Character hating in Fanfic(Harry Potter)

[Kimmimaru]

Oh look, Kimmimaru's having yet another rant! Lol. Sorry, I may be getting rather boring but this is something I find very odd indeed...

Ronald Billius Weasley (That is an epic middle name isn't it? Lol) from Harry Potter...I have to ask, why do so many people hate on him? I have to say that I absolutely ADORE his character, every time I read the original books he has me in stitches. He's funny and even in the movies Rupert Grint portrays him perfectly (in my head he is now how I imagine Ron when I read the book or even fanfic). I love the way Rowling wrote him, he's a little immature at times but let's be realistic here how many teenage boys are mature?

Then you have those who write slash and end up turning the female characters into utter bitches, in Canon they're not (Apart from Bellatrix and perhaps Narcissa) I have read several fics where the girls, such as Ginny Wealsey and Hermione Granger are portrayed as bitchy, nasty and generally not very nice, which completely deviates from known canon. Ginny does stupid stuff, such as write in Tom Riddle's diary, but for gods sake people she's ELEVEN! I ask anyone to truthfully say that they weren't plagued by idiocy at that age, especially when it came to trying to sift through all the hormones racing around your pre-teen brain and confusing everything. Hermione Granger is a little hoity-toity to begin with but Ron and Harry calm her down and as the books progress she becomes a loyal and brilliant friend.

Lastly, I have read at least one fanfic where the writer has demonised Dumbledore...once again refusing to take into account that he is only human. He admits it himself in canon and says to Harry that he made a mistake where he was concerned. Everything he does is for a definate reason and yes, it does cause more harm than good in certain cases (Ootp being a prime example) but ultimately if it wasn't for good ol' Dumble's Harry would have been murdered on the spot as soon as he first encountered Voldemort.

Ultimately, the main issues I have with demonising these characters is because people seem to prefer to turn Canon characters into some kind of Canon-esque Mary-sue type creatures...which is so, so wrong! It defeats one of Rowlings main theme's in the original books; THE CHARACTERS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FLAWED! THEY ARE HUMAN BEINGS!

Damnit people! No one is perfect, get OVER it.

I have had many, many reviews calling my versions of Sirius Black weak...because in my stories I exaggerate his home-life into an extremely abusive one, because in my opinoin no one who hates their family THAT much had a happy home life. He is a very disturbed individule in Canon and this COULD be due to having suffered some form of abuse at home...it is blatent from the reaction of his mother's portrait that at least a part of it was mental abuse. But anyway, back to the reviews, I have written some from the perspective of Sirius as a child, someone has decided to try and tell me that by making Sirius cry I am making him a 'Pussy' (Their words.) Let me just say that as far as I am concerned a six/seven/eight year old being punched in the face is hardly going to have the emotionally control to stop tears...get a grip you idiots. I have researched the mental/physical affects of abuse victims (I am writing and original story that has some abuse in it) and I can deduce that children who are abused will carry the scarring into their own lives. Even Harry Potter is not immune to mental scars, he is tortured by Voldemort in GoF and he is pretty messed up for a while...Alice and Frank Longbottom end up with horrific mental and physical damage from constant torture...and yet obviously I'm STILL wrong to have children cry when they're tortured and abused... No. Just...no.

(Lastly, of course, It's MY fucking story thank you, so unless you have some reasons why I should make Sirius ignore the fact that his own father is beating the shit out of him then STFU and get out)

Back to my OP, I am still utterly confuzzled as to why people turn the female characters and certain male ones into demons when in Canon they're really not...Perhaps someone could shed some light on this as I have no idea, lol.

[Daydreamer]

I've never liked Ron, though I don't agree with all the character bashing he gets. Well, if I want to be more accurate, I don't agree with character bashing at all, but thats neither here nor there. I try to avoid fics where he is the main character since he's one of my least favorite characters. For me personally, I feel that Ron lessened Harry's potential. While it's true he gave him a good friend, and one that stood by him for the most part, but Ron was pretty dang lazy at Hogwart's and he dragged Harry down with him. I think even some small part of him was attracted to Harry because of his noteriety as 'The Boy Who Lived'. I think that if Harry had not had Ron as such a deep and close friend, he would have been a much better student. That's my reasons for disliking him. I don't want to debate, just stating my reason and it could be the reason of others.

Female character bashing is horrible in slash fiction, especially if those characters are paired canonly with the author's fav male character. It really breaks my heart, but it occurs far to often. Just like Ron, I'm not a fan of Ginny as far as the books/movies, but in fiction as long as she's not the main character, I tolerate her presence, but hate when she is made out to be completely unlikeable.

I think a lot of fanfiction authors forget that the characters are already flawed and feel the need to add their own flaws, character bashing aside. Adding flaws to already flawed characters only exacerbates the flaws and makes them turn out terrible and seem overly OOC. And others, they just hate on them. Character bashing is really pointless and ruins perfectly good stories. I've exited out of more stories than I care to count because the bashing got to be too much that it seemed the focus of the story was to bash the characters. I have a lot more respect for authors that don't bash than those that do.

[JayDee]

You think those guys have it bad, you should see the shit Judas Iscariot has been getting...

[the4w5neko]

I didn't know people hated Ron.

I do know that the female characters in pretty much any story are treated unfairly.

For instance, in Rurouni Kenshin, people hate Kaoru and Misao for having violent tempers but they love Sano and Yahiko. What?

[JayDee]

Move the female characters out of the way and suddenly there's more "reason" for the male characters to make with the chocolate cha cha. It's generic slashfic 101!

[KerantliDreamer]

I've had people that say I've had Ron acting like an utter jerk when in canon he isn't, yet, I'm going on how he behaved when Harry and Ron fell out in the various books. That infamous Weasley temper comes into play, and he says things that are jerkish, or he acts like a jerk towards someone he likes.

If that is bad, or wrong of me, then all I can say is re-read the books and see what I mean. Yes he can be a loyal friend, but some of his actions really made me dislike him as a character in general, same with the way he was slacking off in school.