fandom approaches male characters from a watsonian perspective and female characters from a doylist perspective
by virtue of being made up constructs everything about fictional characters only exists as far as what is told about them, and yet underdeveloped male characters are assumed to have rich inner lives that the writer have simply not tapped into – when they actually did not give them any – and it’s therefore up to fans to rescue the character from the writer’s assumed negligence and explore him themselves through
headcanon-ing the shit outta thempicking up small bits of characterization and expanding from it, whereas female characters are taken at extreme face value: if the writer did not give them an inner life then she doesn’t have one period, even within the universe of the story where everyone is a living breathing person, and it’s not worth exploring. even when the small bits of context and characterization about her insinuate something interesting about inner world and leave room to spin an interesting backstory and motivations there seems to be no interest in fandom to do so.
“I like this character because-”
“Why are you defending the misogynistic man who wrote her?”