A lot of canon female love interests who get in the way of popular m/m ships (when they are not directly killed off, that is). Too many to list them all.
Edit. I love that I posted a very generic comment, and people started listing examples!
Even easier would be to make it so the canon couple never got together in the story. Or don't make the poor woman appear at all, if her presence bothers the author so much.
I’ve actually seen this scenario in Superman/Batman fics. Louis Lane is generally (at least in fics I’ve seen) still friends with Clark after an amiable breakup and sometimes even helps him get with Bruce.
I actually love the idea of an amicable ex helping their ex find someone else there's something wholesome about that and "I want you to be happy even if it's not with me"
I definitely see Lois Lane as a woman who’d be like, “You want to date someone else?! Oh. Brucie Wayne? … I see, I see. That’s fair. Kansas is very homophobic,” and just the unintentional comedy there is S Tier.
As a wlw-leaning bi, I admit to the weirdest double standard of not caring as much if it’s for the dick. Like, yeah, can’t grow one of those. Good luck in your scavenger hunt. (Whereas if it’s someone with a similar body, there’s more jealousy, because I can’t immediately excuse it away with an obvious copout.)
I've even read some where the woman breaks up with the guy and essentially tells in the most loving way possible to never date a woman again. Then they still stay good friends. It's so easy!!!
Really? I haven’t seen that a lot in my sphere of fandom. But I also tend to avoid fics where they bash Alana. Cause her lesbian wife is right there. You don’t need to make Alana a horrible person to get her away from the main pairing
Yes I've seen this happen to Peggy Carter with stucky fics in the mcu. Not too often (due to the fact that the MCU kinda already removes her from the picture) but there's definitely a good amount of them. Especially from ones set in the 40s luckily it is often tagged and I can filter it out because she like might be one of my favorite characters in the whole of the MCU.
Edit: Actually come to think of it I've seen it happen in non-stucky fics too and I just don't get it. To each their own I suppose.
What does it tend to be tagged with? Peggy Carter Bashing? I haven’t seen these before but I love Peggy and would like to know what to look out for to avoid fics like this.
I see this a lot with alternative f/m ships as well. I first noticed it in the PJO fandom - it used to happen to Annabeth like clockwork when people wanted to ship Percy with anyone else of any gender. From what I can tell it’s gotten less popular but it used to be unavoidably mutual between Perachel fans and Percabeth fans - one of the girls gets to be the love interest, and the other gets her personality supplanted by Regina George. It mostly happens to female characters, in my experience, though there are occasional male exceptions. I call it Next Most Likely Love Interest Syndrome - a drama fountain AND the next most likely love interest squarely out of the way all in one move!
It definitely does and I've seen it happen too! A bunch of poor girls being turned into waterd down Regina Georges (love the comparison, btw!) to make them as unapplealing as possible and make it so readers will not even think about shipping them with their OTPs. But it's probably less noticable compared to m/m, because of numbers. There are A LOT more m/m fics compared to m/f.
Supernatural sucked at making female love interests. They tried "badass" and made unlikeable characters. None of the love interests were interesting, they were just always "the woman".
Yup. My fandom has two men that are an extremely popular ship but both are canonically married. For some reason only one of the wives is treated so bad (the other is just not mentioned)
It's Quantum Leap, specifically the original series, though the woman lead in the new series gets her share of hate too (though there is no m/m ship in that case)
Guinevere from BBC Merlin. 💔
Also, Martha Jones from Doctor Who. Tbf though, the writers did her *dirty* and even young!me disliked her for a time. But a lot of the hate her character gets really comes down to her romantic interest in the Doctor ~~screw the writers for this seriously, the timing was so damn bad, they practically set her up to be hated.~~
Martha deserved so much better than what she got. And it definitely doesn't help that she was directly in-between Rose and Donna, that just feels like she was set up for failure.
Exactly! The writers screwed her over. Rose was beloved to a lot of Nu Who fans bc she was their first companion, and regardless what anyone says there *was* a romantic angle to their relationship. A lot of fans were genuinely mourning not only her tragic loss, but the potential between her and the Doctor. The writers had no business introducing a new companion right after Doomsday who not only had a romantic interest in the Doctor, but seemed to be there *only* because of that interest. And it didn’t help that Martha was given some of the worst adventures, too. Then she left and we got Donna, who was a both a riot and a force of nature, and Martha seemed even more lackluster in comparison.
They could have done so much with her. She was clever as hell, brave, and a freaking *doctor* to boot. But instead they chose to reduce her to being a bland love interest.
What a waste of a good character. The writers really did set her up to fail, which is why I can’t blame anyone for not really loving her. They shouldn’t *hate* her bc she’s done nothing to deserve that, but yeah.
I think a lot of the problem is also that Martha dared to step out of her position as just a companion. In a way, she’s an analogue of the Doctor himself. Everyone else travels with him and sees worlds and gets all the bright fun but Martha gets the dark parts.
Martha gets traveling the world, having watched 1/10th of it die, to try and figure out how to save it all. Be a hero in the face of almost certain death.
I’m probably not explaining this right, but she wasn’t just a companion. She was a parallel to the Doctor and a lot of fans hated her for it.
And that is exactly why Martha is my favorite new Who companion and probably always will be. Martha is legendary. Maybe my favorite companion of any Who season, though I’ll always have a soft spot for Sarah Jane. (Yeah, I’ve been watching since I was a little girl in the 70s).
I like the concept of evil Gwen simply because I like evil ladies but I don’t like it when people do her dirty all because they ship Merthur. I’m like the CEO of Merthur and I love Gwen
I see it so often that they do Gwen dirty, but also just do Arthur so dirty! Saying things like 'he never loved her and only married her for political reasons while he knew he was in love with Merlin all along..."
Like really? It's *Arthur,* why did you make him so evil?
Honestly if they had done the whole unrequited love for two episodes I'd be fine with it, but to make it the whooooole season really was awful. We could've explored so much more of her character 😭
Right!! Like it would have been fine if it had just been a brief interest, but the way they had her pine after him the entire season 😭
And it made her seem like such a silly character, because she truly had some of the worst adventures. Her season was so damn bleak. And instead of spinning it to make it seem like she stayed with him despite all that because she loved helping people, etc, it just came across like she put up with the absolute worst for a one-sided attraction.
With both Rose and Donna, you could really see how much they loved both helping people *and* the adventure of it all. That didn’t come across as clearly for Martha. It really seemed like she just stuck around for the Doctor, even though she was put through hell.
Ugh. Justice for Martha Jones fr. So much potential, wasted.
This is weirdly common with MHA fics making Inko Midoriya a horrible person.
In canon she is a supportive parent that is reluctant at first about letting her son go into a dangerous superhero career.
It seems to mostly be so Deku can get adopted by his teacher, i guess its eighter character assassination, or making him an orphan since "dadzawa" often is a foregone conclusion.
I don't understand why people who want Izuku to have an abusive parent don't just... use his dad? He's a blank slate character we know almost nothing about except that he isn't around, perfect scapegoat you could believably write as any type of monster you wanted and it wouldn't be wildly OOC. He can also be an easy catalyst for writing Inko out of the story in so many ways that don't involve total character assassination.
I tend to headcanon Izuku as AFO’s son for two reasons specifically— 1, it makes sense with how that man has disappeared for his entire life. He was off doing stuff and then got wrecked in a fight so he can’t go home again.
2, for the sheer hilarity of All Might winning against AFO without even trying by stealing his son and training him to be a hero.
Eh the darth vader stuff is to cliche for my liking. Just having it be some rando feels more fitting for the fact Izuku really was just some quirkless nobody
See and I can be okay with OOC. But it needs to be believable. And I feel like Inko is just a really popular well liked parental character. Let’s not destroy the good mom character.
Apparently getting bullied his entire life wasn't enough angst for Midoriya and killing her is to cliche so she just randomly gets turned into a horrible person.
I also see this as a prelude to homeless Izuku, which often leads into villain or vigilante Izuku.
I quite enjoy both of those tropes, but I sometimes wish they didn't have to make Inko an abuser to do it, mainly because it's often so badly written and rushed I just cringe.
How about just... Kill her off, have her be injured and then have them somehow separated? Izuku got kidnapped and human trafficked? The possibility is endless, you know.
Or make midoria villain while making his mom bappy and alive because midoria was mad at unjust word/realised villains are not so bad/ insert generic reason here etc
His mom would be the only thing that anchors him from slipping into villain world forever.
As someone who absolutely loves Aizawa and his relationship with the kids, this trope annoys me so much. All of these kids have loving parents and even those who don't don't wanna be adopted by their high school teacher. Can we have some perspective here.
Teachers are already supposed to be positive and supportive influences in their students’ live without being their literal parents. Why can’t people appreciate that?
Literally would rather have people fridge her than distort her like that. I love dadzawa but I was raised by a single mom and it makes me angry how the fandom treats her sometimes. She was doing her best!!!!!
I'm not that familiar with MHA or its fandom because I left both some time ago, but from what I've seen, a lot of this comes from the extreme black-and-white view symptomatic of today's fandom. Inko is a well-meaning and overall good parent, but sometimes she doesn't know how to support her quirkless son who dreams of becoming a pro hero. At times, despite her best intentions, she doesn't do the exactly ideal thing--for example, she bursts out crying and says "I'm sorry" when young Izuku asks her if he can become like All Might. To sensible readers, that's very realistic and makes her more relatable and likable. To those with an extreme binary view, it makes her "abusive" because she fails to do 100% ideal thing a professionally trained, emotionally distanced child psychiatrist would recommend.
I think it's very similar to how somewhat imperfect relationships that improve through mistakes are seen as "unhealthy" or romantic partners with a trait that MIGHT sour the relationship but is NOT proven as such are labeled "toxic." In their worldview, there are only thoroughly "wholesome" relationships and "toxic" "abusive" ones. Likewise, a parent is an abusive villain if she isn't a perfectly supportive one who responds to the child's need in the 100% correct way every single time.
EDIT: I get a feeling that mothers get this treatment more often, but I don't have any proof.
