People who just keep needing rescuing

If you’re in the position where you are constantly being rescued, either by a superhero or by Mario or by Link, wouldn’t you do something to take yourself out of that situation? Since the HSC finished, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands to read, watch TV, exercise and play some games that I haven’t played before or for a while. I’ve specifically watched a bunch of crime shows, Iron Man, The Dark Knight and some Harry Potters, and reread The Evil Overlord’s List and related lists, but the following discussion applies to trends perpetuated in movies in general rather than just in these ones.

The movie-watching and game-playing reminded me of how there’s often a character who just keeps needing to be rescued (usually a girl because it’s generally the love interest so as to increase the emotional impact). This may not be through any fault of his or her own. It may be that, like Princess Zelda, the character is the key to something important or holds a position of authority. It may be that they’re a good bargaining chip. It may be that the protagonist/hero cares about them and so it’s a way of hurting and/or manipulating him. It may be that the character is just that stupid and defenceless that (s)he can be constantly put in danger. The trend itself kind of makes sense. If you’re hanging around superheroes or your father is Jack Bauer, you’d expect to be near situations that they can deal with but you have no hope of handling due to the vast difference in your physical capabilities. If I were in love with Clark Kent, and he with me, I’d accept that someone against whom I have no chance of fighting would probably try to use me against him at some point. But, regardless of why I'm in the position of damsel in distress, after the first or at least the second time, I’d also try to equip myself with means of escape or avoiding it. I’d learn how to pick a lock in case I’m locked in a basement or handcuffed, and I’d make sure that I had bobby pins or whatnot in my bag or preferably on my person (well, having a bobby pin or two in my hair wouldn't be conspicuous) at all times just in case. I’d learn basic martial arts so that I’d at least be able to do something against enemies that aren’t superpowered. I'd make sure I wasn't the only person in the show whose phone ever experienced problems; if my dad's phone can be at full charge and capacity all the time, and I've already been endangered once, I'd make sure mine was the same. If I were American, I’d have a gun registered and know how to use it (and be aiming at legs because I wouldn’t be able to force myself to kill someone; though I recently found out from TV Tropes that that’s not a surefire way to avoid killing someone as you can still hit a major artery, so really shooting anywhere on a person is shooting to kill). There are probably a plethora of movies and shows and games in which the person who is constantly kidnapped is prepared. There’d also be those that subvert this trend. I’m not enough of a gamer or a broad enough TV watcher to know how often this happens, but Daphne was somewhat prepared in the second Scooby Doo movie and there's probably lots of examples of it on TV Tropes. But it confuses me that Bowser can constantly capture Princess Peach – you would have security systems in place even before the first time, and surely the sight of Bowser approaching the castle would set off a multitude of alarm bells and the addition of extra security personnel around the princess.

Showers --> thoughts on power disparity in YA paranormal stuff (because I don’t care about the classifications anymore)

I primarily read YA novels and I enjoy adult urban fantasy/paranormal romance/whatever-they’re-classified-as novels when they don’t conflict with my values or push an anti-Christianity message (I can ignore my belief that these things don’t exist and would be evil if they did exist, but I’d prefer to read books that don’t specifically knock the reasons for this belief). But even though YA paranormal romance or urban fantasy novels would then seem like the perfect novel for me, I’m really weary of them. It’s great that they’re generally toned down in terms of the description of violent or sexual elements (which is why I generally avoid adult fiction unless I’ve read reviews and know what’s in it; I was so not expecting what was in The Horse Whisperer when I was thirteen), but the power disparity is really annoying.

It never seemed to make sense. The disparity is based on the fact that the supernatural characters have significantly more physical or mental power than the non-supernatural ones. And the presence of both supernatural and non-supernatural characters in paranormal romances seems natural, even if only minor characters are humans. But adult paranormal romances often seem to avoid this disparity or address it as an issue that is actually dealt with, while YA paranormal romances seem to either ignore the fact that there are major control issues in their relationship or have the non-supernatural character address it then forget about it.

The issue is where to draw the line between creating a protagonist that the reader can identify with due to shared experiences and creating an equal environment and relationship.

