I just want to reiterate, Wesley Crusher…
Kristin Lavransdottir, and her no good husband. This book won the Nobel Prize for literature, and the only other person I know who finished it is psychotic. The same author wrote another book, which said psycho loaned to me, and I took it out in the backyard and burned it. I have utterly blotted out the names of the characters, but slapping was way too good for them. Clearly, they were smoking crack in Stockholm.
This is probably disjointed, but the very memory gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Oh, where does this poor fanboy begin?
I’ll have to second that suggestion for Peggy Hill. It seems whenever I start to watch “King of the Hill,” Peggy’s pulling some passive-aggressive garbage on poor Bobby, usually when he’s inadvertently (and quite innocently) made her feel “threatened” about her self image. :mad:
My dad has suggested all of the characters from The Poseidon Adventure. And most of the characters from the “Little House on the Prairie” books or shows. Especially “Ma” and “Pa.” (Yeah, ol’ “Pa” with his “wandering urge”…he was just on the lam, wasn’t he?)
And can fanfic characters count? I mean, even weeding out the bad ones, the fanfics where the "I"s are always uncapitalized, and where the format switches from script to novel form and back. I can think of a few well written fanfics that feature characters, original or otherwise, that I’d like to see have a meeting with a knuckle-duster.
Ranchoth
Both characters from Oleanna. I don’t know which one I despise more.
Yet another vote for Heathcliff and Catherine. What miserable, nasty people.
And Private Ryan himself.
Kim Bauer from 24. Annoying, clueless, uses her stupidity to exacerbate her problems. Between the SDMB and TWOP forums there’s gotta be about dozen or more nicknames for her. My favorite: retardoSpawn.
And for the fellow gamer nerds, Raiden from Metal Gear Solid: 2 for being a whiny wuss who was nowhere near as cool as Solid Snake (mullet and all); and Leo from Zone Of The Enders, for being another whiny wuss who somehow managed to get control of a bad-ass giant robot but didn’t want to kill anybody, even people who tried to kill HIM.
The female lead from Every Girl Should Be Married. I think her name was Annabelle, but my friend and I just called her Crazy Stalker Lady. She runs into Dr. Cary Grant twice and, after talking with him for all of two minutes, decides she loves him and is going to marry him. The lengths to which she goes truly have to be seen to be believed. And it’s all portrayed as a good thing! I know romances aren’t really a guy thing, but my (female) friend seemed to hate Crazy Stalker Lady even more than I did.
Tidus from Final Fantasy X. In the cut scenes he was always whining about how everything was all about him (“This is my story!”) and complaining that what other people were doing was wrong or stupid. I can’t imagine how irritating Squall is if he’s actually worse than this guy.
And another vote for Dawn Summers.
Buffy. Y’know, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. From about halfway through season four on. She gets progressively more self-involved, and hardly anyone has commented on it (in the show, I mean). She didn’t notice anything about Willow and Tara (even though she was living with Willow), she drives Riley away (though I wanted to smack him, too, even moreso than her), then whines about losing him. She adopts a self-righteous standpoint at the end of Season Five that just bothers the hell out of me–“if anyone touches Dawn, I’ll kill them.” Come on–the world’s ending; don’t act like you’ve got the high horse just because you love her–you just have a different perspective. Then with her coming back, using Spike, ignoring Willow and Xander’s troubles…and this season, where she is just so GRATING! Argh…
…er, sorry.
Yeah, they’ve said that slayer usually don’t live very long, but they’ve never come right out and said it was because of vampires and demons. I suspect that after seven years of slaying, they get so self-absorbed that they just implode. I think the only reason I tend to cut Buffy some slack is because she’s usually the least interesting character on the show anyway (next to Riley), so she’s easy to ignore. Every other character on that series has been extremely smack-worthy at one point or another – Willow’s lame magic-as-addiction storyline, Giles’ in touch with his inner muse phase, and Xander, Anya, and Dawn always. I realized about halfway through last season that I didn’t care anymore what happened to any of those characters. (I still watch regularly, though).
Speaking of TV shows I’m obsessed with, Jonathan Kent from “Smallville” is past due for a good beating. (I was stunned when Lex Luthor finally told him off.) And Chloe, too. Of course, all of the characters just do the same thing over and over again week after week, but at least the other manage to make it seem slightly different each time.
