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Nikki J. Maxwell
- Aesop Amnesia: Despite the fact that, at the end of each story, she learns that she should be proud for being a dork, the next book will always start with her being ashamed of it.
- Almost Kiss: Happens twice between her and Brandon. They get interrupted by MacKenzie both times. They do get a real kiss between those two scenes though.
- Animesque: The Dork Dairies have anime drawing style supposedly because Nikki's an artist.
- Bad Liar: Every time she has to think of a lie on the spot, chances are she'll come up with something completely ridiculous, such as having to take care of a sick unicorn. Some people believe her anyway.
- Badly Battered Babysitter: Whenever she has to babysit Brianna, she ends up this way. Something always ends up burned, broken or ruined (including Nikki's reputation).
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Zig-zagged. She isn't shown insulting her parents in their faces or getting into fights with them, but doesn't really share the desire to bond with her family and writes about how much they annoy her in the diaries. Justified, considering how odd and annoying they can be.
- Brutal Honesty: Subverted as she often says something brutally honest, and then admits "but I just said that inside my head, so no one heard it but me."
- Buffy Speak: Doesn't always know the correct word for something and ends up using "thingy", like calling a fake wireless headset (made out of a hearing aid) a "faux cell phone thingy".
- Butt-Monkey: A lot of bad things tend to happen to Nikki in each book on an almost every page basis.
- Catchphrase:
- "but I just said that inside my head, so no one heard it but me." whenever she is saying something, but is actually just thinking it.
- "Calling MacKenzie a mean girl is an understatement. She is a [insert dangerous animal] in [insert two fashionable items]!"
- "I just HATE it when MacKenzie sashays!" whenever she sees MacKenzie strut out of the scene in a fashionista-like manner.
- Deadpan Snarker: Her comebacks to MacKenzie definitely qualify, and she shows shades of this around others too.
- Disco Sucks: She really hates it when her dad plays his disco cds.
- Does Not Like Spam: She hates pickles.
- Drama Queen: She has a tendency to freak out over minor problems and panic too much. Her lively imagination doesn't help either. To her credit, she is careful not to insult people out loud or hurt others' feelings for the most part and she is able to get over small things eventually.
- Eating Lunch Alone: She's a loner and is seen eating alone at school before meeting Zoey and Chloe in gym class.
- Eye Pop: Her eyes fly out of their sockets when she imagines she'll get to meet-and-greet the hottest boy bands in the universe.
- Fatal Flaw: Pretty much the flaws any teenage girl would have. She is insecure about her appearance and attention she gets from the people around her. She is also shy, overdramatic, vulnerable, and quite sensitive about many things. She also has a tendency to believe that she doesn't need, or rather can't get, help or support from others so she spends a good majority of the books struggling alone.
- First-Person Smartass: Prone to snarky remarks, but she rarely (if ever) says them out loud.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The Responsible to Brianna's Foolish
- Genius Ditz: Nikki is not the brightest bulb in the shed… but she's a very talented artist, and her illustrations are one of the most entertaining parts of the series. However, one of her blog entries says that she is normally a good student...when she needs to be.note
- Girlish Pigtails: Her most common hairstyle, likely to emphasize her youthful and teenage status.
- Gym Class Hell: Gym is easily her worst subject. Most her awkward, embarrassing or frustrating moments that happen in class here, from being Picked Last to failing at ice skating, having to deal with a Small Name, Big Ego karate teacher, or almost drowning in four feet of water.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: The tone in which she writes her diaries can be quite angry sometimes. She also panics very easily.
- Happy Dance: She does a happy dance whenever she’s pleased, which she calls her "Snoopy happy dance".
- Hiccup Hijinks: At one point in Tales From a Not-So-Popular Party Girl, she and her family go to a funeral but she gets the hiccups to the point it's constantly interrupting a guy's euology.
- Hypocritical Humor: At the very beginning of the first book she swears she'll never write in her diary again. Cut to her next entry two days later. To be fair, she admits to being hypocritical.
- Hypocrisy Nod: Sometimes, Nikki makes hypocritical remarks in her diary, but she quickly admits the hypocrisy.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's somewhat bratty, shallow, easily annoyed, and can be overly dramatic. But she is overall a sweet-natured girl who loves her friends and family.
- Large Ham: She has tendency to yell out and use all-caps when writing.
- Locked in the Bathroom: She often locks herself there when she's upset and/or very embarrassed.
