Character's you hate from stories that you love

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Silvanus

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I can't stand Harley Quinn. Obnoxious in the extreme, but with none of the gravitas necessary for a compelling villain. Sounds like the kind of teenagers I used to avoid in school. No reason to be taken seriously, and no reason to be sympathised, either.

She's supposedly a genius, but we never see that; we see only the most contrived, straightforward, cartoonish villainy from her imaginable. A "genius" whose plan consists of little preparation, and trying to hit someone with a comically oversized mallet. This isn't Tom and Jerry.

Yet now there's a seemingly huge following... helped along, I'm sure, by the outfits.
 

Casual Shinji

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Emily from Until Dawn.

Yes, I know she's supposed to be a *****, and that the characters are written to fill in the horror movie archetypes, but Emily is written to be hateable on almost every single level. And if there's one thing I can't stand in fiction it's the character that's purposely written in such a way that makes it impossible for the audience to like them. Or the anti-Mary Sue. The rest of the cast gives the impression to atleast be reasonable when the shit starts hitting the fan, but not Emily. She's an annoying ***** from beginning to end, just cuz. And this doesn't even translate into her atleast having stone-cold ***** capabilities, like a cool head in a bad situation or having the guts to do what needs to be done. She's just bitchy, incapable, whiny, and ungrateful.

Another example of an "anti-Mary Sue" is that slimey, weasely guy from The Green Mile. But then I don't like that movie overall.
 

Hawki

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flying_whimsy said:
To be fair, I haven't actually watched anything beyond the season 6 premiere: Starlight left a bad taste in my mouth. And it isn't so much that she's a stand-in for Sunset Shimmer (which she totally is), but it's more that from the start the driving philosophy behind her touched a nerve for me. It then didn't help that the season 5 finale was the only one in the entire series I didn't like, not just because she was in it, but because I think it was poorly done to try and shoehorn her in.

I straight up actually just hate Starlight and would rather have seen her banished to the moon or stuck doing Celestia's ***** work now that Twilight has her own royal council. Sombra tried to take over the crystal empire and gets blown to bits, Starlight ends the world dozens of times and gets...tutoring. Like the entirety of season 5, everything about her just feels really off balance to me.

rant rant rant ***** ***** ***** whine whine whine. Sorry, I'm just bitter because I haven't been able to enjoy the show as much over the last year. I'll probably get caught up with it and back in stride once I visit some brony friends this coming weekend.
I certainly sympathize with most of that. The season 5 finale wasn't really my cup of tea, how Starlight is forgiven just like that. Distrust of Luna was brought back in season 2, and her redemption arc was resolved much later (the one where she enters the dreams of the Mane 6 IRCC. Discord was brought back in season 3, but probably wasn't fully accepted until the end of season 4 (post-Tirek). Even though she's learning the "magic of friendship," Starlight's forgival was WAY too fast. I mean, it's not as if Queen Chrysalis has ever been forgiven for her actions, so there's a precedent for not every villain being redeemable.

That said, I wouldn't go so far as to compare her with Sombra, a.k.a. the weakest season opener/ender villain the show's had. As reprehensible as Starlight's actions are, they're at least rooted in emotional backlash, and can be at least sympathized with, if not forgiven. Sombra, on the other hand, wants to destroy the Crystal Empire because...he's evil? It also doesn't help that he basically has no personality to speak of. He just does what he does with no rationale behind it. Not to mention that Starlight's motive was to screw up Twilight's life, but screwing up the timeline and Equestria as a whole wasn't her goal in of itself.

I can't really say if season 6 is any better or worse than past seasons (at this point in time the overall quality generally feels consistent across multiple seasons), but hey, Starlight has barely featured in it so far, so there's that.
 

Neurotic Void Melody

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Silvanus said:
I can't stand Harley Quinn. Obnoxious in the extreme, but with none of the gravitas necessary for a compelling villain. Sounds like the kind of teenagers I used to avoid in school. No reason to be taken seriously, and no reason to be sympathised, either.

She's supposedly a genius, but we never see that; we see only the most contrived, straightforward, cartoonish villainy from her imaginable. A "genius" whose plan consists of little preparation, and trying to hit someone with a comically oversized mallet. This isn't Tom and Jerry.

Yet now there's a seemingly huge following... helped along, I'm sure, by the outfits.
Oh, forgot about her! But yes, i agree with you here. Not only does she have a voice seemingly designed to pierce through all grating-hate neurons, her only played up character trait is gushing over the joker with no evident skill or independence to do anything else. A squeaky fetish toy for the big bad males to appreciate. Her pre-joker past is much more intriguing, but do we ever see any of that?
 
