Episode 13: Comfort Characters

The host discusses the concept of comfort characters and how they can be used in writing. Comfort characters are fictional characters that bring comfort to individuals, and they are easy to relate to and empathize with. They can serve as role models, friends, or possess characteristics that make them likable. Comfort characters can be used in various roles within a story and can help with character development. The host also mentions some examples of well-known comfort characters from different genres. Welcome, welcome, welcome, my lovely creatives. Welcome to A Cup of Creativity in the Literary Lounge. I am your host, Kinda Faith, and today I would like to discuss comfort characters. Living with artist children, they always sketch comfort characters, at least my daughter does, and so I kind of wanted to apply that to writing today. So today I want to talk about the comfort characters, who and what they are, how they're used, and why writers utilize these characters. But, before I do anything, I would like to give a couple of shout-outs. First off is the Advanced Learning Library here in Wichita, Kansas. Their AV studio is amazing. I mean, you can dim the lights, you can record, you can, I mean, there's tons of material. It's this really funky lime green, so you can't go wrong with that. It's just like the perfect environment for creating. And so I really want to give a shout-out and a thank you to them. And then, of course, my other one is Faith Publishing Incorporated. We are the company that's sponsoring this podcast, and it is kind of what is driving me right now. Faith Publishing Inc. is a nonprofit corporation, a nonprofit publishing company, who, how do I say this? I need to really work on my spell. I want to focus on underrepresented voices. And in addition to that, I have, like, we have eight different programs that we can help. I want to help, like, small towns. I want to help schools. Obviously, I want to help writers. And there's just, there's so much that we can do with stories. I am adamant about telling stories and sharing stories and documenting and writing stories, because as a culture, actually, every single culture on the face of the planet learns everything through stories. And that's kind of where Faith Publishing comes from. We are the audience. We are the storytellers. We are the legacy. Because every voice matters. Every talent matters. And every story deserves to be told, even the really awkward or scary ones. So, with Faith Publishing, I want us to inspire, and I want to be inspired. So, with that, if you would like to contact us, please go to our website. It's faithpublishing.org. Check out our programs. I'm really excited about them. I did kind of a complete revamp of the website. And if you looked at my video clips of my study, I have got papers everywhere. The madness, the method of my madness. I've got papers everywhere with all of my exciting news and all the things I want to share. And so, now you can actually go to our website, and it's a little bit more organized. It's not nearly as terrifying as my study. So, anyway, check us out at faithpublishing.org. But before I dive into this wonderful topic of comfort characters, you know it, you know it, you want to do it, I want to say our mantra. Yes, what is a mantra? A mantra is a group of words. It can be one sound. It can be a phrase. It can be pretty much anything that you say over and over and over again until you begin to believe it. It helps with meditation. I actually have all of my students say this in my classes. I teach, if you guys didn't know, I teach English. I teach all levels of English at Newton High School. And then I also teach rhetoric of horror because rhetoric is super cool, and horror is really, really fun. And then I also teach creative writing. So, I always have a mantra. And while some of my students think it's cheesy, I do not care. It makes us feel better, and I just think it kind of creates a sense of community. So, without further ado, ready for your mantra? All right, today I will face fear. Today I will be brave. Today I will struggle. Today I will grow. And today I will get through this. Huzzah! Jazz hands. Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle. I love that. Okay. All right, so let's dive into comfort characters. It's kind of funny because, honestly, I don't think about comfort characters when it comes to writing. But I was thinking the other day. So, I've got two children, as we all know, and they are both artists. And my youngest one, before she goes off to the Kansas City Art Institute, she is my book illustrator. She has done covers for me. The girl draws all the time, and I'm maybe as mean or sinister as it sounds. I want to use her talent as much as I possibly can until I find a replacement. So, you know, anybody that likes to draw and wants to do illustrations, please let me know. Anyway, one of the things that we always talk about, because my students and my children and even myself, we are full of anxiety. I mean, anxiety about anything. I get anxious. Not necessarily, like, really, really nervous, but I'm always anxious before I do this podcast. I'm anxious when I do something