I really dislike how 'you shouldn't treat characters like they're people, you need to treat them like tools in the story' has become the new tumblr buzzphrase for fiction writing/analysis, because it takes a singular approach to fiction - a very traditional/conservative one at that - and frames it as the intellectually and morally correct perspective.
like, yes, if your interest is purely in traditional twentieth-century literary criticism, if your interests are exclusively in story structure, use of language, author-intended themes and symbolism, etc, absolutely that's an approach where characters are seen as tools. and there is nothing wrong with a personal preference for that approach. but that approach is definitely based on an 'ideal reader' who is able to identify those features, and the process of learning how to analyze a text in that way involves learning to become that ideal reader.
and that's something that, realistically, only a tiny subset of the population will ever do. personally I am much more interested in how the average person responds to a text than how the most educated one does. I know that in many popular genres, including crime fiction, soap operas, historical fiction, sitcoms and pop music, plenty of authors want their audience to engage with the characters as though they are real people, to make emotional connections with them, to consider the morality of their actions, to want to hang out with them, etc. and in even more genres, plenty of readers engage in that way. not everyone of course, but a lot! and they are going to keep doing that whether or not they are doing something "wrong" by your framework. and it just comes across as so elitist to say that it doesn't matter how much time they've spent with this media, how deep a level they've considered it on or what role it plays in their life, their opinions on it don't matter because their approach isn't as Detached Academic as yours.
and obviously I see people interact with fiction in a way I personally dislike all the time. I see people binge through a 3700 page text in two days to 'catch up' and clearly retain zero information. I see people trying to map a set of characters 1:1 onto the X-Men or the cast of an anime, unnecessarily forcing them into boxes. I see people apply gendered stereotypes onto characters when there's nothing in the source text to validate their use. hell there are still people doing freudian analysis and that I think has genuine ideological issues. I don't personally like any of those things, but it's simply not interesting to me to claim that they're doing it wrong and that I can do it better. instead it is more interesting to frame it as: this is their approach, and it's different from mine, so therefore it leads to a different understanding. knowing all that, I can see where and why our analysis differs, and I can get a fuller picture of the text and its actual (not ideal) reception based on the combination of those perspectives. and that's only possible if you take other readers seriously no matter their background, no matter their level of "media literacy" (although I do not think high media literacy is incompatible with analyzing characters as people) and no matter whether you, personally, agree with their approach.
so I'm gonna raise an eyebrow at anyone who says there is one specific correct way to look at fiction, but especially this one. just knowing that for the past 30+ years plenty of people in plenty of fields have supported and engaged with these alternative perspectives, it feels regressive for a significant subset of tumblr users to suddenly say 'actually, there's one correct way to interact with fiction, and it just so happens to be the one that fits comfortably in the mouth of an old white male academic who is still mad that women and poor people read fiction, too.