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-Troy (Midsummer Murders)
Aw, what? He's, like, the best one! Well alright, Jones was probably the best one, but at least Troy wasn't Scott...

Anyway, I'm increasingly beginning to dislike Uhtred from Bernard Cromwell's Saxon Stories. Learn from your mistakes you grumpy bastard!
 

Hawki

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Pallindromemordnillap said:
-Troy (Midsummer Murders)
Aw, what? He's, like, the best one! Well alright, Jones was probably the best one, but at least Troy wasn't Scott...

Anyway, I'm increasingly beginning to dislike Uhtred from Bernard Cromwell's Saxon Stories. Learn from your mistakes you grumpy bastard!
...derp.

You're absolutely right - it's been so long since I've watched the show that I got the names mixed up. But yeah, I agree. Jones was better than Troy, but Troy was better than Scott. I've made an edit to my original post.
 

DudeistBelieve

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Saturn Girl from legion of superheroes.

I don't have a real reason for it, much like Kim Possible, her existence just irks me. Just the perfect person with no flaws that you just want Onomatopoeia (The DC Villain) to show up and add her to his collection.
 

The Wykydtron

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Think i'll go for Erika from Umineko No Naku Koro Ni Chiru. There are no words to describe just how badly I hate her, yes she's one of the bad guys but and takes a lot of shit from her... teammates? The other ladies on her side of the chessboard but they hardly do much in the way of "helping"

Bern relentlessly ridicules her in every other scene they share and Bern could be described as her mother so that's vaguely tragic if you think about it and the game does try to show her in a sympathetic light sometimes but like... She's still a fucking *****. Tragic circumstances and sad backstory aside, she is a fucking ****. A manipulative, spiteful ***** and is possibly the sorest loser you will ever see.

I mean when she introduces herself as, and I quote "an intellectual rapist" within her first few scenes and she's super proud of it, you know this is going to be... interesting? She gets shit done too which is the most aggravating. I think in a pure win/loss percentage going scene by scene she goes maybe 75/80% wins vs Battler's 25/20%. Battler just makes a couple of awesome comebacks so his wins are super cool but Erika is just so competent and consistent throughout when it comes to solving mysteries.

I've just grasped why she's so irritating actually, it's how she's so good at winning through bullshit underhanded moves and all the good guys can do is impotently seethe with rage as she taunts on and on with her disgusting personality. I just want to say "Battler, body this *****" and he rarely ever does cuz you have someone trying to play fair and the other playing to win using anything and everything to her advantage.

Annoyingly enough though, Erika pretty much singlehandedly makes Chiru ten times more interesting just by her presence... The game would be much worse without her and I hate to admit it.
 

DefunctTheory

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Johnny Novgorod said:
I absolutely can't stand Handsome Jack, yet every game he's in plays off the notion that he's some sort of <a href='http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard
' target='_self'>Magnificent Bastard.
I guess it's YMMV... I liked Handsome Jack for this exact reason. The game (Because Jack is in charge) constantly tries to tell you how awesome he is, and how smart, and how magnificent, but the more you pay attention to him, and the closer you get to the ending, the more you realize he's just another psycho, only a bit more grandiose.
 

Neurotic Void Melody

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AccursedTheory said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
I absolutely can't stand Handsome Jack, yet every game he's in plays off the notion that he's some sort of <a href='http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard
' target='_self'>Magnificent Bastard.
I guess it's YMMV... I liked Handsome Jack for this exact reason. The game (Because Jack is in charge) constantly tries to tell you how awesome he is, and how smart, and how magnificent, but the more you pay attention to him, and the closer you get to the ending, the more you realize he's just another psycho, only a bit more grandiose.
Annnd if you were to play Tales from the Borderlands, you would see further evidence of Oh crap, i've already said too much...umm something related to your point possibly.
I'll go now.
 

DefunctTheory

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Xsjadoblayde said:
AccursedTheory said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
I absolutely can't stand Handsome Jack, yet every game he's in plays off the notion that he's some sort of <a href='http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard
' target='_self'>Magnificent Bastard.
I guess it's YMMV... I liked Handsome Jack for this exact reason. The game (Because Jack is in charge) constantly tries to tell you how awesome he is, and how smart, and how magnificent, but the more you pay attention to him, and the closer you get to the ending, the more you realize he's just another psycho, only a bit more grandiose.
Annnd if you were to play Tales from the Borderlands, you would see further evidence of Oh crap, i've already said too much...umm something related to your point possibly. I'll go now.
Indeed. I really need to finish that game. But you really have to be in the right mood to get into it, and that state of mind has eluded me recently.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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...seriously guys? I have to be the one? 30 comments in and she hasn't been brought up? I have to be the one to do this?!

sigh


DIANA ALLERS!

flying_whimsy said:
Its worth pointing out that Starlight Glimmer is just a stand-in for Sunset Shimmer, but they're keeping her in the movie universe for now. I'm guessing Starlight and Sunset will meet in the actual pony movie when it comes out.

