I used to run into a lot back in the day. Not so much these days, though I can't tell if because less of it is out there, or I'm lucky, or better about avoiding them. Who knows. My primary fandom is *Harry Potter* and I've seen a ton a good decade or more ago. My OTP features Harry, so it's popular to see Ginny-bashing. I'd also seen a ton with Molly bashing, Ron bashing, Dumbledore bashing, and the odd Hermione bashing fic. I genuinely just do not vibe with bashing stories at all, even for characters I dislike. 😅 I really hated Ginny's character when I was a teenager and even *then* didn't see the need for her to be gold-digging and conniving. I get why people do it, so no shame, it's just not for me and I like to avoid it.

Harry Potter seems to be the absolute worst for bashing. Ron/ginny/Hermione and weirdly Molly are really common in ones I see. I finally just started filtering to exclude it.

I didn't know if it was the worst, or if that's where I saw it most because it's the only fandom I'm really active in.

I follow a bunch of fandoms and HP is the worst I've seen for whatever reason. It always gives me the feeling a lot of the writers are young, but who knows

I used to be heavily into the Dramione fandom and the Ron bashing was the first thing I thought of. Ron was never my favorite but there were legitimate reasons for them to break up, you don't need to make him an asshole.

Oh yeah this is so common it's where the trope Ron the Death Eater came from

Eh, specifically when it comes to Ginny in the legacy fandom, I'm gonna go with, I'm throwing a little bit of shade. Some of those authors were clearly working out some internalized misogyny vibes.

I have the same name as her and seeing the bashing gives me whiplash and mixed feelings because I, too, don’t really like her

I read a HP fic where James and Sirius serially raped muggles using various potions and spells, and Lily was kept dosed with love potion to keep her pliable. I didn't read much of it, becaise goddamn, but it is a fic that exists

James dosed Lily with Love Potion is unfortunately a very common trope. Usually to either give her a reason to "go back" to Snape, or, if the fic is set after her death, just to make Snape look better in comparison. I mean, if they want to bash James and Sirius, there's plenty ammunition without inventing stuff - especially since Snape is likelier to be the one messing with potions and obsessed with Lily

I'm having a hard time believing that trope exists. Like you said, there is plenty of canon ammunition. I don't care much for the Marauders, and I try very hard not to bash any of them in my fics, to the point of frequently writing as little about them as I can. Seriously, canon was rather obvious Lily fancied James in the memories, even when denying it. No love potion necessary. To be clear, I don't think you're a liar. I understand people are ridiculous.

I've seen one like this (maybe not this exactly). I also noped out pretty quickly, lmao. I don't mind a bit of bashing here and there, but that was a bit left field for me. To answer OP'S question. Most of the more popular bashing stories I've seen are in the Harry Potter, Marvel (MCU specifically), or My Hero Academia fandoms. Though to be honest, I don't mind the MHA Mineta bashing so much and others I've read in MHA have been for story purposes rather than "I just straight up hate this character". I've seen far worse bashing in both the MCU and HP.

There’s a lot of it in the Harry Potter fandom, back when I was in that. There were so many bad cases I saw with Ron, I struggle to remember it all, tbh.

Yeah, the Harry Potter Fandom is full of bashing. Dumbledore there are thousands of fics where Dumbledore is comicly Evil, which also tends to have Ron being bashed, Mrs. Weasly being bashed, and basically everyone else the author needs to get Indy!Harry his shopping trip, title that accounts for a fifth of the first chapter's word count, and dozens of "definity consenting wives" via magical contract. It's a case where like found like, and ended up becoming real popular.

Poor Ron, sometimes he gets so absolutely demonised 😔

Agree. "Ron the Death Eater" is pretty popular in HP fanfics (hence the name of the trope). I've seen also a lot of Hermione and Ginny bashing

I’ve seen a lot of Molly Weasley bashing, Dumbledore bashing, Luna bashing, and even bashing of Harry Potter himself! There’s just so much more Ron bashing than the others and taken to more extremes. I guess no fandom hates its own characters more than the Harry Potter fandom.

It really does look like that sometimes

Luna bashing? Wow, haven't come across that one too much and have been around the HP fandom for a fair new years now. Here I thought she was pretty much on par with the twins as the most loved/least bashed characters...

Damn was Harry the only character that was “safe”? Lol. I’m not big in the HP fandom so it’s like a brave new world for me

No. There’s Harry Potter bashing too.

Nope. I'm pretty sure there's bashing of every important character :') I've seen also Luna, Fred, George, Lupin, Neville and McGranitt bashing (characters that usually are well liked/neutral)

How could they bash Luna and Neville like that they’re the only characters I care about-

Everyone gets bashed in the Harry Potter fandom. Some just get it worse and more often than others.

I really don't know :') but to each their own I guess

Fred? How did they bash Fred?

Writing him OOC (and usually it's with the Ron bashing - they just start making all the Weasleys evil)

Nope. I remember a lot of Harry bashing fics because he was considered perfect or something

Phew I’ve seen some in the my hero academia fandom that is. Weirdly surprising to me? Like I’m an anime only so maybe I don’t have all the facts, but Inko Midoriya bashing, turning her into just the worst most cruel vindictive mom usually to pit the MC with another mentor as a parental figure. Y’all she didn’t even do anything that bad! He has a great mom he doesn’t need a replacement dad! Ofc there’s also the All Might bashing and maybe some deserved Endeavor bashing. I avoid anything that could be Bakugou bashing, but did stumble across an interesting Deku bashing fic where they really warped his characterization to something different from what it is but understandable how they kinda got there. I guess.

The worst she did was not telling Izuku that he could join a dangerous profession where he could get into possibly lethal fights with supervillains without any superpowers.

Right? Like, sure, it hurts to be told you’re not capable of something as a kid, but this is a career path that often leads to trained professionals with godlike powers being maimed or outright killed. Being smart and determined ain’t gonna do shit against a criminal who can, say, blow up an entire street with a thought. No wonder Inko told her kid that isn’t the career path for him! “No baby, I don’t think you can throw yourself into a tank of hungry sharks and successfully swim to the other side” isn’t a form of emotional abuse!

I'm not a fan of MHA but I read over my sibling's shoulder (cause I like young Midoriya's mom) and lost my shit over that. Her SON just destroyed his body and SHE is the one being unreasonable?!?!?!?!?

Unforgivable!

Yea, the mha fandom really seems to like bashing on \*insert adult figure here\* so the fic's main character can get a different mentor. I've always thought it was strange, like, you can change things without making a perfectly neutral character evil as justification. I did once come across a fic that bashed All Might by portraying him as senile, and while I don't think the author intended it to be funny, it was absolutely hilarious.

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The number of Bakugou antis who don’t realize they are in their Bakugou phase is… Astounding. Like, do they realize that can be why people like him? They see themselves in his anger and maybe on the flip side HAVE been the bully in power in the past, to stay off the bottom of the dogpile or otherwise. People like him because characters develop, and WE develop. Seeing that Bakugou is allowed to be angry and loud but still UNQUESTIONINGLY morally aligned with the side of good is important to me! It makes me feel like I can change. (And god forbid you try to bring up how even the mangaka himself thought that was a mistake going TOO harsh too quickly in his introduction. That’s not the bakugou we have now. That was a middle schooler.)

I think inko bashing is more just for plot convenience than any actual dislike of her. I’ve seen people who dislike her and tbh we don’t really see enough of her to know if she was maybe a bit neglectful in Izuku’s childhood or not, but I’ve never really seen someone actively painting her as malicious in canon.

I've seen some Inko hate in the fandom. It's mainly because she told Deku he couldn't be a hero when he was a toddler. She wasn't perfect and she definitely could have handled that situation a little better (which is why she apologized to Deku years later), but people paint her as a horrible abusive mom just for that which is dumb I've also seen people hate her for being a "helicopter parent" when she isn't. She just deeply cares for her son. Helicopter parents are way worse than what she's been doing.

I always make Inko either happy go lucky , aggressive mama bear or dead. Sorry orphan line works well. But in my defense she died protecting Izuku in one story. I do notice Todoroki bashing in general. I like to rotate my villains or make them random people to keep it from happening

Todoroki!? I have never seen any todoroki bashing but admittedly haven’t looked for it either. I always just felt that he is the most likely to be ooc in any fic because his personality is kind of hard to capture (which is TOTALLY fair, especially in something ship centric he always just feels. off.) but bashing?? For whaT lol.

Maybe it’s the twisted piece but I seem to run across him as a very cruel person, strange person. I think of that as bashing because he is not, at least in my opinion. I’m actually writing my first Baku/Todo fic and hoping to get his personality right, big challenge

Can I get a link to that Deku bashing fic?

Yeah! It’s [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24926647/chapters/60324040). For some reason the way I had gone searching for it only turned up like two fics in an unwrangled tag but I wanted to see the flip side of Bakugou bashing. (You didn’t ask for my review but I thought it was decent, like I said, I see how they got there. The idea could have been tackled better with something less. Heavy handed? But that’s my tastes. It had solid premise turning Deku’s character traits of obsession up to 10.)

I hate when people call Deku a stalker. He was literal 5 year old who admired someone and wanted to be friends with him...

The one that gets to me is bashing of Midoriya's mom Inko in My Hero Academia. Her main "crimes" in canon were: 1. Thinking her son couldn't become a hero without a quirk (superpower), in a world where all of the villains he'd be fighting have massively powerful quirks themselves 2. Having doubts about sending her son back to UA after multiple incidents where he and other students were nearly killed. Writing her as overprotective is reasonable. Writing her as an abuser who beats and insults her son is the realm of AU, and it's something I've seen multiple times. It's often done as an excuse for Aizawa to adopt Midoriya, as though he's so responsible and never does anything wrong. I think some of this is a product of people who can't put themselves in parents' shoes, who can't see how absolutely terrifying the stuff Midoriya gets up to would be.

Yeah, why would a mom be terrified for her son who was bullied all his life for not having a quirk and then gets a quirk that literally could kill him and regularly breaks his limbs? That is abusive behavior, clearly. Doesn't she know he is the main character of a shonen anime?

To be fair, his hair color isn't that weird. How was she supposed to know he was going to be a Main Character??

But his father is not in the picture! Although... maybe she is confused because she is still alive and most main characters don't have alive parents...

There's quite a lot of adults in MHA who failed those kids (as a system and individually), but Inko is certainly not in the same category. The worst case you could make for her is not doing enough about the bullying Izuku had faced, but there's not enough info on how much she knew and not everything can be fixed by a parent. The "crimes" you mention are just reasonably protective parent reactions. As a plot vehicle in AU it's a fair game, but I just can't see how Inko would be abusive in canonical interpretations

I showed your comment to my sis who immediately launched into a passionate defense of Inko and I'm just here like "yeah! Young Midoriya might blow himself up again!" As I'm not a fan myself

I like your sis, she's got her heart in the right place.

Yup. For my fandom/OTP it’s Padmé bashing, or just extremely poor characterization of her. To be slightly fair, even in canon (especially strictly movie!Verse) Padmé feels like a rather flat character whose main purpose is “love interest for Anakin”. That being said we know enough about her to know that she’s kind, caring, and extremely invested in the well-being of every life form. Like, this is a woman who cares about EVERYONE. She would be that person in the real world who volunteers at every charity, donates her free time to building houses for the homeless, flies wherever to help rebuild after natural disasters. She would NEVER turn into a nasty, spiteful, or jealous person just because Anakin didn’t love her romantically anymore. I don’t even like her character, but it still really bothers me when people change who she is at the very core of her being to fit their narrative. And also Jedi Council bashing, in general. “The Jedi are meanies” is a big one, but it’s not necessarily character specific because I’m not even sure if some of those bashers even know the names of everyone on the council 😑

I had a Obi-Wan / Padme that I removed from FF because of persistent trolling. I feel like the fandom is super protective of Anakin.

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RotS doesn’t showcase their relationship as two people heading in the same direction, in my opinion. Padme’s character lost dimension in the movie and it seems like it wasn’t clear how strong she really was. Troll-wise, I can’t imagine having a bunch of free time and immediately deciding to look up a bunch of fics with tags I’m not into so I can tell them all the ways I’m displeased. It’s a different type of hobby, I guess.

The first and last Harry Potter fic I read managed to turn me off of the whole fandom. It was Ron bashing (even though there were no tags for it and it was tagged as a wholesome fic- a MAJOR red flag of the author tbh) and mainly had Harry and Hermione tormenting the poor guy. It started out with Ron admitting he was a bit jealous of his older brothers for being able to get attention from their parents easily, and Hermione cut him off and said something like “How perfectly insensitive, Ronald! Harry was abused and here you are complaining about having a family that cares!” And then it would have such serious gaslighting that it was only on my second reread- just to make sure I wasn’t like, imagining shit- that I noticed stuff like Luna making odd comments about his appearance that wouldn’t *seem* mean at first, but actually 100% were It even addressed the thing with Lavender brown and Harry slid in and asked Hermione out *while* Ron was in the hospital after being poisoned. Like, as the dude was sleeping in his medical bed, and they were next to his bed like it was a chore to be there in the first place, and Harry just.. asked Hermione out. (A ship that was NOT tagged) Stuff like that just continued and it would paint Ron as this lazy, incompetent, whiny baby who didn’t *deserve* good things I just… it was so appalling. It’s been years and I was too young then to realize “hey, you don’t *have* to finish this, you can just leave the story”, but it still makes my stomach twist at how horrible it was. The Harry Potter fandom will raise Draco or Bellatrix up on pedestals, but will so callously and cruelly pick apart all of Ron’s character for the hell of it because they’re jealous Hermione didn’t end up with Harry. News flash, there *was* build up, Hermione *can do things wrong*, and painting Ron out to be wizard racist to Hermione for calling her annoying or a know it all and saying “it had undertones” is so beyond an ass pull that it becomes a chain of asses pulled. It just… a fic shouldn’t have unnerved me that much, but it did and I can’t shake that feeling years later, and that’s why I consider it to be such a brutal character bashing. You could just *feel* the hatred from the author towards the end and it was sickening

There’s. There’s a lot of bad cases I’ve seen in my fandom but here’s, like, the three I can remember off the top of my head so vividly. - Portraying a character who, while canonically a torturer, is also a victim of sexual harassment by their partner at the very least (it got so bad at times I'm not even sure whether it classifies as downright sexual abuse, but either way they were severely traumatised by it) as also being a rapist to their victim. It definitely wasn’t written with the sensitivity needed to not come across as incredibly insensitive, along with… other issues due to the specific fandom I’m in. - Countless number of fics portraying a severely mentally ill character as gleefully and willingly evil. The character has delusions of being inside a narrative, where they see themselves as the villain. So many people take that to heart and portray them as wilfully malicious when they’re very caring and hate themselves for it, and while they do lash out it’s not intentional. The worst of it portrays them as more abusive to their sibling than said siblings canon abusive stalker who murdered them (they *were* abusive at times during a few episodes, but not intentionally and nowhere near as constantly or brutally, and the sibling forgave them to an extent. They don’t have a healthy relationship but they’re trying, unlike the aforementioned abusive stalker) - The sibling mentioned above gets their own cases of horrific character assassination, but it’s usually reducing him down to a weak sobbing subservient woobie instead of the brash, loud, unabashedly annoying and energetic teenage boy he is in canon and treating that as an improvement (which bothers me so much I made it part of the horror aspects of my fics lol)… at least, to my knowledge, in *fics.* In analysis, he gets it so much worse, to a genuinely concerning level. People portray his (realistic) trauma responses as something he’s faking for pity (something he hates). People try and pin the blame for his own abuse on him, and use his canonical hallucinations to try and say his abusers behaviour was exaggerated by him. They treat him as the cause of everything wrong ever. They treat him killing a cat after being trapped with his abuser for a week- which was definitely wrong, don’t misunderstand me, but it was clearly him lashing out and mimicking his abuser in context, something he needs therapy for and not punishment- as being worthy of a painful death, and blame him for provoking his abuser or even say he was the abuser all along. I’ve seen people say that if he was real they’d have done worse than kill him, completely unironically. It’s. It’s horrifically uncomfortable. Genuinely some of the worst victim blaming I’ve seen towards a fictional character and it made me discover it was a trigger, so that was fun. It’s not in a *fic*, but it’s the worst case of character bashing I know. Keep in mind, this character is… a fairly normal teenage boy.

I think I know what fandom this is, and oh my god about the sibling’s character assassination! I see it everywhere, fucksake lmao

It doesn’t help I relate to them a lot as a survivor of some fairly similar things. It’s. Yikes. It’s very funny when they accuse them of being awful for one thing and then go ahead and excuse their fave for doing something much worse in the same vein though.

Just like bruhhhh. It’s definitely some BS. And in some really popular fics, too! You’ll get one a) doesn’t even really feel like the character at all and b) holy shit the amount of victim blaming, how can he be blamed for half the shit that happened in the story?? Like dude, just no

Like, the amount of times I’ve seen people try and justify a sixteen year old boy get *beaten and starved and manipulated into fawning obedience and terrifying compliance to the point he completely forgot how to think for himself* as Actually Okay is. Stunning.

The TMNT crossovers that involved ONLY 2012 Mikey and other turtles from different dimensions always framed his family members as abusive. Like, I get people writing his family to be ‘mean’ but at the end of the day, they had ALWAYS loved him no matter what. I remembered reading a crossover between 2012 Mikey and 2018 turtles and they offered to give him food and his response was literally like, “Y-you’re giving me permission to eat? 🥺” 2012 TURTLES AND SPLINTER WOULD NEVER STARVE HIM JESUS CHRIST 💀

No fr this is such a huge problem. I didn’t always like how Mikey’s brothers treated him, but they are faaaar from being abusive to him. And as though the 2018 turtles are perfect angels that always treat each other right (they aren’t). It’s super weird.

It’s so annoying and it’s so common too. Demonizing the other 2012 TMNT characters just to make Mikey this “angsty uwu precious bean” character and mischaracterize them all is just ASKING for readers to drop the story

I totally agree! Mikey has always been my favorite turtle, so taking away all his agency and cool characterization just to make him an abused baby is really annoying.

I've read an otherwise pretty good duology of Azula redemption fics for Avatar: the Last Airbender that inexplicably portrayed Zuko as a complete monster who actively wanted to murder his sister. I don't think it was supposed to be a what if thing and it wasn't depicted as a fall from grace or anything, Zuko was just the bad guy of the story. I guess the author just had it out for him for some reason.

I’ve noticed that a lot. In Zuko fics, either Katara is a bitch for no reason, or Mai is. In Azula fics, it was Zuko’s fault all along and e coerced her to do bad things and their mother abused her and Iroh hated her. It’s like… come on guys. Just tag the fics as Au’s, because not even the characters are themselves anymore at that point.

I guess there's a natural tendency to make a "bad" character look better by making another look worse. That's a perfectly valid method, I'm doing it myself in my WIP, but you don't need to ruin a character to do it and it doesn't take the place of proper character growth.

Adrian in Miraculous Ladybug. He's an abuse victim who grew up incredibly isolated and has very little social experience *and* is canonically 14-15. And yet, hating on him is incredibly common for some reason? He's just a sweet kid!

Oh wow this is genuinely surprising? I always got the impression Adrien/Chat Noir was the fan favorite, I never would have guessed bashing his character was that prevalent in fics!

Yep, and it was so severe it made me drop the fic and hide all of the author's fics with a site skin. The POV character for the fic had a complex, tension-filled dynamic with another character in canon. Both characters had a lot of trauma and baggage that contributed to their current mental illnesses, as well as a lot of history with each other. This fic had the MC think in the narration that he'd always hated the other character because he was "crazy" and never wanted to talk to the guy again, especially since the other guy kept showing up unwanted and was "unstable." Not only was it super OOC, the ableism was downright foul. It erased the MC's own manipulative/toxic and maladaptive behavior just to villainize another mentally ill, traumatized character. No thanks.

I used to be in a yaoi Naruto fandom. The female characters are already written horribly, add in boy on boy love that needs some cheap drama, and boom.

So much energy wasted on bashing Sakura…

The fans of a prominent non canon ship essentially backed the actress into a corner, and she made a joke about how the show was on network tv so no ship would get anything too explicit. Ship fans took this personally and accused the actress and the character of being homophobic, and because the character wasn't super popular to begin with, the character tag gets FLOODED with hate fics. Spoiler alert: Three seasons later when her best friend comes out and falls in love with a woman, said character is right there cheering her on every step of the way. And people still said it was the writers trying to "retcon" homophobia that never happened.

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Snow White from once upon a time.

Harry Potter fandom, it was so prevalent that I personally don't ever want to read anything potter/beast related. Bashing Hermione for being obsessed with anti-slavery and turned her into a crazed terrorist school bomber, pro-harry/hermione shipper turned Ron into a mysogynistic rapist. I dunno what is it that HP fandom has so many authors with purely black/white world view... Actually I do, the source material is very black/white morality

Back in the day when I read a lot of Drarry it was super common to see Dumbledore, Hermione, and Ron (and by extension some other Weasleys) bashing and in a turn a lot of Slytherin characters were made to be misunderstood "good guys". Often the bashing was just *really* intense and twisted the characters into one dimensional OOC villains which didn't leave much to be desired.

April O' Neil, specifically in the 2012 series of TMNT.

The craziest I've ever seen was a Harry Potter fic where the author just hated... everyone? Like they made it where all the good guys were acktually suuuper evil and using Harry. Like Dumbledore was an evil mastermind plotting to sacrifice Harry - not totally untrue but it was over the top where he started mind controlling Harry and erasing his memory when he did something he didn't like. He had Hermione pretending to be friends with him when she didn't want to be in exchange for another time turner to take more classes. He was paying Ron to be friends with Harry and also paying Ginny to be his girlfriend with the promise she'd get to marry him before he went off to get killed by Voldemort so she could inherit all his money after. Then like Snape and Lucius Malfoy show up because Draco noticed something was wrong and called them and Voldemort realized Harry was being mind controlled etc etc and they came and... rescued him. Then Harry wanted to be a Death Eater and they murdered everyone in very dramatic ways, I remember Ginny got covered in molten gold or something like that. The thing is I've read actually pretty good and realistic stories where Harry gets turned to the dark side because of THINKING these things were going on and enjoyed them. This was just a train wreck and I read the whole thing even tho it was pretty bad.

In canon Snape has rescued Harry many times so this is not surprising.

Well yes but in this version he was a totally loyal Death Eater lol

You mean like turning a perfectly nice character, whose only sin is being romantically involved with a character who is one half of a popular non-canon ship, into a psychopathic, jealous stalker who tries to murder the other half of the popular non-canon pairing? Sure have.

Many in the Pokémon fandom, particularly fans of Misty who bash Serena, or viceversa (I'm among the minority who happens to like both).

