I'm not sure if there would have been blood just because Briggs makes a point to explain that Sam never really loved Mercy he just wanted her to have his babies lol. It never really felt like a love triangle to me because of that. I never really considered the vampire as a true love interest cause Mercy has no real interest in him that way and I really liked the character (his mystery machine van, i mean how can you not like him). Silver Borne was not one of the best books in the series but it wasn't bad either, the worst one I think was River Marked. But even though River Marked was rather boring it still goes into her family history and starts to explain why she's a coyote shifter.
I tend to hate female characters that are supposed to be feminism poster girls. Those characters that just scream "Aren't I so empowered and just as good as the boys?". Their characterization usually backfires pretty badly, meaning it ends up (ironically) sending misogynistic messages. I'm not even gonna name examples because I feel I might touch a nerve .
Conversely, I can't stand women waiting around for people to save them, or doing that super annoying, typical dance between Man A and Man B (Katniss fucking Everdeen).
The argument that empowered female characters actually send misogynistic messages is a weak one if you can't back it up with some specificity.
Yeah, but unless you're going to write a romance, female protagonists must be tough. They must be able to conquer impossible odds, and oftentimes this means that they are better equipped to handle the opposition than most of their peers. Of course, sometimes they still need to be rescued. Too much sloppy kissing at the end, but overall a great scene.
Are you talking about action girls? if so, then yeah, I agree. Idk, though. I guess, personally, I don't care much if a character is "tough" or not. Everyone is different. As long as the character is relatable, it's fine by me.
I think what you're trying to say is that you don't like when authors go out of their way to brand a character as "TUFF," rather than letting their actions speak for themselves and allowing the reader to come to their own conclusion, yeah? And I could see the latter approach being swayed toward a bit of stereotypical sexism in the sense that this is often shown through tough women who aren't able to also be vulnerable and feminine, and instead must leave their womanly wiles to the wayside and literally mirror a man. Which is somewhat counter to gender-equality initiatives, which lean more on a general understanding that all people are capable of a diverse amount of things, despite what's between their knees.
@tumblingdice: I once argued, half joking, than Gen Urobuchi is more feminist than Joss Whedon. Whedon's like "Look at this girl being awesome! Isn't it amazing that a girl could be so awesome? I bet you never expected to see a girl being this awesome!" Urobuchi writes like it never occurred to him that anyone might doubt that women could be awesome. (In some ways his writing is way more gendered than Whedon's, but that's to be expected when you write for freaking Nitroplus.) @No-Name Slob: More broadly, there's this thing in a lot of sci-fi and fantasy romance where the female lead is the perspective character who the reader is expected to identify with, but the male lead is the one who actually does things. All the female lead does is stand around and watch him, like he's Sherlock Holmes and she's a particularly boring Watson. It feels like she could easily be written out of the story, despite nominally being the protagonist!
Could it be that they come across patronizing? Especially some male writers might be worried of portraying women as weak or damsel-ly, so they have to make sure she is stronger and cleverer than some or even most of the males, otherwise he'll face the wrath of... well, quite a few people. But the whole weak/strong dichotomy is pretty stupid anyway 'cause everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and a good character, man or woman or hermaphrodite, would have strengths, weaknesses, and insecurities, and they'd make mistakes and sometimes have to be helped -- or saved -- by a friend or a colleague, and sometimes that person is a man, sometimes a woman. I was chatting with one fantasy romance writer about this a while back. Her heroines were definitely capable of taking care of themselves, but she did put them into situations where sometimes the love interest saved her butt -- but the author thought it romantic! And, to be honest, I did too, I think she wrote those scenes very well. Having said that, T.Trian and I flipped the script of a hero saving his love interest in one of our manuscripts, and now she's obsessed with finding and saving him. Again, this could send a misogynistic message (?), I guess, of a woman who's so enamored by a man she's willing to risk everything for him. Would she be an example of the kind of character you're talking about? Either way, I'd be curious to hear your examples.
Really, the closest thing about this that's offensive would maybe be that it's insulting the audience's intelligence. Though f we needed to make it gendered, we could say it's a misandric message saying men are so sex craved and stupid they'll do anything if you flash your funbags. *Shrug*
Yeah, most of the characters I was thinking about were written by men. Exactly . I write romance and I do that as well. Some might call it old-fashioned... but I like it. Not unless her entire existence revolves around saving said man. A character (male or female) is supposed to have a personality and life outside their love interest. Well, I still stand by what I said earlier: not naming anybody. People tend to be defensive about their favorite characters and I know how much it sucks to hear/read some stranger calling them awful characters, lol. . My point is made anyway, I think.
