the characters and people in media you consume to see if you are a good match. 

It’s a bit harder to try to articulate what I mean with success. Are you someone who is going 100% all the time? Do you have big aspirations, or not so much? Do you know what you want to do with your life, or just figuring it out as you go? Are you hitting rock bottom? Are you on top of the world? How much success have you seen so far? How much are you planning to see and what are you willing to do to get there? Are you average, above or below?

Then maybe assess fortune as well. I’m talking about Karma here. What’s the proportion of good to bad events that happen to you? Are you lucky? Things never seem to go right? This possibly is the most enabling criteria, as it is unique and specific to each person how they perceive their own fortune. Which leads me to my pick.

I think Jack Kerouac, especially as he portrays himself and his adventures in his novels, is a character and human that represents my position in all the situations and concepts above. I’m not going to share why as it ends up extremely personal and is a form of abstract reasoning and thought that is especially hard to depict with words on a page. If you got through the same process, I believe you’d end up feeling the same way.

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