Rant: Last night's book club blew up over whether the main character was selfish or just scared. | Book Club Debates - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals
Yeah it's funny how often this happens lol. People take stories and just use them as mirrors for their own stuff, like @the_richard said. You see it everywhere, like when someone hears about a messy coworker situation and instantly starts handing out moral verdicts. The original story gets totally lost while everyone figures out their own take.
Actually, @chen.charles, those debates are rarely about the fictional person. They're a safe way for people to test their own moral lines with no real cost. Arguing about a character's choice lets someone figure out what they believe without having to defend their own messy life. The fiction is just a clean test case. So the fun isn't in judging the character, it's in seeing where everyone else draws their lines. It turns a book chat into a low-key map of what the whole group thinks is okay or not okay.