Montreal pornstar Cassie Chrome, 28, believed she had finally found true love after meeting 26-year-old raver Étienne “Bass Goblin” Mercier beside a broken speaker at an illegal warehouse party. “He never stared at my chest, asked about my movies, or tried to impress me,” says Cassie. “I thought I’d found the one decent man in Quebec. It turns out he simply wasn’t interested in three-dimensional women.”

Their romance progressed quickly. Cassie accompanied Étienne to psytrance festivals, tolerated his collection of identical black hoodies and even pretended to understand his three-hour explanation of why DJs who use laptops are destroying Western civilization. “He was distant, but I assumed that was mysterious,” says Cassie. “Whenever I tried to kiss him, he’d close his eyes and whisper Japanese words. I thought he was being romantic.”

The truth emerged when Cassie opened Étienne’s bedroom door and discovered several body pillows, 900 figurines and a colour-coded database devoted entirely to underaged anime girls with green, blue or purple hair. Étienne subsequently admitted that he was a self-described lolicon and had never been attracted to Cassie. “Real women have pores, opinions and unpredictable lighting,” he says. “A drawing remains perfect from every angle and never asks why you spent the rent money on limited-edition merchandise.”

Cassie was devastated by the revelation. “I make adult entertainment, and the important word there is adult,” she says. “I lost my boyfriend to a collection of fictional children who look like somebody spilled energy drinks on their hair. How am I supposed to compete with a two-dimensional person who never ages, speaks only in catchphrases and doesn’t know what a hydro bill is?”

Relationship expert Dr. Monique Tremblay says romantic disputes involving anime collections are becoming increasingly common in the rave community. “Years of staring at lasers can flatten a person’s perception of depth,” says Dr. Tremblay. “Eventually, some ravers become frightened by anything rendered in three dimensions. We’re opening a treatment centre where patients will gradually be exposed to adult women with ordinary hair colours until they understand that women do not come with display stands.”

Cassie has since ended the relationship, while Étienne changed his online status to “emotionally unavailable except to JPEGs.” He insists that he bears no ill will toward his former girlfriend and hopes they can remain friends, provided she never enters his bedroom during convention season. Étienne told reporters that his heart remains open to love, but only if love has purple hair, no legal personality and can be downloaded in under four megabytes.