Bahmo's Ten Most Overrated Characters

A lot of people have made these, and I've been meaning to, as well.  Up until recently, though, I didn't have a good image editing program.  Now that I've downloaded and learned (to an extent) to use Gimp, I finally threw something together.  Now, without further ado, I explain my opinions:

10) Grumpy Cat:  Some will question this inclusion, saying Grumpy isn't really a character.  This may be so, but I'd argue that's the problem.  Grumpy Cat, whose real name is Tardar Sauce, or just "Tard", for short (yeah; I'd be grumpy too if I was called by an ablist slur all the time), is simply a deformed cat whose heavy jowls give her the impression of a perpetual scowl.  On the basis of merely that, the cat became a gigantic meme connected to lots of snarky insults, until they started to be used in ad campaigns and merchandise.  Now, because I find many of the captions funny, Tard only makes the tenth spot here, but really; it's just a goofy cat face.  A fake personality has been erected on nothing but this appearance.  Grumpy Cat is perhaps the most blatant demonstration of the ADD-riddled sense of humor that the Internet generation possesses, and had they more of a memory, they'd realize this is nothing new.  I've seen cards of a snarky old lady, and shirts with Stewie Griffin, etc, selling exactly the same sort of insult humor.  A new image does not really make it any better, even for a longtime cat lover.

9) The Team Rocket Trio: Like many, I used to really like these guys.  I still do, to some extent, but let's be real; objectively...they suck.  They suck as villains, and while I understand that's the point; in order to be funny, the sad truth is that in retrospect, they're not that good at being funny, either.  Sure; they grant some truly great lines, and their breaking of the fourth wall is a big relief in a show I can't really accept at face value, but the majority of their humor is just puns, which should speak for itself as to the usual quality.  Meanwhile, as to their bumbling nature as villains, they derive little comedy from it, because they aren't so much bumbling as completely weak.  Countless times, they hit Ash and friends with schemes that could logically be successful, if only they caught and trained Pokemon more!  They don't get this basic level of strategy; they just keep throwing themselves after Pikachu unprepared to go up against the virtual army the protagonists build up.  This must be added to the fact that in many episodes, they serve absolutely no purpose to advance the plot; sometimes Ash will be challenging another trainer in a friendly battle, the Rockets will interrupt it, briefly, be blasted off, and the battle resumes.  What is the point of that besides killing time?  Adding villains doesn't add drama if your villains suck, guys, and other villains who are more competent are few and far between.  Even Giovanni, who's supposedly some genuine evil genius in the anime, seems fine with investing money in these buffoons who only help to make the heroes stronger.  I still have a soft spot for the episodes that give these characters backstories; they're some of the most touching in the series.  But looked at in the broader sense of the show, that almost makes it worse.  Note also, that frequently, whenever the three go undercover in some legitimate business, like restauranting, they actually do really well!  These guys could be full-fledged characters with a genuine arc, but instead, they're stuck being bad at being bad.  Team Rocket is a tragedy painted as a comedy.

8) Pinkie Pie: Another character I do not actually hate, but think is mighty overrated.  Like the above, Pinkie Pie is funny enough, and has some moments of even being tender, but she's also obnoxious, frequently insensitive, and something of a Black-Hole Sue.  An almost integral part of Pinkie's character is being "above" some of the laws of physics, and while that might be useful for meme status, it's downright disastrous in a show that tries to teach lessons.  Nothing of legitimate value can be gained from "The Swarm of the Century" or "Feeling Pinkie Keen", which essentially ask people to shun common sense in favor of being polite to even the most zany people, and while we're on the subject of unique powers, sorry bronies; but despite your ravings, I can't recall a single time Pinkie Pie broke the fourth wall, and I've seen the first three seasons in their entirety; plus half of the fourth.  What's worse than what powers Pinkie possesses, though, is the one she doesn't: Empathy.  Pinkie Pie touts herself as being the type who wants to please everyone, but she's frequently oblivious to how obviously tiresome; even unbearable, her brand of entertainment is to many others in-canon.  (Not to mention outside of it.)  Pinkie Pie doesn't get that not everyone has the same hyper, whacked-out tastes in entertainment she does.  This became most obvious of all in that episode where she constantly annoyed a poor old donkey, almost ruining his life...but then she happened to get back into his good graces because it turned out she knew his old girlfriend, and got them back together.  There's that Black-Hole Sue thing again; characters shouldn't just have their flaws and foibles rendered irrelevant to their success by coincidence.  This gripe will return...

