Ten Questions about YA Paranormals
One of the reviewers over at bookfails is doing something called the Sparkle Project--reviewing a ton of YA books featuring human girl/stalkerish paranormal boy-shaped-being-who's-hundreds-of-years-old. None of them so far have been any good (which doesn't surprise me, considering that most of them sound like they're ripping off a series that sucks on toast).
But it does make me wonder about these books. Because--well, here are ten somewhat snarky questions that occur to me:
1) Why is a dead boyfriend desirable?
This is the biggest problem I have with vampire/human romances. Keep in mind that I have had this problem since before Buffy. And yes, this means that I do not get Buffy/Angel or Buffy/Spike. Or Nick Knight/Natalie Lambert or Javier Vachon/Tracy Vetter, for that matter. I don't care how good-looking the vampire is, or how charming, attentive, witty or rich. If he has a death certificate, I really, really don't know why a non-necrophiliac would want to date the guy.
Yes, I know vampires are supposed to be sexy. It's just that--to me--they aren't. And I wonder what it says that so many books are pushing the idea of avoiding live guys in favor of the dead ones.
2) If he's immortal and can do anything he wants, why does he keep repeating high school?
This seems to be a common motif in YA books, presumably to get the paranormal character and the baseline human together. The problem with this tedious plot device is that the paranormal guy almost always tells the baseline human that he's been going to various high schools for ages, not quite knowing what he was looking for.
Not only does this sound creepy, it's STUPID. You've got good looks, wealth, and eternity to enjoy both...and you want to waste your time in high school, learning the same things over and over again in preparation for a life you're not going to have? I can think of a lot more entertaining things that I'd rather do for eternity, even if I were a soulless monster.
I think the most practical vampires I ever saw were the ones in Forever Knight. Most of them had jobs and tried to blend in. The vampire with the worst luck as far as employment goes has to be the eponymous hero in The Vampire Fred, who, being very new as vampires go and not at all rich or powerful, is stuck working the night shift at his pre-death office job. Both of these methods are practical. I can deal with them.
But trying to pretend that you're eternally a teenager? Even if the vampire/angel/fae/whatever in question is physically a teen for all eternity, the very fact that he--it's ALWAYS a he--has lived for hundreds, if not thousands of years and has thus had experiences that a modern human teen couldn't possibly have had means that he won't think or feel the way that a modern teen does. Logically, he should be shaped by his upbringing yay these many years in the past, by his immortality, by his experiences before and, if he's a vampire, after death, by his very difference from humans, and, just possibly, by the fact that he has killed humans.
Which leads me to another issue.
3) Why isn't the fact that the guy is a multiple murderer ever an issue for the heroine?
Most paranormal guys have killed, in such stories--angels, fae and shapeshifters as well as vampires. However, for the purposes of this section, I'm going to be referring to these characters as vampires, because the killer vampires are by far the most common.
For some reason, the intended love interests never seem to find the fact that Hot Vampire Guy is a killer even vaguely repellent. The general reaction seems to be, "Well, you're not doing it now, so that's okay." Which, to me, is like saying to a serial killer, "Well, you're not murdering anyone now, so we can just forget about the people that you've slaughtered." Never mind that the girl, being human, is effectively part of the group that the guy kills and eats.
Some love interests--both in fanfic and in published works--actually get turned on by the "power and strength" of the paranormal killer and are pretty eager to toss their humanity aside and start preying on humans themselves. Hybristophilia, anyone?
4) Why is the vampire falling in love with food?
This is something I have always wondered about vampire/human romances. Now, I can see coming to realize that certain types of animals (note the word) have feelings and finding the food made by or from such animals distasteful or even immoral. But there's a difference between going vegetarian or vegan and not only giving up meat, but also falling in romantic love with a nice, juicy cheeseburger.
Now, you can like cheeseburgers, be indifferent to them, or hate them. You can like them and refuse to eat them for aesthetic, religious or moral reasons. But most people would draw the line at a tragic, impossible romance with a piece of food.
This is never a problem in such stories. No matter how many people the vampire has killed in the past, no matter how superior he acts toward humans in general, he always regards her as a person (i.e., not prey) right from the get-go. And the bad guys are always the only ones who have a problem with his romancing a Lunchable.
And speaking of romance...
5) Why do stalking, attempts to control the love interest and physical violence always equal 'true love'?
The guy watches her all the time. He follows her home. He pickpockets her bookbag and locker in reverse to give her presents--but he may also break her car to keep her from going wherever he doesn't want her to go. He may break into her house, or even threaten her with physical violence. He'll employ reverse psychology and tell her that she's in danger around him, secure in the knowledge that she won't believe for a minute that she truly is.
For her part, she is typically insecure, tells the reader that she is plain or ugly (even though she is demonstrably neither), is convinced that no one will ever love her, and is prone to doing background checks on friends and lovers that seem to occur without either her or her author possessing any knowledge of how the Internet or libraries work.
