greatcheezer2021 said:
i hate Ender Wiggin.
i hated that book so much, i hated his stupid character, his stupid decisions, his overly stupid compassion, and whining. i burned that book. humanity would be so much better off without him.
on the other hand, i admire shinji ikari. but Ender Wiggin? if i ever saw him, i'd tear his eyes out. i would not let him live.
Admiring Shinji? That's a first. I don't really have any problems with him, I certainly don't get the hate, I mean, growing up with a massive asshole of a dad in post-apocalypticia while undergoing puberty ON TOP of being forced into serving as a child soldier while essentially the entire cast is perfectly willing to make your life hell if not actively trying to at all times would make anyone totally down all the time. People go, "You should be awesome, you have an awesome robot" and leave out the part where he always gets hurt in the damn thing, and can feel the pain that it suffers. I don't think many of us would handle getting stabbed by an eldritch abomination while your only halfway kind caretaker is yelling at you to stop being such a pussy at the age of 13 very well is all. /endrant.
Anyways, care to share why you admire him? I just feel bad for the guy. Also, I'm really surprised that you hate Ender so much, since he seems to be Shinji with just a bit of Stu-ified intelligence.
On to who I hate? Not a lot, but as a rule of thumb, a character that is not either intentionally 2D or totally 3D will at least irritate me.
However, I think over the years I've come to loathe Drizzt Do'Urden of R.A. Salvatore's soulless cash cow. The character, while a bit of a contrived Sue, used to have a bit of depth to him, and also was accompanied by solid popcorn writing, but I think after his origin trilogy, things just went way the fuck downhill. He's gone from being unrealistically awesome, to just plain unrealistic, especially in the new series. Apparently he needed to be more "gritty" so now a 200 year old man who has lost hundreds of friends before is now an upset and angry teen because a bearded one finally kicked the bucket? And he has a girlfriend/fuckbuddy, Dhalia, who was obviously written with the intent to be sympathetic but edgy, and is instead written as a self absorbed *****. NOT TO MENTION that an actually interesting protagonist of his own series, Artemis Entreri, is turned into a one dimensional douche around Drizzt. I mean, Artemis IS a douche, but at least he's a douche with some intriguing characteristics, a bit of heart, and observable character development. But once he sees those lavender eyes, taut muscles and ebon skin he gets a raging hate boner and forgets everything that makes him not suck. On top of this, he's part of a stupid, Stupid, STUPID fucking "love triangle" with Drizzt and Dhalia in the latest book I've read, because Drizzt is now apparently as good at romance and basic human interaction as a child raised by Shinji Ikari, Rei Ayanami and the physical manifestation of schizophrenia. Because for some reason, he's also all "wise and introspective" one day, and is threatening to cut people who don't really deserve it because they looked at him funny the next. His "wisdom" is also garden variety common sense at best, and pointlessly spelling out the subtext of the story at worst.
And my final grievance is, despite his almost constant downward spiral after the first two trilogies, Drizzt still seems to be more popular than an actually interesting and fairly well written character who was very much like him, except having had all but the obligatory levels of Sueness that most all high fantasy protagonists tend to possess removed, Liriel Baenre. I mean, I'm glad that Elaine Cunningham didn't try and milk the girl's life to death, but goddamn, that girl is essentially the only dark elf in the Forgotten Realms who isn't a complete tosser or as badly written as Drizzt and Jarlaxle (another, though much less severe, one of Salvatore's abominations)
Okay, so maybe I'm a bit hateful after all.
Ooh, final note, somebody mentioned Camus and Mersault, and that Mersault is indicative of how Camus thought the world was/should be. I don't think that's quite fair, as I'd certainly not call Mersault a protagonist, considering that shit just happens to him. Also, considering some of Camus' other writing, namely the "Myth of Sisyphus" and "The Plague", I don't think that Mersault is a good example of Camus' own ideas on how we should live. The man seems to be more like a thought experiment than a character per-se, namely he seems to represent the idea of someone who has internalized the inherent nihilism of the world. Camus himself seemed to advocate that one should care, live, and try to be in spite of that nihilism. That the narrative seems to actually care about the characters who get shat on, like the women and mistreated Arabs (is that term actually racist? Sorry if it is, I'm not sure) doesn't particularly paint Mersault's own indifference in a very good light either.