Why people have crushes with animated charaters?

[FFSloan]

I always wonder why this happens. What do you think?

[thomasg453]

Beats me. I can understand having affection for cartoon characters, but not to the point I wanted to pick out china patterns or anything.

There are some fans who want to, like, marry Danny Phantom and stuff. I don't know how serious they are. Maybe it's the same kind of "crush" girls get on androgynous rock stars. To the crusher, it's safe because the object of affection is non-threatening and unattainable.

I can't remember exactly who - maybe Jerry Seinfeld? - but some bigshot celebrity once revealed that he had a, uh, crush on Bugs Bunny when he was a kid. (And yes, I mean "crush" in its most extreme sense). He had a cardboard cutout of the rabbit that he used to drag around. Weird.

[PwEeTo]

I'm certainly in the party of the baffled with regards to this. As Judyindisguise said, affection for characters is hardly execptional, indeed it is a mark of excellence if we can be brought to empathize and care about the characters so as to give greater dramatic weight to the story, but holding them as objects of romantic desire seems outright silly.

I suppose it could be constru?d as the consequence of a dozen and a half psychological explanations or summat, but by and larger, I think it's the product of uninhibited self-indulgence.

I suppose I should hold my tongue some and give them the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes something feels too inconsequentially crazy to really rile up my sense of decency or restraint.

[Ali McAllister]

Err..what the hell?

[a???Carola???]

To quote Dave Barry: I am NOT making that up.

And I'm pretty sure it was Seinfeld. Read it in an article a long time ago. The story apparently buried itself in my little prepubescent memory and burst upon me as I was reading this thread. I'm as stunned as you are. It was like stepping on a land mine.

[giraffefan]

I think there's kind of a threshold with this area that shouldn't be crossed. It's not uncommon for certain animated characters to have fanboys and fangirls. Case in point, I'd consider myself a minor fanboy for certain female characters. In certain genres, the creators actually try to make the characters 'attractive'. Anime for example is currently high on fanservice pandering with female characters being there for often the lowest common denominator. The problem of course comes when people get just a little too attached to fictional characters (some of them even make embarassing posts here). In the female characters I like, there are traces of what I'd like in a partner but I'm not nearly detatched enough to cling to said characters as if they were a replacement for a real flesh and blood partner.

[Emily Em]

I think it just depends on how they see a certain character, be it be a physical attractive or something of their personality they like. Perhaps these cartoon characters fit the quality that people like to be attracted at. I have no problems with people having affection for cartoon characters. Heck, I have a few myself: for example, at the current moment, I find the character Vlad Masters/Plasimus of Danny Phantom to be quite the attractive fellow (older man, nice hair and suit, eyeliner eyes, soul patch) with an engaging personality (suave, clever, complicated enigma).

That said, I DO get worried if people start to treat them as real-life people or any of that form of obsession. I think there's a certain line you should cross when admiring a cartoon character because in the end, they ain't real.

[Girl Is Lost]

If characters are realistic enough, it makes sense that people would get "crushes" on them. The same way someone might develop a crush on any public figure, or even by, say, reading someone's blog.

But there is a difference between "having a crush" and being "in love", and THE LINE MUST BE DRAWN HERE!

[instantitnet]

You'll find more people like this in the anime fandom than the cartoon fandom.

Mainly because the Japanese go out of their way to give fanservice to people on purpose, where cartoons generally don't do this sort of thing. IMO, it's totally anime related, that's where it all comes from.

[Skitty Crazy]

it was actually cartoonist robert crumb(fritz the cat) that confessed that in the great, quirky documentary movie 'crumb'...he basically explained that he had a weird crush on bugs bunny as a kid and carried around a little cardboard cutout in his pocket, to the point where it got so wrinkled that he asked his mother to iron it out for him. it of course, got all browned and crispy so it ended tragically for him lol...

as to why we get crushes on toons...i guess the safe distance factor has alot to do with it...the way things in life sometimes don't work out so well for us with real human crushes. a toon is ideal and always the same and there for us in our imagination...they don't ever really change, look how we always want them to and will accept us because we can just picture that happening and it can't logically change...

but anyway so much for the doctor phil response...to look at it another way, how can you not fall in love kim possible's pouting puppy dog face??:nurse: