Unwanted Assistance in Literature.
By Author:
- The novels of P. G. Wodehouse include several characters so inept that you're better off without them on your side.
- Bertie Wooster from Jeeves and Wooster, when he attempts to be The Chessmaster, can turn any minor predicament into a catastrophe.
- Edwin the Boy Scout keeps getting behind on his "good deed a day" schedule and then causing trouble for his intended recipients by rushing to make up for it.
By Title:
- In the first American Girls Collection "Girl Of The Year" book, protagonist Lindsey has a habit of trying to "help" people in ways that aren't actually all that helpful (to say the least) — like reorganizing her teacher's desk without asking or trying to covertly matchmake people without knowing enough about them or their situations to know if it would be appreciated. A large part of her Character Development over the course of the book involves her coming to understand the difference between "helping" and "meddling".
- Ascendance of a Bookworm: Benno has a sour relationship with his guildmaster mostly because of a long history of poorly timed or thought out attempts by said guildmaster to help his family through tough times, which all took the form of marriage proposals. First, when Benno's father died, the guildmaster offered to marry Benno's mother himself. While she was still mourning. Later, the woman Benno was about to Marry for Love died, and the guildmaster offered Benno to marry his daughter in a "for business" marriage. After that refusal, Benno's oldest sister ended up leaving town to escape a proposal to marry the guildmaster's youngest son. Later, the guildmaster offered the very same son for marriage to Benno's youngest sister Corinna. Corinna is married to a man who is not the guildmaster's son and proposed to her out of Love at First Sight upon her first appearance in the story proper.
- In Darth Bane, during the Duel on Tython in the second book of the trilogy, Johun Othone's attempts to help are more a hindrance than a benefit. Darth Zannah herself remarks that had Johun not constantly been getting in the way of Sarro Xaj while both fought Zannah, she would have died. Later on, he does get called away. And she very nearly does get killed. Fortunately, Bane indirectly saves her.
- Don Quixote: Many characters (most memorably Andres, the flogged boy) react this way to Don Quixote's interference.'For the love of God, sir knight-errant, if you ever meet me again, though you may see them cutting me to pieces, give me no aid or succour, but leave me to my misfortune, which will not be so great but that a greater will come to me by being helped by your worship, on whom and all the knights-errant that have ever been born God send his curse.
- In Emma by Jane Austen, Mrs. Elton tries to help and "elevate" Miss Fairfax, an orphaned young lady from a local impoverished family who is nevertheless very talented, accomplished and educated because she was adopted by kind friends of her late father. Mrs Elton feels very superior to everybody in the neighbourhood and fancies herself "Lady Patroness". Because Jane is socially of less consequence than her insufferable mentor, she has to be civil and accept the unwanted attention, especially when she forces on her a position as a governess.
- Enchanted Forest Chronicles:
- In Dealing With Dragons, Cimorene has an unending stream of knights and princes showing up to "save" her from the dangerous dragon she's been "kidnapped" by. It's not until the second book that she figures out how to direct them towards princesses who do actually want to be rescued.
- In Searching for Dragons, Mendabar has only one servant — an elf named Willin. Unfortunately for him, Willin is hellbent on fixing stupid things like Mendabar's dungeons and torture chambers not being properly stocked (as Mendabar notes, they haven't used those rooms for ages). He also keeps trying to arrange meetings between Mendabar and "proper" princesses, which angers Mendabar so much that he threatens to stick Willin in the rack he wanted to have bought, just for suggesting it.
- In Talking to Dragons, the baby dragon's "shortcut" gets Daystar and Shiara caught by an evil firewitch. His next one turns out slightly better, in that they unexpectedly run into an ally instead of an enemy. By the time he offers a third shortcut through some underground caverns, the others have learned go with the instructions they were given.
- In the second Franny K. Stein book Attack of the 50-Ft. Cupid, Franny initially finds Igor's attempts at helping her with her experiments annoying, with such disasters as Igor mistakenly putting together a monster Franny was building with the body parts assembled in the wrong order, Igor aiming an X-ray projector at Franny and exposing her underwear and an explosion occuring when Igor tries to help Franny with mixing together chemicals.
- Harry Potter:
- Dobby's attempts to "save" Harry from danger in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets inevitably led to Harry being worse off, and in the end Harry makes him promise to "never try to save my life again." He keeps that promise for a while, but eventually breaks it, leading to his death.
- In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix even though Harry wholeheartedly appreciates their courage and they eventually become more competent in later books, it’s rather hard to say exactly how much use his friends really were during the Department of Mysteries. Neville and Luna probably stumble the hardest, as the former accidentally disarms Harry during a fight and later is taken as a hostage to force Harry into surrender (after Harry had bought them an opening to flee), and the latter breaks Ginny’s ankle trying to help her, effectively knocking one of the DA's best fighters out of the battle.
- Percy has a few examples:
- At one point, Harry alludes to a game of chess with Ron that he might not have lost so badly if Percy hadn't been trying to help him every second.
