Where art thou, character?

Every writer takes on a different challenge. For some, it might be a super complicated plot. Others, it might be multiple POVs.

For me, its my characters. When I write characters, I don't think about mini-flaws that I could give them to make them more "round". I also don't think about whether or not the traits that are taking form will make them relatable and sympathetic to the reader. I write the character whose voice speaks to me, who will best carry the story (because character and plot go hand in hand), and who will undergo the most development as said plot unfolds. 

Just as I love the challenge of writing my characters, one of my favorite parts of reading is meeting the characters. Here's my break-down of the protagonists I've seen in YA.

Protagonists that I've seen a lot of:

(As you can see, these tropes are female characters since protagonists of the YA genre are still predominantly female)

The tough-as-nails-I-will-beat-the-brains-out-of-you-kick-ass girl

      -I-will-protect-everything-dear-to-me girl often falls under this category

The stubborn-as-a-mule girl

The witty, cheerful girl with a hidden Past 

The doesn't-know-how-to-have-fun-studious girl until she meets a guy

And of course, the normal girl who is nice enough

Protagonist that I would love to read:

The Bully

       -Lauren Oliver came close to crafting a Bully Protagonist in her debut, BEFORE I FALL. Now, I love BIF for many reasons (the writing, the theme, the characters), but I wouldn't call Sam a real bully. More often, she's a follower of the main bully, and *spolier* after she dies, she makes an effort to turn for the better pretty quickly.

The Dense One 

Exactly how it sounds. And really, I've never read a YA novel with a dense protagonist. Usually, the protags are about as intelligent as the reader (unless the book is badly written--then you have an unintentionally dense protag). Though she was kind of dense around the boys, even Bella Swan was pretty up-to-date on her classical reading and had a praise-worthy vocabulary. I'm talking about an all around dense character here. Maybe it'd be too annoying if the reader were always a step ahead of the character leading the story, but I'd still love to see a protagonist of lower intelligence take me by the hand and show me a different world. This 

       -FLOWER FOR ALGERNON's protag, Charlie Gordon, starts off with an IQ 68, but very quickly he undergoes a procedure that bumps him off the scale.

       -FORREST GUMP (yes, there's a novel!) basically fits the dense protagonist, but you could easily argue that Forrest is actually a prodigy. 

The Coward

I'd just love to sink my teeth into a character in an epic story who is a coward through and through. 

And of course the character doesn't have to stay in one of these categories for the entire story. In fact, these kind of protagonists have so much potential for growth. How you do the growth will be crucial. Good character development should slowly come up to a boil, and if it doesn't, there should be a clear event or trigger incident that causes the sudden change.

Okay, I'm done being pretentious now. Thanks for humoring me because come on, I'm no agent. So obviously, the characters I'd love to see may not be the ones hot on the market now or acceptable to a mass of readers. 

What characters would you like to see more of in novels? (I focused on YA here because that's usually what I read but any umbrella genre is game).