I think this might be my "special interest". Sometimes I will watch a movie, play a game or read a book, and for some reason I will feel very emotionally connected to one character. I observed that they usually have dark hair and are some kind of "tragic hero" or anti-hero (half good half "evil"). It's not exactly like just having a crush on a character. I don't fantasize about me meeting them or anything. I will, however, think about them a lot - about their life, their behaviour, why they did what they did and how they must feel... I look at pictures of them and read fanfiction. I don't go absolutely crazy fanatic like some fans do, and I am always aware that they are not real, but they just are in my thoughts a lot. Often this goes hand in hand with a mild or moderate phase of depression, or at least melancholy, especially if the character has a hard life or even dies in his story.
These phases of obsession can last anywhere between a few weeks up to more than 2 years. During that time I usually daydream about them often, usually when I go to bed, before I actually fall asleep. I think of new stories for those characters. They tend to get injured or die in a lot of them. Most of the time these daydreams are pleasant, a comforting escape from reality, but a few times in my life they got really obsessive and made me depressive, with a strong feeling of loss, like it was unbearable that they would never be real, or that their life was so sad. Then I usually wish I could stop caring for them, but I can't.
The weird thing is that I've never felt as close to a real person in my life as I have to some of these fictional characters. Is this "normal", do you know what I mean?