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Photo source: CWtv.com

Each week, thanks to the power of TV we easily travel to places we could never find on a map. While sitting on our couches we get transported to the foggy town of Mystic Falls on The Vampire Diaries. Or maybe it’s to the buzzing metropolis of Central City on The Flash. Regardless of how fictitious they may be, the escape from reality they provide is real. They provide a home to characters we come to love. They allow us to get lost in worlds that otherwise would only exist in our imagination. But even more than that, they somehow find a way to take things created as fantasy and somehow make them feel real.

Look at a something like The Vampire Diaries. It’s a town that’s home to the impossible.

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Photo source: TV Fanatic

Vampires. Witches. Werewolves. Hybrids. Heretics. Travelers. Mystic Falls has ’em all. It’s a town filled with characters. It’s a town made up of the superhuman. But somehow they’ve found a way to take these superhuman characters and root them in the things make us human. Our desire to be loved. The idea of free will. What it means to actually be alive. Sure, we can’t go around snapping people’s necks when someone we love is in trouble, but we can understand doing what needs to be done to protect our family. We can’t all relate to falling in love with two brothers, but we can relate to pursuing the people that make us better — a point of contention within the #TVD fan base. What I’m trying to say is that these characters prove that you don’t need to have a heart, to have a show that’s full of it.

Then you have The Flash. While we can’t all relate to having super speed due to meta-human powers, we can relate to the struggle of being different. We can relate to the journey of taking what makes us different and letting it bring us power. While we may not all have the ability to travel back through time to try and right a wrong, we’ve definitely all wished we could. The Flash is a story that was brought to life from a comic book, but nothing about it feels unrealistic. Why? Because at the root of it, The Flash is just about a someone trying to find their place: in their family, in love, and ultimately, in the world around them. Isn’t that what we are all trying to do? Doing our best to piece it all together? At the end of the day, we’re all Barry Allen. We’re all doing the best we can. We’re all trying to figure it out. Some of us are just doing it a little… faster than others.

What do you love about shows in the supernatural or superhuman genre?