I wrote an essay about this earlier today and deleted it bc I was ashamed of it being too verbose. this post here is so much more concise and covers the same points.
I’ll add what this post fails to address:
-this is not a new phenomenon at all and has been around since oonga boonga told the first story of all time to his Paleolithic cave man friends. So many people thought Boogabog the sabertooth tiger slayer was Literally Them and thus missed the point of the story.
-it’s not just criticisms people take personally, but also headcanons they disagree with, which they often will reject with an equal level of offense.
-people will also reject the author’s original intentions with a character in favor of their headcanons, and will get upset when the media handles the character in a way that goes against their perception of them. This can include if the author makes the character partake in what the reader views as morally egregious activity or canonizing a ship the reader dislikes or even “ruining” a canon ship the reader does like. The list goes on and on. I mean duh sometimes these complaints are valid and writing can take a fucking nose dive but sometimes this is genuine insanity and delusion that… you guessed it, came from people projecting themselves onto the character, and getting upset that the character wasn’t literally them after all. Basically imagine if Annie from Misery wrote kin lists.
Projection’s a lot more dangerous than you might think it is. You can also say “oh but these people are just having fun” the problem is a lot of the ones I see really aren’t. People will go on long arguments and tangents about what they (wrongly) believe a character is and attack others for thinking something different, to the point of outright calling them heinous things. If people are having fun, then they would not be doing this at all.
That all being said, YOU CAN of course enjoy a version of a character which is far removed from canon. The fun of fanfic is doing things like that, reimagining a character in a way the source material would not be able to portray them. Boogabog can slay giant sloths instead of sabertooth tigers if you want him to!
The important thing is to be able to distinguish your version of a character from the official one and not feel attacked when someone (which does include the actual creator/creative team) says something that contradicts your own interpretation.
Tldr; I am going to simply enjoy things in peace as best I can and try my best not to be bothered by the opinions of internet strangers.
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