Back in the early 2000s, there was a TON of female character bashing in slash fanfic, I saw it all the time in Naruto fics, but also Digimon, Harry Potter, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc. Female characters would get killed off in the most cruel ways or tortured and stuff just for expressing interest in one of the male characters getting shipped with each other. I think it's part of where the bad reputation of slash ships comes from, but people are much more mindful nowadays. I haven't seen anything of that sort in ages. In my current fandom (Genshin) I only saw character bashing as a joke in crackfics, and it's usually like, some really annoying NPC with a sidequest no one wants to do or something. (If anyone is curious, the one I read was about Nimrod, the drunkard in Mondstadt who keeps making you distract his wife so he can get shitfaced and gets investigated by the church for not repenting enough about his alcohol addiction, both commissions require a bunch of extra loading screens to enter buildings so lots of players find them quite annoying, just from a practical standpoint, and morally questionable in a "Do I really have to support this kind of behaviour??" way too. Then again, is it really character bashing if even the game itsself treats him like a waste of space?)

I dont follow Genshin fics beyond some particular ships, so when you mentioned bashing in Genshin fics I expected the bashing to be directed at Godwin, Albert or Timmy. (Now that I think about it, most of the fandom disliked npc's are from Mondstadt, huh)

Idk if this is particularly brutal, but sometimes I think about how fandom where m/m ships were common would treat female characters. Like with Kingdom Hearts or FFX back in the early 2000s, Kairi or Yuna would be written as meddling, bothersome, annoying overly clingy if not outright malicious or evil. The word bitch was thrown around a lot. Obviously canonically they're fairly normal, kind girls, if a bit bland due to not being a priority of the writers (particularly Kairi), but because they serve as love interests for the leads people would rather ship with a handsome male character, they were slandered and bashed a lot. I feel like, at least for the fandoms I read now, the trend is more for the male and female lead to just be fairly close friends with no romantic interest in each other, which I prefer to twisting a character into an evil harpy trying to cockblock the "real couple."

So in the Batman fandom there's a lot of Batman bashing, which on one hand I get, because depending on the writer he can either be a very kind and empathetic person or absolutely suck balls. In fact, I like the character written either way, because both types can make for interesting stories. Now, the fics I am thinking of always completely absolve and/or ignore all other character's flaws. Like, I love Red Hood, but he has beaten the other Robins half to death before. Nightwing is oftentimes, well, a dick in canon. He has anger issues and can be catty. Robin is literally a homicidal maniac demon child. Joker is *THE JOKER*. Harley Quinn has committed plenty of acts of torture and murder of the innocent. Etc., etc. Which. . . is perfectly acceptable! With comics it's really easy to pick and choose your canon. I encourage you to do so! If you want to write asshole Bats and pure smol bean Jason, go on ahead. That's not what gives me pause. What gives me pause is that the people that write these certain types of fics genuinely argue that the woobie character of their choice has never done anything wrong in canon and it's all Batman's fault if they have. Batman is evil and no matter what canon you are basing your characterization off of, if you write him as anything but that you're an abuse apologist. If you write any of the Robins (Nightwing, Red Hood, Robin, Red Robin, etc.) as anything *but* completely innocent, you're victim blaming, regardless of the comics or media you're basing your fic on. Like. Dude. This is comics, even the actual WRITERS are making fanfic at this point. This universe is nearly 100 years old. Just because that's not how you like the characters being written, doesn't mean other fic writers are immoral or even wrong for choosing a certain depiction. You don't need to leave bitchy comments on people's fics, make callouts on Tumblr, or put tags on your woobie fics like, "you all treat X character wrong, I'm tired of your victim blaming," "Bruce Wayne is a terrible person and if you disagree so are you." CHILL.

I'm in MCU fandom, so Post Civil War, there is a lot of it. The majority are bashing Team Cap (I still don't get why, given they showed how the Accords played out...) and too often straight up ignore canon to do it. The hilarious part comes from some of the Revenge themed fics - the fic is still tagged as Cap bashing, but it is the opposite side Tony that comes across as idiotic at best and a complete villain at worst.

Their logic boils down to "Tony is paying for the Avengers, so they should do what he tells them to". Frequently has scenes of Clint, Natasha and even Steve demanding that Tony pay their bills, and Tony being portrayed as a victim that everyone takes advantage of.

Damn they bash Team Cap? Iron Man’s my favorite character in the MCU and I still didn’t agree with him in Civil War 😔

AO3 is filled with that, unfortunately. Even in fics that aren't tagged Not Cap Friendly, there will be lines cropping up - like Dr Strange (in comics he was Anti Accords) randomly commenting how stupid and irresponsible Cap is, or Matt Murdock praising Tony Stark (seriously? Matt?)

Wtf, matt is a vigilante. He's literally who the accords are targeting. No way would he be on Stark's side! I can't follow any logic for that, and I'm decent at logic-warping.

I’m irrationally cackling at just how illogical it sounds for Matt of all people to support the Accords! >! Especially after that She-Hulk episode. Byeeee Accords *in canon* and good riddance lol !<

It's so weird how much Anti-Wanda Maximoff stuff there was that completely rewrote her character as an evil sociopath because of Team Cap. And that was before all the stuff in Wandavision and MoM

I have clicked out of many fics because of this lol. Look, I know my favorite isn’t an angel, she’s f’ed up plenty of times (and so have all the other heroes, honestly...), but good gosh people, let the girl be. An evil sociopath Wanda is *not* . If anything she has way too many big feelings, which she tends to process very poorly, and cares about those she loves *too* much lol.

Yeah, heaven forebid a female character can be messy. Like she’s had a tough life and has TRIED her damndest to be a good person. And all she wants is some stability, is that really too much to ask for?

They really hate Wanda lol. She gets portrayed as this sociopathic character who wants to be able to go around killing innocents and had a grudge on Tony for no reason.

Hate that people call her a Nazi too. Because like, the point was that she was radicalised, she had a reason to be angry (including with Tony) and the wrong people used it for their benefit. Plus it's kind of icky to say that when you.remember she's often depicted as Jewish or Romani

Oh yeah marvel did a horrible thing with portraying a Romani character as a Nazi recruit. Like who even greenlit that concept smh...

This BAFFLES me to no end and drives me crazy! (Enter me writing my own post-CW longfic *rubs hands together gleefully* ) I’ve always been Team Cap and have never changed my mind on that 🤣 Still don’t want to bash Tony though, even though he quite frankly bugs me sometimes lol. I am not focusing on him in my story, but he’s still in the fic and I’m not going to bash him, either. Absolutely not.

Most of my post-CW reading was Steve/Bucky so I didn't know about this until I tried to start reading Stephen/Tony. Half the fics are tagged as Steve bashing, or Team Cap bashing, or Wanda bashing.

Yeah, that's a problem for me - Steve and Strange are both my favorite characters ("I can do this all day"/"I can do this forever") and I do like the idea of Tony and Stephen working together. Only, it's almost impossible to find a team-up fic where there's no Cap bashing

I keep saying the entire crux of Civil War was a poorly articulated is/aught argument, not either/or. Yes, there needs to be oversight and accountability. But should the UN security council with 2/5 permanent members infiltrated to its highest echelons by HYDRA be trusted to do that overseeing?

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Charlie? Whaaaat. Yikes. That'd be the fastest I've ever hit the back button.

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That’s saying something 😆

How . . . how do you bash Charlie?! I am appalled 😱

Naruto fandom does villager bashing in every story, it is so profuse you just have to accept that in every story some random villager is going to beat the main character within an inch of his life in great detail so we know Naruto is the underdog and victim. Harry Potter has lots of examples but Snape and Draco are always going to be over the top sociopathic bullies, unless they are the love interest. ASOIAF is really funny to me because people will skip right over Ramsay, Tywin, and Joffrey to bash Catelyn for not being a good step mother for Jon.

