These characters were useless: they never did anything to change their lives or fix their problems if they could whine about them instead, and they only acted when circumstances or other cast members pushed them so hard they had no choice but to react. They were, in short, whiny damsels in distress with no agency whatsoever.

I used to write a lot of those in original fic-- male and female. I think part of it was a developmental thing, a reaction to being a awkward teenager who felt pushed about by events, and part of it stemmed from a desire to make the characters not at fault. If they don't do anything (right or wrong), and sorrows are just heaped upon their precious little heads, then they're blameless lambs and it just heightens the sadness, right?

It took a long time to get past that as a concept of virtue. Blech.