Webnovel.Forum

You know these chinese antagonists in cultivation novels?

The young scion?
The arrogant senior?
The selfish female cultivator?

Yeah, all those characters which judt makes your blood boil, the moment you think about them.
Turns out they are pretty hard to write.

At least for me. What do you think makes a character truly unlikeable. That you get annoyed just from their name being mentioned.

If possible, I would like to know the answer, as im looking to implement sich a character in my novel (just a bit smarter).
If possible V2, I'd hope for some examples of these guys, maybe chara name, chapter name or some excerpts anything is fine. I think there are plenty of them.

Thanks for reading

You can't force a character to be disliked or liked. But IMO, a disliked character is one that is unreasonable and is an annoyance to the story. A good example would be Rachel from Tower of God (highly recommended webtoon to read). She was willing to kill her only true friend, the MC, because of jealousy of his talent. Furthermore she spouts about wanting power and defying fate, yet she has no true power and is always getting carried by others who initially used her as a pawn. In general, if you want your character to be dislikable while also giving them depth. Imagine somebody in your life that frustrated you or just don't like them. Jot down the behavior you recalled and extrapolate from their.

Also, most shounen characters or CN protagonist are disliked due to their hypocrisy or flawed ways of thinking or achieving things. Such would be Chu Feng, who is walking dickhead due to all the dumbshit he does.

For me it is just characters who are unnecessarily arrogant and haughty. Characters that don't understand the situation they are in are very annoying read (but I still read those stories) Ghost Emperor Wild Wife: Dandy Eldest Miss has a lot of those characters, in fact it's basically the story is no one knows just how important the MC is and treats her like crap the entire time only to realize they can't touch her later.

For me, the most unlikeable characters are those whose motivation I can understand, but not agree with. Game of Thrones is an excellent example of super-popular fiction that does this very well. Cersei Lannister is a monster. She is, also, incredibly easy to understand and sympathize with. She is complex, and is all the more unlikeable BECAUSE she COULD be a good character if her perspective was a little different or she had different information. She becomes even more unlikeable when presented with this information and instead doubles down on her twisted perspective instead of changing it.

But, really... can we blame her? Her actions are entirely reasonable for what she's been through. She is inherently unlikeable because we see how likeable she could be, and how her actions prevent that person from coming through.

That, to me, is how you write unlikeable well.

Most writers just make the character annoying by defying the main character in every way possible. Of course you can go overboard and attach many unlikable qualities to them such as jealousy and just plain stupidity. To amplify the aforementioned effect, you would want to place these characters to have power over the main character.

In my opinion, you shouldn't design such characters and instead write characters who have their own motivations. Good antagonists are always working towards their own goals and the main characters just get in the way, the worst kind of antagonists, on the other hand, are the ones who are prevalent in this Chinese webnovel community, usually have no personality or motivation, and just are annoying for the sake of it.

Writing smart characters is very hard because we are all limited by our own intelligence and experience, so it takes a lot of time to actually create a good character. That's why characters in most webnovels are so boring and predictable.

Hyowha people who are hypocritical, fail to see reason, are just plain assholes, or their ideals and point of view is so drastically different that the reader is unable to sympathize with them

Harem Or No Harem makes people go crazy and makes the MC unlikable.

madesaturday
I was going to use him as an example.
Also, speaking of disliked main characters, Yun Che from Against the Gods is another XD

NormieScum
Why do you actually sound like your name

WorstNameEver If they're an actual 9 year old kid and know what "ugly bastard" and "netorare" are, I suddenly feel deeply, deeply depressed.

Clowniac
True.
I feel depressed because I am googling Netorare myself... Never heard the word before.

After googling

OHHH ok it is just NTR/NSFW/Sex Scenes...
Honestly never knew what was behind the whole NTR acronym, always preferred NSFW since not many people truly care about Sex in books if it is done appropriately and not cringy/unrealistic.

God of Slaughter is a good example, the sex didn't really affect the story, all it did was show the main characters mindset and shit. details were only really included once (although apparently, the raws had all sex mentions with scenes... Qidian censoring an R18+ novel) and after that literally just implied.

Geoffrey game of thrones... need I say more? That brat was a bitch I watch his death to Cheer myself up