Why do people have crushes on fictional characters?

[Apteryx]

So I was looking for a new game to play and I stumbled across a game called Angels with Scaly Wings. It's a murder mystery visual novel, and I clicked on it because I like dragons. Out of curiosity, I checked it's community discussion page and there were posts that I'd expect to see in the forum for a visual novel. You know, people asking how to get certain endings, or how to keep a character alive, etc. The problem is that I had to dig through so many posts where people were just simping for different characters that it felt like no one actually cared about the story. All they want to do is date these obviously fictional characters. What is up with that? Why do people have crushes on characters that could never feasibly exist?

[76561198356019466]

because i stand a better chance with them than I do real people

[sleeps]

because it's fictional and man made. it's easy to make man made being either appealing or the scariest thing on earth.

[vkobe]

because you can cuztomize them and made them perfect, also they dont go older or has bad attitude

it is why AI robot waifu going to have big sucess

[👾]

Yeah that seems to be a thing. It isn't that strange when you think about it though. I once had a crush who I met online and we were chatting and so on. Then when we started meeting irl it was really awkward and it was over quickly. That made me realize how much I had created the image of her myself, in my mind. This happens even in actual irl relationships, because how well do you really know the other person?

Edit: Btw you are talking about a furry game... with them it happens even more, it's a fetish thing I guess which they care more about than gameplay and such. It also seems most of those people are pretty young.