Falling in love with a character

Parasocial relationships are commonplace nowdays. Have you ever been in one? What'd you make of it? I feel like I may have unironically have fallen for Gawr Gura's character. It's fuarrrking pathetic, I know, but there's something about her voice that just never fails to fill my heart with warmth. I don't know, I've always been extremely attached to game and anime characters growing up, perhaps they helped fill some of the void inside during my childhood and it's something that hasn't really gone away as I grew up, if anything it's gotten worse due to vtubers. I'm not the most social guy irl but I also never really was interested in normal person girls much. There's something about these characters that often make my heart skip a beat, it's rather bizarre. I know this isn't healthy particularly when the attachment is towards real people wearing masks like vtubers and not simple game characters, but at the same time I can't help feeling the way that I do. How am I supposed to process this?

Dude, just relax and enjoy. If a vtuber can fill in the void for a relationship, that means you will show yourself to others with less needs, which is more attractive. Use that to your advantage when looking for a real relationship. Just find some excuse to meet other people and focus on long run self improvement over the next years, you will do fine.

>>78862 Parasocial relationships bad. Do not dig the hole deeper. I've heard seeing what the vtuber REALLY looks like can help break the curse. Other than that, good luck and godspeed. Also: >Just find some excuse to meet other people and focus on long run self improvement over the next years, you will do fine. This is good advice.

Older generations lived in imaginary tv land, current generation lives in imaginary youtube land.

>>78867 This. that post reminds me of those moms who have Disney villain crushes VS lainon who has anime (or vtuber) crushes. Only difference is the live and real nature of the characters. (Pic rel. Maleficent fuarrrks hard) Remember that while Gura cares for her fans, it doesn't go beyond. This is her job. And she loves doing it and it shows :)

>Finly veiled Findom thread or How I learned to stop worrying and love the Shork. Dr. Strangelove, I presume. The heart of Man was once paired with beings perhaps called Angels nowadays, but Wisdom of them has become somewhat of a forbidden fruit; Leaving Mankind with a void She tries to fill with various forms of muse. This it the secret knowledge hidden at the heights of many mystery traditions. The Hermetic may say the solution is precipitate: Eshew the mundane world and "Know" Thyself. Perhaps another lain to walk is the Hero's Journey: Death and Rebirth, Catharsis, or how I loarned to Divorce the One Ring of idyllic matrimony, and build my own robowaifu dark lord. If you can't channel that reserve of holy love once reserved for sacred beings, perhaps move to New Mexico and start a UFO religion (my ApyoloGuise to Xemu/Xenu) or learn how to stop fighting Jung and JewDo yourself into a yet another cult of personality. Some are just born to follow and merely consume the fruits of other's labors; As long as you're not being consumed by another's Egregore and can still function normally, enjoy your unintended consequence of (mostly incomplete) technology being thrust into the lives of unwashed masses: Your false idol is still an idol none the less. Lets all love Lain!

>>78867 >>78868 "Other people did that too" doesn't make it less pathologic.

>>78862 I consider it a normal aspect of adolescent development for a certain type of person, ie the transition between fixation on internal objects, to bridging internal representations of objects to their external counterpart / origin. Fictional characters have no external origin, they are right there, zero separation, and yet also infinite separation. They are in the world, not of the world. There are a few different branches, one of which is Anima engulfment, ie the Anima is used to soothe and direct you and yet it has no reflection in the world, so it's mapped onto something fictional (like a mirror). There is also the branches that contain fear of connection pain or failure, so you attach to something unattainable yet also controllable (being an internal object, part of you manifested externally). There can be a lot to it, has to do with early childhood development, individuation, identity diffusion, in some cases dissociation / fantasy defenses. I don't really remember, other than that Kagome and Kikyo were hot back in the day. I vaguely remember liking some other characters but it's largely faded from memory. It's "normal" imo but can indicate underlying structural characteristics and processes at work, thus other things down the line which may not be so favorable overall.