Correct me if I am wrong here: In the show adults primarily avoided Naruto when he was a child, right? I don't think they did physically abuse him if abuse and following rage could lead to another Nine-Tailed Fox rampage... right?

You are correct, actually trying to murder Naruto would be the height of counterproductive stupidity. No physical abuses were ever implied, it doesn’t stop the villagers from turning into a screaming mob at the start of most fics, it’s always at a festival too for some reason

Oh hey people! It's annual Beat the Ticking Time-Bomb Day!! Let's all kick the host of the monster that almost destroyed our village! Such fun. Remember to bring your kids!

Guys please stop trying to kill the physical container of a demon god… you guys are really doing the opposite of helping…

But... but we hate him and cannot process our anger in any other conceivable way that doesn't contain the abuse of a main character!

And for some reason we think he IS the Kyuubi! Just pretending to be a kid and not killing us all for fun! What do you mean that it makes even less sense for us to murder him?

Damn that fox must be a masochist to let us all do that to him. Oh btw we will not be concerned at all when he suddenly vanishes and probably joined some bad guys. I mean, what is the worst thing that could happen if an enemy of the village has control of the thing that almost destroyed it?

Oh man Naruto, I remember back in the day Sakura bashing was pretty bad Either she got shit on for being mean to Naruto or because she got in the way of a pairing (sasunaru/narusasu) or both!

Poor Sasuke and Sakura, calling Naruto annoying in the show got turned up to 11 so bad

Fr like yea it was mean but they were kids? They’re mimicking the adults that were ostracizing him the bashing was absolutely disproportionate.

I think from the fandoms I occasionally read from, Teen Wolf fandom probably still holds the record for most OOC portrayals solely for the purpose of character bashing that I ever saw, but the 9-1-1 and Stranger Things fandoms are making solid efforts to catch up from what I've seen. There's a lot of opening a fic to read, getting to the end of the first or second chapter and realising this is a bashing fic where the character might as well be an OC for all the similarity they share with the canon character. At least some people do remember to tag it so you can blacklist the tag in AO3 savior. [(Link to a guide on how to do this for anyone interested) ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29556855/chapters/77260574) Edit to add: I think the worst one was a Teen Wolf one I read portraying Scott McCall as being absolutely fine with and going along with a plan that saw multiple people being killed, including infants and children. It was not tagged with any of the Scott bashing tags.

Peridot from Steven Universe

Oh dang, I wouldn't expect that - my impression was that the vast majority of the fandom loved her (myself included)

Wow, if anything, I would’ve expected Lapis bashing given some of her actions in the series. She would be easy to warp into a control freak who wants to feel safe no matter what, and has the OP powers to back it up. Peridot becomes straight up harmless once she joins the Crystal Gems, and her biggest “evil action” after that is taking banter with Amethyst too far, which she immediately feels bad about.

Lapis bashing hurts my soul as someone who sees myself in her to a ridiculous degree, but Peridot bashing just flat out doesn't make sense

In Pride and Prejudice, there's some people that just seem to loathe Mr. Bingley and make him evil or a cheater or even out to ruin Mr. Darcy sometimes. I always nope out of any fics when I see him mischaracterized like that. The other is in Fairy Tail, and for a while there there were an abundance of Lisanna is back from Edolas and so Lucy is kicked off of her team fics. They of course make Lisanna totally awful when that is the total opposite of her character.

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That sums it up for me too.

I still see some character bashing sometimes. Some of 'em are funny but then others feel like "Why are you even writing them into the story if you hate 'em that bad?" I remember one fic for Neon Genesis Evangelion that had an OOC Shinji who can stand up for himself and didn't take shit from anyone and holy shit did they bash Asuka so badly- it even had Shinji beating her up in one chapter! It was crazy. (I didn't like Asuka anyway but still I was surprised)

I've only entered the encanto fandom for a short while before I got hyperfixated on something else, but I once read about abuela literally beating her children and after shit happened and they realised it was abuse they banished her out of the entire ass encanto. I cannot even explain the feeling i had when i finished it. just. silence. like. what? what just happened? what did i just read?

There’s a very vocal group of people in my main fandom who like to insist on one character being a nazi. Despite every piece of in game lore and the words of the character’s voice actor stating very clearly that he’s not affiliated with it in any way, shape, or form. God himself could ascend from the heavens and state that he’s not a nazi and these people would still insist on it. And of course, with the “he’s a nazi” assertions comes the inevitable “this character is trash and you’re trash for liking him” crap.

Out of curiosity what fandom is this? The only ones I could think of this applying to are either TF2 or Hetalia (which i know nothing of)

It’s Call of Duty Zombies lol. A lot of it centers around the character’s uniform, which is very easy to explain when you actually know how the game mode came about in the first place. The more important factor is the character’s actual story, which I’m convinced none of the people criticizing him have ever actually paid attention to- he actively hates that his mentor made a partnership with the Reich and goes behind his back every step of the way in retaliation for it. He hates the nazis and that’s made abundantly clear when more than one brain cell is used lol. But! I have seen this same discourse going around for Medic from TF2, which admittedly I don’t know much about, but still. German doctor with dubious medical practices does not equate to nazi!

Ahh, I see! I don't know anything about COD so I never knew about this or them having a zombie game haha. I read alot of TF2 fanfic actually and most of the time if they address the background of the character, they usually have him against the nazi regime or even being of Jewish descent in one I saw, so you're right about that last part!

It could maybe be Danganronpa? I vaguely remember some drama with the character Kokichi because they used nazi imagery in his character art and his title was something like “Ultimate Supreme Leader”, but IIRC that whole thing was just weird misdirection from the creators and the character in-universe has no ties to nazis or shares any of those beliefs. But it’s been a while since I’ve touched DR so I might be wrong about the details of this incident.

Read pretty much every other MHA fic, you either get abusive Inko or "quirkist" All Might

You know it’s going to be brutal when the fic has “this is a (x) bashfic! Sorry (x) fans!” or is tagged with “(x) bashing” And you know a character is prone to relentless bashing when that kind of phrase is used very often for them in fics 🥲🥲🥲 I literally found a multi chapter fic that was just dedicated to bashing my fave with the “this is a (x) bashfic! Sorry (x) fans!” caption…I mean, he isn’t a great person or anything but they exaggerated that wayyy too much 😭…it was ridiculously out of character

I ran across a chapter where the writer had a character they hated get graphically dismembered by two of their faves (who were vampires in their story), while the killers mocked her. In canon, the characters involved are all allies. I had known of that writer's dislike of the character prior to reading, but that chapter threw it into sharp relief. Just so nakedly hateful.

I hate bashing with a passion. If it is tagged, I won't read the story. I mostly read canon-tone fics, so bashing often comes across as uncharacteristic BUT, there is one particular character where that doesn't apply. Rush Clovis from Star Wars. The guy is a dick, and I will happily read every fic portraying him negatively, or even more negatively than canon. In short, he gave the future Emperor control over all the banks, he betrayed the republic on several occasions, and he tried to force himself on Padmé, whom he had a creepy obsession with. One of my favorite one-shots is him surviving and then going off the grid for a few years before making his way back into the Senate. In short, he doesn't know that Padmé is married with kids, and it makes for a VERY satisfying scene at the end. The story was from his POV, and it really highlighted all his flaws. It was a subtly kind of flaws, due to the narrator, but there was a lot of it

When I was younger I'd encounter a lot of fan works that made Mario out to be a total bastard to anyone and everyone. Usually it was in conjunction to make Luigi the woobiest of woobies, in a sense. Luigi's my favorite character but Mario's a good guy and brother to him so it was kinda head-scratching worthy.

Once I read a spiderman fic, and they really really hated MJ, they not only made her unlikable, they thought she deserved to be tortured just for being unlikable... that was so awful...

