I really dislike Mrs Weasley.

[cockneysalad]

She is an awful character, she seems to prefer Harry to Ron and is mean to Fleur. She is also a bit of a stereotype, the apron, the knitting, the homemaker etc. Which literary characters annoy you and why?

Holden Caulfield. What a whiny, self-centred little twat.

I can't believe I'm saying this but... I can't stand Hagrid.

• ducks for cover-

Simon Serailler from Susan Hill's detective novels.

He's just so one-note and emotionless. He's supposed to feel it so deeply when his sister dies, but he just...doesn't. He's so flat. And, on TV, I feel the same about Foyle in Foyle's War. For gods, sake, emote a bit, chaps! It's all very well being enigmatic, but there's got to be something going on underneath!

Another vote for Bella Swann, miserable, whiny, self absorbed drip. When she arrives at a new school, people are genuinely friendly to her...the utter bastards, how dare they be nice and take an interest?

@BatleyTownswomensGuild, but that’s kind of the point of Eilis Lacey — she’s just an unexceptional, dull, smalltown girl with no particular talents or strength of character who, like a lot of dutiful Irish daughters of her generation (including my mother), essentially did as she was told by parents and authority figures and resisted only passively, if at all.

The frequency with which we’ve come across bigamous emigrant marriages in family tree research also suggests that the secret ‘foreign’ marriage never acknowledged at home was not unheard of.

Hear, hear to whoever — @MarieIVanArkleStinks? — dislikes PD James’ Adam Dalgliesh — we’re clearly supposed to find him devastatingly attractive, whereas he’s a chilly, self-absorbed, self-satisfied smugathon, and the rest of the world is just too tacky for him to give it any of his austerely good-looking attention. I take great pleasure in imagining his poetry as sort of underdone TS Eliot.

I know, right? I can buy both Charlie being cool, and Harry finding Charlie cool. Charlie is outdoorsy and down to earth and works with dragons.

Harry has no more idea of fashion sense than a mushroom. He has (as previously stated, and yes I know about the abhorrent thing that is Draco/Harry slash) absolutely no homoerotic leanings whatsoever.

He does not find Bill cool.

Also, Hagrid. Hagrid reminds me of no one more than the very drunk bloke who used to work the college bar in my university - the one who was in his 40s but spent all his time hanging around teenagers and facilitating breaking the rules, and periodically getting inappropriately pissed on the job. And everyone was all 'yeah, top bloke, lovely man, isn't he great?'

I understand that the idea with Hagrid is that Dumbledore (who is also a grade A manipulative twat) kept him on because he felt sorry for him. But really? Dumbledore couldn't find him a nice job somewhere else? Or, you know, pay him to go to the wizard version of AA and get some therapy?

she deserved Amy burning her novel, and Amy getting the Europe trip instead of her

I have always been an Amy fan :)

YES!! Holden fucking whining twat Caulfield...I was so excited to find Cathehr in the Rye in a holiday cottage we had for a week. thought I'd read this wondrous classic...wharraLOADashite

stupid americans.

Dumbledore annoys the fuck out of me ... Just bloody explain things - it would save so much hassle later!
Mrs Weasley, Ginny, Frodo, Sam ( way too forelock tuggy ) Everyone in every Thomas Hardy novel ever. All of Walter Scott ( had to do him for A level, l didn't read them on purpose! )
Lydia out of the James Asher vampire novels - she's supposed to be adorable and it just makes me cringe when the author gets other characters to gush about her!

catcher....stupid typos :O

To be fair wizards dont seem to go to school until they are 11 so ginny is at home full time in the first book. Mrs weasley must have has a child at home full time from when the eldest was born until ginny went to school. After that career reak it would be very difficult to re-enter the workplace

And after home schooling Fred and George you’d probably need a few years of peace and quiet to recover

@corythatwas - I don't know, I mean Ron doesn't even have a working wand for the first few books, you must be pretty poor if you can't afford to buy a wand for your kid who's going to wizard school. It's like being the only student nowadays without a tablet or laptop, surely he would be at a huge disadvantage?