>>78872 Oh, I didn't realize this was about vtubers. That's slightly different. More a matter of submission to illusion and fantasy outright. Sort of like how very young children play pretend with each other. Not good. Particularly because what you're attached to is basically pathological femininity. On one side of the coin you have the soothing and engulfing maternal, on the other you have the predatory feminine, an apex predator. This is what you're likely taken in by, a notion of women as apex predators and yourself having a place relative to (or even within) that. It's pretty much just wanting your mother back, from the eyes of an infant. Mom knows everything, can do anything, she is everything. Therefore to a man there are 3 primary female roles and a few secondary ones 1) Mother 2) Lover 3) Friend The secondary and supporting roles are 1) Sister / family 2) Stranger 3) Seductress 4) Love interest Noirmally these processes are controlled and modulated internally, however you're outsourcing this machinery to someone else, a stranger obscuring their actual self no less, to provide the medium for this fantasy and the idea of a woman who is and can be everything and nothing. You are "God" and you're looking for completeness via the external world.

>>78871 I meant that this is a manufactured pathology with a long history, not that "it's fine because things were always this bad". Celebrity worship and illusion of friendship goes way back. Big celebs like elvis had this kind of culture. Seeing these pseudo relationships as the manufactured products they are is part of how to escape them.

>>78862 I used to have a bit of a parasocial thing going on with Asriel Dreemurr. I'm not sure why exactly. I guess that Undertale was the first game I played at the time that really felt "alive" to me. It's pretty silly in retrospect. For whatever reason I just have no connection with any anime characters. All anime girls look so same-ey.

>>78862 I have realized that loving a fantasy character that's famous is the most beta thing one can do. After this realization, I am just lost as to what to do. I am too ugly and stinky for real girls (brown poo, cursed by birth) and loving animu girls is beta behavior. What do I do? You too should realize this lainon. The one you love is being fuarrrked by black dudes in some arts. If you can accept this, you are too far gone.

I fell in love with an actress and I think about her 24/7. I don't go 5 minutes without thinking about her once. I keep looking at pictures and videos of her every day. I daydream about normal life and fantastic scenarios with her. Anything I experience I keep wondering what she would think about it. What would she think of this movie I watched? What are her opinions on the current news? I wonder what she is doing this moment. Nothing else really brings me joy anymore. Everything else in life just feels like a hollow distraction. I might get some laughs from this comedy show but then it's back to lonely reality. I might enjoy this painting but the painting can't talk to me and once I stop looking at it it's gone. Same with every hobby or interest. I went outside during a nice sunny day and the world just looked gray and foreign to me. I am disgusted with myself and yet self-improvement feels pointless because I can never become good enough for her as the damage has been done after years of self-neglect. I am feeling sick from loneliness and yet I don't want anymore else.

please don't do this. in an autistic relationship, my ex repeatedly blew me off until i had only seen them once in two months. i don't have any conclusive evidence, but i'm pretty sure there is at least a 36% chance they were doing some bullshit with a bungo stray dogs chatbot on character.ai. i can at least say that they definitely used character.ai a lot and when i last saw them, they looked at an image of a character on their phone with a very particular kind of gaze. don't never date no genshin player

I cant stand this meme speak "parasocial relationship" it is literally just some term male incels made up to cope over women getting attention and some money for being popular but had no problem when some male pro gaymer was getting attention and money. There is nothing new about any of this. It actually is better than people that get overly attached to celebrities they had literally zero interaction with. Sure people can get lost in a mass but they usually get noticed some time if they actually have a memorable personality but that isnt even really much the point. They are just lonely and want to feel a sense of having some company but might not want to be in a close relationship with people anymore from being hurt and let down so many times so it feels like a safe option. This is a symptom not a cause of their problems. And im not saying this as self serving, i have yet to really be involved in any of these circles and at most just watch some clips here and there.