Now, I'd be the first to admit that while I can get characters together, I have no clue about how to write an ongoing romantic relationship. Ninety-five percent of all the people I saw growing up were widowed, divorced or single. I had an aunt and two cousins who were married, but as I saw them infrequently and one of those married ended in divorce when I was still a teenager and the other two weren't romantic at all...well, for all intents and purposes, romantic relationships are largely mythical to me. I do know that they exist outside of books, fanfic and roleplay, but I still have the feeling that they're as easy to comprehend as your average unicorn.
So no, I'm not an expert on romance. But stalking, insecurity and violence do not sound like love to me. Obviously they DO sound like love to a lot of authors--and a lot of their readers--but a crappy idea held by large numbers of people is STILL a crappy idea.
I suspect that my opinion is largely colored by 1970s and 1980s fiction, where the creepy boy or girl next door generally turned out to be a LOT creepier than anyone even suspected. Bodies in the basement, that kind of thing. This might not have been a flawless plot, but it did acknowledge that homicidal people were dangerous. Revolutionary concept, I know.
The normalization of stalking in fiction worries me because many people do not think when they read. They simply accept what is presented as good and right AS good and right, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. As these books proliferate, I wonder how many girls will be spotted by predators who can easily spot the vulnerable ones in the herd--the ones who will accept stalkerish behavior,a man's complete control over their lives, and physical and emotional abuse as signs of true love.
And I wonder how many will be hurt or worse because they get into a situation society and culture both say that they shouldn't want to escape.
Because one is too many.
6) What is up with the paranormal characters not having any weaknesses?
I blame Anne Rice for this; she eliminated a lot of the traditional obstacles that her vampires would have had to deal with, like religious symbols and so on. A lot of people have followed her lead--and haven't remembered to replace the traditional weaknesses of vampires with anything. Obstacles are GOOD things, narratively; they give a character something to struggle against, something they can't overcome in a wink and an eyelash. Once you've decided that your vampires can stroll about in the sunlight, have no sensitivity to garlic or roses, can cross running water without breaking a sweat, can't be burned, beheaded or staked, and can deal with that pesky blood-thirst quite easily, don't you know, then you're not writing about a vampire. You're writing about an uber-powered immortal god with no weaknesses. He (or, to be fair, she, but the vast majority of fictional vampires are males) has no problems, no difficulties, no obstacles to overcome. He is, in short, starting not from Square One, but from Square Perfection.
And this throws a monkey wrench into characterization. If the character is effectively perfect from the get-go...well, where can the character go from up?
7) Could we actually have a proactive protagonist for a change?
I've already ranted elsewhere about the Protagonists Who Don't Do Anything--the ones who are effectively useless and who only do dumb things so that something will happen. Nothing annoys me more than a character who sits around whining and angsting about how unhappy he or she is AND YET NOT DOING ANYTHING TO CHANGE THE BAD SITUATION. Protagonists are supposed to solve their problems, not sit around and wait for someone else to do it.
8) Shouldn't I feel that the good guys are...well...good?
This dovetails with the murderous abuser tropes that I listed above. I don't have any problem with morally grey characters. I don't even have any problems with Magnificent Bastard types (why, hello there, Petyr Baelish from A Song of Ice and Fire). But when an angel starts beating up the girl he claims to be in love with or an immortal's obsession with multiple reincarnations of the same girl has led to her family being murdered...well, I get upset if the characters are presented as good, noble, virtuous, etc. Present them as creepy, sure. But don't tell me that "creepy" = "epitome of virtue."
9) How come the heroine is always in such a hurry to give up living in the human world, give up her humanity or die?
Seriously, why? The characters making this decision are generally sixteen to eighteen. That's rather young to be deciding that they'd be perfectly happy giving up their families, their friends, their world and possibly their humanity, and that if they can't have AbusiveParanormalGuy5000, they might just as well drop dead.
I know about teenage crushes and all, but this is just stupid. Shouldn't they waver back and forth on the question? Shouldn't they worry about the things they'd miss--or hell, the people they'd miss? Don't they have any dreams of things that a high school student can't do but that someone in college or after can? Don't they have any thoughts about people they want to meet, places they want to go, wondrous accomplishments they want to achieve?
Why does everyone and everything they've ever known matter so little and the guy they just met a day or two ago matter so damned much?
Which leads me to my final question:
10) Why are these girls falling in love with these creepy guys?
Because this is the Twilight formula. And the formula sells.
What difference does it make if it pushes bad writing, promotes poorly developed characterization and sends dangerous messages?
What, indeed?
***
But it does make me wonder about these books. Because--well, here are ten somewhat snarky questions that occur to me:
1) Why is a dead boyfriend desirable?
This is the biggest problem I have with vampire/human romances. Keep in mind that I have had this problem since before Buffy. And yes, this means that I do not get Buffy/Angel or Buffy/Spike. Or Nick Knight/Natalie Lambert or Javier Vachon/Tracy Vetter, for that matter. I don't care how good-looking the vampire is, or how charming, attentive, witty or rich. If he has a death certificate, I really, really don't know why a non-necrophiliac would want to date the guy.