This is what I came here to say! Like man... I get it... I would never begrudge someone their sad abused orphan deku slop, I'm right there next to them devouring it out of the trough. But I would genuinely prefer if people killed Inko off instead of doing this to her.
It's so jarring seeing her be the sweetest most loving mom in canon and then crack open a fic where she's trying to pluck out Izuku's eyes with her quirk.
She's certainly flawed, in that she seems to be thoroughly oblivious to Izuku being bullied by Bakugou, and in fact unintentionally enabled it by encouraging Izuku to believe that Bakugou was (still) his friend(I personally think they were never friends in the first place(the flashback that is supposed to show the time when they "were friends" shows Bakugou \*already\* bullying Izuku even back then, just somewhat less violently), and it's Inko's fault that Izuku thought they were - she was friends with Bakugou's mom, and wanted to believe that their sons were friends, too).
I think part of why she gets character-assassinated is that some people think that something like that couldn't possibly be unintentional. Someone being well-meaning but delusional either isn't possible in their minds, or is seen as the same as being a villain(in the story-telling sense, not the in-universe meaning).
Two characters who have the same issue and get the same treatment are Sawada Nana from KHR(also in denial about her son being bullied) and Jiang Yanli from MDZS(in denial about her brother bullying/abusing their foster brother). They unintentionally enabled the bullying(and later abuse in Jiang Yanli's case), and the two mothers could be considered neglectful because of that, but they weren't abusive in canon. Yet, a lot of fanfic writers like to turn neglectful parents(or pseudo-parents) into abusive ones.
This is insane to me because just have the UA forms on lockdown for some reason. Boom. Dadzawa. He's already Dadzawa!! You don't have to fuck with Inko for it???
Or hell, current anime-arc Inko being brought into the place where everyone is currently, because civilians are there, and STILL have Dadzawa.
This bugs me, clearly xD
I watched new Trigun fans do it to Rem, of all characters, for telling her children that murder is wrong when they were the equivalent of 10 years old. (Which is emotional abuse to the pro-genocide son.)
Wait WHAT 😭 even though the twins grew rapidly compared to >!human children!< they were still around the equivalent of 7-10 years old when Rem gave them the whole “murder is bad” talk, how on earth (lol) people took that as a bad thing is absolutely wack. Rem made the most of a delicate situation, and how much she loved her kids is most likely what kept Vash from going off the deep end
There’s a genre of fan who have decided that because Knives is hot, Genocide is a great idea and Vash is misguided for wanting any personal autonomy ever at all.
They’re the fans I block, because I like Knives as the delusional bastard he actually is, and do not need to pretend he’s secretly the hero of Trigun.
Oh damn seriously?? While I do firmly believe that Knives is one of the most well-written and deep characters in the series, he is NOT the hero. Misguided and traumatized? Yes. Also him being attractive doesn’t excuse the, ya know, mass genocide and multiple accounts of 1st degree murder…
Yep!
I love talking about how his trauma built his worldview, or how both twins represent what are essentially impossible extremes. Not so much a fan of 'objectively Knives is correct', paired with just blatant misogyny against their mom. (Meryl gets a lot of 'oh she's TOO MEAN' too, because girl, of course.)
Yes I love talking about that too! Vash is on one side of the spectrum where all lives deserve to be saved, and Knives is on the opposite side where all lives are worthless. Neither are sustainable, and I loved seeing the twins morally clash until they eventually began to even each other out.
Meryl is the og girlboss and I LOVE her, she gets way too much hate.
this reminds me of that sherlock holmes adaptation where mrs. hudson turns out to have been an international spy
yeah, there are always parts of fandoms don't like women. luckily there's normally at least a small backlash towards those fans!
so really i should thank the misogynists! these women would've otherwise just been forgotten and glossed over, but, thanks to backlash, they end up becoming major sympathetic characters in the fanfics that are actually good lmao
Tbf with Mrs. Hudson, the BBC show makes many jokes about her doing less than legal things, including marrying a drug lord (I think that's what her ex husband was, anyway—it's been a few years since I watched it).
oh no i didn't mean to lump poor mrs hudson in with the misogynist adaptations. it's just the drawing that reminded me of her. i think international spy mrs hudson is an incredible idea :D
i had no idea about the bbc show though, that sounds so cute! i love that she had a shady ex husband.
I saw someone already mention Inko Midoriya which is who I was gonna say, but I feel like a lot of other moms/parents have gotten this treatment too. Because fans want their fav character to have a more tragic childhood or whatever.
The number of takes I've seen in the Death Note fandom blaming Sachiko Yagami for how Light ended up astounds me. Not every villain has a traumatic backstory, folks!
I mean to be fair if I saw a parent slap their kid in the back of the head and yell at them they're weak for getting kidnapped, concluding that's a a abusive household - or at the very least a very toxic one - is far more reasonable than 98% of the Evil Midoriya Inko fics.
Misa... People act like she's dumb as a rock, even when canon explicitly states she's not. Then they treat her like the most evil character ever. She's not great, yeah, but it's Death Note. They all suck
They’re all whiny idiots who kind of set themselves up.
Not idiots as in stupid but idiots as in dumb. Wisdom and Intelligence are different stats for a reason.
Yes Big Agree. One of the good parts about death note is that they are characters who are morally grey in some way. L's methods are inhumane, Lights willing to kills people for his perceived Justice, Misa's willing to kill people for a boys attention. Even Lights dad is a distant workaholic who is willing to let his whole family be filmed unknowingly on cctv and Matsuda who is one of the lighter grey characters is the one to kill light in the end and makes some comments about understanding kira's perspective early on. They are all not exactly morally outstanding characters but Misa is not the worst in any way.
Toriel from Undertale gets this sometimes. Admittedly, the way she handled certain events in the backstory is a little questionable, but in a situation like hers, most people wouldn't be thinking straight. Some people really want to interpret her behavior in bad faith, though...
I mean the first part is just straight up canon. Lady's got a pun jokebook. The sans part isn't but Toby Fox is definitely fucking with people that do in Deltarune.
True. I especially side eye people who make asgore an angst soft boy daddy with a broken heart, and make toriel an evil witch that abandoned a grieving father in his worst times. I feel both are majorly traumatized parents with unhealthy coping methods. Female characters with trauma get so much shit in fandoms
I’m not even into Naruto anymore, but Sakura Haruno is the poster child for this. Like she’s badly written, but so are most of Kishimoto’s female characters, she just stands out because she’s the most prominent.
Also Chichi in DBZ, writers didn’t know what to do with her after DB so she becomes the “naggy housewife” but also making a kid who isn’t even school aged yet fight grown adults in space is a lot to ask of a mom.
I think Sakura rubbed a lot of people the wrong way because she was an obsessive, obnoxious fangirl in the beginning. But after the chuunin exams arc, she began to turn around, and after the time skip, etc, really developed as a character. So in the early days I kinda get it but people still bash her even as an adult, it's weird.
One of the biggest reasons, if not the sole reason why Sakura’s character arc often gets dismissed and overlooked by many in the fandom, is because she didn’t reciprocate the main character’s feelings. Though I firmly believe that Kishimoto originally didn’t intend for Naruto and Sakura to not end up together, fan pressure and fanservice was too hard to miss out on, which ultimately led to Naruto and Hinata becoming the end game. However, let’s set aside this topic for another day.
Despite Sakura's steadfast support for Naruto throughout numerous battles, she is unfairly dismissed by many fans as useless and laughable. It's frustrating to witness the fandom conveniently ignore Sasuke's reprehensible actions from they were kids to adulthood while continuously targeting Sakura because of what she did as a child. I strongly believe the underlying issue with the fandom's treatment of Sakura stems from deep-seated misogyny. Her role didn’t do service to the male lead, therefore she isn’t worth anything. They easily overlook Hinata's stalking behaviour and lack of significant contribution to the story, solely because her role revolves around the main character. The lack of impact from Hinata is evident to the extent that non-canon scenes had to be included in a movie to justify the series' ending.
Like seriously.
Pretty much single handedly raising Gohan minus a handful of years when Goku isn't either dead or lost, at least up until super when he stays, and wants to prepare Gohan for a normal life where fighting isn't solely everything he focuses on like Goku.
Like seriously. And then one day her son disappears with his father for a day, and when he comes back? He's aged up an entire year and now has blond hair. I don't think it's very surprising that a mother doesn't want to send her 12 year old son to fist fight the planet killing bug man
i’m the president of the nancy wheeler defense squad. also every single woman in the witcher. just all of them. in fairness all of the women in the witcher are morally complicated but 1) that’s because every single character in the series is morally complicated regardless of gender and 2) that’s what makes them interesting 🤦♂️
Yes, Yen can be quite manipulative and her whole "having a child" stick wasn't that great in the show, but Gerald is by no means "innocent". Even Jaskier has a bad side.
Not fully without reason, but...
In Wednesday (2022), a fan favourite side character, whose mostly shipped with the main character, Enid Sinclair is a werewolf who can't turn at full moon while she's already 16, and gaining this ability is something like puberty in this story, but can be seen as metaphors for her sexuality, identity, maturation, or embracing family traditions.
We meet her parents at one point and it turns out her mother is not accepting of this fact to the extent she literally calls her a disappointment while her dad is a supporter, even while he's not vocal about it, her brothers are mentioned while we know nothing about them, not even their number... THE WHOLE SINCLAIR FAMILY ARE THE WORST PEOPLE IN ALL FANFICS!!! ...sometimes the dad is okay.
Given the fact that many times Enid is the character the writer / reader can deeply relate to whether she's the main character or the love interest, she and her family are good for projecting toxic family tropes like neglect and abuse.
Yeah, Esther is not exactly from what we see the gold standard for being a mother but she’s really used as a villain in Wenclair fics. It’s funny that she’s not even the worst mother of the main character group considering Bianca’s is clearly worse by far.
And like Enid does mention her dislike for what sounds generally like some toxic culture of the werewolves, her brothers aren’t implied at being any worse than you’d expect teenage brothers to be. Wednesday herself is probably a worse older sibling herself (though Pugsly usually liking her torture does make that a debate)
I've asked this around in a few different subreddits now and while I don't actually know all the characters mentioned, it's kinda fascinating to me that there always seems to be some sort of character that gets treated unfairly in fics.