Readers need to relate to characters. If they were perfect and untouchable, we couldn’t relate to them. But if their lives seem to always suck, we aren’t interested as reality is better and we want to be told that the perfect romance or the happy ending or the tidy solution exists and is achievable for the ‘ordinary’ person (unless it’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which case you want them to have a happy ending but keep reading despite all the tragic events that are occurring, or the horrible circumstances have meaning, like Catch-22). While this preference exists in all fiction, it is especially prevalent in young adult years when you’re developing your identity and trying to be normal, or at least not to be different in a way that is perceived to be bad or uncool. School can be tough. People always have some insecurity or something more that they want. Teenagers develop a lot physically and mentally in a short period of time, and both these things can cause stress as you want to look decent and not to say things that sound stupid or that will cause a debate that you may not be able to keep up with. Adolescence is a turbulent time; things are so much more complicated than when you were in primary school. You have to balance an increasing school workload and your social life and sports or music or whatever your hobbies are and potentially paid work and learning to drive and being allowed to drink alcohol and fitting in sleep around everything else. Friendships will develop, but they’ll also disintegrate due to conflict or, even worse, slowly fade until you look back and see that the other person is essentially a stranger, except one that you feel like you should know. You want to read about someone who is like you and who has problems but overcomes them and ends up happy. While readers need to be able to relate to characters, teenage readers also need to be able to identify with at least some of them. It may be that the minor character has the same interests as we do or the main character has the same value system or one of the characters is gay and in a long lasting, well-developed relationship or there are people of different ethnicities without it necessarily having to be about multiculturalism or racism. Not every book needs to have characters with whom we can identify, but there needs to be some that do so that we can feel validated and normal. Because of this desire to identify with characters, protagonists are generally either who we want to be, who we are or slightly better versions of ourselves.

The problem is when the desire to have a relatable heroine with whom readers can identify (because all paranormal romances I’ve heard of have a female protagonist as stories based around romance are perceived to be an almost strictly feminine thing) results in an ‘ordinary girl’ in the midst of extraordinary people. The idea of having the reader discover the existence of this alluring world along with the protagonist can be appealing. You know exactly what the protagonist knows and it’s as if one day in a few weeks’ time you woke up and met this mysterious person who drew back a curtain to reveal an unknown layer of the world and facilitated you living among it. It’s engaging. It’s escapist. And it’s fine. But the problem is that, unless he or she has experience and the correct tools, a human could never match a supernatural creature in a fight. So the teenage heroine is often overshadowed by people that can move and think so much faster than she can. When confronted with a dangerous situation or a subject on which they disagree, they think that their plans or opinions, backed up by their experience, override her wishes, and they have the force to sabotage her car or otherwise convince or force her to follow their will. And they’re just cute enough to get away with it.

The irritating thing is that it is possible to create a character that is different from the norm but completely relatable. I don’t think any of Buffy’s viewers slayed vampires or were ex-vengeance demons, and most of us aren’t Wiccans, but it didn’t stop the characters’ struggles and the issues that the demons represented from being relatable to the viewers. The main character being stronger or faster or funnier or fitter or more intelligent than the audience doesn’t mean that he or she loses all ability to be relatable and identifiable.

The main realisation that my shower brought was that none of the admittedly few adult paranormal romances/whatevers that I’ve read have the protagonist as a human. In the Mercy Thompson and, um, Anna and Charles? series by Patricia Briggs, the heroines are both at a disadvantage due to the fact that they are physically weaker or less knowledgeable respectively, but they are both supernatural beings themselves and so aren’t the fish being taken out of the water by their experienced fishermen romantic interests (okay, the fisherman part may have turned that kind of creepy). In this other series – I can’t remember what it’s called – the heroines are all more knowledgeable than the men and are equally dangerous in a fight, except the heroine of the first one, who is equally unknowledgeable and grows from helpless to dangerous. There are times in all three series when the heroine needs the romantic interest’s help. There are also times when the romantic interest needs the heroine’s help or when the heroine saves herself without calling on him or before he can get there.

Both YA and adult novels need protagonists that are relatable. If they weren’t relatable, we wouldn’t care about their story. We might wish the characters well and look up what happens before returning them to the library for someone else to read and care about, but we wouldn’t bother finishing it when there are so many other books that could be read. But the problem with the former category is that the attempt to ensure this quality seems to result in a character who is inherently weaker than her male counterpart and doesn’t have the will, or enough of his respect, to assert herself, ensure that her own wishes aren’t just ignored or reasoned away, and remain attached to her human world as well as to his supernatural one.

I want my heroes and heroines to be real.

I'm tired of walking into bookstores and just seeing young adult paranormal romance books which probably feature a heroine who is weak. I haven't read much of this genre so I may be generalising, and there is a paranormal (admittedly adult) series that I enjoyed, but from friends' reviews and Goodreads and personal experienced I would never buy a YA paranormal romance without first learning about the relationship dynamics between the main characters and the heroine's strength, both in terms of inner strength, physical strength and how she applies it to her life. (Potential spoilers for BtVS, and really minor spoilers for Angel, 24 and the Mercy Thompson series, ahead).