- Meaningful Name: Her name means "diary" in Japanese.
- Mysterious Middle Initial: Her full name is Nikki J. Maxwell. We never find out what the J stands for.
- Nightmare Sequence: Has one in Tales From a Not-So-Popular Party Girl where she imagines herself being chocolate and people are eating her
- Oblivious to Love: Simply doesn't get that Brandon clearly likes her back - not even when he kisses her.
- Only Sane Man: Nikki tries to make herself out to be reasonable and she feels other people are idiots. Although she shows Not So Above It All tendencies.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Falls for Brandon because he is sweet and kind to her.
- Smitten Teenage Girl: Acts this way towards Brandon.
- Surrounded by Idiots: Usually has this mindset when she feels desperate or everyone annoys her.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Nikki really likes to eat Wing-Dings. Recent books also point out she usually gets red velvet cupcakes at the Cupcakery.
- True Companions: With Chloe and Zoey. No matter what happens, they remain friends.
- Twice Shy: With Brandon. They've been in love with each other for over eight months and both just don't get that the other likes them back.
Brandon Roberts
- Almost Kiss: Happens twice between him and Nikki. They get interrupted by MacKenzie both times. They do get a real kiss between those two scenes though.
- Green-Eyed Monster: In Not-So-Secret Crush Catastrophe, when Nikki starts spending time with Andre.
- Heroes Love Dogs: He loves the dogs at Fuzzy Friends and wants them all to find nice, caring homes. When Fuzzy Friends has no room for Holly and her puppies he is genuinely upset at the thought that she might get into a different shelter without a no-kill policy.
- Nice Guy: One of the friendliest characters in the series.
- Only Sane Man: Brandon is the most adjusted of the cast as his friends tend to be either Cloudcuckoolanders or Not So Above It All.
- Parental Abandonment: He's living with his grandparents. His parents died sometime before the series.
- Satellite Love Interest: He's a Nice Guy, he works at Fuzzy Friends and he's Nikki's Love Interest... and that's about all we know about him.
- School Newspaper Newshound: He is the photographer for the school newspaper.
- Twice Shy: With Nikki. They clearly like each other, but they just can't muster the courage to tell each other. He did finally muster the courage to kiss her in Not-So-Glam TV Star though. Which doesn't mean that they're dating now.
- Women Are Wiser: Inverted; he is the most sane character in the book
Chloe Christina Garcia
- Beta Couple: With Marcus in Not-So-Happy Heartbreaker. It's not clear what became of them after the Sweetheart Dance though.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Usually very nice. However, she will gladly put the beatdown on anyone who lies or hurts her friends, unless stopped or restrained.
- Bookworm: Owns over 900 books and has read most of them twice. She's also often seen raving about the newest YA novels.
- Brutal Honesty: She and Zoey are always quick to tell Nikki when her plans or ideas kind of suck.
- Divergent Character Evolution: She and Zoey used to be treated as one similar, inseparable pair, but now it's becoming clear that she's the silly one of the duo.
- Motor Mouth: As pointed out when she appears as Goldilocks in Not-So-Happy Ever After.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: She and Zoey make a few in Tales From a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
- Shipper on Deck: She supports the Nikki-Brandon pairing.
- Spicy Latina: She's more temperamental than Zoey and willing to beat up anyone who messes with her friends.
- Straight Man and Wise Guy: Wise Guy to Zoey's Straight Man, especially in later books. Out of the two of them she's clearly the goofier one.
- Those Two Guys: With Zoey. Especially in the early books, when they had very little personality difference.
- True Companions: With Nikki and Zoey. They're friends no matter what.
Zoeysha Ebony "Zoey" Franklin
- Ambiguously Brown: In Tales From A Not So Popular Party Girl, it is remarked that she looks a lot like Beyoncé, who is mixed.
- Beta Couple: With Theo in Not-So-Happy Heartbreaker. There's no mention of their budding relationship after that though.
- Brutal Honesty: She and Chloe are always quick to tell Nikki when her plans or ideas kind of suck.
- Celebrity Resemblance: She claims to looks like Beyonce in Tales From a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: She tries to keep Chloe in check, who seems to become more goofy with every new book.
- Divergent Character Evolution: In the beginning she and Chloe seemed very similar, but it turns out she's usually the more mature of the duo.
- Puppy-Dog Eyes: She and Chloe make a few in Tales From a Not-So-Popular Party Girl
- Shipper on Deck: She would love if her friend Nikki and her love interest Brandon became a couple.
