The Hated - Part Two

The Hated, part two: Heroes we hate

Last week I blathered on a bit about villain Protagonists. These are evil, or "bad" characters who get to be Protagonists!

But what about more traditional heroes, or supporting characters are written to be the "moral compass" or "voice of reason", or just good characters, but who end up being hated by audiences and readers?

This is bad news, and something we obviously don't usually do on purpose, unless we're going for some kind of meta or satirical thing.

I remember seeing a lot of hatred for Skylar, Walt's wife in Breaking Bad. Reading online comments can give a skewed picture of reality at times, of course, but the hatred of the Skylar character was so loud that the actress wrote an article in a magazine that tried to dissect the causes of that hatred. Wow!

As an aside, many of these complainers professed hate, and made threats to the actress herself during that time. Those people are morons. But that's another story…

Hated supporting characters seem to be those who get in the Protagonist's way, or drag them down in some way. Even if their position makes sense for the character, there is still the risk of drawing hatred if they cause extra difficulties to characters we do like.

Another trait that can lead to being hated is high and mighty, holier-than-thou attitudes. Many "good" characters have ended up despised by some for arrogance. Brian from Family Guy and Lisa Simpson have fallen into this from time to time. It's a danger to all opinionated "author mouthpiece" characters. Especially if they're always right, in story. That's getting into Mary Sue territory, there!

As far as Protagonists, one of the big pitfalls is to have a passive lead character. It's funny how many writers fall into writing these folks!

Who are the notable "hated heroes" in your opinion? What efforts have you made to avoid writing hateable characters?