Protagonists you just can't stand.

Zontar

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Feb 18, 2013
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We all have them, that Mary or Marty Sue that is just to perfect, that strong and silent type thta just gets on our nerves, that guy who in 5 minutes became better at doing something then someone who did it all their life because someone it's hereditary or something.

Well name them. Now is your chance.

I'll start: the protagonist from Sword Art Online. A clasic case of the wish fufilment character, that particular Marty Sue is the strongest person in the game the characters are trapped in because... well to be quite honest they never even try to explain it in adiquet detail. Hell, given the logic of how an MMO runs, he would be one of the weakest players since he did all of 2 missions with other people in 2 years, and soloing in an MMO is the slow way to level up. I could go on listing things I dislike about the character, like the Deus Ex he pulls every battle, but I think you get the point.

So, what protagonist, regardless of medium, can you not stand?
 

Elfgore

Your friendly local nihilist
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Dec 6, 2010
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I tired my best to let go hating Kirito, but I just have to say this in his defense. Almost EVERY shounen protagonist is like this. OP, always pulls a victory out of his ass, has multiple attractive women loving him for no real reason. He just embodies it perfectly.

Rito from the Love-Ru. He is the most pathetic excuse of a person ever. How he ever got multiple women to fall in love with him is beyond me. He is completely useless in any situation and just lets his many girlfriends take care of him.

My most hated protagonist of all time. Ichika from Infinite Stratos. He is the most dense person, no. The most dense thing that exists on earth. Seven girls have feelings for him, and at several times making it painfully obvious. Every time he just goes "huh?" and gets a dumb look on his face. This picture describes the show perfectly.


Edit: Picture should be fixed.
 

DementedSheep

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Jan 8, 2010
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Alright you asked for it. Hate rant time!

It's rare that I drop a book mid way through. Even if I don't like it I tend to want to finish stories especially if I paid money to read it (which is stupid but whatever). Rhapsody: Child of Blood successfully made me do that. I didn't like Rhapsody to start with off with but it got unbearable after she went through the fire and was made "perfect" so now every guy who sees her is immediately obsessed and wants to rape her. I wish I was exaggerating, it has towns grinding to halt while all the men throw themselves at her and internal monologues from characters trying to fight the urge to rape her not just that a lot of major character like her. Hell, at the start of the book before the magical fire crap she already had one boy regard her as his soulmate having just meet her when she was kid and after the time skip worked as a prostitute complete with an obsessive guy trying to own her but is somehow still oblivious to this sort of shit because she is so naïve, pure and oblivious to her own charm. Her naiveté is often bought up and its clearly meant to be foil to the other leads ruthlessness and endearing but mostly she just seems really stupid rather then inexperienced.

But my most hated is still the woman for Queens Bastard. I assume she is meant to be a villain protagonist because she far worse than anyone else in the book and mostly just screws up everyone else's lives. Unfortunately she didn't get her comeuppance at the end. She might in latter books but I'm not reading those. There are plenty of villains I like or love to hate rather than just hate but she has no redeeming features! She expresses regret at manipulating someone one moment and then is raping him and magically forcing him to rape someone else (how do I keep finding rape plots? it's not like I look for them) because she's horny and finds its amusing the next. She is apparently "professional" and "emotionally controlled" but that must have been with all the things she did they aren't in this book because she certainly isn't during the course of the story.

Oh and Naruto because he's loud, annoying and repeats the same crap and moral lesson over and over again. I also don't like characters who learn "difficult techniques that take years to master" in a few weeks or days. This seems to a common theme in a lot of manga but maybe its just the ones I keep coming across.
 

Queen Michael

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Every shouty and annoying shounen protagonist ever. Basically anybody that resembles Natsu from Fairy Tail.