- Straight Man and Wise Guy: Quickly becoming the Straight Man to Chloe's Wise Guy. She's more mature than her friend and keeps an eye on her and her antics.
- Those Two Guys: With Chloe. Especially in the early books, when they had very little personality difference.
- True Companions: With Nikki and Chloe. No matter what happens they remain friends.
MacKenzie Hollister
- Abhorrent Admirer: Mackenzie is completely obsessed with Brandon and will do anything to make him her boyfriend, even though he makes it clear that he doesn't like her back because of her nasty attitude and the way she treats his friends and other people in general.
- Alpha Bitch: She's the most popular girl at school and she's quite mean to Nikki and others.
- Beauty Is Bad: She's very attractive but is also a manipulative, cruel Alpha Bitch.
- Catchphrase:
- She frequently says "OMG" and "hon".
- In Not-So-Dorky Drama Queen: "Yay me!"
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Her attempts at Crippling the Competition are always doomed to fail, and some end up backfiring on her to boot.
- Consummate Liar: She lies all the time to get what she wants or humiliate Nikki. Most people (read: everyone except for Nikki and Brandon, and sometimes the rest of their group) believe her.
- Crippling the Competition: Very fond of doing this — not that it works. Both her attempt to keep Nikki out of the talent show and the time she steals Nikki, Chloe and Zoey's skating costumes don't work as planned. Locking her competition in a storage closet almost did, though...
- Cute, but Cacophonic: Mackenzie certainly is very pretty. However, according to Nikki, she has a screechy, nasally voice, as revealed in one of the website's blog posts.
- A Day in the Limelight: Tales from a Not-so-Dorky Drama Queen, after stealing Nikki's diary and writing in it.
- Didn't Think This Through: In the fourth book, she switches Nikki and her friends pretty outfits for the ice skating competition out for clown costumes. She also knows Nikki has problems not falling on the ice. Because of this, once Nikki goes on the ice dressed in her clown costume and falls, the audience thinks she's doing it on purpose and loves it and they win the competition.
- Drama Queen: Mackenzie is a Drama Queen to the max, and she is proud of it.
- Establishing Character Moment: Her first appearance has a path immediately clearing for her as people shout out compliments to her.
- Evil Laugh: She is often described as cackling like a witch.
- The Fashionista: Throughout the series she is always commented on for her fashionable looks. She has even shown an interest in making fashions as a career.
- Girl Posse: She has a group of avid followers, the most prominent member being her best friend Jessica.
- Hostile Show Takeover: Does one in the ninth book, thanks to her stealing Nikki's diary and writing in it for some time.
- Hoist by Her Own Petard: Most of her plans to ruin Nikki end up backfiring on her. The one time she does defeat Nikki in the talent show, the latter's band gets a record deal out of it. Also, her plan of publishing an embarrassing video of herself on the Internet really bit her in the behind. This is because it made her a target of bullying at North Hampton Hills International Academy.
- Hypocritical Humor: Mocks her mother for being "totally addicted to lipstick" when she's pretty addicted to lip gloss herself.
- It's All About Me: She's not above lying, manipulating or cheating to get her way. The reason why she messes with Nikki so much is because she sees her as a rival.
- Karma Houdini: Sometimes, she can get away with a few of her rotten schemes:
- She sends Nikki a fake tuition fee, making Nikki think she'll be kicked out of the school if she doesn't pay it. This would get anyone, rich or not, suspended or expelled. No one finds out about this and Nikki doesn't tell anyone.
- Mackenzie not only steals Nikki's identity once, but twice. She gets away with the first one because Nikki's friend guilt trips Nikki into not getting her arrested despite the fact that Mackenzie herself almost got Nikki and her friends arrested. Then, she steals Nikki's persona as Miss-Know-It-All when she stole her diary, sending malicious and hurtful replies to the students who sent her the anonymous notes. She gets away with this one because Nikki feared that if she gave the diary to her school, they'll read all the escapades Nikki and her friends had in the janitor's closet and spend the rest of their school time in detention since being caught in the janitor's closet is three day's detention.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: That being said, she's not entirely immune from karma.
- During her party in Tales From a Not-So-Popular Party Girl, she and Jessica flip a plate of fruit onto Nikki's dress but one of them ends up in a chocolate fountain. Shortly later, she and Jessica try to get their picture taken by the fountain but it explodes on them from the fruit piece clogging it up.
