I've been reading a
lot of YA Dystopian/Fantasy novels and I've gotta say the chicks in these books
amaze me. At the moment I'm reading "Die for me" by Amy Plum, which
if I'm honest really isn't that great a book. The characters are all superficial
and there doesn't appear to be any real depth to the story line. There's a lot
of fuss made about how Kate is a mature young woman and Vincent seems like he's
struggling to keep up the dual identities of 'tall, dark and handsome tough
guy' and 'buff, uber romantic, clingy puppy'. Neither character is really
pulling it off. I'm finding them both to be incredibly shallow and immature.
For someone who is supposed to be mature
- Kate is ridiculously whiny and naïve. The same can be said for Vincent
and his roomies. I don't care how often they reanimate as teenagers - they have
lived for decades and you'd hope that some of that age and experience would
manifest in their present day behaviour, rather than being plagued by temper
tantrums befitting of teeny boppers and rich kids.
ANYWAY - back to my
original point. The heroine's of these novels are all so damn tolerant.
"Oh - you're actually a zombie, whose touch can force me to be calm even
though I should be running around screaming like a lunatic, and you become a
corpse every month like clockwork? Nah that's cool. I'll just come over and
have some popcorn over your dead body while I wait for you to come back to
life" - In what universe is that considered normal?
And unless you've
been living under a rock for the past few years you will undoubtedly have heard
of Twilight. I'm sorry I don't care what any one says but there is nothing even
vaguely threatening about a man who sparkles. What was Stephanie Meyer thinking
when she wrote that? As they say in Moulin Rouge, Diamonds are a girls best
friend. So what does Edward do? In order to show his great big scary badassness
he drags her to the last patch of flowery sunlight left in the forest and shows
her how sparkly he is? Me? My first instinct in that situation would be to
laugh, raucously. If Edward wanted to frighten Bella then rather than lighting
himself up like a display at tiffany's he should have gone found himself one of
those deer he likes so much and forced her to watch him butcher it.
But the examples
don't end there. I am a absolutely massive fan of The CW's Vampire Diaries, but
I'll be damned if I can understand why Elena puts up with all the vampires. As
much as I am an Damon Salvatore fan-girl I think it also needs to be pointed out
that despite Damon repeatedly murdering Jeremy (and a host of other
misfortunates), Elena still forgives him. Its almost as if she's sitting there
weighing it up in her mind "Damon looks really yummy in that leather
jacket… but he did kill Jer, again… but… Jeremy still kicking soooo I guess its
ok!"
I think that the
first time I've actually seen a normal, healthy response to being told that
[BLANK] is a vampire was in Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments book series.
Simon is forced to do a big reveal and tell his mum that he's a vampire. And
she - understandably - freaks out and calls him a demon and barricades her
house with holy symbols and other anti-vamp paraphernalia. Whilst this is
regrettable, as Simon is a *cough* good vampire (He only ever bit that one
little girl...and apparently that's ok. He just couldn't help himself!) it's
the only time I've ever seen someone have a rational reaction to vampirism.
Vampires are creatures that need blood to survive, and the blood of choice is
always human. We're a walking juice box to them, all they have to do is tap a
vein and voila! Dinner is served. It seems completely insane to me that so many
books turn what should essentially be a horrifying hunter of the night, into
friendly companions who end up being more like super heroes with a drug problem.
This is not to say
that I don't absolutely adore vampire diaries or twilight and the
host of other YA books with these kinds of flaws, however it'd be good to see
the protagonist's start to show some savvy and survival instincts rather than
just accepting that the monster hiding beneath the handsome face is actually
friendly.
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