Types of Characters That Annoy You

Thylacine:

Most female main characters.

It sounds wrong, but I agree with this. I believe I'm a little misogynistic, but I normally don't like female main characters because of all the stories I've read, they tend to be a) whiny b) pushy c) a drama queen d) a super cry-baby or e) really stupid. Stupid as in, they over analyze everything and take things too far almost all the time. But when I do find strong (but also flawed in her own way) female leads, I'm very happy and I read the entire book/story.

^
May I ask why you are a little misogynistic?

I do find some female characters annoying, but I also see many male characters that piss me off too.

I also loathe 2D characters. Characters that are based on one stereotype (for e.g. the sports crazy jock) and don't seem to have any other qualities.

Villains written by their fangirls/fanboys so that they can downplay their flaws and try to woobify them even though they haven't done anything that deserves woobie status or gone through any character growth that would make them redemptive in the slightest. Sympathetic villains are great, but pretending they're justified misunderstood tragic fluffy kitten oochie coochie fluffylumpkins when they're not is stupid.

Strong female characters paired with relatively weak male characters.

It seems like people do this to avoid the whole "damsel in distress" stereotype, but honestly, I find it equally annoying. I'd rather read something where both characters were on equal footing when it comes to strengths/weaknesses and were able to save one another in different ways instead of it being so unbalanced.

The Nice Guy who harasses their love interest into going out with him? Because he gave a girl flowers, he totally deserves affection in return. "She must sleep with me because I repair her television and listen to her drama, therefore she must give me something in return, and this can only mean one thing." Uhmmmmmm, how about no?

Anytime I see a character described as hyper, random, or crazy, I say "nope!" out loud and go back. A character that says "Oh my God! I love pickles! Weee!" while running around in circles is not appealing.

Oh God, here comes my list...

I agree with disliking most female leads. I think it’s generally because being a girl, I know exactly what ticks me off about other girls, so when a character has even one of those traits I’m annoyed by, I dislike them. I also don’t like female leads who start out as the strong woman, but then when they fall in love they allow the boy to turn them into a weaker person. Saba from Blood Red Road is an example. She starts by being completely determined, heading out into the desert and not caring how much it harms her, but by the end Jack had her completely wrapped around his finger and kept outsmarting her.

I don’t like characters with stereotypes, but then I don’t think I’ve met many people who do.

I don’t like characters who are basically just the author writing about themselves with one or two appearance changes to make themselves more beautiful. It’s unoriginal and obvious, and they could at least try to come up with someone interesting. Generally I’ve only really seen this in OCs in fanfiction, but I’m pretty sure some people have done it in original fiction too.

Characters who make the most idiotic mistakes constantly. Like, in a series they make about 5 per book. It doesn’t make the character more believable, because a normal person does not go around messing things up every few seconds. The worst I’ve ever seen of this is in the CHERUB books. In pretty much every book James cocked up badly, and had to get pulled out of the situation by one of his friends.

I don’t like it when a character has either a perfect life, and then something awful happens and they spend most of the time comparing their life now to how it was before. Or vice versa, so a character has a horrible life and doesn’t stop going on about all the bad things in their life.

(Last one, I think)I don’t like characters who are too centred around their family. It’s good that they love their parents and family, but they really don’t have to give us constant explanations about how amazing their mum is and how they don’t know what they’d do without their parents by their side. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is terrible for this. The first book is all centred around Percy loving his mum so much that he has to go to the Underworld and rescue her. It’s not an appealing trait, especially in a young boy, and I think the family relations shouldn’t be exaggerated.

Right, I’m done now. I’m the pickiest person on planet Earth right now, so here you go.

Overly pretentious female characters, especially if they're the narrator or the main character.

Characters who exist just to develop another character.

That is all.

@ Yayzikens
Or when the author gives the main character a friend, that is obviously intentionally unlikable so they don't take away from how "special" the main character is, for the sole purpose of explaining to the other characters how "special" the main character is.

Dang, there is a LOT of hate going on for females. I have to say that some of the BEST books I have read have come from amazingly written female mains. I don't know what books y'all are reading, but dang, come on now. What I hate most are the angsty characters that are all 'woe is me' 'my life sucks' and then their all over the first person they meet and 'life is perfect. We can do anything! Your my soul mate'. Blah. Gag. Gender doesn't matter with this.

However, when it does come to gender, I usually CAN NOT stand to read from a guys point of view. For me, those are always the ones that are like 'I hate my life' 'I have to be friggin' perfect'. 'nobody understands me'. Like really? I haven't read many books with a psyically/mentally strong male point of view.

The over-douchey guys. Not when they're written to be that way; that I understand but when the writer just makes all of the guys in all of their stories a douchebag. I know guys kind of have a reputation universally for being pricks sometimes but come on... o.e

The character who describes themselves as a bitch or an asshole, literally on the first chapter. I've read too many stories where the main character will say something like, "I'm kind of a bitch, but everyone else can just deal with it." And then for the rest of the story they're rude, annoying, and incredibly pretentious, and then they act all shocked when other people are rude right back to them, and it's like we're supposed to just go along with it and agree with them because they're the main character and generally we're supposed to like them, but it just drives me absolutely insane, probably because I know way too many people like that in real life and I don't like reading it in stories. You can have a character that's sarcastic and has a dry sense of humor without them being completely full of themselves.

