When I first got this journal I planned to make it mostly meta.
Tumblr is not a site that is designed for meta - it's a graphics place - but it's pretty perfectly designed to get me to write some, because I say something in the tags about how "this could be a rant about [x] but I will refrain" or whatever, and certain other lovely people reblog and say "DO IT" and then I make delighted squeaking noises at the screen and obey with glee.
This time, I'm getting pissy about John Green.
Okay, so. John Green is not necessarily the worst author out there or anything, and generally when he crops up saying things on the Internet they are fairly decent things to say, but: Issues. I have them.
In order of writing:
An Abundance of Katherines: This one actually lacks most of the major flaws that I associate with Green. True, Lindsey has some shades of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in that she comes along and snaps Colin out of his depression and his rut, but she's mostly very down-to-earth and realistic, and she and Colin manage some pretty good rapport. She's a fully realized character with her own issues, and - this bit is important - we get her perspective on them. All of them. We, the reader, know how she feels about her problems. I probably wouldn't even connect her with the MPDG archetype at all if this were Green's only book.
Also, Colin? Actually has a personality. He's got a lot of quirks and individual interests (languages, anagrams, math tricks, swearing in other languages, tricking people, nicknaming) and his own drive and goals ('be a genius and win back my latest girlfriend, also go on a road trip to appease my best friend' - not terribly specific, but goals. A purpose. Some ability to drive the story, in other words.) It makes sense for Colin to be the protagonist of this.
[Technically passes the Bechdel test, I think - the guys are around, but Lindsey talks to her mother and various ladies without them contributing to the conversation, and she has relationships with them.]
Okay, second: Looking for Alaska. This is a pretty interesting book, vivid and with a fair bit of suspense and emotional involvement (also some cool things with structure: instead of traditional chapters, the sections are headed with [x] amount of time before and after a certain point.) However, it also introduces the two main issues with Green.
One: The Alaska character. Look closely, because we'll be seeing her again. Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the extreme, this wild, zany and unpredictable character bounces into the hero's life and perpetually astonishes him with her strange, out-of-control, behavior and reckless disregard for rules, inhibitions, and sense. The hero, Pudge, is dragged into her wild world half-willingly and is forever changed. Yadda yadda yadda.
In fairness to Green, Alaska is far from perfect: she has a lot of difficult things going on in her past, and she has plenty of issues of her own - in fact, she's an emotional wreck underneath the cheery facade, and she may or may not be suicidal. May or may not be - this, of course, is the problem. Unlike with Lindsey, we never find out much about what is going on in Alaska's mind; her problems are not there to deepen her character so much as to separate her further from Pudge and place her further beyond his comprehension as the unattainable myth. The full force of her story is not her tragedy, but the lead-up and Pudge's reaction to it; the climax and resolution come not from anything that happens to Alaska, but from Pudge learning how to process the fallout from her death.
Yes, Pudge drives the story, and this brings us to our second main problem: Pudge himself. Remember what I said about Colin having distinguishing features? Yeah, distinguishing feature of Pudge: He's interested in peoples' last words. That is pretty much it, beyond 'fairly generic somewhat-dorky-but-not-an-outcast guy.' He doesn't come up with any plans or tricks, takes no actions on his own (except changing schools) until the very end of the story (and even then, he's borrowing other people's ideas), and even points out at various points that he is far less interesting than the other characters. Why is he our protagonist?
Because John Green less interested in a girl's tragedy than he was in an unremarkable middle-class white dude's reaction to it.
[Does not pass the Bechdel Test.]
Okay, Number Three: Paper Towns. Here, we meet Q and Margo.
Margo is - again, to give credit where credit is due - a deconstruction of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. In fact, this book actually contains the lines "She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl." I was prepared to forgive a lot for that, but a deconstructed MPDG is still an MPDG and she is portrayed as such for most of the book, and she is never ever given a chance to truly explain what's going on in her head to the reader. The book even ends by claiming that she will always be an enigma, although it states that this is true of everyone, not just her. Also, she isn't even around for most of the story.
What's really impressive is that Margo manages to be absent from the narrative and yet shoulder the entire weight of it, instead of Q. Pudge at least got to handle his own inciting incident (choosing to move); Q doesn't do anything throughout the entire novel except follow Margo's lead and the vague instructions that she chose to leave behind. Without Margo, he would never have done anything interesting at all throughout the story, or indeed have any remarkable quality about him whatsoever. As I mentioned, Pudge has the one quirk, but Q doesn't really have any at all. (He's perpetually late. This is his only remarkable characteristic.)
Finally, remember when I said that at least Looking for Alaska had good momentum and was intense and had a cool structure? Yeah, this... doesn't. There is way less emotional impact and way less tension along the story. It's like Green forgot how to keep up tension without sacrificing an unknowable tornado woman.
[Does not actually pass the Bechdel Test, but does have one close friendship between girls, no dudes involved. Of course, one of those girls thinks the other is backstabbing her and takes a vicious revenge... even if the second still cares about her a lot, SIDE. EYE.]
Fourth, we have Will Grayson, Will Grayson. This is a co-write; there are two characters with the same (titular) name, each one written (predominantly) by one of the authors. I should disclaim now that I only read one segment involving each Will, and decided I wasn't going to waste my time on this for the following reasons:
This Will Grayson is the further evolution of the increasingly dull everydude progression. He opens the story by explaining that his main goal is to be unnoticed, stay quiet, and not cause trouble or care too passionately about anything.
So how does a determinedly passive character do anything in the story? Well, we don't have a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, or indeed a predominating female character in these sections. Instead, we have Tiny Cooper, a very large and very stereotypically gay friend of Will's who starts things, has extravagant goals, drags (straight, white, middle-class) Will into his plans, and generally saunters through the world stirring things up and facing down assholes with courage and self-possession while Will skulks about narrating sullenly in the background.
...Oh.
Dear John Green: make your most interesting and proactive characters your protagonists, please, not props for your passive privileged personality-less dude to talk about. Really, we don't want to hear about the latter.