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@sarah-inkdragon

This sounds like a fun topic 😀

I think characters one can personally relate to do not necessarily correspond to characters one find interesting, but I’ll just share my thoughts on this.

Characters I love

I love a good redemption arc, so I love characters that get redeemed and enjoy character development such as Edmund Pevensie from Chronicles of Narnia. I also like characters that struggle to do good in spite of the tragedies and obstacles they face like Vimes from Pratchett’s Discworld and Dr. Tenma from Monster because they are very inspiring.

Another way to make me love a character is to simply make them charming and fun to be around and interact with. Much of the appeal about the Avengers, for example, lies in watching the characters bounce off one another. While I have never liked the superhero genre, I could appreciate the characters’ dynamics and thus care about them to some extent.

Characters I love to hate

This usually applies to my favourite villains 😛 I enjoy villains that are terrifying and entertaining in their villainy such as Azula from ATLA and Dio from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (their sheer glee whenever they attack or plan against the heroes is infectious and makes the comeuppance very satisfying). My personal belief is that it is better to have a fun “pure evil” villain than a boring “sympathetic” villain which are so banal nowadays since everyone’s trying to be “edgy” and “morally grey”.

I also love villains which have interesting motivations. For example, Kira Yoshikage (also from JoJo’s) is a serial killer that collects women’s hands but otherwise lives a very average and mundane existence and only wishes to have a peaceful and quiet life. Since JoJo’s is an action/adventure, this simple and very human motivation is a fascinating contrast to the more grandiose villain motivations found in the genre.

Characters I hate

Hoo boy. This is going to be a long and non-exhaustive list. In no particular order, characters I hate include:

– audience surrogate/everyman/blank slate characters (e.g. every MC in transported to another world stories). When writers try to create a character everyone can relate to, this more often than not creates a character that is boring.
– characters with 21st century psychology/morality even though nothing about their setting/background should explain this (e.g. character being anti-slavery for some weird reason even though the whole society she grew up in is pro-slavery, a royal/noble character thinking that he is “no different” from his servants).
– not like other boys/girls stories (unless done very well like Hiccup from HTTYD). I guess all this comes down to my preference for characters that are in harmony with/a product of their world.
– characters with no vulnerability and thus relatability (e.g. every action movie hero ever, Strong Female Character TM).
– characters included for “diversity” or “representation” aka characters which readers are obligated to like because of that one trait (Amaya from The Dragon Prince is a fearsome army commander… and is deaf and communicates through sign language. I am all for having disabled characters in fiction but the show treats her deafness more as a cute quirk than something that would realistically impede her ability to react and give commands to her soldiers in the heat of battle. Nothing in the story would really change if she wasn’t deaf and she so far does not suffer any real consequences due to her handicap, which does not acknowledge the struggles faced by actual deaf people).
– characters that can do no wrong / characters which the writer half-heartedly tries to give flaws but are otherwise perfect (Percy Jackson’s fatal flaw being his “loyalty” comes to mind).
– boring “sympathetic” villains with unoriginal motivations and/or backstories not anymore tragic than anyone else’s in the setting. Also applies to “bad boys”, I guess.