The Scrappy / Literature

• The Baby-Sitters Club:
  • Dawn Schafer has gained quite a hatedom in the later years of the series, though most of this can be blamed on her Flanderization from a laid back Granola Girl to a self-righteous extreme Liberal environmentalist.
  • Mallory and Jessi are hated too, with fans seeing Mallory as whiny and unsympathetic and Jessi as a badly-written Token.
  • In the spinoff Babysitter's Little Sister series, Kristy's stepsister Karen Brewer is seen by many fans as an insufferable Bratty Half-Pint.
• Casteel Series: Logan Stonewall, for being a bad boyfriend to Heaven that showed no sympathy to her ordeals and pretty much acted like it was her fault that she was sexually abused by Cal Dennison.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: Tamlin became one of the most despised characters in the fandom following the second book's release, due to his obliviousness in regards to Feyre's trauma, his increasingly abusive and controlling behavior towards Feyre, not realizing Ianthe is evil and his interference in Feyre's new romance with Rhysand, among other things. Tamlin is intended to be a villain in the second book but many readers didn't find him to be a particularly compelling antagonist, seeing him more as existing just to prop up Rhysand as the superior love interest and throw in unnecessary drama, and so got sick of Tamlin constantly being inserted into the plot despite having little relevance anymore besides being an annoying jerk. Following the novella's publication though, some readers began to reevaluate their opinion of Tamlin and believe he has more depth and sympathetic traits than he's given credit for (to the point he's seen as more sympathetic than possibly intended), transforming him into a Base-Breaking Character.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • The unnamed pig the Heffleys get in The Long Haul is often seen as a terrible addition to the series. He usually fails to be funny because most of his gags revolve around him being a useless source of trouble (the family getting into trouble via Ass Pull is already getting old) and/or acting unrealistically human-like, which is just jarring in a series that's otherwise grounded in reality. It doesn't help that he only became the family pet due to Manny's insistence, and then became overused him to the point where even those who didn't hate him in the first place think he overstayed his welcome. It's likely the backlash against the character was the reason he was absent from The Getaway, and him running away from the Heffley family and not being found in The Meltdown.
  • In-universe in Old School: Old-Timey Tobias, the mascot for the Old-Timey Ice Cream Parlor, gets pelted with ice cream left and right every time he comes out to entertain the kids at the restaurant.
• In-universe example: In Discworld, the Personal Dis-organizer is an imp-powered PDA that comes equipped with so many malfunctions, warranty loopholes, and annoying personality-flaws, people unfortunate enough to purchase one (or, in Vimes' case, have one foisted off on them by their wives) have been known to snatch up a sledgehammer at the first hint of a "Bingeley-bingeley beep!". The introduction of the Gooseberry in Thud! serves as an in-universe example of Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
• Sam Jones, from the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures, whose Holier Than Thou and overly politically correct and 'right-on' character was so disliked that her replacement, Compassion, may have been deliberately written as the exact opposite—i.e. rude, snobby, opinionated, and selfish—either to avoid this Hatedom, or to make people say "now that I think about it, Sam wasn't that bad."
• Goosebumps, thanks to its polarizing reviews based on the quality of writing in each of them, has its fair share of characters that are despised in certain books:
  • Easily the books with the largest number of hated characters are the Monster Blood series (with the exception of Conan Barber and Kermit Majors since the hatred they get is deliberate). However, the most hated character of the series by far is, ironically enough, the main character Evan Ross. While he's a Butt-Monkey whom readers are meant to feel sorry for, he loses all likability due to his incredibly whiny attitude and incredibly dumb decisions (like telling everyone about Monster Blood without contemplating the fact that no one will believe him) that only makes him come off as unsympathetic. In fact, his stupidity in the second Monster Blood book actually caused many readers to root for Conan over Evan.
  • Sarah Maas, the protagonist of The Curse of Camp Cold Lake, has also gain a lot of backlash due to her incessant whining and selfishness. Her attempt to guilt-trip the other campers by pretending to drown in a lake pushes her even further into this trope.
    • Of course, her bunkmates don't come off any better either due to their reaction of her minor mistakes she made in the beginning. The one who is arguably the most hated of the three, however, is Jan, who deliberately attempted to tip the canoe over to cause Sarah to fall in the lake, knowing the latter is a bad swimmer—because Sarah accidentally revealed to everyone that Jan has asthma.
  • Greg Banks in Say Cheese and Die - Again practically slipped into this territory due to bringing the evil camera to his school just to get a good grade and prove the camera is real (never mind the fact that writing a book report about the evil camera without contemplating the fact that no one, especially his teacher, would believe a damn thing about the story, was perhaps the dumbest thing he could ever do, and his grade because of it was well-deserved), which even caused some readers to call him an even bigger menace than Spidey in the first book.
