: How not to give up hope on Scrappy We all know the spiel: We have an insufferable jerk who is a jerk/annoyance for 95% of his "screen time". In the remaining 5%, he sacrifices himself to

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Good illustrations from Amadeus and Phong.

It's all about the narrator establishing a rationale for the character's behaviour, and holding out an offer of redemption (which has to be fulfilled, even if the other characters don't know it - that's part of the "contract with the reader"). And you could have other characters who never lose faith, who have their own reasons for doing that. If you have a couple of years to spare, Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are well worth a read.

The offer of redemption could be something the other characters (or at least some of them) don't know - or know, but think couldn't possibly be related to the annoying character - an obscure prophecy or journal of a time traveller, for example. It's particularly easy to do in a prequel - less of a Scrappy and more of a Young Anakin.

You could play with the way the narrator reacts to the character - differently to the way some of the other characters react - which will tell the readers that something interesting is going on : where the narrator leads, the readers will follow. With sufficient rationale and hope of redemption, you could even have an ending full of irony and pathos where the most hated person in history was the one who saved the world - if only more people knew.

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You have your trope (The Scrappy) wrong; the trope you are looking for is called Good Is Not Nice.

The Scrappy is disliked and stays disliked and does nothing to redeem himself from being disliked, by characters or fans.

The Good is Not Nice is an abrasive, even abusive anti-hero, that in the end will not actually harm innocents or let them come to harm if he can help it.

The Good is Not Nice link contains some of the qualities you are seeking. Part of the way to have the characters dislike your anti-hero, but the audience like him; is to show him doing something altruistic in secret, and perhaps even denying that he did it, or berating whoever did do it. After all, the most pure form of altruism is helping somebody and taking zero credit for it.

Or, for example, have your character on an early road trip, pass a family stranded on the road with a raised hood and three kids. He drives past, then a full minute later, turns around and goes back to help them. But he's irritated as hell, tells them to stop talking, etc. but fixes their car, gets it started, then without a word just goes and gets in his car and drives away.

(A scene like that can stand alone, or actually play into the plot: he was far from home; but the family he helped end up in his town and recognize him. He recognize them. Maybe they out him as a nice guy? Too obvious. Maybe they don't out him, because they know he doesn't want that; but they are sympathetic and know the truth about him, and this contributes to the plot in some way, providing secret aid to him. Maybe when the anti-hero does set off to save the world, the father in this family is his ally and keeps him from getting killed.)

Good is Not Nice.

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