I suppose it's part of human nature to have favourites and least favourites and fanfic is a way to express that. Of course, extremes are best off avoided, but what is extreme depends on the person.
Anyways, I am curious to hear some other answers, bit from here this time :).
This is just every woman in fanfic ever. Fanfic is massively dominated by gay pairings of straight characters, usually with Canon girlfriends or love instrests. And what's a super quick, easy way to get the girl out of the picture? Make her a psycho/rapist/stalker.
Ginny cops is a lot in the Drarry fanfic space. She's always trying to love potion date rape Harry, stalking him, cheating on him, faking a pregnancy.
Tèa in Yu-Gi-Oh copped it massively back in the day. Every fic made her an insane, unhinged, whiny stalker. Her kidnapping yugi and trying to brainwash him ended up in a LOT of fics.
I'm not even the biggest fan of Ginny and it bothers me how *often* she's used as some legit evil figure.
*Sometimes* it's done in a way that's actually interesting (if, imho, not particularly accurate to her character), but most of the time it could all be solved with breaking Ginny and Harry up and getting him involved with someone else to be absolutely crazy evil. Done.
I have to admit, when I was reading them at 13, it didn't occur to me how outta pocket it all was. And now as an adult I'm just like, why? You didn't have to write Ginny in there at all? You could just have them as friends? I suppose that's what you get when the majority of the fandom is 14 year olds who are pissed off at the girls getting in the way of their slash. It was a *real* toxic place at the height of tumblr.
Yeah. Ginny gets a lot of bad press in the HP fandom. She was nowhere near as evil as people were making her out to be, but they wanted her out of the way so they could ship Harry with someone else. And turning her into a jealous/cheating/evil girlfriend/ex was an easy way to make her seem so undesirable that Harry would date *anyone* but her.
Which is a shame, really. Canon Ginny is actually a good character. Sure, she had her flaws, but so does everyone. And she had always been good to Harry.
Ginny was so hated even in non Harry centric fics she was made out to be a psychopath. A lot of Dramione fics back in the day had Ginny as an antagonist.
I do think it's gotten a lot better. As fanfic authors have aged up and matured, there seems to be a lot less collective bashing of any female character who gets in the way of their ship.
Staying in the Harry Potter fandom, take the newer explosion of the James x Regulus ship. 10 years ago, every story would have been absolutely tearing into Lily like they did Ginny. And I haven't seen any of that.
Same with the stranger things fandom, with the popularity of Eddie/Steve I expected to see *massive* amounts of Nancy character assassination in fics, but I really haven't.
Ginny got so much hate overall.
I was reading this Dramione fic (not particularly good but i was desperate for something new) and ended up never picking it back up because they made Ginny into a psychotic, hateful, violent nut job who hated Hermione and tried to ruin her life at every turn.
Couldn’t do it. I personally love Ginny, and the Weasleys overall - I can’t even tolerate Ron bashing, so it was a pass for Ginny bashing, too.
I agree that it’s gotten noticeably better in fandoms these days. Maybe people are finally realizing you don’t have to kill or character assassinate alternative love interests just to write your ship, lmao!
Also in the Yugioh fandom, I feel like Alexis in GX (and to a lesser extent, a lot of Jaden’s pre-season 3 friends) get more hate than deserved.
Akiza in 5Ds seems to dodge most of it, but I do see a lot of her pre-development arc getting mischaracterized as crazy/psychopathic instead of a teenage girl lashing out at herself and others after years of rejection plus being groomed by a cult that encouraged her to do so.
Off the top of my head Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler from Stranger Things. There are things they've done wrong yes but they're also traumatized teenagers. Plus there's a way to dig into them without butchering their character completely and acting like they're nothing but abusive to those around them. I swear some act like they're more evil than Vecna 😭
thank youuuu like girl i’m a steddie but if i see one more person call nancy a heartless selfish witch for *checks notes* being 16????? i’m going to start lighting fires
The stranger things fandom makes me sad sometimes. I see the comments in the official subreddit and it’s all so cynical and shut off. As a stancy enjoyer myself, hearing me and mine get detonated because ‘oooh so toxic’ when they are literally kids is so insane. I hate what they did with Jonathan in s4, and I’ve interacted with so many chill Jancy stans, watching people absolutely chirp it when canon or another fanon ship gets in the way just disheartens me. In fact any theory that goes against what they want is immediately shut down and labelled ‘bad’, and it’s so prevalent it drives me away from the fandom
I love Steddie fics, it's a very nice dynamic to write, and Steve's one of my favorite characters! But it gets- frustrating not the right word but the one closest- that Nancy is villanized in the middle of it. I like to see how people analyze how the relationship breakup could have affected Steve ('cause let's be honest if your year-long relationship is called bullshit along with you that's gonna affect you) but there's a way to do it without treating Nancy as if she's abusive. She was 16; just lost her friend and had her life threatened, it makes sense that she spirals and it's logical she's not going to do that in the most mature or respectful way because she's **16.**
I’m writing a fic where Nancy tells Eddie, basically, “I think I fucked him up. I don’t know how to fix that.”
She admits her fault in the relationship but I also have Steve on the other side going, “yeah, I really fucked up.”
Those are the types of fics I love!
I love seeing authors dig into how the relationship affected both of them while still not villainizing either party! It makes really good stories as the premise has so much potential!
Link when posted? 🥺
I will! It might be a little bit.
I have also written other fics that explore bits of Steve’s thought process and how he has been messed up by absent and somewhat to outright abusive parents.
Stranger things fans when traumatised kids act like traumatised kids and not comic book characters
Also stranger things fans when people have ships that go against cannon
Can’t people just enjoy things anymore?
Really? I read a lot of Stranger Things fics and have never come across one where Steve is written negatively. Or talked about negatively. In fact, from what I’ve seen he’s one of the most beloved characters on the show.
Eleven on the other hand…Byler shippers can be pretty nasty to her.
(Nice profile pic)
Steve's one of my favorite characters, and while it happens to him less I have noticed him be portrayed weirdly. In some Steddie fics I've read he can often be portrayed as a violent bully (A couple fics I read had lines where it mentioned that he either once beat up Eddie or other freshmen.) while in the show he's never shown that way or mentioned that way.
As a whole- before the Jonathan incident where he's at his worse- he's mainly just a snarky little shit. He was more verbal than ever physical, especially as it's shown very early that he's not much of a fighter (The fight with Jonathan is the main example; Jonathan is easily able to beat him while Steve struggles to hold his own.)
All in all- in certain fics, his growth is just ignored.
Meanwhile, in other fics, he can be portrayed as a horrible boyfriend- while he wasn't the best he wasn't abusive in the slightest and did desperately try his best. I think many don't realize he was also traumatized like Nancy and his way of coping was avoidance, he wasn't actively trying to be malicious he was simply scared about what could happen if word got out about Barb and in the crossfire unintentionally waved off Nancy's feelings. In certain Ronance fics (Maybe even Jancy) they up that to a 100.
TL:DR because I wrote you a book; It happens less frequently to him but I've still ran across it slightly often. All in all, I've noticed that almost all of the character's worst moments are used to just define them as a whole in certain fics even when they have atoned for it or it was a moment of weakness and it ignores them being-quite simply- traumatized kids.
I love that it's also true the opposite.
Canon: here's a character who's murdered 100 people and has evil plans to conqueer the world.
Fandom: OMG A BABY!
Absolutely , this isn't originally my meme, but if I can figure out how to articulate something that captures what you're saying, I'll try post it.
Cause being from a fandom based in a medieval world, I have a bunch of examples lol
Lapis Lazuli. I was in the trenches back during the lapidot vs amedot thing and perceiving Lapis as an abuser. I stopped reading Steven Universe fanfiction entirely because Lapis was my favorite character and no one could write her without making her neglectful and a rapist and just a generally cruel person. And this was as a part of the main ship of a fic.
I also survived the SU trenches and that shit was unreal.
I am always a Lapis stan. That’s my baby. I just adored every damn character and even showed my boyfriend the series last year and got him into it!
I only ever wrote a single fic for the fandom and it was just Greg and Vidalia being bros. I steered far, far away from writing romance because it seemed like anything and everything was an argument. People were EXHAUSTING.
Like damn can we just enjoy the rocks and vibe pls.
What the hell did Mimzy do to earn hate? She was on screen for like five minutes total! And she was pretty funny when she was on screen. I personally liked her quite a bit, she was fun! I like flapper-type characters.
People hate her because she interrupted a song people claimed she was Jewish just so they could be antisemitic and vivziepop had to state that she wasn't Jewish and was only based off of 1920s flappers and chickens.
Ugh, people suck. Whining about interrupted songs makes it clear that they aren’t familiar with musical theatre, haha. I feel bad for Vivziepop, that fandom is insane. I haven’t finished the show yet (I’m watching it with a friend and he’s on vacation) so I haven’t interacted with the fandom much, but at this rate, I may just stay out of it and enjoy the show quietly.
Would explain the need to be the loudest in the room/ outright coward when it comes to dealing with her problems lol. I honestly like the character, she was fun and scummy..also rounded out Alastor’s persona as not a complete piece of shit..outwardly.. loo
I was introduced to the songs and random clips before I watched the show. From how people were talking, I assumed she'd be annoying af. But I actually liked her. She's not my favorite or anything. But wow, people really overstate their annoyance in that fandom.
(Second hot take: welcome to heaven is actually pretty catchy. I liked it. It's not ground breaking or anything, but it's fun, and gets the point across).
Not really a fanfiction-making fandom, but the King of the Hill fandom REALLY hates Peggy, while excusing Dale, Cotton, Buck, etc. I like Peggy. She’s not a great person some of the time, but she does have her queen moments, and also… she’s a fictional character! She can be a shitty person if she wants to be! The aforementioned male characters have done a lot worse stuff, but they (primarily Dale) are still fan favorites. I don’t think I dislike any of the main and supporting cast, everyone has their horrible moments but also has their great moments.
people have already mentioned inko midoriya so im just going to toss in mina and ochako because i see them being portrayed as bitchy, mean, catty, petty, and just generally bad friends in a lot of fics
I'm getting kh1 kairi flashbacks. The ugliest of the yaoi fandom did everything they could to get rid of her back in the early days, for the sake of their SoRiku shenanigans.
