An Ode to Annoying, Unrelatable, and “Bad” Characters.
I understand that, to some degree, we all desire a connection with other people, with other human beings. We want to feel some kind of connection, to feel seen and heard and understood. That’s probably why a lot of Buzzfeed-type media has taken off in the last decade. It’s easier to swallow information if we already feel like we understand it—and the best way to make sure we understand it, is to make it “relatable.”
In the case of novels and fiction writing, there’s another reason for this, which is explained in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. Brody states that every story must have a “life lesson” and that each life lesson must be universal. It should be something that your protagonist must learn, something that if you were to talk about to any person on the street, they would be able to “relate to it.”
Unfortunately, some of us are downright incomprehensible at times. We say and do things we don’t mean. Some of us are even annoying. Some of us are complete dicks! So where are the books about absolutely heinous characters? The kind of characters that, if they were real people, you would cross the street to avoid them?
Too often, I come across book reviews where people DNF’d because they couldn’t “relate” to the character. And that’s fine—I think people should be able to DNF whatever they want for whatever reason they have. But it’s gotten to the point where if I start writing a book where the main character is less than a paragon, I’ll often meet pushback.
Which is a little bit strange to me. Maybe I’m just not up to date on the current book zeitgeist, but in my opinion, there is nothing more interesting than characters with more flaws than they have virtues. Nothing more enticing than a character who almost never learns from their mistakes. It's like touring an alien planet. They are so wonderfully distasteful, I NEED to see what's going on in their brain. I HAVE to crack open their head and study the contents. I can't help it! I’m hooked.
But it often seems to me that many readers prefer books with protagonists they can project on. If the character says or does anything that they would not necessarily agree with, they are “annoying” and “unrelatable”. And if they’re a YA protagonist? Good luck.
Sometimes, I’ll even read a book featuring a protagonist that many people consider “unrelatable” and discover that the reason why it’s unrelatable is because the protagonist is simply…Black. Or any other person of color. Or neurodivergent. Sometimes, it’s because the readers didn’t realize the protagonist was gay, and feels tricked into reading about someone that isn’t exactly like them, but most of the time, it really is because the protagonist does not come from the exact same background as the reader.
Which can be troubling for many (and hopefully obvious) reasons.
I’m not saying people should ONLY read books about unrelatable characters. I think for every 10 books I read, maybe 1 or 2 of them feature unlikable protagonists. However, it says a lot about the current state of the world if people are unable to push through a story simply because they could not relate to the main characters enough. They didn’t like them enough.
After all, how many people do you encounter on a weekly basis that you actually like? How many people do you merely tolerate because you kind of have to? Because doing otherwise would stir up more shit than you really have energy to deal with?
And if we were to push a little deeper, are you able to recognize someone from another country/culture as a unique human person, with their own customs, their own background, their own language? Can you find commonality with someone who doesn’t know what a meme is?
Sure, it may be a little inconvenient or annoying to try to parse through all that but I would argue that all of us, at some point in our lives, are inconvenient to others. We are unlikable. We are annoying. We grate on each other’s nerves, we make rash and extreme decisions, we simply become intolerable to some people. But unlike with books, we aren’t always able to walk away from each other. We have to deal with awful co-workers until our workday ends, we have to get through a holiday with a shitty family member, we have to share a room, or an elevator, or a street with someone that makes us consider what our mugshot would look like.
We are not all perfect people. Some of us are kind of awful. Or at the very least, have awful moments. Books with terrible (or vaguely annoying) protagonists serve to remind us of that.
The last book I read where I didn’t like the main character was Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough. That wasn’t to say the book was bad—it was so good! All it meant was that for the 300 or so pages there was, I was reading this book like it was the Real Housewives of wherever the book was set. I was rooting for absolutely Nobody™️ and I was filled with glee because it meant I didn’t have to feel bad about whatever happened to anyone.
I think we all deserve that kind of consequence-free schadenfraude. And not to sound like Old Man Yells At Cloud, but I fully blame social media for depriving us of this feeling. The idea that every video, every tiktok, every story must be relatable has destroyed the market of Unlikable Characters.
Is it not enough to revel in the deplorable? To read about shitty people, secure in the knowledge that you will not have to endure their presence in the real world—while enjoying the terrible decisions they make, and the consequences they reap?
Must everything and everyone be relatable?