ABSTRACT
Children used media characters in their fantasies, but rarely adopted them completely. They felt free to make changes in the characters to suit their own needs. They imagined themselves in these characters' shoes and/or used the most attractive traits and behaviors of the original media characters, ignoring or simply omitting non-relevant or contradictory parts of the characters' personalities. A few cases stay closer to the original text in their make-believe worlds. These fantasies seem to be a reenactment of the kind of action-hero media script that is designed to engage boys at the deep level of their wishes to have power, be strong, and over-come adversity. It became evident that children build upon a wealth of information gathered from a wide range of sources, including their own personal experience and mediated sources, and freely interweave them to create rich fantasy backdrops for playing out their wishes to act.
