I have a pet peeve about fandoms: when they try to moralize their favourite characters, particularly villians or morally grey characters.
The issue and conflict of morality being forced into fiction conversations has been going on for as long as I can remember. And I actually agree. While morality is an important theme in fiction, it shouldn't stop you from enjoying certain characters or just enjoying the fictional piece generally. You're allowed to fall in love with morally ambiguous characters. It's fun, and they're not real and it's not that serious at the end of the day
But then, that thing we do where we try to moralise these characters or try to defend them is where the disconnect happens. "Unpopular opinion, B character is the victim and had every right to do this" or "them not doing this made that character turn out that way..."
And it becomes a battle of who wronged who and morality is overemphasized. Personally, I like to study morally ambiguous characters and look at why they turned out the way they did. But when we start blaming characters who shouldn't be blamed and we start cuddling said character, it starts losing meaning.
Now, I also want to criticise how "heroic" characters are viewed. They're held to a certain standard and judged so much while the antagonists or the "misunderstood" characters are given leniency, as if they don't make mistakes on their own. And said heroic characters are not allowed their own flaws and mistakes. Nuance is lost when discussing these type of characters while the morally ambiguous ones are babied.
My point is that just because you like morally ambiguous characters or antagonists doesn't mean you have to demonise the morally upright characters and just because these morally upright characters doesn't necessarily mean that they're hypocritical, it just means that they're flawed. Just because villians are mistreated in the past doesn't mean they're completely valid in their wrong choices, and it shouldn't stop you from enjoying their characters less. You don't have to justify or defend their wrong doings to enjoy them.