For example, I hate when the male characters make all the decisions and it's 'okay' because that's just how they are due to their personality or due to whatever type of supernatural creature they actually are or due to however old they are. Firstly, just because someone 'is like that' doesn't make it okay. Your hero is a control freak? Fine. There are plenty of people, male and female, who are. But the other characters aren't necessarily going to just accept that. Unless they have some contextual reason to just go with it, they're going to struggle against it at some point and it shouldn't just be them ranting at the character then forgiving them immediately because they love them sooo much. Same goes for it being part of being a dominant werewolf or something. Thirdly, saying 'he's just a lot older and more experienced' brings about other issues as it suggests that there is a significant age gap that should probably be addressed at some point in the story. I like the Doctor and Rose, Angel and Cordy and Angel and Buffy as much as anyone and I've read a John Winchester-Buffy Summers fanfiction that I found surprisingly charming and believable, so if it's done well I don't mind an age gap every now and then, but I think the different values and different expectations that would come from the age gap would have to be addressed. If your vampire or your angel or your demon is significantly older than your human heroine, you're going to have to consider the context and there is a change that the heroine will be at least a little bit concerned about the age gap at some point. It may just be that she muses about whether or not she believes age to be important when she's falling asleep one night. In BtVS, a few characters mentioned the age gap before they even knew how big of an age gap it was and one character innocently remarked how much extra experience Angel would have had to have - something about how, even if he only went on two dates a year, that'd be about four hundred dates or something. It's really possible to include this experience or control-y-ness without just having the other characters submit to his obvious superiority.  I feel that the Mercy Thompson series (the aforementioned paranormal series that I like) handles this well. The men in her life are control freaks and super protective. The book gives a good reason for them to be that way. However, Mercy, who is simultaneously tough and loyal and imperfect, does what she wants and what she believes is right and the guys understand that, while they have more experience and believe that their way is better, she is a person who has to act and follow her own instincts. That's a fundamental part of her too and it makes her the strong heroine that she is. However, she's able to recognise when she's in over her head and needs their support. In one book, she runs/contacts one of the guys two or three times when she's in trouble and she knows that she won't be able to defeat the enemy by herself. She's stubborn and wants to act, especially when someone that she loves is in danger, but she's not stupid.

I want more characters like Mercy, like Buffy Summers, like Faith Lehane, like Cordy Chase, like Willow Rosenberg, like Anya, like Holly Short, like Max Ride, like Hermione Granger, like Ginny Weasley, like Luna Lovegood, like Donna Noble, like Velma, like Amy Pond, like Josephine Alibrandi, like Chloe Williams, like Joyce Summers, like Dawn Summers, like Tara Maclay, like Alaska Young, like Elisabeth Leroy, like Hazel Lancaster, like Jo March, like Beth March, like Judy Woolcot, like Jo Harvelle, like Ellen Harvelle, like McGonagall, like Katniss Everdeen, like Michelle Dessler, like Allison Taylor, like Audrey Raines, like Chloe O'Brien, like Renee Walker. Women who are resourceful and strong and intelligent and rely on themselves but are flawed and know when to ask others for help. Some of these characters realise that they need their help earlier than others do. Some wouldn't be alive if it weren't for their friends. Some have physical or magical strength, some rely more on inner strength. One is over a thousand years old, another is fifteen. Some are supernatural or magic or genetically modified, others are just 'normal' girls fighting for their cause. Most are stubborn. Some are bitchy. Some are among the nicest people that you could ever hope to meet. Some have superiority complexes and at least one has an inferiority complex about it. Some are obsessed with money - wait, that's just Anya. Some die tragically, some young, some older. Some die to save the world, some while trying to save the world, some in a completely unrelated and so shocking accident. Some go off the deep end at one stage or another, but all but one find their way back with the help of their friends. They're all shoved in both exciting and horrible circumstances. They do what they need to do to survive. Some fail, some succeed, some fail but their failure is fixed by other people. They lean on the men and women in their lives, especially when the others are more experienced or knowledgeable, but they make their own decisions, learn from their own mistakes and live their own lives. Tara is not the epitome of physical strength. However, she is the most consistently 'morally good' character on BtVS and she does the strong thing and leaves when she has to, despite the pain it causes both herself and others. Chloe relies on Jack a lot of the time because he's fieldwork guy and she's computer girl, but she helps him and, because she trusts him, risks her job to do what they both think is right and to stop whatever-the-current-terrorist-threat-is.

