I’ve noticed a pattern in fandom where people flock to stick Popular Characters into two extremes of morality: Popular Character has either never done anything wrong in their entire lives, or they’re a stinky bastard murder man but beloved regardless. People seem much more comfortable with characters who can easily slot into one of these two extremes. It’s the characters who fall somewhere in the middle that tend to freak people out.

There are some circles of fandom where people seem absolutely terrified at the prospect of a character who is good but makes questionable decisions, or who is bad but has a noble or admirable goal. Characters who don’t slot easily into “all good” or “all bad” end up getting their edges filed off so they fit one or the other. One character will have a past of truly dreadful sins ignored and washed clean by fandom at large, but another is villainized and has their actions nitpicked and misinterpreted to turn them irredeemable. Stereotypes and oversimplification turn complex characters into one-dimensional caricatures. This is annoying as shit, not only because it turns nuanced stories into thoughtless Goofus and Gallant-level morality fables, but it eventually devolves into fans judging each other for their opinions on fictional people.

Stories are a lot more interesting when characters are allowed to be multi-faceted; neither all good nor all bad. Even heroic characters have flaws and can have bad opinions, bad ideas, or just plain make mistakes. And even the worst and most despicable villains are more interesting if there is some level of relatability to them, some glimmer of understandable motivation or human emotion in their actions or beliefs.

In conclusion, everyone is entitled to like or dislike characters for their own reasons, but my problematic favs are the best, actually, so there.