new. I'm anxious when I don't know what the results are going to be. I get stressed out, and I have a variety of skills or, you know, tools in my proverbial toolbox that I use to help me just focus. And so, one of the things that my daughter and I always talk about are comfort characters. And so, a lot of times, you know, throughout her high school career, I'm like, Hey, did you take notes? No, but I drew Scrubby. And Scrubby is actually a little cartoon of herself that she has drawn since, like, I don't know, the second grade. And so, whenever she gets stressed out, she draws Scrubby, which is a version of her, but it has, like, you know, like a power-up tail, kind of probably after, like, some Mario game. And, of course, she has to have a hat, and she's got these really big, like, cat ears. I don't know. I don't question it. I just enjoy it. And so, that's what she does when she kind of, you know, gets stressed out and she needs somebody or something there. So, when I'm talking about comfort characters, believe it or not, you can use this in writing. We see this in, oh, my gosh, in reading. We see it in movie characters. We see it, oh, my gosh, pretty much all over the place. But what's kind of cool about it is what a comfort character is. It's a fictional character. And it brings you comfort. What? Exactly. So, when you are stressed out or even if you are really involved in, let's say you're binge-watching something. We'll just do that because I think it's easy. There's always that character that you're drawn to. That character kind of inspires you. Or maybe that character inspires the main protagonist. Or maybe that character is that, you know, has a lot of inner torture, but he's, like, the anti-hero or the fallen friend. Or, you know, maybe you just really find warmth in being with that character. And I've said many times before, I think a good read, a good read, it doesn't have to be, like, positive, negative, or whatever. A good read is when it's done, I'm kind of, I have this cathartic feeling, I'm happy that it's ended. But I'm also kind of saddened because I've made friends with these characters. And now my friends are gone. I know that sounds a little psycho. It's actually, believe it or not, there's a thing called, I think it's fictophilia? I know, the things that you learn. It is actually, fictophilia is actually a very intense or endearing emotion attachment, emotional attachment to characters. So I think occasionally, I probably, I don't want to say suffer from that, I probably enjoy that quite a bit. And why I do that is because I am attached to these comfort characters. So these comfort characters, obviously, they're really easy to relate to. I like to empathize with them. I think that they are my friends. They kind of, maybe they reflect on my principles or my beliefs or, I don't know, maybe like their emotional dynamics. So if you still don't know what I'm talking about, let me give you a couple of examples of maybe some well-known comfort characters. My genre is kind of, I don't know, a little all over the place. I apologize. My go-to is kind of cartoons. That's where I was this morning. So Klaus, I think he's hard grief. Remember from the Umbrella Academy? He's the one that can talk to the dead, and he's absolutely adorable. Right? Luz from Owl House. Peter Parker. Peter Parker from Spider-Man. Recently, my daughter and I, we re-watched all of The Last Airbender, and I would say Zuko is probably a comfort character. Like, I don't like him, but then I really like him. Like, I really like him. One of my favorite cartoons of all time is Invader Zim, and I would say my comfort character is Grr, the little robot dog. You could even also do, like, Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas. All of those characters have some kind of characteristic. I know, character characteristics. Some kind of, I don't know, they possess some kind of something that can make us connect to them. Maybe they are role models. Maybe they are friends. Maybe they are, I don't know, we just like them. And that's actually what a comfort character is. Now, how on earth is this tied to writing? Well, the cool thing about it, well, I mean, I don't necessarily write the same character over and over again. I try to kind of switch it up. But I like, sometimes I like reading formulaic writing. You know, I love a good detective story, or a series, or such and such. And you can kind of, like, follow. So, like, maybe Sherlock Holmes would be a really fun one. But what's kind of cool about your comfort character is that your comfort character can actually be in any role in your story. It can be resilient, carefree. Maybe this is, like, that particular characteristic that you're drawn to or that you want to write about, maybe it's how that person or character faces struggle. Maybe he, she, they are extremely loyal to the community. Or maybe they're ambitious about what's going to happen in the future. So I think that's just some of the things, how you can use this in your writing. Another way that they can help you in your writing, at least with character development, is that this, by having your comfort character, it's not quite like a trope, per se, or an