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RE: Netoju no Susume - On Compersion and Virtual Identities
An important factor in whether someone feels joy at the joy of others is how attached they are to the characters in question. The romance in Vampire Knight falls flat for a lot of people because the characters are wholly uninteresting, but the romance in The Notebook hits home for a lot of people because they cared about the characters.
While I mostly agree with you, here is an observation: We like what we like, and dislike what we don't. Thus far, obvious. But, rather than always have a reason to like/dislike something, and then like/dislike it based off of it, we often have the opinion to start with, and then retroactively justify it.
Now, while some characters are just much better done, or worse done, sometimes we like the characters, and because of that we relate to them more.
But sure, how attached we are to the characters is a big part of our enjoyment. In other words, how much of ourselves we see in the characters, or at least, in terms of being able to try on the mask as a perspective shift.