Fun fact: Did you know that not once, in all three seasons, has Amelia ever glomped Zelgadis?

I think of all the offenses I've listed, character bashing is the one I hold the least amount of tolerance for. If you don't like a character, that's great. Some characters you're not supposed to like, that's the point of their existence. For instance, I don't like the charcater Jaken from Inu Yasha. He makes me want to chew tin foil. But you know what? That's because Rumiko Takahashi did a good job at writing him as an annoying little kiss-ass toady. He's supposed to be annoying. If I ever write an Inu Yasha fic where he might play any kind of a role, I'll do my best to make him as close to the original character as I can. Because to write him any other way would A)show an incredible lack of creativity on my part, and B)would be disrespectful to the entire creation that Ms. Takahashi labors over. Not everyone has the ‘take-it-in-stride’ attitude towards some characters, and it really overflows into their writing and, I feel, taints the story, no matter how well-written it may be otherwise. I can only speak for myself, but if I read a story where one of the characters is being bashed, regardless of my opinions of this character, I’m going to lose respect for the story and the writer, and will probably not even finish the story. I’m funny about stuff like that. I’ve read some Gundam Wing stories that were actually really well-written except for their treatment of Relena, and even back when I didn’t much care for her character it put me off. Frankly, if you’re going to write a character as a two-dimensional idiotic/petty/evil/self-absorbed plot device when, if you watched the show and the character behaved this way you’d wonder what crack the writers had been smoking, you’re pretty much shooting your credibility in the foot as far as I’m concerned. Yeah, characters aren’t perfect, they have faults and flaws and can be stupid and petty and self-absorbed, but that’s a part of what makes us like them. If these attributes are given to a character that doesn’t normally have them, I’m sorry, I can’t take the writer seriously because they obviously aren’t taking the writing as seriously as they should be. It really burns my biscuits, actually.

So if you’re writing, say, an Inu Yasha story where something terrible happens to Inu Yasha and/or Kagome and it’s all Kikyou’s fault because she’s just so despicable and evil and you hate her and wish she’d just die again already, you might want to take a few minutes and consider her actions in the past and really try and figure out why she’s been doing what she’s done. Characters like Kikyou and Relena and Amelia, widely disliked characters, for the most part, are generally the ones that people tend to gloss over when they’re doing character analysis for a story. (If you don’t figure out your characters motivations, characteristics, and backstory before you write, back away from the keyboard and go do something else. Please.) Those three characters I listed above, plus scores of others, are usually very in-depth, complicated creations that the creator/s of the series worked very hard to come up with. If you enjoy the series enough that you want to write a fanfiction but there’s just that one character that you hate, my advice to you would to be either to not involve them in the story, or to take a few minutes, sit down with some of the manga or maybe watch a few episodes with them in it and try really really hard to figure out what makes them tick. Not saying you should try to like them, you can’t force yourself to like anything, but at least try and get a deeper understanding of their character other than “they suck”. Trust me, people might take you a bit more seriously if you write them as more than just a shallow plot contrivance. Your story might be a bit better too.

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