I'm thinking about it because of the post I just reblogged, but there is a lot to be said about how valuing individual relatability and personal catharsis over seeing narratives and characters as vehicles to explore complex ideas or deliver social commentary and how that intersects with fandom to create environment where extremely projectionist -that is to say, readings of a character which begin and end at "they're literally me"- readings of characters are not only common but taken as grounds to find dislike or different readings of character as a personal attack. If the most important thing about storytelling is how the narrative is relatable to the individual reader/viewer/player, if the audience being able to see themselves in characters is the sole end goal, then denying that is denying that they can get anything out of a story.
There's also the aspect of people taking dislike of a character they relate to as judgement on themselves and their experiences, which again, if the value of stories is in being relatable, then saying you don't relate is passing a negative judgement on the value of what is being portrayed. It's a very narrow and individualist way of understanding and parsing stories, but damn does it explain a lot.
