Wordsmithing and Worldbuilding: TTT: 10 Characters I Couldn't Connect With (and gifs!)

Between computer problems and internet problems, I have had my blogging fingers tied for about a week now! But I'm back today for Top Ten Tuesday, the fun meme hosted and created by The Broke and the Bookish. Want to participate? Click here.

Normally, there is at least one character I like in a book (well, except in most adult fiction, but that's another story). Sometimes there are characters I love, and sometimes there are characters I hate. More frequently, there are characters that I wouldn't know from Adam, who make me sleepy with apathy. And since this week's theme is "Top 10 Characters I Didn't Click With," I picked a random assortment. And because I am me, I decided to illustrate my list with gifs. Because they make everything better.* (Disclaimer: All images belong to respective copyright holders, and are not being used to generate money or profit of any kind)

So, in no particular order:

Top 10 Characters I Just Didn't Connect With

1. Emma Bovary from Madame Bovary

Actually, I didn't click with anyone in this novel. They were silly, self-absorbed, and they were terrible with their money. And they all could have used a constructive hobby. There was a scandalous affair in there somewhere, but most of Madame Bovary was actually Emma accruing a horrifying amount of debt.

2. Celaena from The Throne of Glass Series by Sarah J. Maas

For some reason, I see TS when I think Celaena . . .

Celaena is the Mary Sue of assassins. Beautiful, deadly, not-sorry-I-accept-my-own-awesomeness, and with all the gifts; I doubt she cares about my lack of admiration (likewise, Taylor Swift). She didn't irritate me as much as Prince Dorian, but I just didn't care a whit about her. *Yawns*

3. Peeta Mellark from The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

Throw me some of that bread

Face it, he's the dead-weight that never gets the chance to really shine. He's also manipulative, and vaguely annoying. And he's a baker's son named after bread. And I couldn't remember who he was for most of The Hunger Games. I kept going, "This guy, why does Katniss know him again?" And then there is that lackluster love triangle . . . pfft . . . I could have put Gale on here too, but at least I remembered him, you know?

4. Augustus Waters from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The delightfully pretentious Gus, designed to play upon your emotions. I almost felt bad for feeling nothing at all. While I have the utmost faith in the intelligence of teens, very few things about him rang true to me. He gave me a few chuckles, but let's face it: if I hadn't been reading this for book club, I wouldn't have been reading it at all.

“I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

5. Dee Moray from Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Another book I read for book club. I don't go in for sweeping romances in general, and this is why. Though it's technically literary fiction, that doesn't excuse the tepid, irritating characters who never learned from their mistakes or figured out that they caused most of their own problems. I was 100% done with everyone in this book, after the first few chapters. It never got better.

6. Roran from Eragon by Christopher Paolini

I am digging deep, deep back into the vestiges of my algae-covered memory for these characters, but it would be hard for me to forget just how irritated by Roran I was. I basically skipped every part with him in Eldest just so I wouldn't have to keep falling asleep. I fell asleep every chapter with him as viewpoint character. He's an irritating macho type and I couldn't make myself care what happened to him.

7. Ivanhoe from Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

I love this novel, but honestly, I doubt there is anyone who really connected with Ivanhoe. He was your average nice, charming, knight fellow with little depth. Nice. Very nice. But that's all. (Rowena, you too)

8. Percy Jackson from the Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan

Scratch that - everyone from these books. I tried, twice. The writing, the characters - flat and clumsy and inconsistent, and . . . zzzzzzz, *sleeping in chair*

And I don't care if the internet comes after me with tar and feathers, the only way I am touching another one of these books is if you pay me to.

9. Thomas Ward from The Last Apprentice Series by Joseph Delaney

Yes. Yes you are. I never knew that a monster book could be so boring. How in the world was this supposed to scare someone? I felt cheated. And Thomas, I'm so sorry, but you are duller than my carving knives. We will probably never meet again.

10. Dane from Stitching Snow by R. C. Lewis

Stitching Snow was a sci-fi Snow White, so of course I read it, but I couldn't get behind the token "prince" character, Dane. He was determined, principled, devoted, in love with the MC, and . . . nothing else. Sorry Dane, but I had to use Google to find your name so I could write this.