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Wow… so much amazing advice! I’m very late to the game, and you probably have this all figured out by now, but here’s my two cents: maybe it’s not bad if people don’t like her initially. Based on her arc, it sounds like she gets a whole lot better later on in the story, and from my experience I actually feel a massive ton of empathy for characters who are hated, once their stories and motives are revealed. It might even make me like them more than some of the other characters.

For example: Snotlout, from HTTYD. In the first movie, he’s ridiculously annoying. Actually, in every movie (and show) he’s ridiculously annoying. The thing is, though, he’s one of my favorite characters—at least from a writer’s standpoint. Why? Because it eludes to the fact that his faults come from a poor family history. I pity Snotlout way more than Hiccup (at least nowadays—the first movie I loved Hiccup, but my love for the whole franchise kind of fell apart after the second movie) and feel for him on a deeper level than I do for the other characters. Sure, Hiccup’s dad died and whatnot, and a lot of responsibility was thrust on him all at once, and he eventually (spoiler) lost Toothless, but in my opinion those were just cheap clichés to try and get people drawn into the story. Snotlout’s history and behavior are real, plausible, relatable problems that cut a hair deeper than the HTTYD plots that were “cooked up in a lab,” if you catch my meaning.

But then again, I’m a writer, and I probably catch things other people may not. So. *shrug*