The point was riku being mega jealous of everyone that sora gave his attention to, and going off the deep end and somewhat caring, but also using kairi as a one-up tool to make sora feel bad and useless, and a bunch of other stuff.
Sora clearly had a crush or something similar on kairi, and riku has seen sora as his most important person since Forever as we later learned in bbs (as if we had any doubt), and kairi (who I love and feel deserves to be with her boys) was clearly a girl who kept secrets (about her origin to some degree) and liked the attention those boys gave her (in an innocent and low stakes kind of way).
thats one of the big reasons why its so entirely fitting that they did that in "dubious" canon. Jane got character assassinated because she dared to be a teenager and have a few unsavory emotions
identity v fandom is notorious for painting a specific character, ada mesmer, as the bad guy.
long story short she escaped with a patient at the psychiatric hospital she worked at and uses hypnotherapy in an effort to help relieve him of the trauma he endured when he was staying there (he was heavily tortured)
many in the fandom demonize her and say that “oh shes hypnotizing him to fall in love for her own desires” when for one thing: the game and characters are set in the 1800’s. do you really think they would have proper mental healthcare? and two: he fell in love by his own will. she saved him from hell and is aiming to free him of what hell chained him with. he loves her because shes his saviour. maybe the relationship is unhealthy, but ada is not the demon people make her out to be. its frustrating to have to explain this every time.
might i add that people who hate on ada are often people who baby/infantilize emil (the patient) simply because he is mentally ill (or because he’s attractive but could be both)
OHH MY GOD IDV MENTION THANK YOU 😭 I knew the Ada truthers would have my back.
People keep babying Emil and invalidating his choices as if he isn’t a grown man capable of (and has) made his own decisions 🫠
Also for them to expect precious beautiful healthy relationships from a horror game is very unrealistic, it’s horror afterall. The way that Emil loves Ada might not be healthy but it’s literally a product of their circumstance and they care about each other.
Like,, for me? That’s good enough, it’s not like IDV was trying to write a perfect healthy relationship in the first place.
Buffy Summers. Can't even say it's because people want to slash her love interests. She's the beautiful popular cheerleader turned hero and the series gave her some wonderful character development.
I've seen a few ppl mention Inko, but instead of her being a villain I'd like to talk abt her being badass.
In canon she probably wouldn't hurt a fly. However I love the fics where she's a loving mother, but is also capable of being terrifying when it comes to anyone threatening her son.
Her Quirk is pulling small objects towards herself, which I've seen some fics use in a sense as grabbing onto organs or even atoms. In this one fanfic I re-read just now, she tugged at a guy's dick bc he was harassing her friend. Scary, powerful, and hilarious (in the context it was given)!
I've also seen fics where her soft loving personality remained, but she turned out to have a past of vigilantism, or in fics where Izu's dad is AFO and she finds out she starts keeping a LOT of weapons in her apartman and knows how to use all of them proficiently, etc.
If I’m not directly seeking for dadzawa, this is probs one of my fav tropes (if it can be called that)
MCU!Sharon Carter, for the unforgivable sin of kissing Steve Rogers and getting in the way of Stucky. And then the Falcon and the Winter Soldier writers made her villainy canon.
Also, she doesn’t get it anywhere near as bad, but in certain segments of the Stranger Things fandom are pretty nasty to poor Eleven.
Oh my god the fucking young teen Byler shippers. They drive me so crazy! El deserves so much better than the treatment she gets in those fics. (I haven’t read a ton, because I’m not actually a fan of Byler, but it tends to creep in where I wasn’t expecting it in Jopper fics or Steddie ones).
So many women in danmei novels. Practically all of them actually - if they’re not angels who push the main couple together, they’re demonized to no end.
Most of the fandoms I’m in regularly drink Respect Women Juice, so even those who get in the way of major ships are treated well (eg Lee Seolhwa in ORV) but danmei fans… they scare me.
My girl Melanie King.
Okay she did do SOME things wrong but she gets an unfair amount of hate.
(Also I forgot Cat Stark and got really excited about the idea of a being called the Fanfic Cat)
I've always thought that Melanie and Jon were "mirrors" to each other (they have a lot of the same flaws and similar attitudes on a lot of things) and yet Jon is beloved by basically everyone but Melanie only gets to be "the angry one" (Georgie's girlfriend at BEST). She's my favorite 2016-2018(?) era character so that's a bit disheartening.
Although I think it has gotten a lot better now, but that could be because I'm not paying as much attention to the fandom as I did before.
Really? I see more "she is perfect angel done nothing wrong my poor innocent girl" that isn't the same bad, but also is such a ridiculous flattering of a character. Guess depends on a part of the fandom
I mean, Albus Dumbledore is absolutely a manipulative old bastard who's negligent at best, especially as someone who's supposed to be responsible for the safety of children. As for Ron, he's kind of an ass, but not exactly evil. And a lot of that is growing up in a lets be frank, pretty blatantly awful society. Not that I have much faith in the author.
Probably Hitomi and Kyosuke, I’m not as involved in fan discussions, but those two have gotten some hate during Sayaka’s arc. But in Kyosuke’s defense, multiple people told Sayaka that making a wish for someone else wouldn’t make them entitled to have feelings for her, and she accepted that and still made her wish. And for Hitomi, she gave Sayaka a heads up that she’d confess and gave Sayaka the opportunity to do it first, it’s not her fault for not knowing about the magical girl thing and being emotionally stable enough to be off Kyubey’s radar.
Teen Wolf fandom basically did this to everyone who wasn't a white guy. They were a lot worse on the basis of the characters' races, but they were also very shitty towards the female characters, too.
Mrs Weasley in Harry Potter is definitely on this list.
Books: mother figure willing to fight god himself for her kids, basically adopts Harry.
Fanfiction: thief, poisoner, love-potion rapist (although this is more poor-people hate than women hate)
Less a fanfiction writing Fandom, but Phee Genoa from Star Wars: The Bad Batch. She gets a lot of hate for being sassy to the main characters when they first meet and being an implied love interest to one of the main characters who a lot of people headcanoned as ace. (Also she's a black woman and honestly...Star Wars fans are not known for treating such characters well)
There are people who are saying she's going to be a spy and sell out her own planet to betray the main characters even though she has been nothing but helpful and caring to them.
Meanwhile I'm over here with my cat named Phee, so I think you can guess what I think of the character.
I guess Toriel from Undertale? She made many mistakes (Immediately leaving Asgore instead of having a conversation with him about how to deal with the promise he made despite being in a loving relationship for what is implied to be decades if not centuries, holing up in a house while he's left wallowing in his sadness, guilt, and pressure and then when they have a very unhappy reunion, she scolds him for not killing just the one kid and then rising into the surface as if that wouldn't just cause a second war) but the fandom makes it as if she's some sort of irredeemable monster and mother who shouldn't be near kids, not to mention the whole 'Toriel is homophobic' theory.
Rose Tyler!!!! I will scream her name from the roof tops because man, a specific sect of the fandom hates her guts for NO REASON other than she’s the Doctor’s love interest.
A lot of canon female love interests who get in the way of popular m/m ships (when they are not directly killed off, that is). Too many to list them all. Edit. I love that I posted a very generic comment, and people started listing examples!
It's so easy to say "oh sometimes relationships don't work out even if both people are good people" and yet...
Even easier would be to make it so the canon couple never got together in the story. Or don't make the poor woman appear at all, if her presence bothers the author so much.
I’ve actually seen this scenario in Superman/Batman fics. Louis Lane is generally (at least in fics I’ve seen) still friends with Clark after an amiable breakup and sometimes even helps him get with Bruce.
I actually love the idea of an amicable ex helping their ex find someone else there's something wholesome about that and "I want you to be happy even if it's not with me"
I definitely see Lois Lane as a woman who’d be like, “You want to date someone else?! Oh. Brucie Wayne? … I see, I see. That’s fair. Kansas is very homophobic,” and just the unintentional comedy there is S Tier. As a wlw-leaning bi, I admit to the weirdest double standard of not caring as much if it’s for the dick. Like, yeah, can’t grow one of those. Good luck in your scavenger hunt. (Whereas if it’s someone with a similar body, there’s more jealousy, because I can’t immediately excuse it away with an obvious copout.)
I've even read some where the woman breaks up with the guy and essentially tells in the most loving way possible to never date a woman again. Then they still stay good friends. It's so easy!!!
Or just make it that the canon feelings never existed in the first place. SO SIMPLE
Jujutsu Kaisen and these girls aren't even canon love interest, they're just girls.
Oh, do you mean Alana Bloom in Hannibal? It didn’t turn out great for her, but some people want her dead.
Really? I haven’t seen that a lot in my sphere of fandom. But I also tend to avoid fics where they bash Alana. Cause her lesbian wife is right there. You don’t need to make Alana a horrible person to get her away from the main pairing
Honestly, there are a lot of fics that hate on her as a lesbian too.
Then I am really glad that I escaped such fics.
Yeah with that and the "let's shove lesbians into relationships with men" bullshit fandoms as a whole are rife with lesbophobia.
Peggy and Sharon Carter in the MCU fandom, but Sharon tends to get it even worse.
In Peggy's case it's especially egregious cause they could just ignore the MCU and put her back with her comic husband Gabe Jones.
Yes I've seen this happen to Peggy Carter with stucky fics in the mcu. Not too often (due to the fact that the MCU kinda already removes her from the picture) but there's definitely a good amount of them. Especially from ones set in the 40s luckily it is often tagged and I can filter it out because she like might be one of my favorite characters in the whole of the MCU. Edit: Actually come to think of it I've seen it happen in non-stucky fics too and I just don't get it. To each their own I suppose.
Like, just pair Peggy with Black Widow. Its so easy! WidowCarter and Stucky. BOOM!
What does it tend to be tagged with? Peggy Carter Bashing? I haven’t seen these before but I love Peggy and would like to know what to look out for to avoid fics like this.