7) Heath Ledger Joker: I may catch Hell for this, but I think Ledger was a terrible Joker, and though he was a decent villain, he was a long way from a great one.  Remember that scene wherein Alfred tells Bruce, "Some people just like to watch the world burn"?  Well; that is a great description...of the Joker as he is classically portrayed, but not this one!  Ledger's Joker is low-key, philosophical, angsty, only laughs ironically, and never really seems to "like" anything he does.  He just does it because, as he puts it, Gotham City is evil, so why shouldn't he be evil, too?  While that's a somewhat valid, if sick motivation for a villain, it not only isn't what the Joker's motivation is supposed to be; it's also nearly identical to the goals of every other Big Bad in the Nolanverse.  I like those movies a lot less in retrospect, because it often seems to me that everything about them is a slave to slamming home the dreary, existentialist vibe they're trying to create.  Joker is supposed to be a fun villain; highly antithetical to the usual fictional portrayal of evil as a dark, negative thing, but Ledger Joker couldn't even provide a relief from the series' standard form of evil.

6) Dory: I wish I could type out another essay about why I hate Dory, but frankly, she's so lame I don't know how much I can really say.  She's forgetful, stupidly optimistic, loud-mouthed, and otherwise obnoxious.  She's a one-joke character, and I hate the joke.

5) Yellow: Everything I said I hated about Pinkie Pie as a Black-Hole Sue applies to this bitch, except she's also not funny.  Or likable in any way that I can see.  Seriously; it needs to be said: I understand how strange this sounds coming from a person who's stated it's his goal to become to Aspies what Malcolm X was to blacks, but I am sick of these sorts of characters; the types who are young, naive, uneducated and inept in the traditional sense, but somehow possessing of extreme powers that make them an asset in a struggle.  Please stop making them, Stephen King et al!  They seem like nothing but a misguided attempt to stroke the egos of those of us who've been made to suffer for being different with the delusion of possessing the innate power to become superior, which, in my opinion, distracts from the real solution of attaining superiority through realism and hard work.  Yellow's adventures eschew realism and hard work constantly.  It's not a good sign that she's literally an OC (that is, she's not based on anyone in the games), with the power to communicate with Pokemon, and power them up despite not training them well, but this is only the start of her plot immunity, and making it worse is that she's not just naive; she's genuinely stupid and almost willingly thoughtless a lot of the time.  In one utterly dismal scene, she gets attacked by villains, and only gets out because her Ratata fights them off of its own device, and then evolves.  What does the little brat do in return?  She sobs at its "scary" new appearance as a Raticate.  While she gets over it, not to the extent that she doesn't become completely against evolving any more Pokemon, to the ludicrous extreme that she doesn't even evolve her caterpie.  EVEN ASH KETCHUM HAD THE SENSE TO EVOLVE HIS FUCKING CATERPIE!  But then comes the final battle, and you think she'll have the good sense to see she was being dumb, and let the thing do what nature intended and what's helpful, right?  Nope; she just happens to lose her Pokedex, which in that adaptation, is necessary to stop evolution.  The TLDR is that Yellow is a stupid, inconsiderate, whiny bitch whom circumstance somehow enabled to stay one at every turn while still coming out on top.  Sadly, she still can't claim the title of worst Mary-Sue on this list...

4) The Rabbids: RAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!  Do I need to say anything more than that to explain my hatred of these guys?  Well, let's put it this way.  Imagine characters whose whole joke is essentially that they're retarded.  Imagine the Gremlins, if they weren't scary, weren't funny, didn't have interesting, varied designs, and oh yeah; weren't in movies called Gremlins.  The Rabbids are bad enough on their own, but what drove them from mostly harmless to something I won't forgive any time soon, was that a genuinely cool looking Rayman 4 got bastardized into a plotless, toilet-humor- and gibberish-screaming-filled, Rabbid-centric game, putting Rayman himself in the background for half a decade.  Then they somehow got into a TMNT game over many actual TMNT characters who deserved it more.  Hey; speaking of things that shouldn't be in TMNT...

