“Hilarious and absolutely right” is actually my Tinder bio, but for some reason it never seems to work.
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When you buy a book and get flashbanged by the most detestable character, or the most underbaked romance, there is no amount of angry complaining that is going to get your wasted money back, so I think its fair.
On the topic of underbaked romances, the evil elf Queen (forgot her name) from Crown of Sorcery (forgot the full name). The only RO I found interesting, and the author left her path baking for three minutes, and said: “Good enough, enjoy!”.
You barely interact with her in the story, and when you do, 80% of the interactions are through a magical phone/watch thingie, and boil down to the Queen asking if you still work for her, and how much she cant wait to meet you, and how horny she is.
And in the climax, after betraying eveyone, you meet her, resist the urge to stab her in the back after seeing her in-game portrait (dear god), and you kiss.
Then, in the epilogue, you have sex while floating.
Thats it.
It bad, very bad. There is probably more content in the subplot about getting that damn fancy orc back in his throne than there is in the entire Queen romance.
Its not the RO I hate the most, but its the romance that disapointed me the most.
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But like. Is the singular romance/character really the only thing that makes a book worth it to you? Is a single character truly so bad that you feel “flashbanged” by their quality?
When I’m talking about entitlement, I don’t mean the natural entitlement of a consumer–we all do expect and deserve a certain level of quality with our purchases–but I mean the idea of feeling entitled to have a fictional character behave the exact way you want them to at all times. The idea that something must be wholly and entirely written to cater to your specific interests and needs, the want of the author or other parts of the reading base be damned.
I think it’s fully justifiable and understandable, even, to be disappointed in a romance or hate a character. But some of the ways people talk about the characters go beyond constructive critique and reason, and more into assumptions, accusations, and exaggerations.
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Everyone makes purchases for their own reasons, IF you buy a book only because you are interested in a single character, and their romance turns out to be below what you expected, its wasted money.
A very expecific situation, for sure, but I believe you paid for the right to complain.
Of course expecting a character to be exactly what you want is unreasonable, and demanding it to be exactly what you want is as well, but you still get the right to complain about it, in the right place to do so, while being polite enough that it doesnt come out as complaining for the sake of complaining.
Assumptions and accusations, I understand, but exaggerations? When talking about romances in a IF, its all subjective, there is nothing that is a exaggeration.
I could say that Ortega is the worst RO I’ve ever seen, and she destroyed my enjoyment of Fallen Hero, that would only be my subjective opinion, you can THINK that its a exaggeration, but that would only be your opinion as well.
(I love Ortega, its was only an example)
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True enough, but frankly if you are so angry about a disappointing purchase but decide to complain about a specific character repeatedly online without any form of actual critique, I do consider that an expression of entitlement. I’m not coming out here in opposition of complaining–I’m speaking specifically about how some people choose to express their criticisms in ways that are unnecessarily hostile and toxic.
I’m not sure where I said otherwise? What I said was that there are times when I read someone’s post and come away from it feeling that they are being inappropriately hostile and that it comes across as entitlement.
I’m going to make up an example to show what I mean with an exaggeration.
Barbara Pennycomb is one of the romance options in the regency IF, Bird Fountains Are Beautiful. She is usually kind and sweet, but she is upset with the MC for a tragic and painful slight that they’ve committed against her. Someone on here might take Barbara, and say that Barbara is an insane Pick-Me Girl who is fake as heck, overly sensitive, and a Mary Sue. Also, Barbara is probably a stalker nutcase who will snap and kill everyone at a moment’s notice. Barbara deserves to die, and the author is also a Pick-Me Girl because they express sympathy towards Barbara within the narrative.
It’s totally okay to dislike Barbara and to criticize her as a character, but at this point, the commenter is making up completely false reasons to dislike Barbara, and is also using their dislike of Barbara to make insinuations on the author’s character.
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Waves 
I’ve actually been meaning to do another one, but other writing stuff I’ve been doing off-site has been distracting me.
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Agreed, as I said, be polite enough that it isnt complaining for the sake of complaining.
You didnt, I was agreeing with you.
Weird, but I wouldnt classify making shit up as exaggeration, that just lying.
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Ah, okay. I’m not sure why we were arguing then if we’re completely in agreement haha.
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Basically the conversation just now:
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I do Not want to be rude, but this thread IS for venting and not living constructive critique. Thats what the WIP or discussion threads are for. That is the reason @HannahPS said, that an author should be careful Reading this thread.
Personally I think If I was an author I would love seeing my characters getting called out here by name. When people hate your char its a Kind of compliment, that you wrote them good enough to be mentionend, that people feel them. I would be heartbroken, when people don’t remember them. Like “oh that Story yeah there was romance but I can’t even remember details of it!”
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It really depends. If I wrote a character like seven I would be deeply worried if they did not turn up in a thread like this, because seven holds an antagonistic role in the story and thus should ruffles some feather and frustrate people. They are a source of conflict in the story.
But then there is Ferrado where the discussion of Ferrado is not just about that specific character of even heart of batttle, but also an expression of the general frustration with heart of choice as a whole, but also the frustation many people feel that their romance stories are being santized and scrubbed off all edge. So poor Ferrado sort of becomes the symbol for both of those things and thus get discussed again and again, which is not the authors fault, but must be frustrating if you are the author.