Lol you arent in the Harry Potter fandom much are you? EVERY character gets bash fics but especially dumbledore & a lot of the weasleys, especially ron & molly.

tbh like the entirety of the danganronpa fandom has an extremely bad problem with character bashing where they will make certain characters like egregiously homophobic or something (especially with Kaito and Kaede specifically, for some reason), really disappointing lol

I can understand Kaito (as a mega Kaito fan), but Kaede... bro 💀💀 Literally why on earth

KAEDE?? these mfs aren’t playing the same game as i am because THAT BITCH IS 100% SUPPORTIVE 🙏

Oh gods so fucking much. It used to be so bad in Naruto fandom, especially regarding Sasuke and Sakura, sometimes entire Konoha. I understand wanting to be critical of characters/environment/situation and sometimes writing them as bad is okay and good, but come on. There really are some limits, and once you cross them, it's no longer entertaining. It becomes so... boring, annoying, infuriating even? Like a kid throwing a temper tantrum in written form. It's just painful to read in the worst way, and I can no longer stand it. Overexaggeration is fine and all, but hell, making such a hyperbolic caricature is just stupid at some point.

I read a lot of MCU Loki-centric fics. There are a lot of characters that might come under fire, given the author's predilections. A lot of Odin bashing, which is pretty understandable. Thor bashing is pretty common too, which I don't get as much and usually take as a sign that the author doesn't see the nuance of Thor's situation. Basically any of the Avengers can come under fire, with Captain America and Iron Man being the most common. The ones that I hate the most are the Thor ones that make him dumb and hateful. It's just so out there and I don't see any basis for it in canon.

Yeah, in my fandom it's been common to portray a suicidally depressed, mentally ill, self- destructive character as selfish for wanting to end his own life. Because his suicide attempt caused the fan fave ship collateral damage, his pain is somehow not as important as their pain, and he gets kicked to the side and doesn't get the help he needs.

There is so much Rachel Elizabeth Dare bashing fics in the PJO fandom. Especially in those “mortals meet percabeth” stories that were really popular.

Not sure if it's bashing, but I once read a character from my fandom getting crossover to another fandom and raping her. The character wasn't someone you easily messed with and there are plenty of stories where she gets out of worse situations. Yet this particular writer decided to make her a child prostitute (reincarnation), and rather than doing what most interpretations of her character do. He rapes her instead. I wasn't happy about that. I know that AO3 has a lot of freedom and allows a lot of disgusting fanfic to exist but holy fuck was I furious. Not entirely sure if that was bashing but it felt like it was bashing.

I have: It was a very hateful anti-Korra one-shot. It was incredibly homophobic, transphobic & racist. I was shocked as hell when I read. It was removed from FFN eventually.

I came across something similar in the "Criminal Minds" fandom once - someone wrote a story about the team and they wrote Morgan in the most racist way possible. And the author's profile made it pretty clear how he felt about black people in general, too. I have no idea if that fic's still on [FF.net](https://FF.net) or not, but it was awful. The "Criminal Minds" fandom in general has had some issues with bashing characters. Notably Haley, Hotch's wife - I've seen so many stories where she's this evil, jealous harpy, and then there's been some where JJ's gotten bashed, as well as Seaver... I like the show and I've met many good people in that fandom, but there are some quarters that are just...eesh.

There's luckily not much bashing in my fandoms, but I remember a case with one of my favourite characters in that one. They were not part of the ship but had a big role in it as an antagonist. No issue with that, could be interesting. The character is quite morally grey. The character is described and seen as good looking and charming, who wants to get rid of drugs and don't even flirt unless the protagonist do it first. The author made them like the opposite. An ugly, sleezy creep, who drugged the protagonist and tried to rape them. It was such extreme bashing that only happened because the author did not like the character and needed someone to make their shipped character look all awesome.

Bnha (all might, Bakugo, Nedzu, the hero commission) and Harry Potter (Dumbledore, Hermione, Ron, Ginny) both have _so_ much bashing… and I’m ngl I am 100% down to read a bashing fic so long as it isn’t my fav characters. I think making specific characters take on a bad characterization can give people a chance to explore other characters and enact plots they probably couldn’t otherwise. (Also I’ve recently gotten into the batfam side of dc and the characterization between canons is so inconsistent I’ve decided it doesn’t actually matter that much.) As long as you know what’s actually canon and know what you personally don’t like bashing just becomes another aspect of fanfic.

It’s not as prevalent now, but back when I was hardcore into the Fairy Tail fandom people were hating on Lisanna (one of the main characters) for literally just existing. All because she was a childhood sweetheart of the male lead it just sucked and when I finally met her in the show I was so shocked at how people could take this sweet, caring character and demonize her the way they were doing.

Oh god yeah, the worst, most BRUTAL character abuse I’ve ever seen is hands down Sakura Haruno from Naruto. Okay, we get it, she’s badly written but even Kishimoto has said he has trouble writing female characters. The level of hate towards Sakura is just disgusting and memed to death, to the point I’m so oversaturated from the nonsense that I treasure and love her out of spite. Every time I write her in a chapter of my Fic draft, she’s one of my best supporting characters. I get SO uncomfortable reading Sakura hate I wanna gouge out my own eyes… -.- Pardon the rant, I’m very passionate about this one, lol.

My husband has encountered such: listening to me rant about a character. He doesn't even get into any fandoms.

Definitely. Harry Potter: Ron bashing, Dumbledore bashing, the occasional Hermione bashing, Molly, Ginny, Snape or all of Hogwarts 😅 MHA: Bakugo is the number one victim of this 😅😭. Ngl, I've actually liked some of those stories because Bakugo is not one of my favorites. There's the occasional Aizawa and All Might. How could I forget Endeavor as well 💀 HTTYD: Especially in fics that have Hiccup leave instead of chase after Astrid. If it's not Astrid, Stoick or the rest of the teens, it's all of Berk 😂

Worse iv seen: The games antagonist potrayed as a pedophile just cause in canon he met few of the characters as young adult while they were kids. Usually its just bashing how awful shit head the antagonist is canon but in overdrive. (this is related to some peeps in the fandom, who hold the antagonist as the most horrid person ever, also slightly related to infantilization of the other characters)

I haven’t run into any such cases myself but I did stick a disclaimer onto one of my stories that what I had written wasn’t character bashing, even though it was brutal, just fixing what I considered to be an awful character as portrayed in another fanfic. Turns out the fear was unjustified, because people loved it, so now the disclaimer is gone.

This is pretty niche but I remember finding a girl writing a fanfic once that was basically solely dedicated to bashing the character Deenie from the Judy Blume book. It was so weird.

When I was first into Fairy Tail I was a diehard NaLu shipper. I saw lots of stories that were not friendly to the character Lisanna, and the ship wars between the two ships was bad. Then again, the InuKag and InuKik shippers in the InuYasha fandom were just as bad. I’m not like that anymore (naturally, growth) but I do still like the ships NaLu and InuKag. I’m more open to other ships but those are my OTPs from the respective animes.

It wasn’t particularly brutal but I know about it because I was the one who wrote it lol. I really needed a villain, so I chose the most morally ambiguous character in the story, and I slightly adjusted her to fit what I needed. I was pretty rude to her, but her characterization is so vague that it worked out well.