 

Extra-Ordinary

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Mar 17, 2010
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Black Widow from the movies. Had to make that specification because I have no idea what she's like in the comics.
Anyway.
I know she's supposed to be professional but she seems so cocky in her abilities, I absolutely can't stand her.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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MarsAtlas said:
Final Fantasy XIII. Thats been beaten to death, so I'm sure everybody knows what I'm talking about.
Personally, I tend to go the FF8 route and say "The entire cast, including the villains.". THAT is a shit Final Fantasy game.

But hey, let's burn an orange effigy. I'm going to see this overwhelmingly large amount of obvious hate for FF8 and raise everyone the entire cast of Naruto, a load of irritating and shouty pains in the ass that are NOT NINJAS.
 

The Wykydtron

"Emotions are very important!"
Sep 23, 2010
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*Pokes head in*

Hello? Should I start going on about the main character in Persona 3 again or have we gotten really bored of that already? Fuck it.

So I really should copy paste one of my many speeches on this guy so I don't have to rewrite the same stuff over and over again. Basically he's an unlikable **** no matter how nice you try to make him be and every single aspect of the game unintentionally reinforces this negative image I have of him and I really tried to like him. The rest of SEES don't even act like he's more than an acquaintance even later on in the game, everyone else is having character development and Persona evolutions then there's just your lazy fucking arse just sitting in his room doing nothing in the meantime, you're forced to go out with half the female population of the school just to max your S Links and I could go on. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he just quit the whole "saving the world" thing halfway through because he couldn't be bothered anymore, he doesn't seem invested in anything SEES does.

No, stop I know what you're going to say "oh he's like super apathetic because of a traumatic past and so he can't make friends your argument is invalid lol" then I have to say then why is a guy with such apathy ingrained into his character in a fucking Persona game? You know, the one centred around friendship?

Honestly after playing SMT Devil Survivor I can say I would find him infinitely more enjoyable to play if he was in SMT proper instead.
 

Johnny Novgorod

Bebop Man
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Extra-Ordinary said:
Black Widow from the movies. Had to make that specification because I have no idea what she's like in the comics.
Anyway.
I know she's supposed to be professional but she seems so cocky in her abilities, I absolutely can't stand her.
Isn't everybody kind of cocky in those movies though because Joss Whedon?

OP: God I hate Ash from Pokemon. Going 'round the world making friends with wildlife. Catch those motherfuckers Ash, don't you know the premise of your own damn show?
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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Jul 18, 2009
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Tenchi from Tenchi Muyo.

He starts off well enough, being a simple guy who gets dragged into a situation larger than he is. But before long he becomes generic hero guy, who all the girls want a piece of. And instead of making a move on one of them or setting his boundries, he just strings them all along with his befuddlement. He also ***** slapped Ryoko, and for that alone he needs to die!

Also Haruhi Suzumiya from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. But then I hate everyone in that fucking show.
 

VanQ

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Oct 23, 2009
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Elfgore said:
Your picture appears to be broken. And I'm gonna have to defend Kirito a little, in that he's not totaly useless. He at least knew the game world and mechanics inside and out and played the system in ways to give himself an incredible advantage, all the while being totally handicapped by being a solo player the entire time. Have you read the novels? His inner monologues are quite insightful and he really does figure out the game down to the tiniest minuté. Any man that figured out the real world as well as he did the game world would probably have quite a lot of power and influence. And Asuna is the only girl he had after him before the side stories and that was only after interacting with her quite frequently. It's a reason it's one of my favourite couplings. (I like to pretend Fairy Dance didn't reduce Asuna to a useless damsel)
[sub][sub]NO! I won't use that trope name anymore! It has lost all meaning to me.[/sub][/sub]

I agree with your other two examples though, even if I am totally envious of them.
 

SmallHatLogan

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Jan 23, 2014
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MarsAtlas said:
Final Fantasy XIII. Thats been beaten to death, so I'm sure everybody knows what I'm talking about.
I'll go a step further and say most of the Final Fantasy protagonists (and I like Final Fantasy) but if I had to pick one it would easily be Squall. I actually find Lightning more bearable than most.

