It's amazing what we do in the absence of mirrors. Of course I identified with them when the other options were pale shadows-cardboard cut-outs by comparison. No, every aspect, every feature, every flaw piled up until they were as nuanced and realistic as the people watching. They got to be antiheroes they got to be complex they got to be messy and aggravating and powerful. I wanted to have the storylines they were granted on page and on screen. It wasn’t that I wanted to be a man, but I wanted to matter the way they did. Looking back, every character I liked had one glaring thing in common: they were almost always men. They are unabashedly, unashamedly themselves. Villains move perpendicular instead of parallel. There’s a reason so many people who don’t see themselves in the hero find themselves in the villain.
I wanted to be the hero, or the villain, so long as I was the lead. I wanted to be Heroes’ Peter Petrelli and Sylar. I wanted to be Supernatural’s Sam and Dean Winchester in their ’67 black Impala. And to be honest, Buffy was never my speed, even though I was a blonde kid from California, or perhaps because of it.