- Another Percy example occurs in Prisoner of Azkaban, when Harry is depressed over not being allowed to visit the wizarding village of Hogsmeade. His other friends try to cheer him up by promising to bring him home candy and such. Percy offers what Harry considers the worst attempt to cheer him up, by trying to describe Hogsmeade as dull and not worth the excitement, but only manages to make it sound like a lot of fun.
- Heralds of Valdemar: In Brightly Burning, Pol tries to help a victim of bullying by...pressing him to recount, in great detail, what the bullies did to him, and refusing to stop asking questions even after the boy becomes obviously distressed. This is exactly how not to interact with a traumatized person.
- Journey to Chaos: Eric gets like this every time Tasio tries to help him, starting with the first time they met; it ended with him getting fired and looking foolish in front of his crush. Tasio is The Trickster, so it's hard to tell when he's sincerely trying to help, when it's just for shits and giggles, and when he's in a more mentor-y mood.
- In Life, the Universe and Everything, Zaphod Beeblebrox's ship, the Heart of Gold, is invaded by deadly robots from the planet Krikkit. In an attempt to gain passage to the bridge without the robots noticing, Zaphod instructs a door to be completely silent upon entering, instead of its usual content sigh. It then proceeds to loudly ask him immediately afterwards if it did a good job.
- Malory Towers: Catherine from the fifth book is disliked by her classmates for being a "saint" who tries too hard to be helpful and people-please, but her efforts often end up inconveniencing others instead. One example is when she tries to help Belinda sharpen her all of her drawing pencils, when Belinda deliberately kept some of them blunt.
- The Manuscript Found In Saragossa: Busqueros, a smug nobleman who loves "helping" people (often by manipulating them into marriage), and doesn't care that his "help" tends to end up badly for the recipient (up to and including causing their death). If he thinks he knows how to do you a favor, he'll latch onto you and won't leave you, ever, and act very offended if you complain.
- The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family: When Lara is showing her sister Caroline around Pinecone Arts Academy, Caroline uses her tablet to talk to a group of kids they meet. One boy says, "Are you really talking to us?" Lara yells at them for being rude to Caroline. Caroline is angry and embarrassed that Lara wouldn't let her speak for herself and thinks that those kids definitely won't be her friends now.
- In the misnamed book Moses May Have Been an Apache and Other Actual Facts, it mentions a Dane who was executed for being "too helpful".
- Old Man's War: The Consu want to help humanity (and the rest of the galaxy) achieve a perfect, utopian society. Their method for doing this? Inflicting untold levels of horror, destruction, and suffering on everyone, under the idea that Misery Builds Character and will make us stronger. Obviously, humanity objects strongly to this "assistance". They have a serious amount of Blue-and-Orange Morality going on: most species can't understand their goals at all, but everyone knows that they're the most technologically advanced species there is and anyone who refuses to play their games dies horribly.
- In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Bennet's sole goal in life is to ensure that her daughters are married to eligible, respectable gentlemen, a goal she throws herself into with single-minded obsession. However, Mrs Bennet is also an incredibly tactless and ill-mannered woman who, in her enthusiasm to charm said gentlemen (or gloat to others about her daughters having charmed them) tends to come off as a Gold Digger-by-proxy. This, as Mr Darcy points out in a letter to her daughter Elizabeth, has had the effect of discouraging at least two of these gentlemen (including himself) from proposing to her daughters.
- Cueseg in Shadow of the Conqueror thinks distracting the women around him and offering them sex is just him helping them master their own lusts. To say that Lyrah doesn't want his help would be an understatement.
- In the picture book Too Many Babas, everybody attempts to help out with the stew to the point it tastes like crap.
- In The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign, the feud between Kyousuke and the White Queen started when she annihilated a Sympathetic Murderer who was attacking Kyousuke involuntarily. From the Queen's perspective, she was just protecting him. From Kyousuke's perspective, the Queen just murdered a child, who he could probably have saved if she hadn't ignored his request not to butt in. The fact that she tries to seduce him into forgiving her doesn't help either.
- Warrior Cats: In Sky, RiverClan is currently without leadership, and the medicine cats also are noted to be having a hard time keeping up their supplies as they try to take over the leader's normal duties in the meantime. Tigerstar sees that the Clan is struggling and insists that they need his help to run things until they find their feet. They repeatedly refuse until he finally shows up in their camp and takes over by force, insisting that what he's doing is for their own good.
- In White Night, Molly stows away on a heroic mission in the misguided belief she will be able to help. Since Molly is a teenager with no combat ability or experience in coping with dangerous situations, this hamstrings the actually competent heroes by forcing them to babysit her.
- In the novel based on the Infocom game Wishbringer, the hero is supplied with a magic radio that provides helpful advice and alerts him to danger... by turning itself on and playing music very loudly, invariably alerting the danger to him as well.
- There's a reason that I'M HALPING! is a Worm meme, although it's a massive spoiler. The shards that grant powers are genuinely trying to help people who Trigger. Thing is, being fragments of an Eldritch Abomination and designed to give people a Conflict Ball, they're really terrible at it. Hence, HALPING! being used to describe their particular brand of Blessed with Suck inducing "help".