I also don't like characters with the ~special snowflake~ syndrome. The kind who say they're "not like most kids their age" because they're not blonde and don't wear makeup, and then they go on and on about how they'd rather stay home and read a book than go to a party, and they look down on other people who aren't like them. It just comes off as, again, really pretentious. It's like, "okay, you don't like parties and you like to read. Do you want a medal or something?" I guess it's because I'm really not a fan of the whole, "girl who likes to party = slut" stereotype.

I don't know, it just really annoys me.

^Speaking of party girls, I dislike reading about sweet-and-good characters that practically exist just to look down on other 'bad' characters that enjoy partying/casual sex/drugs. I can't help but think they're not so good if the author makes them so damn judgemental...

glitterbombed.:

I also don't like characters with the ~special snowflake~ syndrome. The kind who say they're "not like most kids their age" because they're not blonde and don't wear makeup, and then they go on and on about how they'd rather stay home and read a book than go to a party, and they look down on other people who aren't like them. It just comes off as, again, really pretentious. It's like, "okay, you don't like parties and you like to read. Do you want a medal or something?" I guess it's because I'm really not a fan of the whole, "girl who likes to party = slut" stereotype.

I don't know, it just really annoys me.

Ugh, this really annoys me too. As much as anything, it seems that very few authors actually realise there can be a person who likes reading and who likes going to parties. I like reading, painting, music...all that kind of stuff. I also like parties, going out with friends, shopping, and those typically more 'normal' kinds of things. Yet the vast majority of authors seem to think that these two things are mutually exclusive.

And the whole idea of party girl = slut really annoys me too, because it's not true. There are very few people I know in real life who would turn down an invite to a party (unless they were busy or something) but that definitely doesn't mean that everyone I know is a so-called 'slut.'

@ amaranthine.
same here! I like getting dressed up and going downtown with my friends, I like hanging out and having a drink with them. I also like sitting around in my pajama's and watching tv on the weekend, and I love to read. You really can have it both way's. In fact, all of my friends like mixing it up on the weekends. And even if we only liked to party on the weekends, it's not like we're irresponsible skanks anyways.

In addition to that, I also don't like characters who look down on someone who has a different music taste than them. Like, all the people who listen to punk music are the nice ones, and all the people who listen to pop and hip-hop are obviously idiots. You're allowed to think someone has shitty taste in music, but that doesn't mean they're awful people. I love pop music and nineties hip-hop (along with punk/alternative) and I happen to think I'm a very nice person. In my experience, a lot of rock fans can be majorly elitist and the people who listen to Top 40 are the sweet ones who don't even give a shit what anyone else listens to. It's like the author is just projecting their viewpoints and opinions on their characters. Which is fine in moderation, but not the point where it makes your character sound like a douche.

The fact that so many people in this thread (or at least, this page of this thread) have just blanket-statement said 'female characters' doesn't stand. You can't hate all female characters written in the history of literature, it just doesn't work like that. The reason you hate female characters in books is because they aren't written well. I completely understand that. I've read so many books that have shockingly bad female characters, even female protagonists don't seem as 'authentic' as males would.

You can't brandish all female characters as 'whiny', 'bitchy', and 'selfish', etc. When someone is talking about a male character they talk about him as starting from a completely clean slate. His character is not assumed because of his gender (it may however be assumed if he's trans*, of colour, or disabled), but female characters will always have a preconceived ideal of how their character behaves, and what traits they have.

If you hate badly written female characters, then you should write well written female characters. There's nothing you can do about already published works of fiction, but you can stop your work from falling short.

(But because they're written badly I totally understand why would wouldn't like to read them. I hate reading books with unrealistic female characters, it's like chewing rusty nails.)

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I hate characters that exist solely for the protagonist's growth as a character. In A Christmas Carol, every character other that Scrooge served just to teach Scrooge something about himself and it really got on my nerves. Just the same as characters that only exist on their default setting, and they never seem to have any other emotional value (so if a characters is always sarcastic, or upset, or blindingly happy, or mopey).

@ daisyfairy

I couldn't agree more with you when it comes to female characters. I feel like they get a lot of undeserved hate and judgment when it comes to online fiction, especially when a lot of the traits that people are so quick to criticize in female characters are the same traits they gush about in male characters.

I've also never understood why so many people hate females in online fiction when the majority of people that write online fiction are female

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Characters that are basically sequestered to a specific aspect of the main character's life and never become anything more than just "Alex, the work friend" or "Tony, the guy at the bakery." I have nothing against minor characters, but when a character is just used as someone that the main character always bitches to or the attractive guy that's just a distraction, it becomes very much like The Hills.

"I couldn't agree more with you when it comes to female characters. I feel like they get a lot of undeserved hate and judgment when it comes to online fiction, especially when a lot of the traits that people are so quick to criticize in female characters are the same traits they gush about in male characters."

@i saw sparks,
An interesting double standard. It almost like females online are harder on girl characters than guy characters.
Personally I do read about alot female characters that annoy me, but that's because the author did a terrible job at developing them, not because they're female. When I do read about awesome female characters, they're the best - better than many guy characters I've read about.