- In Tales from a Not-So-Happily Ever After, she is forced to clean to gym bathrooms. And, to her disgust, roaches infest them.
- After transferring schools, she's subjected to the same kind of bullying she put Nikki through.
- Make Way for the Princess: Literally happens in the first book, where Nikki witnesses everyone moving to get out of her way.
- Manipulative Bitch: She manipulates everyone and their mothers to get her way.
- Mirror Character: Aside from the fact that one is rich, snobby and popular while the other is a normal friendly dork, she and Nikki have quite a lot in common (such as their relationships with their younger sisters). Their diary-writing styles are similar too, and both of them started out thinking writing in diaries is lame but ended up getting addicted to it themselves. Also, they're both drama queens and act bratty and shallow, although Nikki is the less bratty and shallow of the two.
- Moment Killer: She has a habit of ruining many a Nikki/Brandon moment and even interrupts two Almost Kiss scenes.
- Narcissist: She knows she is beautiful and is not afraid to let everyone (especially Nikki) know it.
- Proud Beauty: She's very proud of her looks.
- Rich Bitch: Mean and very rich; her father owns a large company and Nikki claims that she spends "twice the gross national product of a small third-world country" on clothes every month.note
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Seems to view Nikki as this. She goes out of her way to humiliate her, even before Nikki does anything to deserve that hatred (aka jealousy).
- Unreliable Narrator: In Not-So-Dorky Drama Queen. She tells her version of events that happened in the previous books, and it's very different from Nikki's version of the story. How much she actually believes and how much she's just making up is up for debate, she and Nikki may have been spending a lot of time trying to spite each other from behind-the-scenes.
- Villain Episode: She's a cruel Alpha Bitch who serves as the protagonist for most of Tales from a Not-so-Dorky Drama Queen.
Brianna Maxwell
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Her wacky antics and overactive imagination drive Nikki insane on a regular basis.
- Cloudcuckoolander: She believes unicorns are real, thinks the Tooth Fairy wants to steal all her teeth, and is a neverending source of wacky plans and ideas.
- Dreadful Musician: Sometimes, she tries to sing like a famous pop star, but to put it simply, she's not really good at it and can't sing on-key.
- Girlish Pigtails: Wears them just as much as her sister.
- Fairy Godmother: Book 8, where her fairy-tale land counterpart plays this to Nikki. She's as ditzy as her real self.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The Foolish to Nikki's Responsible
- Genki Girl: Very cheerful and energetic, much to Nikki's dismay.
- Innocently Insensitive: Has a habit of saying quite rude things to people and being surprised when they get mad. Nikki wonders if she's really this or if she just enjoys messing with her.
- Imaginary Friend: Her talking hand, Ms. Penelope.
- Lethal Chef: When she makes chocolate pudding, she not only adds egg shells to the mixture along with the eggs, she also insists on putting it in the oven instead of the fridge. She does learn to make caramel popcorn balls, however.
- Little Girls Kick Shins: She kicks MacKenzie's shin when mistaking her for the tooth fairy.
- Never My Fault: She blames Miss Penelope for all of her shenanigans, such as stealing snacks or doodling on a poster in her ballet school.
- Nighttime Bathroom Phobia: In the first book, due to Brianna's fear of fairies, she refuses to use the bathroom at night until Nikki makes sure there are no fairies in there.
- No Indoor Voice: Like other young children her age, she sure likes to yell a lot.
- Puppy Love: Possibly with Oliver in Not-So-Happy Heartbreaker.
Tiffany Blaine Davenport
A phone-obsessed Alpha Bitch who attends the prestigious school North Hampton Hills International Academy. She becomes enemies with Nikki and MacKenzie.
- Alpha Bitch: So much to the point Nikki believes she out-MacKenzies MacKenzie
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: At first she seems like a Nice Girl and even gave Nikki a massive hug. She's really an Alpha Bitch who is even meaner than Mackenzie though.
- Evil Redhead: She has red hair and is even meaner than Mackenzie.
- Make Way for the New Villains: She is introduced in Book 11, who in Nikki's words, out-MacKenzies MacKenzie.
- Phoneaholic Teenager: Tiffany is completely obsessed with selfies and cell phones, and uses them to bully people.
- Proud Beauty: Big time; the reason she is so preoccupied with selfies is because she feels she wants to capture her "exquisite beauty".
Andre
A French exchange student who develops an interest in Nikki. He is Tiffany's stepbrother.