Bumping with a new thought: I've realized that almost all of the characters I dislike on an instinctual level are characters who: 1): Think they can do whatever they want without anyone else being able to stop them 2): Are correct I'm thinking about this because I just watched a few episodes of a Japanese zombie show, and one of the major characters is a super-strong half-zombie who dual-wields bizarrely powerful shotguns and can single-handedly wipe out a zombie horde that was massacring a small town. There are a few different things that annoy me about her, but what gets to me deep in my gut is that whenever someone else tries to impede her, she resorts to violence because she knows she'll never lose. I want to see her get into at least one situation where she doesn't have the advantage and actually needs to put in effort.
That seems pretty unfair. Especially considering there are many forms of anti-hero, and the term is often debatable.
I hate male characters who are super good looking, can do no wrong, and get along with everyone. Oddly female characters don't annoy me as much although I also can't think of as many off the top of my head. But it's weird because a lot of my female friends are more forgiving of overly good-looking men than women and I'm the opposite. I forgot about this but yes, I typically hate antiheroes. I don't like cheering for someone who is doing bad things. However this is ironic because with my most recent book I ended up with an anti hero being the main character, completely by accident. I'm sure @Oscar Leigh is right about there being different types of anti heroes and I'm sure some people write them well. It's just a pet peeve of mine. Maybe it's not that I hate the idea I just think it's over rated/over used.
It's less that I don't like a character and more of how I don't like what the author did with it. When a character is given everything to them without having to surmount any true difficulty, I find it aspirating. When all the characters in the book have very similar characteristics and personalities, I call laziness. When a character's peronality deviates in action from the original flow, I cringe from the inconsistency. When a character is well written to be an absolutely vile excuse for a sentient being, I shake my fist in rage (then silently applaud the author). When a character is immature and makes poor decisions, I blame the author. That follows true for the rest of my statements as well.
I hate the character who is able to get out of problems with money. It is the one flaw I see in Batman. For vigilantes my go to guy is Casey Jones of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
I hate the big badass hero who skates through everything unscathed, until the final five minutes when his invincibility finally wears off. Also tacking on that he is never tired, doesn't sweat, and every body leading up to the big boss battle has the aim of a storm trooper. Oh yeah and with out fail gets the girl. The infinite ammo mod. Honestly a page and half back he fired off 12 bullets, there is no way he has 15 more on this page cause he never reloaded the bloody thing. Hell there was no mention he even packed that much ammo to begin with. The chosen one. Need I Say More....C'mon this one is so bloody obvious. The flat lifeless corpse you have flailing about like a marionette, you are not fooling anyone we can see the bloody strings. Half time I am worried something good is going to happen only to find there vacant expression as they celebrate little Billy's birthday party. Have some damn common courtesy to give the illusion they are more than a walking corpse with bland dialogue please. PLEASE! The prodigal whipping boy, who's sole purpose is to take the brunt of all your bad jokes for a shit show at irony, or cruel sense of humor. He appears just long enough to get the wrath of whatever and then immediately walks off stage. Where you keep him until you have the need to exact more sadistic things upon the poor lad. The whole thing is contrived bad luck by design. (Honestly I feel bad for this one)
I very rarely care for moral absolutists. Usually they're good guys, but they're always presented as 'Perfectly' righteous in whatever they're doing. They always do the right thing, never give into temptation, etc. Even if they're presented as a hindrance or nuisance to the main character, I still hate 'em. There are two problems here: One, nobody is that perfect. Two, you *always* know what they're going to do in advance.
I read a romance novel in which the female protagonist spends the book "improving" the lone male love interest. Essentially, the guy's big flaw was that he was too perfect. An entire page was devoted to describing his entire collection of oral hygiene products, for example. It was truly insufferable to endure 350 pages of the female protagonist helping this lone, rugged, mute, muscular loner "break out of his shell." She oh-so-lovingly "fixed" him to her standards and then they lived happily ever after. *BARRRFFFFFF barf barf barf*
