There is one thing that happens sometimes when people talk about fiction, and, hell, I’ve probably even been guilty of it, but it’s… kind of a problem. It’s the assumption that people who have a different opinion about a piece of fiction or a character or a storyline or the like are having that opinion willfully. As if they know the right opinion and are just having a different opinion to be contrary. Rather than that they just see it differently and so have a different opinion.
There was a post I saw once, by two people who were friends and had wildly different opinions about a piece of media (it was something about hockey…a web comic, maybe?). Despite having similar backgrounds, one of them found it a wonderful thing and the other found it a terrible thing. I sort of feel like that post needs to be papered all over everything. Because one of them wasn’t right and one of them wrong, they were both right. For themselves.
And that’s how it is with fiction. Hell, sometimes that’s how it is with reality. I remember once coming across an article written by someone who’d gone to a college I went to at the same time that I was there and their experience was so vastly different from mine it felt like I’d somehow fallen into a different reality or something. But, again, it wasn’t a case of right and wrong, it was a case of two people can have vastly different experiences even while being in the same place at the same time.
So of course different people can come to the same piece of media and have vastly different reactions to it. One person’s great character growth is another’s tired and badly done trope. One person’s best romance ever is another’s icky creepy gross story about a stalker and a stalkee. One person’s relatable villain is another person’s unforgivable monster. One person’s amusing scene is another person’s unforgivable moment. That doesn’t make one person wrong and the other person right. They’re just different people.
(Note: I’m talking about things like in my last paragraph, not things like a woman pointing out that something’s a sexist stereotype and being met with “no it’s not” from a man. That’s a whole different ball of wax. (But two equally feminist women could look at the exact same work of fiction and one find it sexist and the other not. Because these things are not always clear cut. But it’s the people affected who should be having the discussion there.))