Types of Characters That Annoy You

As many have mentioned here 100% vulnerable or 100% weak...

Reading these have made me assess my characters, just to make sure that they are not as cliche as some mentioned :)

As many have mentioned here 100% vulnerable or 100% weak...

Reading these have made me assess my characters, just to make sure that they are not as cliche as some mentioned :)

I hate it more than anything when

1. The layout makes it impossible to concentrate on the story. Bright font on a bright background with distracting pictures flashing around it... Can't do it. I almost always close the story without trying to read it.

2. Blatant grammatical errors. It's okay to mess up sometimes, but it kills me when I see a story typed out like "and then he ran up 2 her and was like 'i seen u and him in the hall earlier!!!!'" It makes me want to quit writing altogether.

3. Negligent parents. It seems like every teenage character in a story I've read recently has a parent/parents who is/are
a. Dead
b. Abusive
c. Alcoholic/addicted to some substance
d. Never home/Absentee
e. Otherwise neglectful of their children, who obviously yearn deeply for a normal relationship with their parents. I'm not saying that everyone should have a chipper home life, but why does it seem like every story I read has a main character from this kind of background?

4. That female friend. The assertive, "quirky," bitch whose parents have no problems at all with her staying over with boys and having slumber parties at her house with nothing but male guests, gay or otherwise. She's the "mother of the group" even though she's freakishly irresponsible, and she refers to the other characters as "my boys" or "the boys." I can't handle it. I just can't imagine it realistically. Sorry if this is actually what your life is like XP Correct me if I'm wrong.

Male characters

Most female main characters.

sereani:

that and the girl who should've died
every other chapter.
or is always getting kidnapped
but never hurt

Oh god I just had a girl get kidnapped, and she wasn't technically hurt. She was very uncomfortable. And she had been drugged, so she vomited in the car. Still, she had no technical harm done to her. Now I feel bad.

I don't necessarily hate female characters, I'm just very apt to find some flaw in them that makes me dislike them, and it's usually the flaw of having no flaws. Guys seem to fumble or make people feel awkward or be to rough or seem wimpy for being a guy-- but female characters just aren't like that, and if they aren't, it isn't made to be a flaw. It's often very glamorized.

GetSavvy:

4. That female friend. The assertive, "quirky," bitch whose parents have no problems at all with her staying over with boys and having slumber parties at her house with nothing but male guests, gay or otherwise. She's the "mother of the group" even though she's freakishly irresponsible, and she refers to the other characters as "my boys" or "the boys." I can't handle it. I just can't imagine it realistically. Sorry if this is actually what your life is like XP Correct me if I'm wrong.

Um, honestly, it is realistic because (aside from being irresponsible) that's me. My mom doesn't care who I have over: a.) because she trusts me and knows I have enough good judgement not to do anything stupid and b.) I'm twenty-one, I'm an adult. If I were living on campus, I'd have all sorts of people in my dorm all the time anyway, so it's not that crazy.

I work for a college football team, and I do refer to the team as being "my boys" because that's what they are. We're like a family, and it's technically my job to take care of them. I don't see how there's anything wrong with it.

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Incredibly plain female characters that basically have next to no personality whatsoever because the writer wants everyone to be able to relate to them.

Television examples that come to mind are Carly from iCarly and Tori from Victorious

i saw sparks:

Um, honestly, it is realistic because (aside from being irresponsible) that's me. My mom doesn't care who I have over: a.) because she trusts me and knows I have enough good judgement not to do anything stupid and b.) I'm twenty-one, I'm an adult. If I were living on campus, I'd have all sorts of people in my dorm all the time anyway, so it's not that crazy.

I work for a college football team, and I do refer to the team as being "my boys" because that's what they are. We're like a family, and it's technically my job to take care of them. I don't see how there's anything wrong with it.

You're 21, though haha
I'm referring to the girls who are still sophomores/juniors in high school having slumber parties with guys. I dunno. Maybe my friends' parents are just ultra-conservative.

^ My mom let my boyfriend sleep over several times when I was in high school. She trusted me because she knows I'm not stupid and I have enough sense to not get an STD or get knocked up. It really depends on the parents and on the child, just because you've personally never encountered that sort of relationship doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that it's unrealistic. My best friend's guardians let her boyfriend stay over all the time in high school when they went on vacation because they didn't want her staying in the house alone. They also let one of her male friends live with them for a while while we were all in high school.

Being twenty-one has nothing to do with the fact that I'm still assertive, enjoy taking care of people, and refer to the guys on the team as "my boys," so yeah, still not that unrealistic.

Lots of Parents nowadays are Lazy and let their kids do anything.

i saw sparks:

^ My mom let my boyfriend sleep over several times when I was in high school. She trusted me because she knows I'm not stupid and I have enough sense to not get an STD or get knocked up. It really depends on the parents and on the child, just because you've personally never encountered that sort of relationship doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that it's unrealistic. My best friend's guardians let her boyfriend stay over all the time in high school when they went on vacation because they didn't want her staying in the house alone. They also let one of her male friends live with them for a while while we were all in high school.

Being twenty-one has nothing to do with the fact that I'm still assertive, enjoy taking care of people, and refer to the guys on the team as "my boys," so yeah, still not that unrealistic.

