Characters: Who's Overrated and Who's Unappreciated

Do your favorite characters get the following they deserve?

Yes! I'm in good company.	14.7%	[ 5 ]
No--they're massively underrated.	11.8%	[ 4 ]
Some of them do.	73.5%	[ 25 ]
Total Votes:			[ 34 ]

[Red the Alien]

There are always those characters in movies/books/TV shows that, for some bizarre reason, go massively under-appreciated. They may even get a lot of hate from the respective fans of the media. Then, on the other side of the coin, there are those characters who have massive fan followings, and it is just mind-boggling because they are not worth all the fuss.

One example of this that I can think of (most readily) is in Harry Potter...there's a massive fan following for Draco Malfoy (and an absurd abundance of Draco x Hermione shippers) but then you've got very few people who really like Viktor Krum--and this is mind-boggling to me because Krum is pretty much everything Draco x Hermione shippers WISH Malfoy was, and that's why Hermione actually gave him a shot.

Another example is in Orphan Black. Detective Angela Deangelis is probably one of the most hated characters in the fandom, even though--when you look at the story from her point of view--she actually has good intentions, and it isn't her fault that she's clueless about what's really going on. On the other end of the spectrum you've got Maj. Paul Dierden, who never showed any clear personality other than "********" and is pretty much an a*****e all around...why "Big d**k Paul" still has so many fans is really beyond me.

So, Gaians:
In your favorite movies/books/TV shows/etc., which characters have a massive fan following that you just don't get? I.e. which characters are most overrated?
Which characters are the most underrated/widely unappreciated/get the most hate that they really don't deserve?
Why is it that so many characters who aren't worth the fuss get fussed over, and so many awesome characters get overlooked?
What draws you to a fictional character?
General times when fans don't make sense.

[Captain Talavar]

Underrated? Superman. Superman gets such an unfairly bad rap. It's like people look for reasons to hate him, reasons which are usually a double-standard when other characters are considered.

Not relatable? Bogus. I'd argue Superman's not only very relatable, I'd argue he's more relatable than Batman. People get hung up on him not being human, but that never stops anyone with other characters. People were able to relate to WALL-E very well and he's got less human characteristics than Superman does. Batman, for all his physical humanity, is a crazy billionaire orphan who is also a genius and a master of every martial art and so on and so forth and it just gets weirder and weirder. How do people relate to that? Superman is a normal guy. He grew up in a small town, went to a regular high school, he got a regular job, he lives in a little apartment. Personality? He's as human as any of us. He's not totally crazy like Bruce Wayne.

Too powerful? Bogus. People need to stop acting like all the superheroes were invented just so they could fight each other. They're not sports teams. They're not designed to fight each other. Every superhero routinely faces challenges and enemies that are tailored to their abilities by the writers. Superman is no exception. He's challenged. He faces things that can actually hurt him all the time. He always has. Street level crooks and thugs aren't much of an issue for him, but he's not a street level superhero.

Too "good"? Bogus, and just plain silly. Half of "superhero" is "hero" and really, when you get right down to it, Superman's not much more of a "goody two shoes" than Batman. Honestly, if everyone can accept Captain America with open arms, I shouldn't still be seeing this complaint against Superman.

Costume too weird? A whole legion of X-Men fans are still pissed that they haven't seen this on the big screen yet. I'm not saying I'm anti-costume, I'm just saying there's a double standard.

As for an overrated character...hmmm...I'll have to think on that, come back later. sweatdrop

[Red the Alien]

A couple of characters who I can think of who get a lot of hate that is really undeserved are Rudy Wade from "Misfits" and Marion from "Once Upon A Time". With Rudy, I kinda understand it because he was introduced pretty clearly as nothing more than a replacement for Nathan Young, and that couldn't happen. But if you look past the fact that Rudy "isn't Nathan" he's actually an extremely well-conceived character, especially when you line him up next to everyone else who's introduced between seasons 3 and 5. More than that, his powers and his struggle to control them MAKE SENSE within the narrative universe of Misfits, much more than the other characters who are introduced in the later seasons. Also Rudy kinda gets buried by the fact that after Season 2, Misfits changed directors/writers and got, indisputably, a lot worse--especially between seasons 4 and 5, when just about all of the original cast was gone, it really felt like "why are we even doing this anymore"...but out of the shitstorm Misfits devolved into post-Season 2, I'd say Rudy is the best of the worst.

As for Marion...we barely know her at this point, but from what we've seen of her, she isn't at all a bad person, and she really wants the best for her family and those around her. All the hate she gets (due to the whole situation with Robin and Regina) is really unfair--it isn't her fault at all that all of that went down (it's really Emma's fault, honestly).

A couple of overrated characters, IMO: The Harry Potter character Draco Malfoy (even J.K. Rowling doesn't think he deserves that much love, she's made her take on his character clear) and Batman. Don't get me wrong here, I love the Arkham games just as much as the next person, and there's plenty of good Batman media out there (comics, movies, shows, games, all pretty good) but Batman's personality and character are all-around overrated. Look past his storylines for a second: he's an absolute d**k who didn't get enough love when he was a little kid and is trying to fill that void by being a billionaire playboy and a vigilante wearing a weird mask that probably gives him a headache.