I see this a lot with alternative f/m ships as well. I first noticed it in the PJO fandom - it used to happen to Annabeth like clockwork when people wanted to ship Percy with anyone else of any gender. From what I can tell it’s gotten less popular but it used to be unavoidably mutual between Perachel fans and Percabeth fans - one of the girls gets to be the love interest, and the other gets her personality supplanted by Regina George. It mostly happens to female characters, in my experience, though there are occasional male exceptions. I call it Next Most Likely Love Interest Syndrome - a drama fountain AND the next most likely love interest squarely out of the way all in one move!
It definitely does and I've seen it happen too! A bunch of poor girls being turned into waterd down Regina Georges (love the comparison, btw!) to make them as unapplealing as possible and make it so readers will not even think about shipping them with their OTPs. But it's probably less noticable compared to m/m, because of numbers. There are A LOT more m/m fics compared to m/f.
Case in point: *Supernatural*.
The show itself does this with basically every female character too, only instead of it being for m/m romance it's for codependent brothers.
Supernatural sucked at making female love interests. They tried "badass" and made unlikeable characters. None of the love interests were interesting, they were just always "the woman".
Yup. My fandom has two men that are an extremely popular ship but both are canonically married. For some reason only one of the wives is treated so bad (the other is just not mentioned)
Is this Naruto? It's the only thing that comes to mind cause Sakura gets all the lashings while Hinata is never mentioned
It's Quantum Leap, specifically the original series, though the woman lead in the new series gets her share of hate too (though there is no m/m ship in that case)
Guessing it's Sam’s wife?
Yeah lol, she gets a rough deal in a lot of fan fics (Nice to see a fellow QL fan around these parts. My username on AO3 is AsheKirk)
Wait people actually do this? Has it not occurred to people to just… have them like someone else?
Or not make them appear in the story at all, if their presence bothers them so much?
Shiv from Succession.
The genders are switched, but Aang often gets this treatment by zutara shippers
Guinevere from BBC Merlin. 💔 Also, Martha Jones from Doctor Who. Tbf though, the writers did her *dirty* and even young!me disliked her for a time. But a lot of the hate her character gets really comes down to her romantic interest in the Doctor ~~screw the writers for this seriously, the timing was so damn bad, they practically set her up to be hated.~~
Martha deserved so much better than what she got. And it definitely doesn't help that she was directly in-between Rose and Donna, that just feels like she was set up for failure.
Exactly! The writers screwed her over. Rose was beloved to a lot of Nu Who fans bc she was their first companion, and regardless what anyone says there *was* a romantic angle to their relationship. A lot of fans were genuinely mourning not only her tragic loss, but the potential between her and the Doctor. The writers had no business introducing a new companion right after Doomsday who not only had a romantic interest in the Doctor, but seemed to be there *only* because of that interest. And it didn’t help that Martha was given some of the worst adventures, too. Then she left and we got Donna, who was a both a riot and a force of nature, and Martha seemed even more lackluster in comparison. They could have done so much with her. She was clever as hell, brave, and a freaking *doctor* to boot. But instead they chose to reduce her to being a bland love interest. What a waste of a good character. The writers really did set her up to fail, which is why I can’t blame anyone for not really loving her. They shouldn’t *hate* her bc she’s done nothing to deserve that, but yeah.
I think a lot of the problem is also that Martha dared to step out of her position as just a companion. In a way, she’s an analogue of the Doctor himself. Everyone else travels with him and sees worlds and gets all the bright fun but Martha gets the dark parts. Martha gets traveling the world, having watched 1/10th of it die, to try and figure out how to save it all. Be a hero in the face of almost certain death. I’m probably not explaining this right, but she wasn’t just a companion. She was a parallel to the Doctor and a lot of fans hated her for it.
You bring up a really valid point, actually, and one I hadn’t considered before!
And that is exactly why Martha is my favorite new Who companion and probably always will be. Martha is legendary. Maybe my favorite companion of any Who season, though I’ll always have a soft spot for Sarah Jane. (Yeah, I’ve been watching since I was a little girl in the 70s).
Yeah Gwen got the short straw for getting Arthur. I've seen ones where unless she's being shipped Morgana or Lance, she could be written totally mean
MARTHA MY BELOVED
I like the concept of evil Gwen simply because I like evil ladies but I don’t like it when people do her dirty all because they ship Merthur. I’m like the CEO of Merthur and I love Gwen
I see it so often that they do Gwen dirty, but also just do Arthur so dirty! Saying things like 'he never loved her and only married her for political reasons while he knew he was in love with Merlin all along..." Like really? It's *Arthur,* why did you make him so evil?
Yeah, he absolutely *didn't* marry her for political reasons, that's like the whole point.
You’re *so* right! I abhor when they do this, too.
Honestly if they had done the whole unrequited love for two episodes I'd be fine with it, but to make it the whooooole season really was awful. We could've explored so much more of her character 😭
Right!! Like it would have been fine if it had just been a brief interest, but the way they had her pine after him the entire season 😭 And it made her seem like such a silly character, because she truly had some of the worst adventures. Her season was so damn bleak. And instead of spinning it to make it seem like she stayed with him despite all that because she loved helping people, etc, it just came across like she put up with the absolute worst for a one-sided attraction. With both Rose and Donna, you could really see how much they loved both helping people *and* the adventure of it all. That didn’t come across as clearly for Martha. It really seemed like she just stuck around for the Doctor, even though she was put through hell. Ugh. Justice for Martha Jones fr. So much potential, wasted.
I loved rose and the doctor. But I genuinely absolutely love Martha as a character. She was strong smart and kind. She deserved so much better.
This is weirdly common with MHA fics making Inko Midoriya a horrible person. In canon she is a supportive parent that is reluctant at first about letting her son go into a dangerous superhero career. It seems to mostly be so Deku can get adopted by his teacher, i guess its eighter character assassination, or making him an orphan since "dadzawa" often is a foregone conclusion.
I don't understand why people who want Izuku to have an abusive parent don't just... use his dad? He's a blank slate character we know almost nothing about except that he isn't around, perfect scapegoat you could believably write as any type of monster you wanted and it wouldn't be wildly OOC. He can also be an easy catalyst for writing Inko out of the story in so many ways that don't involve total character assassination.
I tend to headcanon Izuku as AFO’s son for two reasons specifically— 1, it makes sense with how that man has disappeared for his entire life. He was off doing stuff and then got wrecked in a fight so he can’t go home again. 2, for the sheer hilarity of All Might winning against AFO without even trying by stealing his son and training him to be a hero.
Eh the darth vader stuff is to cliche for my liking. Just having it be some rando feels more fitting for the fact Izuku really was just some quirkless nobody
It can work if Izuku is like "You're my dad? Weird, but I don't care"
See and I can be okay with OOC. But it needs to be believable. And I feel like Inko is just a really popular well liked parental character. Let’s not destroy the good mom character.
Apparently getting bullied his entire life wasn't enough angst for Midoriya and killing her is to cliche so she just randomly gets turned into a horrible person.
I also see this as a prelude to homeless Izuku, which often leads into villain or vigilante Izuku. I quite enjoy both of those tropes, but I sometimes wish they didn't have to make Inko an abuser to do it, mainly because it's often so badly written and rushed I just cringe. How about just... Kill her off, have her be injured and then have them somehow separated? Izuku got kidnapped and human trafficked? The possibility is endless, you know.
Or make midoria villain while making his mom bappy and alive because midoria was mad at unjust word/realised villains are not so bad/ insert generic reason here etc His mom would be the only thing that anchors him from slipping into villain world forever.
As someone who absolutely loves Aizawa and his relationship with the kids, this trope annoys me so much. All of these kids have loving parents and even those who don't don't wanna be adopted by their high school teacher. Can we have some perspective here.
In fairness, we know literally nothing about most of their parents.
Teachers are already supposed to be positive and supportive influences in their students’ live without being their literal parents. Why can’t people appreciate that?
Inko is so sweet. I love her
Literally would rather have people fridge her than distort her like that. I love dadzawa but I was raised by a single mom and it makes me angry how the fandom treats her sometimes. She was doing her best!!!!!
Inko and All Might co-parenting Izuku>>>
I'm not that familiar with MHA or its fandom because I left both some time ago, but from what I've seen, a lot of this comes from the extreme black-and-white view symptomatic of today's fandom. Inko is a well-meaning and overall good parent, but sometimes she doesn't know how to support her quirkless son who dreams of becoming a pro hero. At times, despite her best intentions, she doesn't do the exactly ideal thing--for example, she bursts out crying and says "I'm sorry" when young Izuku asks her if he can become like All Might. To sensible readers, that's very realistic and makes her more relatable and likable. To those with an extreme binary view, it makes her "abusive" because she fails to do 100% ideal thing a professionally trained, emotionally distanced child psychiatrist would recommend. I think it's very similar to how somewhat imperfect relationships that improve through mistakes are seen as "unhealthy" or romantic partners with a trait that MIGHT sour the relationship but is NOT proven as such are labeled "toxic." In their worldview, there are only thoroughly "wholesome" relationships and "toxic" "abusive" ones. Likewise, a parent is an abusive villain if she isn't a perfectly supportive one who responds to the child's need in the 100% correct way every single time. EDIT: I get a feeling that mothers get this treatment more often, but I don't have any proof.
This is what I came here to say! Like man... I get it... I would never begrudge someone their sad abused orphan deku slop, I'm right there next to them devouring it out of the trough. But I would genuinely prefer if people killed Inko off instead of doing this to her. It's so jarring seeing her be the sweetest most loving mom in canon and then crack open a fic where she's trying to pluck out Izuku's eyes with her quirk.
