Meaning
What does Comfort Character mean?
A Comfort character is a fictional character from a TV show, movie, video game or manga that you feel a strong connection with.
People often feel a bond between them and their comfort character, often thinking of them as friends or role models.
Typically these characters are the protagonists of their own franchises, equipped with positive personality traits and an overall wholesome vibe.
Origin
What's the origin of Comfort Character?
Feeling familiar to fictional characters has been a commonly experienced feeling for centuries.
People have developed bonds with characters from books and tales since the birth of entertaining literature.
However, this phenomenon was first named and defined in 2020, on the site Urban Dictionary.
User Squootre defined it in his article as “a character, which can be from a TV show, game, book etc makes you feel safe and happy when upset, sad, down etc.”.
Spread & Usage
How did Comfort Character spread?
After its definition surfaced on Urban Dictionary, people started to cite the article online by editing it on images of various fictional characters.
One of the first of these photo edits appeared on Reddit in 2021. This post regarded the character Jack Avery from the TV Show Grey’s Anatomy as a comfort character.
The expression is still frequently used on Reddit and other forums, mostly being brought in relation with anime and manga characters.