To be fair, I think that when people like characters who are jerks, there's often a lot of justification to make them seem better (which you kind of touch on). In the Harry Potter fandom, it's not that uncommon for Draco and Snape fans to write those characters as being much nicer than they are in canon, or even make arguments for why they're misrepresented in canon. I think there's some uneasiness with liking a character who really isn't a nice person.
I've never felt like I had to defend a character in order to like them. All of the jerky characters I've liked have some sympathetic or tragic qualities that make me like them, but I don't see any point in pretending that they're nice people or that I'd want to know them in real life.
There is a huge double-standard when it comes to female characters, and it bothers me. Female characters seem to be disliked for a lot of things that get taken for granted in male characters. A while back on fandomsecrets, people were talking about how they didn't like Olivia on Fringe because she was boring and it wasn't realistic that she was so special. I pointed out that Walter and Peter, who get a lot of love, are both very special when it comes to their intelligence and abilities.
To be honest, I have no idea how much I buy into it. I'd like to say very little, especially since I tend to like female characters who have the same qualities I like in male characters (is that an issue in itself? Does it mean that I prefer "masculine" females?), but it's hard to tell sometimes. Our feelings don't exist in a vacuum.
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To be fair, I think that when people like characters who are jerks, there's often a lot of justification to make them seem better (which you kind of touch on). In the Harry Potter fandom, it's not that uncommon for Draco and Snape fans to write those characters as being much nicer than they are in canon, or even make arguments for why they're misrepresented in canon. I think there's some uneasiness with liking a character who really isn't a nice person.
I've never felt like I had to defend a character in order to like them. All of the jerky characters I've liked have some sympathetic or tragic qualities that make me like them, but I don't see any point in pretending that they're nice people or that I'd want to know them in real life.
There is a huge double-standard when it comes to female characters, and it bothers me. Female characters seem to be disliked for a lot of things that get taken for granted in male characters. A while back on fandomsecrets, people were talking about how they didn't like Olivia on Fringe because she was boring and it wasn't realistic that she was so special. I pointed out that Walter and Peter, who get a lot of love, are both very special when it comes to their intelligence and abilities.
To be honest, I have no idea how much I buy into it. I'd like to say very little, especially since I tend to like female characters who have the same qualities I like in male characters (is that an issue in itself? Does it mean that I prefer "masculine" females?), but it's hard to tell sometimes. Our feelings don't exist in a vacuum.