The Wet Codfish Award for Annoying Fictional Characters

[oursin]

In response to this post by frumiousb about Proust's The Captive and The Fugitive, I commented as follows:
Narrator becomes strong contender for 'literary character we would most like to see repeatedly slapped about the chops with a wet codfish' (duking it out with Esther Summerson from Bleak House, the queen of nauseous self-deprecating tweeness).
So: wet

Comments

[ex_ajhalluk585]

Francis Crawford of Lymond.

In his later incarnations (say in Diplomatic Immunity) a bit of precautionary codfishing would also do wonders for Miles Vorkosigan.

Little Beth - in fact, most of the characters in Little Women.

Andrew Raynes The Charioteer - although I'm not altogether sure of what the author's view of him actually is, so I may be conflating the pov character's irrational besottnedness with Andrew with a more clear-eyed view by the author.

That Alien Fisher-King (in whose case a wet codfish is more than ordinarily appropriate).

Arwen.

[gillo]

Leave my Francis out of this! OK, so he's unbelievably good-looking, shagged Margaret Lennox senseless when he was 16, is more skilled in bed than any dozen other experts, and is hot enough to make his mother-in-law go soft at the knees but....

See above.

*g*

[ex_ajhalluk585]

OK: make that a skate.

[gillo]

Not even a minnow! "His every breath was a caress designed to please" was my mantra in my student days.

Now Niccoló, by contrast - monkfish at least.

[serrana]

I finally decided Niccolo wasn't *supposed to be sympathetic. At least, I didn't sympathize, past a certain point.

[gillo]

I think we're supposed to care. And Gelis - well, to me she's a lost cause. I wanted Philippa, badly.

[serrana]

I ceased to sympathize with him after he developed Amazing Psychic Powers.

[gillo]

Yes, that was pretty bizarre. I suppose it links into the whole Dame de Doubtance thing in the other series, but I never liked it.

[serrana]

I thought it was linked to Dunnet's inability to get herself out of the plot hole she'd dug...and deus ex machinae always tick me off.

[gillo]

She always claimed the outline plot was in place way before the end of the series. I have my doubts. But I still love her books.