What type of character do you cut no slack?

What type of character do you cut no slack?

If you are an author, what characters that you create are you generally not very kind towards? And if you are a reader, what type of character do you generally not feel much sympathy for?

In my case, I'm generally not very kind to adult spankers of children. Any adult spankers of children in stories I write don't get to be "right", and are not commended through narrative means for their actions. They will likely be portrayed as arrogant and insecure, and have their personality flaws raked over the coals. Other characters who don't spank children are much more likely to have their (possibly much more serious) flaws forgiven or treated with sympathy.

In stories I have read, I've actually enjoyed several that were written from the spanker's point of view, and in which the spanker felt that they had done the 'right thing', but the things I personally enjoyed from those stories were not that part, and I didn't feel sympathy for that character and their thoughts.

So what story characters get no sympathy from you?

I don't like a spanker who is mean or cruel to the spankee, or who demeans the spankee. I sometimes enjoy stories that contain such a character, but then I will always "take the side of" the spankee. But mostly I prefer stories where the spanker is kind and loving, even if they sometimes have to be harsh.

That would primarily be conceited, domineering and/or chauvinistic males, although if that arrogant mindset changes then they'll be treated much more sympathetically after they've experienced an 'attitude adjustment'--of course, that would almost always occur via them being "taught a hard lesson in humility" through being soundly spanked bare-bottom by or in front of their feminine victims.

However, my adult spankers of children generally tend to be portrayed as justified, unless the punishment's lack of legitimacy is part of the story's plot line...

--C.K.

I agree, C.K.
Indeed, RosieRad.
Burgundy, too often those adult characters go way beyond the necessity of the occasion.

The characters I dislike most are self important supercilious fools who believe they cannot be wrong.

Which is why there are so few of those characters in my stories.

Eh, every so often a story really needs a "bad guy"

I *mostly* write likeable (by me, that is) characters, but not always.

Yeah, that's kind of a literary catch-22 on this site, since the point of the stories is the spanking. A problem I have no solution for

Which brings me to Rosie's observation that she takes the side of the spankee if the spanker is cruel to them: actually I can't think of a single story I've read on here(or written myself) where I didn't take the side of the spankee in my head. At no point have I ever thought, he/she deserved that. I guess the 'deservedness' factor is just absent for me, either reading or writing...


So, every single teenager ever?
Nah, I get what you're saying. As spankers, right? Too bad there's so many of them in real life...

I felt a bit guilty as most of my characters are quite likeable. I have a rather bossy and insensitive female friend of the heroine somewhere, but except for that, the only characters I don't like are quite minor and only in it for the plot. The people I dislike in real life are usually arrogant without reason or self-advertising, and I don't feel like having them in my stories if I don't have to.

I do have some questionable characters, but I still like them and sympathize with them in their struggles.

Questionable characters are the best! More interesting than angelic ones who always make the obviously correct and moral decisions...

Me too.

The obvious answer to the question posed is...'the baddies'...or how else can the 'goodies' look good? And what makes them bad is selfishness, cruelty, greed, egotism etc.

But...I've sometimes started out portraying an unsympathetic 'bad' character (useful, as Rosie said, for creating conflict in the plot) who is then redeemed and becomes 'good' or at least forgivable, which leads me to my less obvious answer:

I can't help cutting slack, so the ones I cut no slack tend to be those who remain unexplored i.e. 2-dimensional. As soon as I give a character a background and context, and some psychological realism, then it gets harder to present them as simply bad. There's no saint without a past, no sinner without a future, but for narrative purposes I'll sometimes leave the sinner stuck in their present. Or they die (one of my nastiest characters was trampled to death by cows, which is actually more common in real life than you might think).