  • Courtney in You Can't Scare Me due to her "Little Miss Perfect" attitude in the story. Granted, the main characters aren't really likable either due to how pathetic their attempts to scare her become, but Courtney is just too much of a Parody Sue for many readers to root for her either.
  • Roxanne in My Best Friend Is Invisible is the most despised character in the book, and for very good reasons too. She is very abrasive and harsh towards Sammy most of the time, and despite being his friend, she is even willing to humiliate him in school by telling everyone about his imaginary friend without a single lick of remorse. While she does become nicer after learning Sammy was telling the truth, that does nothing to make up for the way she treated Sammy beforehand.
  • Most of the Annoying Younger Siblings due to how irritating most of them are. Some of them even end up causing the Cruel Twist Endings of certain books.
  • Dr. Maniac, introduced in Dr. Maniac Vs. Robby Schwartz, is regarded as one of the most obnoxious new villains in the franchise. This is largely because he's basically a worse version of the Masked Mutant whose attempts at being Laughably Evil are grating and cringe-worthy, his "evil plans" are incredibly moronic (forcing kids to skate for money), his feature stories are convoluted to the point of being nonsensical, and he gets thwarted in stupid ways. It doesn't help that for a while, he was one of the most featured villains next to Slappy who's quite polarizing himself.
  • Jackson and Gillian Gerard from Help! We Have Strange Powers! are loathed by many a reader for being insufferable, lazy, bullying Designated Heroes with none of even Evan or Sarah's more sympathetic qualities. Worse, they're some of the few protagonists who get superpowers, which they mainly use to bully poor Artie and Nina Lerner, who they hate just for being awkward and nerdy. They only start being nice when it turns out the Lerners have powers themselves. It makes them being pursued for experiments by the villain come off as borderline Laser-Guided Karma.
• Most who read Great Expectations did not like Estella, finding her cold and haughty persona intolerable. There is an in-universe reason for it which makes her a little more sympathetic, but they also felt that Dickens got really carried away with the descriptions of her beauty, and Pip pretty much falls for her based on her beauty alone even though she treats him with indifference at best. There is some Values Dissonance at work—it was the 19th century, and young men weren't able to socialize with women the way they do today, but this comes across as shallow by modern standards. She does go through some Character Development that humbles her and makes her more friendly, but this happens at the very end. And off-screen.
• Harry Potter: Dobby, while arguably Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, is frequently deemed to be annoying at best during most of Chamber of Secrets, making all of Harry's problems that much worse—you can understand why the normally patient and considerate Harry is left briefly homicidal at one point. However, his moment at the end, when he flattens Lucius Malfoy shortly after being freed by accident, helps considerably.
• Adam from If I Stay. He's a Jerkass to Mia while acting like an Emo Teen, vanishes for days while on tour, and breaks up with her twice because there's a possibility she may go to New York.
• The eponymous character of Karlsson on the Roof in Sweden, apparently. In Russia, he has a cult following.
• Little Brother: The Severe Haircut Woman, or Carrie Johnstone, the Big Bad of the book. The reader is supposed to hate her because she's the villain. However, due to the Anviliciousness of the story, readers ended up hating her because she's a one-dimensional Strawman Political. Rather than caring about the safety of the country, she joined the Department of Homeland Security and enforced its strict security methods just For the Evulz, and then waterboards the protagonist, Marcus, just to drive home how evil she is.
• Maximum Ride: Dylan. The readers invested in shipping hate him because he was built up as the perfect love interest for Max and thus is a threat to the Fan-Preferred Couple Max/Fang, and everyone else hates him because he's as flat as a piece of cardboard despite being shilled as perfect and his presence only worsened the series' already-infamous Romantic Plot Tumor.
• Discussed in The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin, where the protagonist and one of his sidekicks decide to pass the time by naming fictional characters they detest, whom the author intended as sympathetic. They come up with Beatrice and Benedick, Lady Chatterley and "that gamekeeper fellow", Britomart, "almost everyone in Dostoevsky", "those vulgar little man-hunting minxes in Pride and Prejudice", and the Leech-Gatherer. At this point, they are interrupted by an outraged Jane Austen fanboy... who just happens to give them the next clue they need.
• Milo Banda is likely the only character in Septimus Heap who is disliked by some fans due to him being constantly away on travels while his daughter Jenna and the Heap family are in trouble and being generally embarrassing for Jenna.
• The Silmarillion: Many fans of Fëanor and his sons loathe Indis (much like Fëanor himself), seeing her as the cause of Fëanor's anger and believing that Finwë had no right to marry her after his first wife's death (since Elves generally do not remarry). This dislike is so misguided that it ignores any personal attributes of her and instead is caused merely by her role as a second wife.
