Awkward brunettes with problems with authority, table for 3.
So I had to write that paper on an influential book in my life, and then I had to write a review of a banned book, and then I realized: well, here you go: here’s where my perception of my young self came from.
-Marcy in The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
-Meg in A Wrinkle in Time
Sure, I didn’t have braces like Meg or a gymsuit like Marcy, but there it is. Both girls are incredibly smart, and at an awkward age. Both butt heads with authority figures at school and outside it. Both know that to get along better, they’d have to be like everyone else, and yet still can’t make that leap to do so.
Both have fathers who don’t live up to their expectations.
Anyway, it’s just interesting to take your “favorite” characters and look at how much you were like them, or they were like you. But what came first: the chicken or the egg? Did you see yourself in them, or in part become them? I’m terrible with reading things and then being in that mindset–it’s one of the reasons I’ve been reading less “serious” books for the past couple years. I get really moody when I read capital-L Literature, where life is Real and Depressing and so on.
I watch TV and I start speaking like the characters. I hear accents in my head the rest of the day.
Really, I shouldn’t read or watch anything at all, now that I think about it. 
(Also, I am kind of annoyed that A Wrinkle in Time is in the Young Adult section of the bf’s library. WTH? A House Like a Lotus, yes, Wrinkle no.)
I honestly think we like characters we can identify with – even if only a little. Sometimes we give ourselves permission to be more like a character, but the basic behaviours had to already be a part of us and we just give ourselves a reason to go for it.
On the other hand, sometimes we like a character just because we respect how different they are. Something to think about. Thanks for an interesting post.