That being said...I actually can't stand Fluttershy. At all. In any way. She's not cute, clever, totes adorbs or enjoyable. She's just awkward and traumatized. They should call her TramaShy.
 

Erttheking

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Big fan of Steven Universe, Ronaldo can just go straight to hell though.
 

Breakdown

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Starbuck from the Battlestar Galactica reboot. She was a total pain in the arse, always disobeying orders, attacking people, or just being miserable all the time. And that was before she turned into some kind of space angel.
 

EHKOS

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Rise and Yukiko from Persona 4. Perfect anime otherwise.

Sam from Uncharted 4. Every time he opened his mouth I wanted to fill it with bullets. At one point I actually yelled "Shut the fuck up!" out loud while he was saying some in-game banter. My sister stopped by my room and was like "Who are you talking to?" I pulled out my pistol and shot through him whenever he got on my nerves bad enough. It was four times, I kept count. There would have been more times but I was more just sighing a seethe away.
 

Neurotic Void Melody

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AccursedTheory said:
Xsjadoblayde said:
AccursedTheory said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
I absolutely can't stand Handsome Jack, yet every game he's in plays off the notion that he's some sort of <a href='http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard
' target='_self'>Magnificent Bastard.
I guess it's YMMV... I liked Handsome Jack for this exact reason. The game (Because Jack is in charge) constantly tries to tell you how awesome he is, and how smart, and how magnificent, but the more you pay attention to him, and the closer you get to the ending, the more you realize he's just another psycho, only a bit more grandiose.
Annnd if you were to play Tales from the Borderlands, you would see further evidence of Oh crap, i've already said too much...umm something related to your point possibly. I'll go now.
Indeed. I really need to finish that game. But you really have to be in the right mood to get into it, and that state of mind has eluded me recently.
Yeah, they do occupy a niche genre that requires a mood somewhere between "want to play a a game" and "cannot be bothered to play a game." But the episodes do get better with a satisfying ending; a rarity in video-games. I find the best moments to jump in are relaxed, but focused and not wanting a game that demands earnest input. Even then, there can always be this begrudging voice in the brain, doubting the outcome. :)
 

Zen Bard

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Breakdown said:
Starbuck from the Battlestar Galactica reboot. She was a total pain in the arse, always disobeying orders, attacking people, or just being miserable all the time. And that was before she turned into some kind of space angel.
Oh my God, yes!! She's the poster child for gender flipping done wrong.

The original series Starbuck was a smooth-talking womanizing con-man. And it would have been really interesting and unique to see a female version of this.

Instead we got an entitled whiny child with Daddy issues and no respect for authority who some became the best pilot in the fleet. Because a woman can't be strong and rebellious without being an emotional wreck.

Honestly, this Starbuck is the main reason I cringe every time someone starts rallying the cry to gender flip a popular male character.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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AccursedTheory said:
Johnny Novgorod said:
I absolutely can't stand Handsome Jack, yet every game he's in plays off the notion that he's some sort of <a href='http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard
' target='_self'>Magnificent Bastard.
I guess it's YMMV... I liked Handsome Jack for this exact reason. The game (Because Jack is in charge) constantly tries to tell you how awesome he is, and how smart, and how magnificent, but the more you pay attention to him, and the closer you get to the ending, the more you realize he's just another psycho, only a bit more grandiose.
See I knew he was a psycho from the get go. And Pre-Sequel's attempt at milking sympathy for the guy felt flat for me.
 

CrazyCapnMorgan

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So, I have two stories with two different characters with the same voice actor. From DragonBall Z, it's Hercule Satan. Words alone cannot possibly communicate the level of hate that I have for this character. Just a total goofball, and Cell really SHOULD have killed that moron the second his hand connected with his stupid face.

On the other hand, Mr. Torgue from Borderlnads 2. He's also a total goofball, but one that doesn't instantly fill me with a pressing need to use a flamethrower on him. In fact, I kinda like the guy. When I realized the same VA did Torgue and Mr. Satan...I was torn. But I still like him, though.
 

Souplex

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Lumpy Space Princess (Adventure Time) beyond the second time we see her.
I enjoyed her first 2 appearances, but by her third the joke had worn out.