• A Song of Ice and Fire has a number of characters you could call "controversial". That said, some of them are more hated than others:
  • The most disliked character in the books is Darkstar. Unlike the other controversial characters, it doesn't seem like anybody actually likes the guy. That might have something to do with his appearance being a rare example of Martin breaking the "Show, Don't Tell" rule to make a replacement for Oberyn Martell—he is supposed to be some kind of amazing, witty badass. Unfortunately, this attempt at an Ensemble Dark Horse went horribly wrong, as his greatest "onscreen" achievement, a botched attempt to assassinate another fan-favourite—Myrcella Baratheon, an 11-year-old girl—only managed to inspire his entire hatedom, based on this appearance in that one chapter.
  • Catelyn Stark is a very polarizing character, but she remains one of the most unpopular of the main cast for her actions against fan favorites Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister.
  • Her sister Lysa Arryn isn't particularly popular, either, due to her Genre Blindness, wanting to see Tyrion Lannister executed, indirectly causing the entire plot to kick off, and trying to murder her niece Sansa. Not to mention she still breastfeeds her six-year-old son...
  • Dany's Meereenese supporting cast in A Dance With Dragons is very unpopular for a variety of reasons—difficult names, perceived blandness, and the idea that the conflict in Meereen is ultimately irrelevant. Daario Naharis draws particular ire for his negative effect on Dany's character.
  • Daario Naharis is hated by many readers for a number of other reasons too, the main being his constant claims of being an amazing swordsman, his arrogance, his disrespectful attitude towards in-story legends like Barristan Selmy, and his cartoonishly flamboyant descriptions. Despite this, he is adored by Daenerys and therefore takes up a lot of her internal monologue during the disliked Meereen storyline.
• Sword Art Online:
  • Nobuyuki Sugou/Oberon the Fairy King, who is in fact the most hated character both in-universe and out, is widely attributed to be the number one reason for the series' decline from decent/average to outright terrible for its hatedom, and even manages to be the only negative point about the series where both fans and haters agree unconditionally. While it's obvious that hating him was the Intended Audience Reaction, his over-the-top cartoon evilness, stupidity, multiple attempts to manhandle Asuna and general lack of any sort of character other than being monstrously evil, resulted in most viewers wanting to see him get off the screen and never come back, instead of wanting to see him get what was coming to him.
  • Kyouji Shinkawa is an interesting example. While originally liked by people who genuinely enjoyed his relationship with Shino, sometimes to the point of shipping them, he lost most of his support due to his role as a member of Death Gun. Unlike his brother XaXa who embodies Creepy Awesome and Evil Is Cool, Kyouji's contribution was a major point of detraction receiving very heavy negativity. Opinions range from those being saddened by him being revealed to be a villain and wished for him to make a Heel–Face Turn, and sympathizing to his Dark and Troubled Past somewhat. While others outright despise him for one of two reasons. One is due to viewing his motives as petty^note  which could be a result of certain important tidbits being Adapted Out and the fact that he's a Stalker with a Crush who believed Sinon was rightfully his and tries to kill her so they could be Together in Death, whereby the anime adaptation makes this worse due to also throwing in Attempted Rape. The other, which applies mainly to anime-only viewers, felt that he's ineffective as a twist villain due to how obvious the fact that he's Death Gun was to some fans due to lacking the subtlety of the Light Novel^note  namely a part in the opening where an image of him holding his hand out to Shino burns away to reveal Death Gun.
  • Chudelkin, while intended to be hated, ends up being despised for reasons likely unintended. While hyped as a powerful Sacred Arts user, he ended up being an Anti-Climax Boss that gets a major Ass Pull in the form of somehow surviving and then activating his fire powers to burn, kill and borderline rape Quinella to be Together in Death. While the intention was probably to give Quinella a satisfying karma, ironically this has the opposite effect as due to her popularity this made fans despise Chudelkin even further, since many of her fans would have wanted her to escape and encounter Kirito in the real world.
• The Twilight Saga:
  • Bella Swan. Many fans, whether they really enjoy the book's content or just see it as So Bad, It's Good, really do not like Bella. This is because she lacks personality, treats her parents and classmates like shit, and most of her positive characteristics are informed (for example, claiming to be well-read, while completely missing the point of Romeo and Juliet and taking it as an ideal romance). And even if she's supposed to be a socially awkward and insecure girl who has trouble fitting in, she immediately becomes a popular Dude Magnet at her new school for no apparent reason.
  • Renesmee because she is responsible for the infamous birth scene, and everyone loves her instantly. She is also hated because she's more of a thinly-veiled motherhood fantasy than an actual character.
