Fannish Friday: despised characters you love

[lirazel]

Tell me about a character that fandom in general hates that you love! I'm not talking about polarizing characters, where half of fandom hates them and half loves them. I mean the ones where, like, 80% of the fandom just flat-out hates the character, where the "consensus" is that the character sucks, etc.

My most obvious answer to this is always Dawn Summers. I love that dorky, nerdy little teenage girl, and I suspect that the majority of hatred for her arises from a) people disliking a character introduced late in the show, even when there's a really good plot-reason to introduce her, and b) how much people absolutely hate teenage girls. They hate them so much! They might make an exception for a fictional teenage girl who also kicks physical ass and plays to the male gaze, but any time a teenage girl acts like an actual teenage girl, she will get hatred from the majority of society.

Another example is Bela on Supernatural (yes, I did watch the first few seasons of that show, we will speak of it no more) who I thought was delightful and who I gladly would have watched a spin-off about. And despite the way fandom treated her, Ruby was fine.

Comments

[lirazel]

Awww, I like him too! I agree with LMA that Jo should not end up with Laurie and I'm glad she didn't go there. Bhaer is a better match if Jo has to have a partner at all, which apparently the publishers said she did. I still like to imagine an ace Jo being a badass spinster.

Btw, have you seen this?

[sophia_sol]

ok now I'm imagining the au where Jo and Bhaer are platonic aroace bffs who go into business opening a school together and what a GREAT vision imo.

also no I had not seen that and ooh, a venue for bird content on dw, thank you!!

[lirazel]

Yes I love it!!!

You're welcome! :D