Toxic characters in fiction?

Just finished The Amazing Digital Circus, and I felt the need to write this essay to process certain things about the ending, specifically about Jax. (SPOILER WARNING)

So, Jax is often portrayed as being mean and sarcastic to the other characters, but we learn later on that it's because he's afraid of them getting close to him and knowing the real him, but the lengths he goes to push them away often seem... excessive, in my opinion. Even after Pomni learns who he really is, he's still mean and hostile towards her despite the affection she shows towards him.

Let's compare him to Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty, for example; Both are afraid of people getting close to them incase they get hurt, so both of them act mean or cruel to push them away. Both of them also have a nihilistic world view. However, one big difference between the two; Rick has two moods; 1. I hate you, you're stupid and nothing matters, and 2. Nothing matters, but you still matter to me regardless. Meanwhile, Jax's two moods are; 1. I hate you, you're stupid and nothing matters, and 2. I hate you, don't touch me.

And there in lies the problem with Jax, in my opinion. Usually the whole "person who acts mean to push people away" trope has said mean person actually be a nice person on the inside, but with Jax, he's not a nice person on the inside, he's just a mean person who happens to also be sensitive, which is arguably worse and makes him far less endearing than Rick.

Anyway, I've gotten all that out of my system, anyone else got any other examples?

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  • Cugel the Clever in Jack Vance's books 'The Eyes of the Overworld' and 'Cugel's Saga'. The books are set in the 'Dying Earth' milieu, where magic is very real - Dungeons and Dragons took Vance's mechanisms for way that that spells function and some of his actual spells, such as prismatic spray, and IOUN stones. Cugel is supremely selfish and amoral, while he evokes sympathy because of his sufferings at the hands of others, he then inevitably does something vile that  loses that sympathy. He is jeered at by a humanoid seashell creature on a beach, Cugel then stabs the creature with his sword in a fit of pique, the creature cries out, "You have robbed me of my one and only life!", before it dies.

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  • Cugel the Clever in Jack Vance's books 'The Eyes of the Overworld' and 'Cugel's Saga'. The books are set in the 'Dying Earth' milieu, where magic is very real - Dungeons and Dragons took Vance's mechanisms for way that that spells function and some of his actual spells, such as prismatic spray, and IOUN stones. Cugel is supremely selfish and amoral, while he evokes sympathy because of his sufferings at the hands of others, he then inevitably does something vile that  loses that sympathy. He is jeered at by a humanoid seashell creature on a beach, Cugel then stabs the creature with his sword in a fit of pique, the creature cries out, "You have robbed me of my one and only life!", before it dies.

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