I hate her...and Bows and Books.

Her’s a profile of a character that I hate. I’m not going to name names about what book this character is in because the character, in this instance a “She”, is in a lot of books lately. You’ve probably seen her. Hell/heck, maybe you even liked her. I did not.

Her typical M.O.:

• She is hopelessly clueless in the beginning.
• In a world set up for inclusion in one way or another, she feels like something just ain’t quite right. But how will she ever find out what’s wrong?
• Oh, yeah. The MMC (main male character). He’s different. He’s an outcast. He shows her the wrong so they can, together, make it right.
• That is, after she has some kind of mental process where she questions her home, her family…and (insert gasp here) even her society.
• By the end of the story, the clueless heroine has learned something and has immediately and subsequently turned into a bad A (capital A necessary, folks), and she can completely rise to the occasion of fixing the world, or at least she can pretend like maybe she could in the sequel.

Does this setup sound familiar to anyone? It’s been a friggin’ epidemic in the books that I’ve been reading lately.  (Btw, I haven’t talked about these books online or anywhere else so I don’t want anyone to think I’m bashing something specific). Now, I’ve seen it does several ways—some of them have even been tolerable, if not good. But, as a whole, I’m over it.

I like heroines who know what they are doing, or who are at least aware that they don’t know what they are doing when they don’t.

Lately, it’s been like these stories are the “damsel in distress” in a different setting. The world is wrong; she is right, but she doesn’t know it; and in comes boy to help her realize that she is the most awesome being ever and can fix said situations.

If you’re going to make your character weak, be consistent. She can’t save the world, unless she has some growth happen. It can’t just be “Knowledge in, awesome out” literally as soon as the character learns what happening around her. It doesn’t read real to me, and those books (not including the good exceptions to this) aren’t going to be on my favorite list anytime soon.

Hopefully the fact that this storyline is practically trending in books now will cause it’s disappearance as people will want something new, but in the mean time, I will continue to look for original people/characters and authors odd enough to create these new beings worth reading about.

Can anyone out there relate to this rant or am I off? Do you like that storyline? Let me know below.

Now here’s a song to write by that I don’t know particularly well, but I like it already, “Kihei Town” by The Throwdowns.

I couldn’t find a video of just them singing this song that I liked, so here’s a link to listen to it on their Myspace page, but if you want your video version fix, here’s how I first heard it:

The song is playing in the background for the first half, but the video itself is teaching you how to make a hair bow out of old magazines. (WHAT!? I know. Amazing, but mine didn’t turn out well, not that I’ll stop trying. 

 

Oh, and to those of you biting at the bit for my "TBR bought and on the shelves pile", I can't really do the largeness of it justice right now, but here are some of the highlights:

The last two of the Vampire Academy series (this one and this too) by Richelle Mead

The last three of the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris (link to her Amazon page)

Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves

The Haunted by Jessica Verday

Nevermore by Kelly Creagh

Virtue by Amanda Hocking (on the Kindle shelves, and don't get me started on how many other Kindle books I have on there to read...like the one I won which I talk about here). 

I know what you're thinking "Psssh, that's not much." Well, in addition to this, I have a small desk made out of books in my room (and by this, I mean my actual small desk is mostly comprised of books underneath it because Book Fairs are a weakness I have succumbed to several times...) So on that note, I promise in the indeterminable future to have more to add to this pile.