archetype. It makes your characters feel real because we are connected to them. So, I mean, you can still have fantasy or sci-fi. You're still going to have some kind of an aspect of that character that you can connect to, right? I think this also helps with your character development, your showing. So, like, if you really know that character and you see how they act, that's going to help you with your showing instead of telling. I kind of think of, sorry, I'm kind of all over the place this morning. I think of Superman. Superman, I will tell you, and I'm sorry if people are huge Superman fans. I like Superman. Not my favorite, but, you know. The cool thing about it is that if you just look at it on a very surface level, there's really nothing exciting about Superman, right? Yeah, you fly. I don't know why you have to have your arms up, but you fly. You guys have a really cool thing. You write for a newspaper. You've got, like, the fancy, you know, the glasses and whatnot. You can't necessarily go into a cell phone booth anymore, you know, since we have cell phones, but I digress. The thing that makes Superman almost a comfort character, and it's kind of cool if you think about it, it's kind of his downfall. The thing that we like, the aspect that we like about Superman, for example, is that he wants to be human, and it's interesting, you know, because he wants so badly to fit in, and then the things when he's actually faced with being human, that's, like, the hardest part for him, and I think that's why we are connected to him. I mean, it's cool. I mean, it could totally be, like, a little curl in the middle of his forehead, but I think it's when he has to go through human emotions and human situations, and that's what makes us attached to him, right? Another thing I can also mention about comfort characters is that a lot of these characters can serve as role models. Now, while Klaus Hargreaves, I can never get that name right, Klaus from the Umbrella Academy, he's the one that does all the drugs, and he talks to the dead, and you're like, how on earth is he a role model? He is one of the most caring and funny and comedic characters in that whole entire thing, so I think there are aspects where you can actually have a role model or a guiding figure, or maybe you want to have a character that, you know, goes through similar challenges that we do. Again, it's kind of like going back to that whole Superman thing, right? Maybe we want to emulate the characteristics that are important to us. And also, kind of as a sidebar, this is going to be a relatively short, shorter podcast, is when you're having your comfort character, one, it makes us feel good. It makes us feel good to write about them. We want to see them succeed. We want to see them connect. But I'm going to just plant a little seed, and maybe I will address this in later episodes, is kind of the responsibility that we have for our narrative. Now, one thing that I talk about when I'm teaching, and I think this kind of gets, I don't know, I say this quite a bit, is you are not your writing. So, I wrote like a really, really long poem about how much I hate a brown-ribbed blue spider, and it sounded like the most racist, hate-filled thing you've ever heard or read. And that was kind of my point. That does not mean that I am racist or hate-filled. I do think that we can be responsible about what we are trying to say in our writing. You know, every single writing is tinge. You have, believe it or not, you are going to have an influence. You are going to influence others, and there's also going to be a little bit of a tinge, or maybe like a little aftertaste of a political stance. That sounds a little crazy, and maybe a little scary. But I think every single piece of writing, every piece of art, is tied to influence, and possibly politics, or like a stance. I'm not talking like Republican, Democrat kind of thing. I'm just talking about the stance, the political stance of what you think about in your writing. Because otherwise, this beautiful piece of artwork is just going to be decor. It's not something that you can get from like Pier One, or whatever, or Hobby Lobby, or wherever you shop. So I do want to mention that when you are writing your character, your comfort character, think about what characteristics you want to bring to life. The wonderful thing about this comfort character is not only does it make us feel good, but as a writer, it shows so much versatility, because you can use this in any single role. You can have it in any kind of figure, right? It can be a friend, it can be an entity, it can be whatever. You get to choose what characteristics you want to emulate in your stories, or in your writing. And I think that's extremely powerful. So, think about your Peter Parker, and Ger, and Klaus, and Jack Skellington, and those characters that make you happy. And then think about why, or think about how you're connected to them, and then how can you put that in writing. That's going to be my call to action for you today. So, this is Makenda States, in a cup of creativity, in a literary lounge, where writing doesn't have to suck. I look forward to reading your work. Until next time. Thank you.