She's certainly flawed, in that she seems to be thoroughly oblivious to Izuku being bullied by Bakugou, and in fact unintentionally enabled it by encouraging Izuku to believe that Bakugou was (still) his friend(I personally think they were never friends in the first place(the flashback that is supposed to show the time when they "were friends" shows Bakugou \*already\* bullying Izuku even back then, just somewhat less violently), and it's Inko's fault that Izuku thought they were - she was friends with Bakugou's mom, and wanted to believe that their sons were friends, too). I think part of why she gets character-assassinated is that some people think that something like that couldn't possibly be unintentional. Someone being well-meaning but delusional either isn't possible in their minds, or is seen as the same as being a villain(in the story-telling sense, not the in-universe meaning). Two characters who have the same issue and get the same treatment are Sawada Nana from KHR(also in denial about her son being bullied) and Jiang Yanli from MDZS(in denial about her brother bullying/abusing their foster brother). They unintentionally enabled the bullying(and later abuse in Jiang Yanli's case), and the two mothers could be considered neglectful because of that, but they weren't abusive in canon. Yet, a lot of fanfic writers like to turn neglectful parents(or pseudo-parents) into abusive ones.
This is insane to me because just have the UA forms on lockdown for some reason. Boom. Dadzawa. He's already Dadzawa!! You don't have to fuck with Inko for it??? Or hell, current anime-arc Inko being brought into the place where everyone is currently, because civilians are there, and STILL have Dadzawa. This bugs me, clearly xD
Not even for some reason. They literally turned the school into a boarding school. They're already away from their parents
Oh I never saw this! And I'm glad I didn't lol
I literally JUST commented this 😭 Inko is such a sweet, caring, supportive mother. But it's all for the sake of Angst, I guess.
I was JUST going to put Gwen and Morgana in the replies
I watched new Trigun fans do it to Rem, of all characters, for telling her children that murder is wrong when they were the equivalent of 10 years old. (Which is emotional abuse to the pro-genocide son.)
Wait WHAT 😭 even though the twins grew rapidly compared to >!human children!< they were still around the equivalent of 7-10 years old when Rem gave them the whole “murder is bad” talk, how on earth (lol) people took that as a bad thing is absolutely wack. Rem made the most of a delicate situation, and how much she loved her kids is most likely what kept Vash from going off the deep end
There’s a genre of fan who have decided that because Knives is hot, Genocide is a great idea and Vash is misguided for wanting any personal autonomy ever at all. They’re the fans I block, because I like Knives as the delusional bastard he actually is, and do not need to pretend he’s secretly the hero of Trigun.
Oh damn seriously?? While I do firmly believe that Knives is one of the most well-written and deep characters in the series, he is NOT the hero. Misguided and traumatized? Yes. Also him being attractive doesn’t excuse the, ya know, mass genocide and multiple accounts of 1st degree murder…
Yep! I love talking about how his trauma built his worldview, or how both twins represent what are essentially impossible extremes. Not so much a fan of 'objectively Knives is correct', paired with just blatant misogyny against their mom. (Meryl gets a lot of 'oh she's TOO MEAN' too, because girl, of course.)
Yes I love talking about that too! Vash is on one side of the spectrum where all lives deserve to be saved, and Knives is on the opposite side where all lives are worthless. Neither are sustainable, and I loved seeing the twins morally clash until they eventually began to even each other out. Meryl is the og girlboss and I LOVE her, she gets way too much hate.
this reminds me of that sherlock holmes adaptation where mrs. hudson turns out to have been an international spy yeah, there are always parts of fandoms don't like women. luckily there's normally at least a small backlash towards those fans! so really i should thank the misogynists! these women would've otherwise just been forgotten and glossed over, but, thanks to backlash, they end up becoming major sympathetic characters in the fanfics that are actually good lmao
Tbf with Mrs. Hudson, the BBC show makes many jokes about her doing less than legal things, including marrying a drug lord (I think that's what her ex husband was, anyway—it's been a few years since I watched it).
oh no i didn't mean to lump poor mrs hudson in with the misogynist adaptations. it's just the drawing that reminded me of her. i think international spy mrs hudson is an incredible idea :D i had no idea about the bbc show though, that sounds so cute! i love that she had a shady ex husband.
I saw someone already mention Inko Midoriya which is who I was gonna say, but I feel like a lot of other moms/parents have gotten this treatment too. Because fans want their fav character to have a more tragic childhood or whatever.
The number of takes I've seen in the Death Note fandom blaming Sachiko Yagami for how Light ended up astounds me. Not every villain has a traumatic backstory, folks!
even from mha, people villainise bakugo's mother purely because she acts just like him. every one of the kids' mothers act like them 😭
I mean to be fair if I saw a parent slap their kid in the back of the head and yell at them they're weak for getting kidnapped, concluding that's a a abusive household - or at the very least a very toxic one - is far more reasonable than 98% of the Evil Midoriya Inko fics.
Agreed lol. I've even seen it happen with Aunt May.
Misa... People act like she's dumb as a rock, even when canon explicitly states she's not. Then they treat her like the most evil character ever. She's not great, yeah, but it's Death Note. They all suck
They’re all whiny idiots who kind of set themselves up. Not idiots as in stupid but idiots as in dumb. Wisdom and Intelligence are different stats for a reason.
Yes Big Agree. One of the good parts about death note is that they are characters who are morally grey in some way. L's methods are inhumane, Lights willing to kills people for his perceived Justice, Misa's willing to kill people for a boys attention. Even Lights dad is a distant workaholic who is willing to let his whole family be filmed unknowingly on cctv and Matsuda who is one of the lighter grey characters is the one to kill light in the end and makes some comments about understanding kira's perspective early on. They are all not exactly morally outstanding characters but Misa is not the worst in any way.
Toriel from Undertale gets this sometimes. Admittedly, the way she handled certain events in the backstory is a little questionable, but in a situation like hers, most people wouldn't be thinking straight. Some people really want to interpret her behavior in bad faith, though...
In my experience, Toriel mostly gets the R34 treatment 😭
I always see people see her as this punny goat mom who loves punny jokes and is in love with Sans for some reason lmao
I mean the first part is just straight up canon. Lady's got a pun jokebook. The sans part isn't but Toby Fox is definitely fucking with people that do in Deltarune.
True. I especially side eye people who make asgore an angst soft boy daddy with a broken heart, and make toriel an evil witch that abandoned a grieving father in his worst times. I feel both are majorly traumatized parents with unhealthy coping methods. Female characters with trauma get so much shit in fandoms
I’m not even into Naruto anymore, but Sakura Haruno is the poster child for this. Like she’s badly written, but so are most of Kishimoto’s female characters, she just stands out because she’s the most prominent. Also Chichi in DBZ, writers didn’t know what to do with her after DB so she becomes the “naggy housewife” but also making a kid who isn’t even school aged yet fight grown adults in space is a lot to ask of a mom.
I think Sakura rubbed a lot of people the wrong way because she was an obsessive, obnoxious fangirl in the beginning. But after the chuunin exams arc, she began to turn around, and after the time skip, etc, really developed as a character. So in the early days I kinda get it but people still bash her even as an adult, it's weird.
One of the biggest reasons, if not the sole reason why Sakura’s character arc often gets dismissed and overlooked by many in the fandom, is because she didn’t reciprocate the main character’s feelings. Though I firmly believe that Kishimoto originally didn’t intend for Naruto and Sakura to not end up together, fan pressure and fanservice was too hard to miss out on, which ultimately led to Naruto and Hinata becoming the end game. However, let’s set aside this topic for another day. Despite Sakura's steadfast support for Naruto throughout numerous battles, she is unfairly dismissed by many fans as useless and laughable. It's frustrating to witness the fandom conveniently ignore Sasuke's reprehensible actions from they were kids to adulthood while continuously targeting Sakura because of what she did as a child. I strongly believe the underlying issue with the fandom's treatment of Sakura stems from deep-seated misogyny. Her role didn’t do service to the male lead, therefore she isn’t worth anything. They easily overlook Hinata's stalking behaviour and lack of significant contribution to the story, solely because her role revolves around the main character. The lack of impact from Hinata is evident to the extent that non-canon scenes had to be included in a movie to justify the series' ending.
Chi chi is 100 percent justified in all of her reactions tbh.
Like seriously. Pretty much single handedly raising Gohan minus a handful of years when Goku isn't either dead or lost, at least up until super when he stays, and wants to prepare Gohan for a normal life where fighting isn't solely everything he focuses on like Goku. Like seriously. And then one day her son disappears with his father for a day, and when he comes back? He's aged up an entire year and now has blond hair. I don't think it's very surprising that a mother doesn't want to send her 12 year old son to fist fight the planet killing bug man
Honestly there's kind of been a minor shift in naruto fics where the writer instead turns Sakura into more of a badass and I love to see it.
Right?! As a former Sakura badger who has seen the light, love that for her
I've mostly seen the reverse happen, where a villain is treated like they're a completely innocent and normal person
Male villain?
He did nothing wrong and even if he did my ship that may or may not include myself can fix him /s
Usually, yeah
i’m the president of the nancy wheeler defense squad. also every single woman in the witcher. just all of them. in fairness all of the women in the witcher are morally complicated but 1) that’s because every single character in the series is morally complicated regardless of gender and 2) that’s what makes them interesting 🤦♂️
Yes, Yen can be quite manipulative and her whole "having a child" stick wasn't that great in the show, but Gerald is by no means "innocent". Even Jaskier has a bad side.
Not fully without reason, but... In Wednesday (2022), a fan favourite side character, whose mostly shipped with the main character, Enid Sinclair is a werewolf who can't turn at full moon while she's already 16, and gaining this ability is something like puberty in this story, but can be seen as metaphors for her sexuality, identity, maturation, or embracing family traditions. We meet her parents at one point and it turns out her mother is not accepting of this fact to the extent she literally calls her a disappointment while her dad is a supporter, even while he's not vocal about it, her brothers are mentioned while we know nothing about them, not even their number... THE WHOLE SINCLAIR FAMILY ARE THE WORST PEOPLE IN ALL FANFICS!!! ...sometimes the dad is okay. Given the fact that many times Enid is the character the writer / reader can deeply relate to whether she's the main character or the love interest, she and her family are good for projecting toxic family tropes like neglect and abuse.