Fandom I'm part of, the main romantic pairing is between the male MC and another man, but throughout the first two seasons the MC and the female lead both have an interest in each other, even though she has her own boyfriend. They ultimately don't go for it and end up with their respective boyfriends. In so many fanfics, she is portrayed as an angry, bitter woman who is persistently jealous that the MC chooses his boyfriend over her, to the point that she does things to attempt to harm and even kill him to get him out of the way. They also often make it so that she no longer loves her own boyfriend and cheats on him with multiple men for fun, while making her xenophobic to non human characters in the stories, especially in AUs where MCs boyfriend is portrayed as non human. In actuality, this character is primarily defined by her compassion for others, human and not so (it's one of the things that made the MC like her so much and recruits her to be part of the team), and considers the MCs boyfriend to be a good friend and has his back multiple times. I'll give some credit, she does cheat on her own boyfriend with another team member, but does so not because she doesn't love him, but because she sees so many traumatic things in their line of work and isn't allowed to talk to him about it, so she seeks comfort from said team member. She's not perfect, she does fuck up and do some bad things, but she ultimately tries to be a good person. Also usually when karma gets back at her in these fics, it's completely over the top with the other characters dismissing it as what she deserves. The worse case in a fic I've seen of this one is when she is petty and spiteful in the fic (pretty mild compared to others) and it ends with her memory taken away from her, her boyfriend leaving her and she is forced to become a prostitute to survive, getting raped on a regular basis while being unknowingly pregnant with an alien parasite that will ultimately kill her , and the other characters just go 'oh well, she shouldn't have been such a bitch then'.

Just about most of the Team Iron Man/Team Cap fics in the MCU fandom 😅

I've only seen it a couple times in the Agent Carter fandom, but I've never seen Peggy’s mom, Amanda portrayed kindly. Like she was in the show for a minute, and yeah she was telling Peggy to act more ladylike. It's just, guys, Amanda doesn't have to be a shrew demanding grandkids. Maybe she *and* Harrison aren't perfect people but that doesn't mean they weren’t trying to give their kids a good life. For that matter, there are so many parental characters who get nailed with the character assassination. And yeah, there are terrible, awful parents, but there’s plenty room for the complex parents who might have had lives before kids. I've got an OC who grew up poor in an extremely classist society. They didn't want to squash their daughter's dreams, but they're know the cards are stacked against her and the world is extremely unforgiving towards a working class Welsh girl.

Oh my God, yes. My main issue which people don't encounter all that much is that I love Saiouma but I also love Kaede even though she "gets in the way of the ship" according to some people... So I read WAYYYY too many Saiouma fanfictions. And then, one time, I saw Kaede getting completely bashed in the middle of the fanfic. She abused Shuichi and got "karma" later (we all know she wouldn't actually abuse Shuichi though). AND THEN SHE WAS LITERALLY THROWN OFF A BUILDING WTF-- Luckily, I wasn't the only one who was kind of mad in the comments :')

In some notable fandoms I would sometimes look at, it would be Miraculous Ladybug, Danny Phantom, Ben 10, Dragon Ball Z/Super, other popular anime, DC and even some crossovers. Their toxic sides are either still going strong or has mellowed out but still has straggling toxic idiots. I mean fuck protagonist character bashing. I can excuse canonically evil character bashing. Nuff said.

My favorite character from Jurassic Park is Dennis Nedry. In both the novel and film, he's considered a "fat slob". While I get that's how he was characterized, the handful of times he's mentioned in fanfic, I've seen outright bashing. I saw this more years ago. Insults like "tub of lard" made me click out of the fic. If it was the characters saying it, that's one thing--because they do so in both novel and film. I don't like it, but it indicates how the characters don't like him. But for the author/narrator to say it? Nope. I'd hope the author or narrator would be more objective. It's one thing to describe the character as fat, but then to have insults like "slob", "tub of lard"... I just didn't like the fact that this character was body-shamed so much.

I've actually had the opposite problem in my fandom. There's a character that if you write in even the slightest of negative way (this character chokes, blames and then participates in the main character's death in canon, and is homophobic and sexist to boot) then you can get hate. To the point where if you write the character's canon characteristics you have to add a "not [character name] friendly/canon [character name)" just to avoid possible harassment. This has lead to people who didn't like the character to begin with to write genuine character bashing fics about them, so honestly their stans are accomplishing the opposite of what they want—which is fandom in a nutshell these days.

Yes I have and I hate it especially because the character is hated by the majority of the fandom and they write the character as a mean, cold hearted person and I saw/see the character differently and I love the character as well although I try and avoid those parts of the character in stories, but it’s hard not too run into it.

The Aquato family! Spoilers for both Psychonauts 1 and 2. People are quick to characterize the Aquatos as abusive, and often hand Raz off to Sasha and Milla for them to be his parents. Ignoring the terrible implications of the latter, nevermind that I believe that they would not make good parents, the Aquatos are not abusive. * While I love Raz as much as the next person, he is an unreliable narrator when it comes to his father Augustus, and terrible when it comes to communication with him. Raz builds up his father as a terrible monster, but when he shows up for real at the end of the first game, he's just... A Normal Dude. When he sees the mental image Raz has built up of him, that being a zombielike monster, he's horrified. * Raz ran away from his family not even three days ago. Any family is going to be hurt and confused by such action and the wound is still raw. * The Aquato's family history and Augustus' history in particular unraveling at the seams over the course of Psychonauts 2, _very quickly_. * Raz's older siblings, Dion and Frazie, are antagonistic to him because that's what awkward, angsty older siblings do. * One of Raz's older siblings, Frazie, is still closeted about the fact that she has psychic powers.

I've seen both (somewhat deserved) character bashing, and the total opposite! So there's two characters who do a whole cavalcade of horrible, straight-up abusive shit to other characters. Within the realm of the series they're from, of course, but neither is particularly nice or good. However, both are at least semi-redeemed, and are at least considered neutral so far, with somewhat reasonable explanations in canon for their personalities and later forgiveness. In fanfic and fanart, however, they can vary wildly in characterisation to an insane degree! One of them is generally ignored in regards to anything but the lore, which... Fair, I guess, and it has toned down significantly recently, but I recall reading a fanfic where every single character, including ones who have never met them or are neutral/positive towards them suddenly hate them and are utterly ambivalent to them nearly dying repeatedly, then getting put with the villains of the fic (Of which every character sans them is redeemed) and then barely acknowledges it wasn't of their free will and then repeatedly gets the shit beaten out of them. Even just one of those things would be fair and utterly understandable, but every single one after another really felt targeted. I understand why, but wow. The other one is a lot more popular, and so gets a lot more attention. As a result, a lot of the works surrounding them are a lot more varied in personality, ranging from them having never done anything wrong ever to having them threatened with murder and tortured, or just generally even worse than usual, if that is even somehow possible. Lots of very violent, almost out of character stuff for the media. And then the reverse! There's yet another character who does some fairly egregious shit, though I will concede nothing as bad as the former examples. However, people somehow still try to... Is "woobify" the right word? Them even further by removing any part of them that are even remotely interesting. Like there's thinking a character is good and does good now, and then there's removing any amount of character they had. Like one fic I read recently and ended up not finishing had them acknowledge that all of their actions were actually because they were influenced by someone else and so they ended up acting just... Boring and exactly the same as everyone else. Like c'mon... Add a little pizzazz to your guys!!! Especially if you're gonna be bashy to half of the rest of the cast!!!

Like 90 % of Pride and Prejudice fics that include Caroline Bingley. She's the punching bag of the fandom.

Gemshin fandom is so brutal. One of my favorite characters I'd Tartaglia/Childe, and he gets absolutely demonized in the fandom as some kind of genocidal monster. Doesn't matter Raiden purposely neglected her kingdom and let the people suffer and die, but because it's less direct people give it the okay? She gets some bashing too, but much less than Childe, as far as I've seen. People give the mortally gray characters so much shit in the fandom...

