Dream Girls Interviews
This interview series explores the experiences of young people who form romantic or emotional attachments to fictional characters. Through personal conversations, I examine how these imagined relationships intersect with identity, emotional support, self-understanding, and everyday life. Rather than treating “dream girls” as a stereotype, these interviews dive deeply into these dream girls and explore what these relationships mean to the people who experience them.
She Calls It a Long-Distance Relationship With Someone Who Isn't Real
What does it feel like to be in a long-distance relationship with someone who exists only in fiction?
At 17, our interviewee has built an emotional relationship with a fictional character since discovering the world of "dream girls" in 2024.
She describes the relationship as a source of genuine happiness and comfort, but also speaks honestly about the emptiness that sometimes follows fantasy, the anxiety of seeing other people share the same character, and the pressure that can come with collecting merchandise and spending money on someone who cannot exist in her everyday life.
She rarely talks about this part of herself publicly and remains largely indifferent to outside judgment. What matters to her is the emotional experience itself and the question of whether something needs to exist in the physical world to feel real.
What if loving someone fictional could change the way you see yourself?
In this interview, Feather, a 17-year-old high school student and anime fan, shares her experience as a "dream girl"-someone who develops a romantic or emotional attachment to a fictional character. For her, this relationship is not an escape from reality, but a source of confidence, emotional comfort, and self-acceptance.
She describes constantly imagining stories and interactions with her character while remaining fully aware of the boundary between fantasy and reality. Rather than allowing the character to make decisions for her, she sees them as a guide who encourages her to live at her own pace and accept herself as she is.
Through her story, Feather hopes to challenge the idea that fictional love is somehow less emotionally meaningful than love in the real world, and invites us to reconsider what it means for a relationship to feel real.
The Fictional Character Who Taught Her to Love Herself | A 17 years old Dream Girl's Story
She Fell in Love With Someone Who Was Never Real | Understanding "Dream Girls"
What does it mean to fall in love with someone who exists only in fiction?
In this interview, Jin, a university student and part-time tarot reader, shares her experience of becoming a "dream girl"-a term used to describe people who form romantic or emotionally intimate relationships with fictional characters. She talks about how this relationship began in middle school, how she keeps fantasy and reality separate, and why fictional love has become a space for emotional connection rather than an escape from real life.
She also challenges two common stereotypes: that being a dream girl is inherently linked to mental illness, and that loving a villain means endorsing their actions. For her, the most meaningful thing this relationship has taught her is something surprisingly real: self-love.