almost like affection

Keyleth:

The DnD fandom at the time was very heavily male and very misogynistic. Marisha Ray, Keyleth's player, was the youngest person at the table and was, like, CONSTANTLY dogpiled for Keyleth's actions, leading a LOT of people to be mad about Keyleth in general. She was a naive, insecure character who grew and changed, and a lot of the writing changes in The Legend of Vox Machina have made this arc clearer. I've seen some people still be mad about Keyleth in TLoVM, but nowhere NEAR as bad as it was in 2015-16. All her decisions made sense for the character, but since Marisha wasn't, like, minmaxing or metagaming, a lot of people were like "why would Keyleth do this, is she stupid??"

She's finding her way in the world!! She's doing her best!!! She's incredibly powerful and really comes into her own as the story goes on. There's only a couple episodes of TLoVM Season 4 out right now but the sheer difference in her confidence versus insecurity from Season 1 to 4 is incredible.

When Critical Role first aired, a lot of fans said she was annoying or criticized the choices she made. People also brought up small mistakes she made more often than they would for male characters .If she made a mistake it was the worst thing ever but if a male character made the same mistake it wasn't even mentioned

I think she's really cool! She actually had an arc about overcoming insecurities and criticism, which is ironic given fan behavior but did result in arguably the most thematically interesting dragon fight we got to see

It's totally okay if you don't want to include her because a lot of the hate towards her also goes directly towards the person playing her being "too new to dnd" or "not nerdy enough". That being said: A lot of people think Keyleth is childish or annoying, when really that's the point of the character. She's been thrown into a position of leadership way sooner than she should've been. Her people live for hundreds of years, she's still an awkward teen within her society.

Druids are awesome. Nature magic is awesome. She's a wholesome little bean until she gets truly pissed off. Is a cinnamon roll that could kill you. And everyone in critical role is the epitome of poly panic. (Maybe not in canon but in our hearts)

Iris West:

Fandom calls her a bitch and annoying for daring to challenge Barry and to be his love interest while being a black woman.