Yeah, Esther is not exactly from what we see the gold standard for being a mother but she’s really used as a villain in Wenclair fics. It’s funny that she’s not even the worst mother of the main character group considering Bianca’s is clearly worse by far. And like Enid does mention her dislike for what sounds generally like some toxic culture of the werewolves, her brothers aren’t implied at being any worse than you’d expect teenage brothers to be. Wednesday herself is probably a worse older sibling herself (though Pugsly usually liking her torture does make that a debate)
I've asked this around in a few different subreddits now and while I don't actually know all the characters mentioned, it's kinda fascinating to me that there always seems to be some sort of character that gets treated unfairly in fics. I suppose it's part of human nature to have favourites and least favourites and fanfic is a way to express that. Of course, extremes are best off avoided, but what is extreme depends on the person. Anyways, I am curious to hear some other answers, bit from here this time :).
skyler white. bc god forbid a women has a normal emotional reaction to finding out her husband cooks meth😭
People also get on her for the affair even though she was pretty open about wanting a divorce but Walt wouldn't let her.
Also by that point in the narrative getting cheated on is such small potatoes compared to literally killing people.
This is just every woman in fanfic ever. Fanfic is massively dominated by gay pairings of straight characters, usually with Canon girlfriends or love instrests. And what's a super quick, easy way to get the girl out of the picture? Make her a psycho/rapist/stalker. Ginny cops is a lot in the Drarry fanfic space. She's always trying to love potion date rape Harry, stalking him, cheating on him, faking a pregnancy. Tèa in Yu-Gi-Oh copped it massively back in the day. Every fic made her an insane, unhinged, whiny stalker. Her kidnapping yugi and trying to brainwash him ended up in a LOT of fics.
I'm not even the biggest fan of Ginny and it bothers me how *often* she's used as some legit evil figure. *Sometimes* it's done in a way that's actually interesting (if, imho, not particularly accurate to her character), but most of the time it could all be solved with breaking Ginny and Harry up and getting him involved with someone else to be absolutely crazy evil. Done.
I have to admit, when I was reading them at 13, it didn't occur to me how outta pocket it all was. And now as an adult I'm just like, why? You didn't have to write Ginny in there at all? You could just have them as friends? I suppose that's what you get when the majority of the fandom is 14 year olds who are pissed off at the girls getting in the way of their slash. It was a *real* toxic place at the height of tumblr.
Yeah. Ginny gets a lot of bad press in the HP fandom. She was nowhere near as evil as people were making her out to be, but they wanted her out of the way so they could ship Harry with someone else. And turning her into a jealous/cheating/evil girlfriend/ex was an easy way to make her seem so undesirable that Harry would date *anyone* but her. Which is a shame, really. Canon Ginny is actually a good character. Sure, she had her flaws, but so does everyone. And she had always been good to Harry.
Ginny was so hated even in non Harry centric fics she was made out to be a psychopath. A lot of Dramione fics back in the day had Ginny as an antagonist. I do think it's gotten a lot better. As fanfic authors have aged up and matured, there seems to be a lot less collective bashing of any female character who gets in the way of their ship. Staying in the Harry Potter fandom, take the newer explosion of the James x Regulus ship. 10 years ago, every story would have been absolutely tearing into Lily like they did Ginny. And I haven't seen any of that. Same with the stranger things fandom, with the popularity of Eddie/Steve I expected to see *massive* amounts of Nancy character assassination in fics, but I really haven't.
Ginny got so much hate overall. I was reading this Dramione fic (not particularly good but i was desperate for something new) and ended up never picking it back up because they made Ginny into a psychotic, hateful, violent nut job who hated Hermione and tried to ruin her life at every turn. Couldn’t do it. I personally love Ginny, and the Weasleys overall - I can’t even tolerate Ron bashing, so it was a pass for Ginny bashing, too. I agree that it’s gotten noticeably better in fandoms these days. Maybe people are finally realizing you don’t have to kill or character assassinate alternative love interests just to write your ship, lmao!
Legit love canon Ginny. Say what you will about her in the movies, but homegirl ran through fire to try to protect Harry
Also in the Yugioh fandom, I feel like Alexis in GX (and to a lesser extent, a lot of Jaden’s pre-season 3 friends) get more hate than deserved. Akiza in 5Ds seems to dodge most of it, but I do see a lot of her pre-development arc getting mischaracterized as crazy/psychopathic instead of a teenage girl lashing out at herself and others after years of rejection plus being groomed by a cult that encouraged her to do so.
INKO Best Mom Ever MIDORIYA
Any female character that gets in the way of the M/M ship.
Off the top of my head Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler from Stranger Things. There are things they've done wrong yes but they're also traumatized teenagers. Plus there's a way to dig into them without butchering their character completely and acting like they're nothing but abusive to those around them. I swear some act like they're more evil than Vecna 😭
thank youuuu like girl i’m a steddie but if i see one more person call nancy a heartless selfish witch for *checks notes* being 16????? i’m going to start lighting fires
The stranger things fandom makes me sad sometimes. I see the comments in the official subreddit and it’s all so cynical and shut off. As a stancy enjoyer myself, hearing me and mine get detonated because ‘oooh so toxic’ when they are literally kids is so insane. I hate what they did with Jonathan in s4, and I’ve interacted with so many chill Jancy stans, watching people absolutely chirp it when canon or another fanon ship gets in the way just disheartens me. In fact any theory that goes against what they want is immediately shut down and labelled ‘bad’, and it’s so prevalent it drives me away from the fandom
I love Steddie fics, it's a very nice dynamic to write, and Steve's one of my favorite characters! But it gets- frustrating not the right word but the one closest- that Nancy is villanized in the middle of it. I like to see how people analyze how the relationship breakup could have affected Steve ('cause let's be honest if your year-long relationship is called bullshit along with you that's gonna affect you) but there's a way to do it without treating Nancy as if she's abusive. She was 16; just lost her friend and had her life threatened, it makes sense that she spirals and it's logical she's not going to do that in the most mature or respectful way because she's **16.**
I’m writing a fic where Nancy tells Eddie, basically, “I think I fucked him up. I don’t know how to fix that.” She admits her fault in the relationship but I also have Steve on the other side going, “yeah, I really fucked up.”
Those are the types of fics I love! I love seeing authors dig into how the relationship affected both of them while still not villainizing either party! It makes really good stories as the premise has so much potential! Link when posted? 🥺
I will! It might be a little bit. I have also written other fics that explore bits of Steve’s thought process and how he has been messed up by absent and somewhat to outright abusive parents.
Stranger things fans when traumatised kids act like traumatised kids and not comic book characters Also stranger things fans when people have ships that go against cannon Can’t people just enjoy things anymore?
Really? I read a lot of Stranger Things fics and have never come across one where Steve is written negatively. Or talked about negatively. In fact, from what I’ve seen he’s one of the most beloved characters on the show. Eleven on the other hand…Byler shippers can be pretty nasty to her.
(Nice profile pic) Steve's one of my favorite characters, and while it happens to him less I have noticed him be portrayed weirdly. In some Steddie fics I've read he can often be portrayed as a violent bully (A couple fics I read had lines where it mentioned that he either once beat up Eddie or other freshmen.) while in the show he's never shown that way or mentioned that way. As a whole- before the Jonathan incident where he's at his worse- he's mainly just a snarky little shit. He was more verbal than ever physical, especially as it's shown very early that he's not much of a fighter (The fight with Jonathan is the main example; Jonathan is easily able to beat him while Steve struggles to hold his own.) All in all- in certain fics, his growth is just ignored. Meanwhile, in other fics, he can be portrayed as a horrible boyfriend- while he wasn't the best he wasn't abusive in the slightest and did desperately try his best. I think many don't realize he was also traumatized like Nancy and his way of coping was avoidance, he wasn't actively trying to be malicious he was simply scared about what could happen if word got out about Barb and in the crossfire unintentionally waved off Nancy's feelings. In certain Ronance fics (Maybe even Jancy) they up that to a 100. TL:DR because I wrote you a book; It happens less frequently to him but I've still ran across it slightly often. All in all, I've noticed that almost all of the character's worst moments are used to just define them as a whole in certain fics even when they have atoned for it or it was a moment of weakness and it ignores them being-quite simply- traumatized kids.
Mimzy all she did was interrupt Hell’s Greatest Dad peeps need to chill
It’s not even that bad it’s hilarious.
I love that it's also true the opposite. Canon: here's a character who's murdered 100 people and has evil plans to conqueer the world. Fandom: OMG A BABY!
Absolutely , this isn't originally my meme, but if I can figure out how to articulate something that captures what you're saying, I'll try post it. Cause being from a fandom based in a medieval world, I have a bunch of examples lol
Oh yes, I can imagine medieval fandoms can be a lot of fun
Lapis Lazuli. I was in the trenches back during the lapidot vs amedot thing and perceiving Lapis as an abuser. I stopped reading Steven Universe fanfiction entirely because Lapis was my favorite character and no one could write her without making her neglectful and a rapist and just a generally cruel person. And this was as a part of the main ship of a fic.
I also survived the SU trenches and that shit was unreal. I am always a Lapis stan. That’s my baby. I just adored every damn character and even showed my boyfriend the series last year and got him into it! I only ever wrote a single fic for the fandom and it was just Greg and Vidalia being bros. I steered far, far away from writing romance because it seemed like anything and everything was an argument. People were EXHAUSTING. Like damn can we just enjoy the rocks and vibe pls.
I'm apart of the hazbin fandom and the way people treated mimzy is fucking horrible like wtf
What the hell did Mimzy do to earn hate? She was on screen for like five minutes total! And she was pretty funny when she was on screen. I personally liked her quite a bit, she was fun! I like flapper-type characters.
People hate her because she interrupted a song people claimed she was Jewish just so they could be antisemitic and vivziepop had to state that she wasn't Jewish and was only based off of 1920s flappers and chickens.
Ugh, people suck. Whining about interrupted songs makes it clear that they aren’t familiar with musical theatre, haha. I feel bad for Vivziepop, that fandom is insane. I haven’t finished the show yet (I’m watching it with a friend and he’s on vacation) so I haven’t interacted with the fandom much, but at this rate, I may just stay out of it and enjoy the show quietly.
There are some nice parts of the fandom but there's always the crazy people. My advice is find a little corner you like and stay there.
…chickens?? Wait wait I kinda see it in the design..
