When people tell me “They’re just fictional characters,” I feel bad for that person because their imagination is so stunted that they can’t feel the life breathing from the characters that are alive in ways they cannot ever understand.
There is no such a thing as “They’re just fictional characters” to me.
Learn up on mirror neurons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron
Now, since mirror neurons will react in the same way while observing “real people”, as they do while observing “fictional characters”, and as mirror neurons are thought to be one of the things giving us our social abilities (and thus a very large amount of the base of any relationship we have), I think it is safe to say that in a mental aspect (and even a social one) “fictional characters” are just as real as “real people”.
(Source: -keanureeves-)