Same here, and I've only just recently turned eighteen. All my boyfriends and male friends have always been allowed to sleep over (sometimes spending several days or, in a few cases, several weeks) since I was like, thirteen. My (now ex) boyfriend even lived with me for a year when I was sixteen, and recently two of my guy friends lived at my place for two months while trying to get back on their feet financially. And I'm allowed to go spend the night/weekend/whatever at their houses, too. My house has always been basically a hotel/revolving door for my friends, including my guy ones. And practically all my friends' parents are the same way. In fact, sometimes when I read stories on Mibba I often think the character's home life seems freakishly conservative and reserved. Idk, maybe I grew up in a far more lenient environment than I realized. xD

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Anyway, to be on topic... I hate melodramatic characters. I don't mind dramatic characters when well-written because they can be very entertaining and dynamic, but it's the melodrama and histrionics that get me. Like a character who curls up in the fetal position, shaking and crying because his mom told him to clean their room or something.

chai latte:

Same here, and I've only just recently turned eighteen. All my boyfriends and male friends have always been allowed to sleep over (sometimes spending several days or, in a few cases, several weeks) since I was like, thirteen. My (now ex) boyfriend even lived with me for a year when I was sixteen, and recently two of my guy friends lived at my place for two months while trying to get back on their feet financially. And I'm allowed to go spend the night/weekend/whatever at their houses, too. My house has always been basically a hotel/revolving door for my friends, including my guy ones. And practically all my friends' parents are the same way. In fact, sometimes when I read stories on Mibba I often think the character's home life seems freakishly conservative and reserved. Idk, maybe I grew up in a far more lenient environment than I realized. xD.

Snap. I dunno what's wrong with the people I know, then XP Maybe it just bothers me because it's such a foreign concept where I'm from. Like, we're not even a super-conservative town, but it's considered scandalous (by parents anyway) to have guys spend the night. My mom gets iffy about me even going over to guy friends' houses when their parents aren't home, and vice versa. And those are just guy friends. And I'm 18. So I guess that's where the disbelief stems from.

But yeah. Also, it bothers me when people go into hyper-detailed explanations of what a person is wearing. I can see where the details/imagery would be beneficial to describing a scene, but sometimes it gets out of hand, and it always distracts me from a story.

chai latte:

Those female characters who are meant to be witty and badass and hilarious but really, they're just obnoxious, overdramatic bitches who, in real life, would make you ask, "What in the fuck is wrong with you?" And yet everyone still likes them, or at least never calls them out on their bitchiness.

It's as intolerable in stories as it is in reality.

I see this in most banf fics I come across, and I haven no idea how author's get away with it - because they do it in all their stories! And even worse, nine times out of ten these girls are the main characters.

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When the OFC's friends are carbon copies of each other; they all love the same band, the same foods, the same tv shows, they all live together and they never have munitary issues. In the real world, life is not that perfect. That's not how girls' friendships work, I'm sorry, and I find it extremely hard to believe a group of four girls are into everything you are. I like a realistic aspect in what I read.

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This is a bit off the wall, but I like it when a character's family isn't perfect. Quirky parents, selfish parents, a mother in law with ulterior motives, etc etc. I love that, and I don't see that enough. I see - if I see parents involved in a story at all - mothers/mothers-in-law who think the sun shines out of their daugher-in-law/son-in-law's backside.

i saw sparks:

Incredibly plain female characters that basically have next to no personality whatsoever because the writer wants everyone to be able to relate to them.

This, so much.

Also, girls who are really awkward when it comes to talking to boys, and always mess up or do something stupid around their 'crush'. It's too cliched - it seems to happen in practically every book I read, and yet I don't see it happen that often in real life.

Characters that have the perfect comeback for everything.

I'm not opposed to characters that are funny, or have some witty remark to say about everything, but not every comeback a person makes is always spot-on: some are a hit-and-a-miss.That sort of sarcastic wit seems to always be cast in a positive light in stories, when that's not always the way it would be received in reality.

I mean really, who would want to hang around someone who had a snippy remark for every single thing that they said? That would get annoying.

I'm just gonna pop a trigger warning here.

Characters who, for example, have been raped yet don't have any of the ensuing results e.g. PTSD or say agoraphobia. I can't believe someone goes through a hugely life-changing and traumatic experience, and after a day in bed with some ice-cream are a-okay.
¬.¬

And generally 2-dimensional characters.

And when plot device/pregnancy or abortion/suicide or self harm is thrown in because the comments/subscriptions are waning. Have a story arc/plot and stick to it. Minor variants are nice but huge random plot devices in every third chapter are annoying.

Characters who are completely defined by their taste in music.

Granted, I'm aware that some people in high school are like that, but the vaste majority of people are not. For example, because a character listens to rock music, they also have to wear leather jackets, be covered head-to-toe in various tattoos and piercings, and have ten different unnatural colors in their hair. Just because a character listens to songs on the radio or hip-hop, they must be a snobby, preppy bitch or a skank. A character that likes country music must wear flowly sundresses and cowboy boots all the time, etc. A character can listen to rock and dress completey "preppy," and people with mutliple tattoos and piercings do not automatically have to listen to rock music

Someone's taste in music doesn't define who they are, and all the stereotypes are just annoying to read.

I can't stand the weak willed damsel in distress. The one who whimpers when anyone yells, never grows a back bone and submits to everyone. GROW SOME BALLS!!!!! URGGGH!

Characters that stay the same throughout the whole story annoy me a lot. If there isn't any character development, I find the story appears incomplete. Especially, if the characters go through tumultuous events and then nothing inside of them changes.

Because seriously, what's the point of having an amazing plot if your characters stay stagnant and don't learn anything?

Optimistic characters. Having some optimism is good but there's a limit. I find it highly unrealistic to make a character always happy all the time. Please, not even babies are always that happy. There has to be something that irritates the character even if it's just a small pet peeve.