• The Vampire Chronicles:
  • Within the fandom, few characters get as much malice as Merrick, a never-before-seen crossover from a different Anne Rice series who somehow became a titular character. Many fans consider her to be the author's Creator's Pet (evidenced by her impossibly beautiful and talented self showing up out of nowhere and immediately becoming beloved by all other characters, including the previously gay narrator, David) and argue that the entire novel reads like bad fan fiction (people behaving out-of-character, ridiculously pointless plot even for Anne Rice...you get the idea). Fans who had managed to survive past Queen of the Damned agreed that this novel was the moment the series was ruined and put all the blame squarely on Merrick's shoulders. Cue dozens of Fan Fics wherein the character is either ignored or killed outright, sometimes to the point of having other characters kill her for being so annoying.
  • Daniel, the "interviewer" of Interview with a Vampire, has his own hatedom as well. His habit of puppy-dogging behind Armand earned him the nickname "Daniel the Spaniel" from many, many writers.
• Warrior Cats:
  • Onestar is hated due to becoming a jerk when he became Clan Leader, which many people see as ruining a good character or unrealistic Character Derailment. While other fans contended that his change in character made sense in the circumstances and he makes a good, realistic antagonist to be hated for the right reason, even these people hated the attempt to give him a Sympathetic P.O.V. in Onestar's Confession, letting him killing the son he abandoned be considered a victory and proof of heroism for him because he was "born evil" and there was nothing Onestar could have done about it.
  • Appledusk is widely despised, particularly by Mapleshade fans, for being a bad boyfriend to her. When their kits drowned because she made them cross a flooded river, he called their relationship a "mistake" in front of his Clan to get back in their good graces, cast her out of the Clans to live as a rogue, and took a new mate, after which she completely snapped. Many fans hold him partly or even entirely responsible for Mapleshade's descent into evil, some going as far as to consider him a Karma Houdini because he was allowed into StarClan while Mapleshade was not.
  • Some fans give Reedshine, Appledusk's second mate, similar treatment for being the "other she-cat" that he was cheating on Mapleshade with, as well as the fact that she decided to cruelly rub salt in Mapleshade's wound by telling her that "she'd caused enough trouble tonight" right after she'd just lost her kits, been cast out of the Clans, and rejected by Appledusk.
  • Sagewhisker is pretty consistently disliked for the way she pressured Yellowfang into becoming a medicine cat despite her dreams of being a warrior, only told her how to control her powers after she caved, shamed her for having kits, and berated her into never spending any time with her son, thus guaranteeing his good qualities never flourished.
  • Mistystar, at least in Veil of Shadows. Many fans, who once liked her, turned against her after her decision to exile Mothwing for her parentage despite Mistystar being half-Clan herself, and then exiling Icewing and Harelight, who didn't deserve it.. It doesn't help that she is very old compared to the other cats, and many people are sick of her being leader and the only cat who gets focus in Riverclan. It's telling that many fans cheered when she kicked the bucket in the follow-up series.
  • Moth Flight's decision to forbid all medicine cats from taking mates or having kits on the grounds that she couldn't handle it instead of coming up with the simple solution of having more than one medicine cat, thus ruining the lives of generations of medicine cats, made her pretty resoundingly disliked. She got hated even more when she tries to send Leafpool to the Dark Forest for breaking the rule that she made up in Squirrelflight's Hope.
• The Wheel of Time series has Faile as the most hated character by far. It didn't help that her introduction as a Slap-Slap-Kiss Rescue Romance Love Interest hardly made sense at all, or that her entire culture believes men and women in love should yell at each other in a never-ending struggle for dominance. Not that her personality is any more obnoxious than any other female character from The Wheel of Time, but that's another story...
  • Nobody seems to like Nynaeve either. She is arguably the most obnoxious female character (or character full stop) in the series, which is one hell of an achievement considering what the others are like.
    • Some readers like Nynaeve, if only because of her channelling/healing awesomeness and the fact that she was one of the two women the Dragon takes with him to face the Dark One... alongside freaking Moiraine Damodred.
  • By contrast, Egwene has begun to fall into this role as she does everything from single-handedly re-uniting the Aes Sedai to rediscovering how to manufacture cuendillar. She also manages to drive away, isolate, endanger, horrifically abuse, disrespect, insult, and otherwise screw over all of her friends. By the end of the Gathering Storm, Egwene, by virtue of rallying the defense against the Seanchan attack against the Tower and prior to that, undermining Elaida's misrule has gained a lot of admiration and support in the fandom.
  • Elayne gets a lot of hate, because she spends a ton of screentime complaining, and/or daydreaming about Rand. It doesn't help that her politics-heavy storyline takes centre-stage just as the plot slows down and the writing gets much worse (Books 9-11).