[First, I’d like to apologise for using a pseudo-meme as the opening image. Second, I would like to forewarn that this post contains mention of sexual harassment and child abuse]

There is nothing wrong with loving fictional characters. When everything else in a story goes to pot, the characters and the emotional attachment we have to them are often what keeps us hooked and allows many a show that would have otherwise run itself into the ground to soldier on. The characters are what we hold dear to our hearts and imaginations, and as they are non-existent conceptual beings created for the purpose of art, copyrights aside, they are in a way ours as soon as they hit the public sphere. I’d say no harm has ever come from loving something, but if you get deep enough into some subsets of fan culture, it can have some weird outreaching connotations.