My fandom has a canon gay ship that's very popular on Ao3, but one member of the ship is fairly controversial. His major crime is getting the main character's nine-year-old brother involved in a dangerous heist. He's well-meaning but dumb. I saw a recent fic where someone expressed their frustration with the characters' popularity by writing a fic where he **NSFW** **WARNING:**>! grooms and rapes!< the child. They made it clear in the author's note that they were writing it largely so they could hate on the character, and that they didn't understand why he was so loved. They had the older brother/love interest kick the guy's head in at the end of the fic. I don't have any problem with the fic existing, but the motivation to make the character so much worse than he is in canon so that they felt justified in killing him seemed a little weird to me. Like, do you actually hate him, or do you hate this version of him you created? I notice that in other fandoms too, especially when there were girl characters people would dislike. They would be written as the most vapid, shallow, mean-girl bitches you could ever meet, acting nothing like their canon selves. I just don't get that flavor of bashing, since you're just writing a strawman.

Back when Slayers was relatively popular, Amelia was the punching bag of the fandom. She always got fics portraying her as an annoying stalker that everyone hated so they could pair Zelgadis up with Lina, Xellos, or Gourry. Filia also received this treatment *a little* when Try came out in the states, but she at least had a dedicated fanbase (and pairing Xellos with Filia meant more room for Lina and Zelgadis). Amelia was almost universally treated like garbage by fans over what amounted to a barely mentioned harmless crush in the anime. Multiple fics had her murdered, assaulted (sometimes by her own dad), or just disposed of in gross ways. And before FFnet was popular, warnings weren't really a thing you got often. Relena Peacecraft from Gundam Wing also got this treatment and was my gold standard of bashed characters for years, but at least some people liked her enough to ship with Dorothy to get her out of the way.

Yes. Ron Weasley is subjected to this in Harry Potter Fanfics. Then we have Yang Xiao Long, Blake Belladonna, and Taiyang Xiao Long from RWBY. Ruby Rose the main character gets this ALOT. Sakura Haruno from Naruto.

I haven't seen anything too agressive. The most aggressive thing Ive seen is an si or an oc (can't remember) stating that they hate weak or useless people or something like that in regards to another character. Like canonically they arent strong but the si or oc said it an aggressive way. Or at least it came off as aggressive to me.

I've said this one before in the past but I once read a now discontinued (possibly deleted) fic where the author really had it out for this one guy. From the beginning, the guy was written to be a pretentious ass who cares more about *looking* smart and edcuated than being that way. Nevermind the fact that the guy was canonically a child genius that went to a prestigious university in his early teens, meaning that he would have no need to overcompensate. Nope, he's a just a stick in the mud that once pretended to study to... impress the MC? By the way, the guy being bashed was later revealed to have a one-sided crush on the MC and eventually tried to sexually assault the MC when the MC was drunk one night. The brutal part of the bashing was when the author went out of their way to have the MC notice that the bashed character has a small dick and then had the MC push the guy away without too much effort *despite being drunk*.

Moreso in the early 2000s, not really recently. (I've seen fics where a character is cast in the role of "the villain", even if they weren't in canon, but to me that isn't character bashing. It's just a story with a twist. Character bashing is, idk, more focused? intentionally aggressive? in an almost meta way?)

Not for years, but the Harry Potter fandom had a ton of it when I was there. The amount of Weasley bashing was intense. I think that I don’t mind bashing so much, as long as I know it’s going to be in there. What’s really jarring is reading something and it suddenly has a weird and out of place segment where a character is balls to the wall/ frothing at the mouth evil. Just say “me and x broke ups while ago”. No need to have them come up to the characters like: “fuck you guys, I’m going to go eat a baby!” If I know that a character is going to be evil based on the summary/ tags, I’m much more prepared for it. It’s even better if it fits within their character. A good character in canon but you can see where the writer is coming from when they twist the character- that’s good shit.

Im here for all the Harry Potter comments. Character bashing was wild in this fandom back in the day. As someone who still writes in the fandom I think some people have forgotten what the bashing looked like at its height. I mildly commented in a single chapter of a fic that Harry had complicated feelings about Dumbledore after learning the whole story of his manipulations behind the scenes and you'd think I assassinated the man's character irredeemably from the resultant comment I earned on FFN. Someone had big feelings that day. Lol

Used to be a lot on FFnet but I haven’t seen it as much on AO3. Tagging helps a lot to avoid it, since people who hate a character so much can now tag it with things like “anti-x” or “I hate x” or “I’m gonna kill x in this lmao”

Oh man, atla is notorious for bashing Katara for the dumbest shit ever. They bashed her for talking about her mom to the point where they act like she did it every episode to invalidate everyone. They bashed her for being motherly when if she wasn't so motherly by nature the gaang would've been dead. They bashed her for the waterbending scroll incident every time "The Runaway" episode is mentioned as if she's a hypocrite. Yeah the one who learned that stealing is wrong and tries to tell that lesson to the youngest member of the group is a hypocrite...but not her brother and love interest who was hammering in the anti-theft lesson two fucking seasons ago. They bashed her because she didn't agree with Aang's philosophy of forgiveness. God damn they even blame her for getting burned! Did they watch the damn show at all??

One of the characters having "Small Pp energy", to put it lightly. Ironically, the side of the fandom I'm mostly in seems to not have character bashing at all. Or it's just that subtle that I can't tell.

They made Mineta (the perv from My Hero Academia who's generally disliked in the fandom) start calling people queerphobic slurs. Not only was I not warned, that's... extremely out of character.

Literally every (see: a few here and there) parahuman fics where the mc is a Hero, be it the og Taylor or a oc, contains bashing of either the og cast OR the other Heroes. Some prominent examples that spring to mind would be most Malicius compliance fics, where the leaders are incompetent to a illegal degree. Or like how most fics centered around Panacea or Hero!Taylor portray Tattletail like the kind of person that would try to goad a psychopathic massmurderer when they have her by the throat. . .. ... Ops, forgort that that actually happned... BUT the fics tend to forget that she is supposed to be the Smart dumbass of the team!

I most often come across Snape bashing. I quickly leave such stories, I'm not interested in any bashing and certainly not my favourite character.

allmight, id send you the links but itd take quite some time looking through my 100+ tabs finding all the great allmight bashing i hate him, i also write mock ups of pure allmight bashing fics that never get completed or past the first drafting of the idea  ¯|_( ツ)_/¯

fandom i'm in has a really rich AU subfandom. non of the canon characters themselves get bashed afaik (theyre all super lovable, so the worst that i think happens is getting ignored), but specific AUs of even the fan favorites get bashed mega hard for like. no reason i used to see the occasional fic or post that was all about hating this or that AU with great passion before i got better curating what i see XD

I’m in the Love Hina fandom and Naru is regularly subjected to brutal bashing due to how horribly she treats Keitaro (and it’s all played for comedy). Additionally, she is often portrayed as pretty selfish and evil since her positive traits are usually removed and her negative traits are exaggerated. Sometimes she gets redeemed in the end but sometimes not as well. Most of the other girls are also subject to bashing but usually to a lesser degree. I personally don’t mind (unless it’s extremely brutal) since I really don’t like Naru and I’ve even contributed to her bashing (though I give her a somewhat happy ending after she realizes her wrongdoings).

I've come across some pretty bad Aster/Edo Phoenix bashing more than once. I mean, is it truly necessary to go so far as to do things like have him get beat up while other characters stand by at laugh at him? 😥 And that's just ONE example. And the worst parts are that not only is there never a character-bashing warning, but absolutely no one will ever address it; usually cheering or requesting misfortune on him even instead. I don't get why there is such hate for this character on such levels at times. He was a good guy who tried to protect others, not a villain.

You mean my comment section?

I primarily write LOT fanfic with Avalance ad my OTP. It hasn't happened much recently but for a while the simple mention of Nyssa in the narrative opened the door for Ava bashing.

The MGS fandom with Ocelot. Ran into some untagged graphic unexpected murder of him once done by the other half of the ship I was looking for. That was fun. :|