One of the (many) things I hate about the "you're idolizing this character and ignoring their flaws" discourse is that it often pretends that flaws must detract from our love of a character, rather than enhance it.

If I'm head over heels in love with a character, trust me, it's probably *because* I also see flaws in them that I bear in myself, and I find it cathartic to see someone with those flaws still being loved, respected, and important.

"You shouldn't love this character so much, because they have moments of being bitchy/petty/mean/tempermental."

Gee, like I do? Like everybody does? And somehow we find friends to love us anyway?

This PSA brought to you by the fact that I just wrote a scene that was basically a blatant fix-it for my own life using Mollymauk and Beauregard as blatant stand-ins for what really happened.

Fanfiction! It's cheaper than therapy.

Characters are not a sum total of "good traits" columns and "bad traits" columns where if you subtract one from the other and the result is a negative number they're automatically a bad character. Characters are the emotion they invoke in you and the things they try to be.