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I feel like this depends on why there’s the dislike for them. As an example of what I mean let’s take two commonly disliked ROS, Darcy from Professor of Magical Studies and Ferrado from Heart of Battle.
Darcy is the good kind of dislike, imo, because people dislike her for the things the character does. None of the complaints are about the writing or the way she fits into the story, it’s just straight up “this person is the worst”. This is a character that people get invested in, in a “I hate them and I am going to ruin their life” sense, and that’s great. (I love Darcy. She’s the best.)
On the other hand I’d say that Ferrardo is the bad kind of dislike, because a lot of the complaints about this character aren’t founded on the character’s actions so much as they are criticisms of the story itself. It’s not “I hate them for what they did”, it’s “this character sounds like a preachy twitter thread about unhealthy relationships and I don’t want that in a romance story”.
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ROs that you will just say that you slightly dislike because you don’t want to ofend the author or the readers thread
Yelp, I’m done with this thread
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I mean, TO BE FAIR… >_>
Well, maybe if he didn’t want me to want him to die in an oil fire he shouldn’t go around SNATCHING PEBBLES, YOU EVER THINK OF THAT, ROSES, HAVE YOU?!
I presume this is the case in Heart’s Choice stuff, but I think I only played one of those (if that? maybe? I THINK the whatsitsname dimensional pirates one is Heart’s Choice) and I didn’t like it, so I never went into threads about it, so I don’t know for sure.
But it’s also the case with games marketed primarily as romance games, even if they aren’t Heart’s Chocie. This includes stuff like Soulstone Wars (the first book of which I want to set on fire for, ironically, reasons utterly unrelated to the romances), Shadow Society (it’s dead and I weep), and Wayhaven (which I certainly wouldn’t be playing still if it wasn’t for the M romance, because the non-rom parts past the first book are eeeeeehhhhhhhh).
Like, comparing Wayhaven to Golden Rose, for instance, Golden Rose has a lot I could latch onto if I didn’t like the romances (and there’s only, what, two for het males, so the chances for “I don’t like any of these people” weren’t all that low, but fortunately Alessa is awesome in every possible metric, so yay), but Wayhaven just does not. 
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I think it’s safe to say that, as an author, it doesn’t feel good to see a character get dunked on (if they intended them to be likable etc etc.), but I also don’t think expressing a negative opinion should be equaled to bullying. As long as things don’t go off-topic.
Take me, for example. I hate stupid ass Manerkol. I think he’s as boring as saltless bread, but that doesn’t mean I hold a grudge against the author for writing them that way.
I guess readers tend to be more vocal about ROs where romance is a big issue because, usually, if you don’t like any of the ros then 99% you’re going to dislike everything else.
TLDR; People online have taken serious words such as bullying, problematic and others I can’t name otherwise this would be flagged and watered them down to be used for whatever petty thing they need it for… yikes.
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With a mod hat on, this thread is moderated more lightly than some other areas of the forum (recent flags notwithstanding) and I broadly think it is OK to have the ABRAHAM PEBBLESNATCHER kinds of posts here - although HOPE THEY DIE IN AN OIL FIRE could result in being asked to chill out a bit, and if forum rules are being infringed, that’s something to flag.
I am very wary of saying something that implies “anything goes in this thread!” because that isn’t true… but I also think that in a thread called “ROs you hate”, there’s a certain timbre of discussion that is reasonable to expect.
I totally agree, and really love seeing this sort of thing - feedback can hugely improve authors’ work. But although those elements are a nice side-effect of this particular thread, I do think better places for it are in WIP threads, announcements, discussion threads, etc, or other romance-discussion threads.
Part of my reasoning being that it doesn’t feel fair to expect either:
a) authors to treat a 2500+ post thread, which may include some critique, but is more for players to chat about in-game frustrations, as constructive targeted feedback
or
b) players not to talk dramatically about ROs they dislike in a thread framed as a venting area (perhaps the thread would have led to different sorts of discussion if it had been called the “constructive critique of ROs thread” but that’s another universe)
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As a writer, I would definitely want to know if people would want for my intended-likeable characters to die in fire (and why), although preferably in a stage where I could still change that before publishing, because it would sound like something might be very very wrong with the writing. Although I agree that I would also prefer to have that made known in a wip thread.
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One person’s trash is another person’s treasure; a character personality archetype that we are intended to like (for example: broody and distant, sweet and gentle, yandere with no issues hurting their target to keep them close, etc.) could be hated because of those traits. RO hate doesn’t have to be rational.
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I mean, I’m one of the loudest Jun simps and people hate him for fully deserved reasons. I also like Ash, and he appeared in this thread as well - when I complain about LIs, it’s usually not because they’re murderous and horrible people that hurt others (that, in fact, is what I like in them in the first place), it’s because to my eyes they’re either boring, hypocritical or both. Nothing worse than a boring hypocrite!
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And I do get that! But I do also believe there’s such a thing as healthy versus toxic venting. Some of the comments I’ve seen here I think come across as more toxic than anything else. Not naming names or linking posts, but sometimes a comment I read here would strike me as not all that different from something you’d see on r/lastofus, if you know anything about that toxic place.
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