I also want a real depiction of male characters. Characters like Xander Harris, like Oz, like Harry Potter, like Ron Weasley, like Sirius Black, like James Potter, like Andrew Wells, like Jonathon, like Rory Williams, like Rayford Steele, like Rupert Giles, like Miles Halter, like Augustus Waters, like Laurie, like Tony Almeida, like Angel, like Spike, like Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, like Riley Finn, like Jess Mariano. Some of them are hot. Some of them are idiots. Some of them do have the whole mysterious-guy thing going on. Some of them are goofy. Some of them are clever and quick-thinking. Some of them are loyal. Some of them are selfish. Some of them are easily misguided while meaning well. Some of them would do anything for someone they loved. Some of them would do anything that it took to save the world, some of them would with a bit of prodding, some of them might well run away. Most of them have been through horrible experiences. They all make mistakes; some of them fix them, some of them repent, some of them don't get the chance to. Some of them are brave. Some of them are wizards or vampires or werewolves. Some of them are a bit idealised but are able to make horrendous mistakes that could cost everyone their lives. Most of them have gone through some sort of emotional journey. I don't like what happens to Riley in season five; however, he was human. He was initially presented as the 'perfect' boyfriend and he grew human - jealous, insecure, worried, in love - and acted on it and did stupid things but was a person. BtVS has a lot of strong women and some supernaturally strong men. But for me one of the most incredible people is Xander. Like he said to Dawn: "You're not special. You're extraordinary." He's just a normal boy who found out that his new friend was a vampire slayer and decided to jump in to try to save one of his best friends and never jumped back out. In the later seasons, all of the other Scoobies (except perhaps Dawn and Andrew) were more equipped to fight on the Hellmouth. But he was always there, from the first episode to the very last, fighting and helping and surviving and being goofy and being himself and being real. He was never portrayed as some super-charming-super-mysterious-super-sexy-super-strong-hero. He was just a teenage boy who never gave up. And that's what makes him, and other characters like him, the truly extraordinary one.

I often get disappointed when I go into the book section of a bigger shop because a large chunk of the YA section is often paranormal romance and generally the same ones as the last time that I went there. I checked for the latest Artemis Fowl novel yesterday, wanting to buy it from a shop instead of online (ever since Angus and Robertson and Borders closed, I've started relying on Booktopia and The Book Depository), as I figured it would be a pretty popular book. Did Big W have a whole row dedicated to YA paranormal romance? Why, yes, of course. Did they sell a book about a questionably-evil teenage mastermind and his supernatural friends and their exploits? Well...no. How does this cater to diversity? How does it encourage young boys to read? To their credit, they had Skulduggery Pleasant, a series that I haven't yet read but really want to. However, most of the books were ones that I wouldn't touch and if I were a boy, in a society where doing anything feminine may equal figurative demasculinsation, I definitely wouldn't touch it. Admittedly, Big W have a lot of different sections of their store and so they really only want to stock the books that they think will be the most popular, which appears to be paranormal YA romance at the moment. And I'll check the bookshop at the mall, which I don't normally go to as it's a little further away but is the only bookshop in my city that I know of that still exists, which will have the book because it's awesome and doesn't really stock much paranormal stuff.

I guess it's just that this has become a bit of a trend for me. I go to the shops, I go to a big store, I check the book section while Mum's looking for clothes or a radio for my grandfather (speaking of, thank you for being my grandfather Dar and I hope you have an amazing Father's Day!) or something, I get disappointed by the selection, I go to a bookshop or a place that dedicates more space to books, I cheer up again (at least slightly).

It'd just be nice for a little more diversity and stronger female characters and male characters who aren't just an idealisation of adolescent - and, apparently, adult - sexual fantasies. I want my heroes and heroines to be real. Flawed but beautiful. Learning and growing and making mistakes. Not conforming to stereotypes. Being individual.

Grease's Ending: Empowerment, Anti-Feminism or Critiquing?

