Do you tend to obsess over fictional characters?

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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?

From time to time. I especially find tragic villains such as Darth Vader or Roy Batty capturing my imagination.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

My special interests have always revolved around fictional characters, as far back as I can remember. I get very emotionally attached to certain characters to the point that I love them like I would a real-life friend or family member. I consider them to be my imaginary friends because imagine them going everywhere I go, and I talk to them sometimes. I like to fantasize about them all living in the same apartment complex in my imaginary world, so they're never too far from each other (I don't want them to be lonely).

I love to play matchmaker for them too; it brings me great joy to pair them off with one another, to the point that I almost need to have an even number of imaginary friends so that they can pair off like Noah's Ark. I take great pride in coming up with couples that no one else has thought of before (I have a special place in my heart for crossover pairings, where the characters are from different franchises), though I will still support my favorite couples even if I find out that I wasn't the first one to think of them. I also like to take the couples thing even further and imagine what my favorite couples' children would be like!

So umm... Yeah. My roster of imaginary friends and favorite couples changes around a lot, but I'd be more than happy to give a current list if anyone's interested.

I get obsessed with characters that have a complex back story and lots of lore...

That's why I love Kit Walker/The Phantom--the 21st of his line since 1536 to honor the Oath of the Skull: "I swear to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice, in all their forms. My sons and their sons shall follow me"

To outsiders, The Phantom seems to be immortal, referred to as "The Ghost Who Walks", "The Man Who Cannot Die" and "Guardian of the Eastern Dark" or simply "Mr. Walker" by natives who fear conjuring him up by calling his name...

Call the Phantom anywhere, and he will hear.*











*Old jungle saying.

I always find myself thinking about BSG's Cylons. I always wonder what they are thinking...

I obsess over cute characters.

They were right about girls loving cute things.

Doctor Who characters!

Yep--I've done this my entire life. I was creating fanfics in my head before I knew what they were.

Just to name a few:

Reginald Barclay (STAR TREK: TNG and VOYAGER)
Alan Shore (BOSTON LEGAL)
Robert Goren (LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT)

Okay, so a lot of you tend to become interested by fictional characters... but does it tend to become obsessive for any of you? Like, it's causing intense depressive phases or even physical pain?

I wish The Doctor would take me away in his TARDIS so I could travel with him. If that's what you were getting at.

Only when someone says to me, stop over thinking it too much. Because I like thinking about it

I wouldn't say that it tends to lead me to depression, but I can still say that I'm on a similar page as you. I actually find myself doing this quite a bit, and it still hasn't gone away.

Currently for me, it's Scott from Total Drama: Revenge of the Island/All-Stars; I find this kind of funny though, because I really used to loath this guy... When I first got back into the series, I just found him to be a one-dimensional antagonist with no interesting characteristics whatsoever... But eventually, my hate for Scott soon turned into... Awkward fascination. The more I thought about him, the more curious I became.

His backstory actually has me bringing up all kinds of interesting questions like how he was raised? Or, better yet, who was he raised with? Does he have any siblings, or was he an only child? How close of a connection did he have with his "pappy"? Did Scott's mother die at an early age, or was she just that unaffectionate not to hug her son? He's also pretty socially awkward at times, which leads me to believing that the area he grew up in wasn't all that urban.

Most of from what the show gives us about him is that he wasn't held enough as a child, (thanks to Dawn's mad aura-reading skills), and that he didn't grow up eating the fanciest of foods. Scott also stated that he'd been shooting kitchen rats with his pappy since he was six, and that the pillow he slept on was nothing but a burlap sack filled with small woodland animals.

And now, his crush on Courtney in the new season makes him even more interesting... But I don't want to ramble on about this anymore. ^^ I just wanted to let you know that this isn't a very uncommon thing on the spectrum.

Not a obsession per say but I can relate to Herbert West (movie version rather than the one in the HPL story) a bit.