#bc now you have neither a unique oc nor an established canon character but a fusion of both who is committing the ultimate fiction sin:

[evilkitten3]

#but seriously i do think bashing is deeply annoying#like it doesn't make me think ''wow this person really hates this character''#it makes me think ''wow this person has no idea who this character is at ALL''#< prev tags#THIS#you just dislike the character and makes no effort to even accept he has nuance or why he has fans#i wouldn't even dislike haters that much if they actually understand the character they hate. i have a friend who hates obito AND madara but#actually gets their characterization miles better than many fans I've encountered

solid points but tbh it's frankly more of an annoyance to me when it's with characters that are generally unpopular (often due to legitimately not being all that likable), since it gets more widespread more quickly.

then it sorta takes on a life of its own and people seem to start expecting it in other stories despite having zero canon basis or even contradicting established canon. which is actually more annoying but not the issue i'm addressing here which is that i think a lot of fic writers don't realize that character bashing is bad writing almost 99% of the time.

if you're writing from a specific character's point of view, it absolutely makes sense to factor in their opinion of a character they dislike (in which case it isn't bashing, it's just. a character having a negative view of someone). say, a son pov concerning his complicated relationship with his father. but a character with no insight on that particular father-son dynamic shouldn't have the same biases. even characters who do have some knowledge of whatever the situation is should have different opinions on it bc ultimately they're outsiders to the scenario.

since we're on the topic of naruto, in my experience, the most commonly bashed characters are danzou, hiruzen, and sakura (which. boy it sure is depressing that that's the lineup. more depressing still that fourth place is almost definitely sasuke). that's not to say that there's not a reason to dislike any of those three (tho as you already know i'm a fan of all of them XD) but through the lens of bashing they go from characters a person may dislike to a bunch of barely tied together negative adjectives with no motivation outside of Cause Plot Problems.

and i think the most baffling thing to me about all of this is. so many people who write bashing fics are fans of the story's canon antagonists, so they should KNOW that a villain with no substance isn't very interesting. an antagonist who tries to cause problems, gets Epically Owned by the Super Cool Hero, and storms off in a huff to go plot to cause more problems which will result in getting Epically Owned again. this character's motivations are meaningless, their inner life is nonexistent, and ultimately the only point of their existence in the whole universe is so that the person writing the story can yell "HEY LOOK HOW MUCH THIS LOSER SUCKS". which is a) boring, and b) actually making them more sympathetic most of the time bc if the universe itself is literally reaching in to fuck up your whole life maybe you deserve to be a bit of a bitch about it

big fanfic pet peeve of mine is character bashing. if you hate a character you should put work into it. bashing is half-assed. usually that's not even the same guy anymore. show me the mf you hate, don't just stack a bunch of Bad Traits together and write DooDooHead on his face. lazy hatred, disgusting

whatever happened to hater pride