Grease: a tale of love and empowerment or of anti-feminism? I love the music just as much as most people. However, I have to be honest here. The first time I watched it I came away feeling disappointed by the ending. Well, a mixture of feeling disappointed and having been inspired to ponder the expectations that women have as I would be perfectly okay if Danny had started behaving more like Sandy (then again, it’s more so because I identify with original-Sandy and so the ending is unsatisfying for me; it’s not a matter of gender but of my personal values. If the 'good' guy became 'bad' for the 'bad' girl, I would still be put off. Though, in all honesty, I probably would like it more than the 'good' girl changing for the 'bad' guy). According to one of my best friends no one likes the ending, though, so when Mum had Grease among her movie suggestions for tonight I agreed to watch it again. I thought it would be nice to watch the ending again to see what I think of it, and even if my opinion hadn’t changed at least the music is catchy. Well...my opinion is pretty much the same, except I’m considering that the purpose may have been to empower Sandy in some way. But now I’m just left in this pit of uncertainty; is Sandy’s change permanent? Is she now going to smoke and drink? If Danny tried to sleep with her at the drive in again, would she let him? Or is it a makeover without an ideological change? Or maybe it’s a mixture – maybe she’ll smoke and drink occasionally but not get drunk or smoke excessively as she’s ‘loosened up’ but still likes what she used to like. I don’t believe that she would have gotten used to and started to enjoy smoking and drinking so quickly, or that she would change her views about sex so immediately. Or has she? Is she willing to change her opinions so as to ensure that she keeps Danny’s interest?

On a different note, I picked up on a lot more of the innuendos throughout the movie.

I wanted to explore my theories first, but I just did some brief research about this.

-        Reminder – Danny was also willing to change for Sandy. He donned a Letterman sweater in place of his leather jacket in the last scene and told his friends about how important she was to him.

o   http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120122114150AAgldfu

-         Apparently my whole ponder-the-expectations point was actually what they were going for. Huh. Interesting.

“The point of the show is always missed by 99 percent of the critics all over the world, and by a lot of the actors as well... It was a poke! A good old-fashioned razz against those...Hollywood movies that turned the main guy into a fine, upstanding citizen...” - co-creator Jim Jacobs

If we’re looking at the story, I don’t like Sandy’s change. If we’re looking at the reasons behind it, I completely understand it and, from an English-student-perspective, appreciate how they used their text to critique movie trends.

o   http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20101202/entlife/712039939/

On Gender Inequality in YA Fiction

Warning: there will be slight spoilers on love triangles in The Hunger Games and Twilight near the end of this post.
EDIT: I'm changing the names of different things around so a person scanning this will hopefully be able to avoid spoilers, but they're still here. So, yeah, consider yourself warned.
I am female. I believe that everyone was made equal and should be treated as such. I hate when guys (not all guys do this, obviously, but some do) objectify or otherwise disrespect women. However, I also hate when women act as if, because our sex has been oppressed in the past, we can do whatever we like as any criticism of our actions is supposedly sexist. (Same as when people of other religions seem to think that they can insult Christianity and Islam (because it is supposedly a terrorist religion; a topic for another day), often without justifying their insults, due to past misdeeds or to misconceptions. (Again, a rant – I mean discussion topic – for another day.)

I guess I’m not a feminist; I’m an ‘equalist’.

I was on The Hunger Games discussion board on the Nerdfighter Ning and revisited the idea of love triangles in young adult fiction. The concept of a love triangle isn’t horrible; it’s overused and I generally dislike them unless they’re done well, but it’s not inherently bad. It depends on how it’s handled. However, there is discrepancy. I don’t read much young adult fiction, but the love triangle idea seems to be cropping up a fair bit, and it’s pretty much always a girl choosing between two guys who generally, outside of that fictional world, wouldn’t be that obsessed with her.* I don’t like it; it’s trite, it’s overdone, it doesn’t even make that much sense most of the time. Why do they like the girl so much? She often constantly picks fault with herself, failing to see her inner (or often outer) beauty while everyone else does and always reassures her that she is in fact beautiful, despite her perpetual protests. EDIT: Or am I mixing up the overused YA heroines? Sorry, but both love triangles and "I'm a horrible human being"/"No you're not, you're the only one who thinks that way" are overused and so merging into one big cliché.

Back to the point. I could ramble for ages about how much I don’t like love triangles (which are inaptly named; most times it isn’t about love. It should be attraction triangles or romance triangles or something).