I also agree with all the other posters wondering a) what the hell Mrs Weasley does for ten months out of the year while all her kids are at school and b) why are they still so poor by the end of the series, when five of her kids are working full time and living outside the home, and the other two are away at boarding school for most of the year.

also dislike Odysseus and his wanky little son Telemachus(both in the original and even more so in Atwood's Penelopiad, although that's intentional) for being such patronising, patriarchic dicks to Penelope, murdering the maids, etc. You've been away for twenty years you idiot, instead of saying well done to the wife who's managed to keep your estate together and raise your son single handedly while fending off suitors without offending them you decide to play some weird mind games? And then murder servants for having sex with men when they probably didn't exactly have much choice in the matter?

Love Moll Flanders, Tess, and Daenerys Targaryen, though. Also Eowyn from LOTR, not just because of the 'killing the WK baddassey' but also because of the convincing portrayal of depression and misplaced glory of war, and the effort it takes to overcome it.

I got an early copy of one of the later HP novels at a midnight opening, and told a tube carriage of drunk people that Hagrid was killed in battle trying to save Harry from Bellatrix Lestrange. I think I invented a proper tearjerker deathbed too.

I’ve always found Hagrid deeply annoying.

Anastasia Steele is surely the worst female character written in recent years.

I know the entire book series is awful, but she is just a horrific character. The films are of course worse.

In fact every character in that book series is awful.

Harry is annoying, he spends the entire time asking questions! All the bloody time!!

James Potter was a bully to Snape and Sirius fancied him.

My other theory is that Filtch’s cat Mrs Norris used to be human, and he possibly fancied her.

Holden Caulfield, Adam Dalgleish, yes, pair of annoying creations, have never understood their appeal. And yes again, everyone in Wuthering Heights, the first book I read in which nobody possessed one redeeming feature. Is anyone still alive who's read Forever Amber? Unscrupulous and devious but hard to dislike.

Sirius Black, and i am sorry to say it, Dobby, annoying little twat. I wasn' keen on Fred and George either tbh. Angel bloody Clare, and yes the girl from 'Brooklyn', so dull i can't even remember her name.

Miriam in Sons and Lovers. My English teacher used to go on about how sweet she was, but I found her incredibly wet and annoying.

Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop. I couldn't stand her, and 100% agreed with Oscar Wilde's view that you'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh when she dies.

Talking of Heathcliff, I liked the version in the Jasper Fforde books where he gets sent off for anger management sessions.

Jasper Fford did a great job on Heathcliffe, how he was always winning the “tragic hero of the year award”. He’s a psychopath but Cathy was a boring Narcissist.

Angel Clare was a wankbadger.

@longwayoff Sat 13-Jun-20 23:37:40
Is anyone still alive who's read Forever Amber? Unscrupulous and devious but hard to dislike.

I read it about 35 years ago so can't actually remember anything about it other than that I enjoyed it. I did have a discussion in RL recently about how a generation of mothers wouldn't use the name Amber for their daughters because of it (as I know of a couple of Ambers who are under 20).

Emma annoys me intensely but I find Knightlys grooming her since childhood much more creepy.

Holden Caulfield. What a whiny, self-centred little twat.

Yes, Christ I hate this book. I read it when I was 17 and some of my peers were raving about it (I was emo before it was a thing). Despite my teenage pretentiousness, I found the book to be excruciating shite.

I read it again at 35 to make sure. Still felt the same way.

Another character who gives me the rage is Win from the Harlan Coben novels. Two dimensional misogynist rich boy. Think he’s supposed to be written as strangely aloof and attractive but he makes me want to wring his fucking neck.

adastarkadder I think I had a huge crush on Rob Roy when i was about 15. I didn't even have to do the books for school, I was just a precocious twat who had a reading list to "improve my cultural offer". I pulled the reading list together myself (I was a nerdy student librarian)

@lovepickledlimes once, and not at her. She stopped other people calling her "Loony".

Snape and Augusta Longbottom.

First, let's start with Snape. Finding out he was a spy all along supposedly vindicates him, as fandom has explored in minute detail. But backtrack a bit. Snape is such a terrible, abusive teacher that he is 13 year old Neville Longbottom's worst fear. Neville has actually developed a phobia of his teacher. Snape did not need to go to those lengths to protect his role as spy and he and Dumbledore could have easily worked out stratagems to avoid it. They could have made it seem like Dumbledore had Snape on a tight leash and was demanding professionalism from all his members of staff. But no.

Augusta Longbottom for letting her family torment Neville throughout his childhood to see if it triggered accidental magic. He nearly drowned at one point! And let us note, even after being dangled (and dropped!) out of windows by his Great-Uncle Algie and nearly drowned, his worst fear is still Severus Snape.