Introspection and Yuri

I started reading Sweet Blue Flowers last night and was struck again (I felt the same way watching the anime) by how strongly I identify with Fumi. I compared that to how strongly I identify with a character who's sort of her polar opposite in some respects, Sayaka from Bloom Into You. It only took me a moment to make sense of that: Sayaka is who I want to be, and Fumi is who I was. (Who I am now is still a work in progress.)

I thought more about how, before I transitioned, it was incredibly rare for me to see a character in media who I saw myself in or wanted to be like. I can only think of two, and it wasn't the same with them. What I liked about them was that they were really smart and, in the case of one, Spock, was perceived to be unaffected by negative interactions with their peers and the difficult emotions that come from them. (The other was Albert Einstein, who I admired as a sort of embodiment of a concept of intelligence rather than as an actual person.)

This feeling of connection to a fictional character is novel to me and has made me think. I wonder what it would have been like to have a role-model like Sayaka (who in a way that feels a little embarrassing to express, kind of is that to me), or to really see myself in a character as I do with Fumi, in media when I was a kid or a teen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Into_You

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Blue_Flowers