My point is that few people seem to complain when the girl is debating between which perfect guy she wants to be with, a debate that usually takes more than one novel, but if the roles were reversed people would be irate that the guy was stringing along two girls like that. For example, if Kyle was choosing between Gayle and Petra, especially if he kissed Gayle under the circumstances in Mockjara… Well, people would either call Petra and/or Gayle desperate or would hate Kyle (unless they were cheering Kyle on and saying he should, ahem, ‘date’ both at once). If a guy called Ben kept calling himself plain and supposedly fell in love with a girl named Emma, became emotionally attached to girl named Jessie when she left, then when Emma returned was with officially with one of them but seeing the other despite Emma not trusting Jessie, most female readers would say that he should respect her wishes and would assume that Jessie would be villified in the future as the 'other woman'. Yet, when the girl is finding it hard to choose between two guys, female readers generally think that it’s romantic and insult any male readers who protest against it. Why is it acceptable for us to be self-centred and take time to make up our mind due to being 'independent young women' but if a guy is doing the same it's wrong as they're hurting our delicate feelings?

Why is there this double standard? Why can fictionalised females get away with having two hot, ‘perfect’ guys flirting with them, generally kissing one while romantically attached to the other, when if a fictionalised male was dating a hot, ‘perfect’ girl while interested in and at one point kissing another hot, ‘perfect’ girl, either he would be seen as a cheater or the latter girl would be seen as desperate. Why aren’t young adult women ever really called up for kissing another guy? It’s as if the YA fiction boys just love us YA girls so much that we can do anything…but we can still treat them in the way that they should really be treating us if the roles were reversed. If you kiss someone else, you cheated, and whether or not the person forgives you there will at least be a trust issue or other consequences. Our YA miniatures need to face these consequences rather than suggesting that we can do whatever we want without considering how it affects the people around us.




EDIT: There are some girl-guy-girl love triangles which seem drawn out but people accept, such as in the Archie comics. Due to the different medium, I think this works better as the idea is that these characters are caught in a moment of time (sort of) and so encounter different events and experience hiccups in their relationships but generally there are no big changes. Archie will always be caught between Betty and Veronica and neither girl will ever make him choose between them definitely as then the rest of the comcis will be confined to that one path and the general friendliness within the comics will be affected due to tension between Archie and the unchosen girl, the chosen girls, and everyone else that it affects in Riverdale. It's also slightly different as Betty, Ronnie, Archie, Reggie and even to an extent Midge all flirt with different people and go on random dates. I want them to pair off and stick with their boy- or girlfriend, but it's not likely to happen as that's just Riverdale for you. This isn't really a great example as I believe one of the main reasons that people accept this continued love triangle is that the comics are in a way based around it, but it's still one of the few examples of a girl-guy-girl love triangle that I have encountered in which one of the girls isn't the heroine and the other isn't a bitch.

EDIT: Note - I know that there are many people who call female characters out as being self-centred when they do this. I'm mostly complaining about the fact that many YA books seek to perpetuate this trend. Love triangles are, like other things, useful tools that can be used to wonderful effect. Some of my favourite books have love triangles in them. In Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, the whole plot is affected by the love triangle, which has a metaphorically tangible effect on the story. They can help develop a story or add tension. However, so many authors are using them nowadays that it's cheapened the idea. I guess what I'm calling for is for authors to consider the plot from different angles and ensure that they're not just writing down their fantasies, but to develop and maintain a believable situation. If the guy has a girlfriend but is falling for the heroine, don't make the girlfriend a bitch; there's a reason he liked her in the first place, and chances are that aliens haven't taken over her brain and made her a different person than the girl that he originally liked. Another of my favourite books has this scenario. Characters comment on how the girl has changed in the past year. The author presents a legitimate reason for the guy's hesitancy to leave her so I feel that it doesn't take away from the story too much, but I would still have preferred to see some more redeeming qualities in her. If the main male character is so great and if the main female character falls into his 'type', chances are that his girlfriend is at least a halfway decent human being.

Sorry for rambling.



* SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER (KIND OF, BUT THE MORE TIMES I SAY ‘SPOILER’ THE MORE LIKELY THAT SOMEONE WON’T ACCIDENTALLY GLANCE DOWN HERE AND SEE A SPOILER. SO, SPOILER S-SP-SPO-SPOI-SPOIL-SPOILE-SPOILER). In The Hunger Games, I think that it’s done okay as a lot of the time only one guy is on the scene and there’s so much going on that it makes sense that she doesn’t have time to sit down and work it out. Also, the two guys recognise that she is flawed. Like Haymitch said, Katniss could live a thousand lifetimes and never be good enough for ______ (I’m not going to say who to decrease spoilers). I found that one of them was idealised but, as a girl who does appreciate that sort of thing, enjoyed it and believed that he was the right match for Katniss. So in my opinion, one of them had a realistic attraction to her and the other’s love was more romantic and idealised but he was perfect for her.