taking a deep breath and reminding myself that i cannot explain to the whole online world that no, you cannot achieve moral purity for yourself through characters or public figures (athletes, celebrities etc), moral perfection/purity is an unattainable concept anyway because humanity itself is very far from any kind of perfection. since i was very young i care deeply about characters and i strongly believe that feeling through the conduit of characters can be really helpful in self-reflection and trauma processing, but a beloved character or a public person can never be the measure of your own morality, your own decency and kindness. for so many years in fandoms (both for fiction and for sports), seeing the rhetoric of "my -person- is good and stanning them makes me a better person" honestly no, only what you do in daily life - offline and online - has the ability to make you a kinder and more compassionate person, only the support that you might be able to give other humans in any ways has the ability to do something to your own self. same thing for enjoying darker media here: no, your soul will not become more pure if you only consume things that are about goodness and light (although all the more power to people who prefer these things - i don't though), there is no correlation in that honestly. just feeling like the plot is truly lost when i'm watching people for years and years acting unkindly towards each other on the basis of some kind of moral superiority, that is not even a real thing that exists, instead of trying to find the road of more compassion and understanding and acceptance of each other, each other's interests and each other's complicated beautiful souls.