I figured out why I hate certain fictional characters and not others.

[betweensunandmoon]

I don't like characters who are bullies, and I don't like characters who have entitlement complexes. It's as simple as that.

I never liked Severus Snape because he tormented innocent children over whom he held authority, and because he believed Lily owed it to him to return his feelings, even after she stopped being friends with him, even after she married someone else, even after she died. I can't entirely sympathize with Erik because he believed he deserved to have Christine, even if that meant deceiving her, manipulating her, and forcing her to stay with him for the rest of her life. On the other hand, I love Holden Caulfield because while he had a very cynical view of most things, he didn't believe he deserved to have anything meaningful in his life.

Comments

[igenlode]

You don't have to expect someone to return your feelings in order to feel for them -- it doesn't work that way. And if someone decides they don't want to see you again, it doesn't stop you thinking about them and wanting them.
Feelings don't conveniently switch on and off for the benefit of either the possessor or the recipient. I'm pretty sure Erik didn't *want* to love an unattainable woman, and certainly didn't believe he deserved her. He was just consumed with feelings for her that didn't take any account of the happiness of either of them, and in the end left him so wretched and angry at the world that all he wanted was to destroy everything.
And even so, if you'd asked him, he probably wouldn't have wanted to stop loving her, because it -- the love itself, not Christine -- was the most precious thing he had.

Snape torments the children in his care (and I don't imagine he sees it as 'in his care' -- more along the lines of an annoying intrusion of incompetence) because he gets a bitter kick out of making someone else's world a darker place. When he sees them flinch, it makes him feel a bit better; when his life is barren and ugly, why should theirs be any different? He's the type that glares back at a baby when it starts inanely smiling and waving, until its face crumples and it starts to bawl. Now it feels the way he does. Good.