Saturday Discussions (6): Main Characters

This is a weekly event hosted by my Big Sis Amber at Down the Rabbit Hole.  This event is to highlight fun things to discuss about blogging, reading, or life.

This week’s discussion topic is: 

Main Character Pet Peeves

So, today I'm late posting this because I was out most of the day shopping with my mom & when I got home I played with my new Nook :) WOOT! I can finally read eBooks now at a normal pace!!

ANYWAY, this week Amber and I are discussing what drives us crazy about main characters. After reading through Amber's post, there's nothing I disagree with in her list.  A lot of things bug me about main characters.

The worst is when they're too predictable in the dumb choices they'll make.  I mean, I get that in real life sometimes the girl chooses the wrong guy, but there's NO WAY it can happen as often as it does in the books.  The bad choices ruin the story for me if it's not something I feel like the character would realistically choose based on how they were introduced to in the book.

Something else that gets under my skin is when nothing goes wrong in a character's life.  Or if the only thing that goes wrong is something completely catastrophic... No one's life is perfect, and no one's life is that imperfect.  Girls have bad hair days, or days when the car won't start, or quite frankly, they just don't want to get out of bed.  Even the popular, pretty, "my life is amazing" type of girl.  It happens, that's life, and it should be reflected in the character's story in a book.  Books are a fantasy type of world, and I get that, but I like when a book is at least a little realistic with things that go wrong.

Amber's point about a character who does not have friends and/or hobbies is right on the dot.  I am not a social person, I can relate to characters that aren't super social.  But I have friends, a few close ones, and a few that are just kinda there in the background (you know the ones, they're your Facebook "friends" that you know from somewhere, probably school, and say hi to about once a year).  There's no such thing as a person without a single friend (even if that friend is someone in their family).  Hobbies are big thing in a lot of people's lives.  If you don't have a hobby, or something that keeps you going, what's the point?  Combine the two to get a character with no friends AND no hobbies and you've essentially got a corpse of a character.  There's no life to them at all, and it shows in the storyline that they're simply boring.
I could probably think of more that bugs me about a character, but it's late and I should sleep some :)

What are some of your character pet peeves?