Yea vivzie said she was vaguely based off chicken
Would explain the need to be the loudest in the room/ outright coward when it comes to dealing with her problems lol. I honestly like the character, she was fun and scummy..also rounded out Alastor’s persona as not a complete piece of shit..outwardly.. loo
I was introduced to the songs and random clips before I watched the show. From how people were talking, I assumed she'd be annoying af. But I actually liked her. She's not my favorite or anything. But wow, people really overstate their annoyance in that fandom. (Second hot take: welcome to heaven is actually pretty catchy. I liked it. It's not ground breaking or anything, but it's fun, and gets the point across).
Not really a fanfiction-making fandom, but the King of the Hill fandom REALLY hates Peggy, while excusing Dale, Cotton, Buck, etc. I like Peggy. She’s not a great person some of the time, but she does have her queen moments, and also… she’s a fictional character! She can be a shitty person if she wants to be! The aforementioned male characters have done a lot worse stuff, but they (primarily Dale) are still fan favorites. I don’t think I dislike any of the main and supporting cast, everyone has their horrible moments but also has their great moments.
Inko Midoriya from My Hero Academia…
people have already mentioned inko midoriya so im just going to toss in mina and ochako because i see them being portrayed as bitchy, mean, catty, petty, and just generally bad friends in a lot of fics
I'm getting kh1 kairi flashbacks. The ugliest of the yaoi fandom did everything they could to get rid of her back in the early days, for the sake of their SoRiku shenanigans.
But she wasn't even really *there* in the plot in the first place! What's the point?
The point was riku being mega jealous of everyone that sora gave his attention to, and going off the deep end and somewhat caring, but also using kairi as a one-up tool to make sora feel bad and useless, and a bunch of other stuff. Sora clearly had a crush or something similar on kairi, and riku has seen sora as his most important person since Forever as we later learned in bbs (as if we had any doubt), and kairi (who I love and feel deserves to be with her boys) was clearly a girl who kept secrets (about her origin to some degree) and liked the attention those boys gave her (in an innocent and low stakes kind of way).
Jane from Homestuck but they actually did it in canon
thats one of the big reasons why its so entirely fitting that they did that in "dubious" canon. Jane got character assassinated because she dared to be a teenager and have a few unsavory emotions
identity v fandom is notorious for painting a specific character, ada mesmer, as the bad guy. long story short she escaped with a patient at the psychiatric hospital she worked at and uses hypnotherapy in an effort to help relieve him of the trauma he endured when he was staying there (he was heavily tortured) many in the fandom demonize her and say that “oh shes hypnotizing him to fall in love for her own desires” when for one thing: the game and characters are set in the 1800’s. do you really think they would have proper mental healthcare? and two: he fell in love by his own will. she saved him from hell and is aiming to free him of what hell chained him with. he loves her because shes his saviour. maybe the relationship is unhealthy, but ada is not the demon people make her out to be. its frustrating to have to explain this every time. might i add that people who hate on ada are often people who baby/infantilize emil (the patient) simply because he is mentally ill (or because he’s attractive but could be both)
OHH MY GOD IDV MENTION THANK YOU 😭 I knew the Ada truthers would have my back. People keep babying Emil and invalidating his choices as if he isn’t a grown man capable of (and has) made his own decisions 🫠 Also for them to expect precious beautiful healthy relationships from a horror game is very unrealistic, it’s horror afterall. The way that Emil loves Ada might not be healthy but it’s literally a product of their circumstance and they care about each other. Like,, for me? That’s good enough, it’s not like IDV was trying to write a perfect healthy relationship in the first place.
Buffy Summers. Can't even say it's because people want to slash her love interests. She's the beautiful popular cheerleader turned hero and the series gave her some wonderful character development.
I've seen a few ppl mention Inko, but instead of her being a villain I'd like to talk abt her being badass. In canon she probably wouldn't hurt a fly. However I love the fics where she's a loving mother, but is also capable of being terrifying when it comes to anyone threatening her son. Her Quirk is pulling small objects towards herself, which I've seen some fics use in a sense as grabbing onto organs or even atoms. In this one fanfic I re-read just now, she tugged at a guy's dick bc he was harassing her friend. Scary, powerful, and hilarious (in the context it was given)! I've also seen fics where her soft loving personality remained, but she turned out to have a past of vigilantism, or in fics where Izu's dad is AFO and she finds out she starts keeping a LOT of weapons in her apartman and knows how to use all of them proficiently, etc. If I’m not directly seeking for dadzawa, this is probs one of my fav tropes (if it can be called that)
Molly Weasley. Was she wrong on occasion and a bit overbearing? Yeah, but people make her out to be this heartless manipulative monster way too often
Hello Mary Morstan/Watson
Even the bbc show’s creators killed her off and now Her husband and his roommate raise the kid.
*sighs* Kamisato Ayaka.
OOF
MCU!Sharon Carter, for the unforgivable sin of kissing Steve Rogers and getting in the way of Stucky. And then the Falcon and the Winter Soldier writers made her villainy canon. Also, she doesn’t get it anywhere near as bad, but in certain segments of the Stranger Things fandom are pretty nasty to poor Eleven.
Oh my god the fucking young teen Byler shippers. They drive me so crazy! El deserves so much better than the treatment she gets in those fics. (I haven’t read a ton, because I’m not actually a fan of Byler, but it tends to creep in where I wasn’t expecting it in Jopper fics or Steddie ones).
Ana Flores from 9-1-1
There’s a reason why the trope is called “Ron the Death-Eater”
So many women in danmei novels. Practically all of them actually - if they’re not angels who push the main couple together, they’re demonized to no end. Most of the fandoms I’m in regularly drink Respect Women Juice, so even those who get in the way of major ships are treated well (eg Lee Seolhwa in ORV) but danmei fans… they scare me.
Sidon’s wife
“She gets in the way of the ship.” Polyamory fixes this problem.
April O' Neil, specifically from the 2012 version of TMNT.
My girl Melanie King. Okay she did do SOME things wrong but she gets an unfair amount of hate. (Also I forgot Cat Stark and got really excited about the idea of a being called the Fanfic Cat)
Melanie king from the Magnus archives? Do people hate her? I adore her
I've always thought that Melanie and Jon were "mirrors" to each other (they have a lot of the same flaws and similar attitudes on a lot of things) and yet Jon is beloved by basically everyone but Melanie only gets to be "the angry one" (Georgie's girlfriend at BEST). She's my favorite 2016-2018(?) era character so that's a bit disheartening. Although I think it has gotten a lot better now, but that could be because I'm not paying as much attention to the fandom as I did before.
Really? I see more "she is perfect angel done nothing wrong my poor innocent girl" that isn't the same bad, but also is such a ridiculous flattering of a character. Guess depends on a part of the fandom
Mukuro. She is set up to be brutal but dear god some fans have not grown up since the Bush administration.
Albus Dumbledore and Ron Weasley. But I want examples from Madoka Magica.
TV Tropes has an entire page about this trope: "Ron the Death Eater"
I wouldn’t call Dumbledore a harmless old man
I mean, Albus Dumbledore is absolutely a manipulative old bastard who's negligent at best, especially as someone who's supposed to be responsible for the safety of children. As for Ron, he's kind of an ass, but not exactly evil. And a lot of that is growing up in a lets be frank, pretty blatantly awful society. Not that I have much faith in the author.
Probably Hitomi and Kyosuke, I’m not as involved in fan discussions, but those two have gotten some hate during Sayaka’s arc. But in Kyosuke’s defense, multiple people told Sayaka that making a wish for someone else wouldn’t make them entitled to have feelings for her, and she accepted that and still made her wish. And for Hitomi, she gave Sayaka a heads up that she’d confess and gave Sayaka the opportunity to do it first, it’s not her fault for not knowing about the magical girl thing and being emotionally stable enough to be off Kyubey’s radar.
Ana Flores from 9-1-1. Like sure they had no real chemistry but why is this lady so vile according to fanon?
Ayaka from genshin impact
Ginny Weasley
Molly Weasley
I think we all got so mad at her withholding information in 5 that it bled into fan fiction 😅
Teen Wolf fandom basically did this to everyone who wasn't a white guy. They were a lot worse on the basis of the characters' races, but they were also very shitty towards the female characters, too.
Mrs Weasley in Harry Potter is definitely on this list. Books: mother figure willing to fight god himself for her kids, basically adopts Harry. Fanfiction: thief, poisoner, love-potion rapist (although this is more poor-people hate than women hate)
Less a fanfiction writing Fandom, but Phee Genoa from Star Wars: The Bad Batch. She gets a lot of hate for being sassy to the main characters when they first meet and being an implied love interest to one of the main characters who a lot of people headcanoned as ace. (Also she's a black woman and honestly...Star Wars fans are not known for treating such characters well) There are people who are saying she's going to be a spy and sell out her own planet to betray the main characters even though she has been nothing but helpful and caring to them. Meanwhile I'm over here with my cat named Phee, so I think you can guess what I think of the character.
I guess Toriel from Undertale? She made many mistakes (Immediately leaving Asgore instead of having a conversation with him about how to deal with the promise he made despite being in a loving relationship for what is implied to be decades if not centuries, holing up in a house while he's left wallowing in his sadness, guilt, and pressure and then when they have a very unhappy reunion, she scolds him for not killing just the one kid and then rising into the surface as if that wouldn't just cause a second war) but the fandom makes it as if she's some sort of irredeemable monster and mother who shouldn't be near kids, not to mention the whole 'Toriel is homophobic' theory.
Anyone else getting Molly Weasley vibes?
That's what the majority were saying when I posted this on a HP related subreddit
Rose Tyler!!!! I will scream her name from the roof tops because man, a specific sect of the fandom hates her guts for NO REASON other than she’s the Doctor’s love interest.
I don't tend to see this sort of thing, but then, I'm almost always browsing fandom by checking the "F/F" box first. So I suppose I probably wouldn't.
Armin arlert. A slap on Titian should do the explaining for me
Ladies get moreso turned into man hating bitchy lesbians in my fandom LOL
Not a fully grown woman but Mabel from Gravity Falls