That damn animated paper clip from Microsoft Word–I just wanna strangle the lil’ bastard, toss him in the waste basket and get him on the way to the landfill ASAP.
Everyone on Everybody Loves Raymond. If Ray would grow up, or whatserface would divorce him, or they all turned on Marie for being the selfish manipulative bitch that she is, then my housemate could turn to something else for half an hour every weeknight.
Add another few slaps for Heathcliff and Catherine, and a slap to Linton too for thinking Catherine was so wonderful.
Oh, and Dorothea from Middlemarch. Forget the martyrdom and shag the doctor!
Drew Carey on his own damn show. For knuckling under to Mr. Wick, Mimi, and anyone else every time he has them at a disadvantage or they are in trouble and they whine to get his help and stab him in the back at the first chance they get. I quit watching the show because I was tired of his sad sack good-hearted nature getting the best of him yet again. Damn, even Charlie Brown isn’t that pathetic, and he plays the sap to Lucy and a kite-eating tree.
Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in One Fine Day. The most weak-willed indulgent parent on a small child I’ve ever seen in a movie. IIRC, all her troubles were brought on by her kid who didn’t understand the meaning of the word “no.” No matter what the brat does she forgives him instantly, as soon as he makes with the “I’m sad” face and says, “I’m sowry, Mommy.” Grrr! I’m not a fan of spankings to discipline kids, but even I said “Whip the little brat!” when watching this one. Annoying and cloying kids are not good comic relief or plot devices.
I second George Bailey, the town doormat.
Every character in any Irwin Allen disaster film. Too many trees were cut down to create that much cardboard. You might as well put flashing “Deadmeat” signs over the heads of everyone who will be killed since it’s so obvious. Actually, I just hate that I missed the chance to slap Irwin Allen while he was alive.
I’ll cheerfully join any line that forms for smacking Thomas Covenant around. “Unbelieve THIS, pal!”
I didn’t want to slap the main character/narrator in John Barnes’ Kaleidoscope Century–just shoot him to put him out of his and the world’s misery.
Jed Bartlett on The West Wing. Okay he is president but does he have to be so pompass.
I second a whole lot of people. I second Pollyanna, Wesley Crusher, Kim Bauer and the animated paperclip from Microsoft Word.
For my contribution - Major Frank Burns. I still want to kill him.
Since I just finished reading it, I’d like to add Rachel, the oldest daughter in The Poisonwood Bible. I admit that Southern Baptists in 1960 are probably as alien a culture to me as anything the Congo could produce, but she is such an incredibly shallow, self-absorbed, arrogant female! Yes, the father’s almost as bad, but he may have an excuse.
CJ
Not to hijack my own thread into a Buffy commentary… but for those spewing venom in the Slayer’s direction, is there no room in your heart to recognize that she’s been through a lot. Being forced to kill Angel to save the world was surely no easy thing; it’s the kind of trauma that might well require therapy to overcome.
And having been through killing a loved one once, I can easily see her taking the stand with Dawn that she did…
Finally, I’d point out that she made a choice to die for a good cause, was at peace in whatever passes for Heaven in the Buffyverse, and got yanked back to this world. That alone is grounds for leniency on a heck of a lot of whiny self-absorbsion.
It seems to me you’re holding her to a superheroic emotional standard. She’s got Slayer speed, reflexes, strength, and healing power. But I don’t think the Slayer package comes with a pumped-up mental stability edge. What she’s been through would have broken any five other people.
Give her a break. There will be no slapping the sh-t out of the Slayer.
- Rick
Ah, Bricker, you seem to be the victim of your own thread…disagree with Madame Bovary, defend Buffy…you know better…if you don’t want to hear the answer, don’t ask the question. 
squeal I’m reading this series now, and I love it! I felt that way, too.
Have you read the second book, A Clash of Kings, yet?
People do slap (beat) Sansa…a lot. It’s brutal, and the poor girl suffers but remains smart and strong in her own way. She’s now one of my favorite characters.
I have to be the third to say Thomas Covenant, although I think slapping is too good for him–better to grab him by the neck and shake him really hard.
For a good slapping, I nominate Scarlett O’Hara, who, quite frankly, can’t be slapped enough for me.
I can’t believe no-one’s nominated Neelix from Voyager yet.