3) Venus de Milo: "What?!" I hear you ask,  "Venus is very hated!  How can you call her overrated?"  It may sound petty, but the answer is that she's not hated enough.  Let me put it this way: When I search for "TMNT Venus" here on Deviantart, none of the top results are things critical of her.  When I search the same on YouTube, it yields loads of Venus fan-videos, and one high up that calls her underrated.  Somehow, the Hub, which was otherwise known for rerunning programs people liked, reran Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation for a time.  The Nickelodeon TMNT staff tease at Comic-Con about adding her, and somehow fans cheer instead of boo.  I can't really say much about why Venus sucks that's new to anyone.  First, look at that thing!  It looks like some creepy Rule63 art that some bad fanartist shit out; meant to appeal to a very small niche, but somehow, this character was intended to be a huge hit.  That must be why she's one of the most horrendous Mary-Sues ever to grace a major property.  Within the pilot episode, she beats up all four of the real turtles and hangs them from the ceiling, alters the backstory so the TMNT are not siblings so she can be a romantic interest for them (and that's extra moronic because it isn't even needed; just establish that Venus isn't their sibling, and you're done), and defeats Shredder by asking Oroku Saki to "fight from the inside", so then the show can stick in original villains, too!  I was liberal enough to give TNM a chance, and the pilot literally had me screaming obscenities at the screen.

2) Lady Legasus: Let me just say for anyone who doesn't know, I think Teen Titans Go as a whole is a fucking disgrace to a whole genre of animation.  It's bad enough that it's ugly, its episodes are practically one-joke all the way through, and that it's bastardizing something I loved as a child, but hearing Paul Dini reveal it's all the result of a conspiracy to create programming so dumb that it scares girls away and brainwashes boys more thoroughly into buying toys should have been enough for everyone who calls themselves a decent fan to shout this garbage off the air.  I will hear no shit from its defenders who try to say, "It's a comedy!  It's not supposed to be the old show!  I bet you hated Batman: The Brave and the Bold, too!" (No; I didn't, incidentally.)  Rebutting these buffoons is worth a whole blog, but in the meantime, I'll just talk about LL as perhaps the worst affront to tasteful superhero ideals in the whole show, and that's saying a lot.  The whole episode is that Raven overhauled her whole identity to a sluttier, sex-appeal-themed persona, and somehow is rewarded for it at every turn.  She's suddenly an unstoppable martial artist, because kicking with naked legs is hotter than telekinesis, I guess, and obviously, the guys are totally taken with her sexual charms.  She only ends her stint with super-sluttiness for an utterly contrived reason; she learns no lesson.  Can this really be justified just because it's a comedy; just because it's meant as a parody of superhero shows?  Well; let me put it this way; back in my day, The Powerpuff Girls was known as such, and it had an episode where the girls made stupid overhauls to their identities, and it still ended that episode declaring such to be wrong.  For decades, even in spoofs where a superhero was explicitly stupid--Green Hornet, Hong Kong Phooey, Underdog, The Tick, to name a few--they always towed the line ethically.  TTG chucks out morals in the delusion that it makes it funnier, and that damned fetish-bait Lady Legasus is the mascot of this travesty.

1) Derpy (Or whatever her real name is): Let's be clear: I don't hate Derpy as much as some of these other characters; in fact, I don't really hate her at all.  Nevertheless, my thoughts never wavered from the decision to put her at the top of the list, and it's because Derpy ranges from worthless to worse-than-worthless.  Everything I said about Grumpy Cat also applies to Derpy, but while Grumpy Cat can at least claim to be a genuinely remarkable deformity on a real animal, Derpy is nothing but a googly-eyed cartoon character.  This is the sort of thing that wouldn't even be worth a second glance had it been born in the pre-Internet era; it's something you'd see in a kid's coloring book.  But I willingly grant that at least she's cute.  Unfortunately, when her being a "Waldo" character wasn't enough anymore, she got worse, and this is where some of the bronies exposed how utterly stupid they could be.  I'm not going to repeat my whole conclusion about this; I'll just link my Journal about it: bahmo.deviantart.com/journal/T…

Well; there's two and a half productive hours!  I hope you've enjoyed my countdown--but see if I care if you didn't.