Jon Snow from A Song of Ice and Fire. That guy is such a bore. I hope George R. R. Martin kills him off in the next book.

Any protagonist played by Shia LaBeouf.
 

teebeeohh

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Jun 17, 2009
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The asshole from uncharted, something Drake. The guy casually murders people and is all funny about it.
 

IceStar100

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Jan 5, 2009
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Mind from a video game

Morrigan from Dragon age. I get most of it but she remind me of the stupid evil players from D&D. Half the stuff she does is not even evil just spiteful. I'll use Alister as a point.
Take one of the two wardens that she need to do her little spell and make sure he dislike every part of you. Made even less scent in the dark spawn spin off. They want to play her as a master manipulator. She come off more as someone who does not know when to shut up.
 

Estarc

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Sadly, male Shepard from Mass Effect. The voice is the thing that throws me off most really. Just doesn't match my own mental image of the character, or rather what I want the character to be. I've gone through the entire trilogy once as a male and it severely hampered my enjoyment compared to the female Shepard playthroughs...

Also Patroklos from Soul Calibur V. Fuck that guy.
 

SFMB

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May 13, 2009
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Lara Croft from the latest iteration... Really now: you've been sniping people in the head with a fully tricked hunting bow and then comes a cut scene, where the main villain is dragging your sister?-Brother-friend? (I fail to remember) just in an optimal killzone towards a doorway, which is still far away... And nothing. This ***** just keeps watching whereas in the game mode you could just sniped the hell out of the antagonist and be rid of him. I didn't really like the whole re-imaging of Ms. Croft.
When you are casually hacking people to pieces with a climbing hook, you really do not whimper in fear when there is a sudden explosion in a sinking ship...
Sadly, you cannot skip all the cutscenes in the game. It would have made the game and the character much better.
 

Dandark

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For the longest time I hated Naruto. I enjoyed the show but he was so annoying early on a lot of the time, I actually ended up quite liking him later on and found him an alright character. He started to get awful again recently but then the whole show started to get awful so im not going to blame that on Naruto's character specifically.
I spent most of the early part of the show watching in the vain hope that he would get taken over by the nine tails more. I love characters that have some kind of uncontrollable demon or rage inside them that can cause them to go berserk and kill even their allies.

This was wasted in naruto though, the most he does is knock Sakura back once and that doesn't happen till Shippuden. Imagine if he had killed Kakashi or something while in a rampage? How would that affect him and his positive attitude? What if he nearly demolished the village?
 

garjian

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Mar 25, 2009
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Estarc said:
Also Patroklos from Soul Calibur V. Fuck that guy.
But that's exactly what makes him a good character. He's so detestable, and that was the point.
Story would've been better if it had finished where he just killed the very reason he set out on his journey, then eventually realised he doesn't really have anything else to live for after that "Malfested must die" adrenaline wore off.
SCV's story annoys me... It would've been a decent arcade mode had they been able to get everything done... :/

Anyway...

If I have to hear this non-dimensional fuckwit say "Bring 'em on!" one more time I'm going to painstakingly find a way to make him a real being so I can rip his fucking throat out with my bare, nail-less hands.
What kind of a name is Edge Maverick anyway?
 

Ubiquitous Duck

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I really disliked a lot of what was done with Lara in the new Tomb Raider.

She never seemed to letup on the screaming. The first couple of hours of the game especially, just seemed to be a lot of screaming.

Further to this, so much of what she 'achieved' in the game just felt like luck/chance - as there were so many points which otherwise could just of ended in her death - like falling down ravines or planes almost landing on her, but she managed to end up somewhere safe in the end, but easily could've fallen off a mountain.

She didn't seem like much of a hero or lead. Just someone who continuously got very lucky and easily could've failed many times.

There are also leads in games that I thought of who were unlikeable, that you grew to dislike throughout the game, but as these were part of the narrative and done on purpose, I did not use these. I won't reference either, as it would be a spoiler.