Agreed. Most of the (unnecessary) hate for Peach comes from her reputation of getting kidnapped through out the franchise. Then again at this point the damage has kind of been done…

If you point out games where Peach wasn't kidnapped and even helped out, people tend to scream "That came sucked so it doesn't count!" or "NOT CANON!!!".

Plus she's so associated with getting kidnapped that even if they stopped now, that's all she'd be known for. (A good example of this is Aquaman. He was borderline useless in the old "Super Friends" cartoons, and now 35 years later despite all the media where he's portrayed as being a bad ass, he's still subject to the same "He's useless on land/All he can do is talk to fish" jokes/criticism.)

I think most of the dislike of peach isn't just because she gets kidnapped often, she generally has no personality to go with it. There's that one game where peach has to save mario I believe and she uses her emotions to do so? Not gonna lie, most of what I see peach designed as is a blank slate woman, and to not get too left ended here, almost kind of like an object in a way, mainly because there's nothing really too her, just something that gets kidnapped, no better than a crown or a jewel. If she had an actual personality to her, something like the nypmhs from rayman or zelda (especially from the newers games) then people would probably like her more. Hell if there was a game where you saved bowser from peach, people would probably enjoy it because bowser has some character to him, and it would actually give peach something to do