Yes, I know vampires are supposed to be sexy. It's just that--to me--they aren't. And I wonder what it says that so many books are pushing the idea of avoiding live guys in favor of the dead ones.
2) If he's immortal and can do anything he wants, why does he keep repeating high school?
This seems to be a common motif in YA books, presumably to get the paranormal character and the baseline human together. The problem with this tedious plot device is that the paranormal guy almost always tells the baseline human that he's been going to various high schools for ages, not quite knowing what he was looking for.
Not only does this sound creepy, it's STUPID. You've got good looks, wealth, and eternity to enjoy both...and you want to waste your time in high school, learning the same things over and over again in preparation for a life you're not going to have? I can think of a lot more entertaining things that I'd rather do for eternity, even if I were a soulless monster.
I think the most practical vampires I ever saw were the ones in Forever Knight. Most of them had jobs and tried to blend in. The vampire with the worst luck as far as employment goes has to be the eponymous hero in The Vampire Fred, who, being very new as vampires go and not at all rich or powerful, is stuck working the night shift at his pre-death office job. Both of these methods are practical. I can deal with them.
But trying to pretend that you're eternally a teenager? Even if the vampire/angel/fae/whatever in question is physically a teen for all eternity, the very fact that he--it's ALWAYS a he--has lived for hundreds, if not thousands of years and has thus had experiences that a modern human teen couldn't possibly have had means that he won't think or feel the way that a modern teen does. Logically, he should be shaped by his upbringing yay these many years in the past, by his immortality, by his experiences before and, if he's a vampire, after death, by his very difference from humans, and, just possibly, by the fact that he has killed humans.
Which leads me to another issue.
3) Why isn't the fact that the guy is a multiple murderer ever an issue for the heroine?
Most paranormal guys have killed, in such stories--angels, fae and shapeshifters as well as vampires. However, for the purposes of this section, I'm going to be referring to these characters as vampires, because the killer vampires are by far the most common.
For some reason, the intended love interests never seem to find the fact that Hot Vampire Guy is a killer even vaguely repellent. The general reaction seems to be, "Well, you're not doing it now, so that's okay." Which, to me, is like saying to a serial killer, "Well, you're not murdering anyone now, so we can just forget about the people that you've slaughtered." Never mind that the girl, being human, is effectively part of the group that the guy kills and eats.
Some love interests--both in fanfic and in published works--actually get turned on by the "power and strength" of the paranormal killer and are pretty eager to toss their humanity aside and start preying on humans themselves. Hybristophilia, anyone?
4) Why is the vampire falling in love with food?
This is something I have always wondered about vampire/human romances. Now, I can see coming to realize that certain types of animals (note the word) have feelings and finding the food made by or from such animals distasteful or even immoral. But there's a difference between going vegetarian or vegan and not only giving up meat, but also falling in romantic love with a nice, juicy cheeseburger.
Now, you can like cheeseburgers, be indifferent to them, or hate them. You can like them and refuse to eat them for aesthetic, religious or moral reasons. But most people would draw the line at a tragic, impossible romance with a piece of food.
This is never a problem in such stories. No matter how many people the vampire has killed in the past, no matter how superior he acts toward humans in general, he always regards her as a person (i.e., not prey) right from the get-go. And the bad guys are always the only ones who have a problem with his romancing a Lunchable.
And speaking of romance...
5) Why do stalking, attempts to control the love interest and physical violence always equal 'true love'?
The guy watches her all the time. He follows her home. He pickpockets her bookbag and locker in reverse to give her presents--but he may also break her car to keep her from going wherever he doesn't want her to go. He may break into her house, or even threaten her with physical violence. He'll employ reverse psychology and tell her that she's in danger around him, secure in the knowledge that she won't believe for a minute that she truly is.
For her part, she is typically insecure, tells the reader that she is plain or ugly (even though she is demonstrably neither), is convinced that no one will ever love her, and is prone to doing background checks on friends and lovers that seem to occur without either her or her author possessing any knowledge of how the Internet or libraries work.
Now, I'd be the first to admit that while I can get characters together, I have no clue about how to write an ongoing romantic relationship. Ninety-five percent of all the people I saw growing up were widowed, divorced or single. I had an aunt and two cousins who were married, but as I saw them infrequently and one of those married ended in divorce when I was still a teenager and the other two weren't romantic at all...well, for all intents and purposes, romantic relationships are largely mythical to me. I do know that they exist outside of books, fanfic and roleplay, but I still have the feeling that they're as easy to comprehend as your average unicorn.
So no, I'm not an expert on romance. But stalking, insecurity and violence do not sound like love to me. Obviously they DO sound like love to a lot of authors--and a lot of their readers--but a crappy idea held by large numbers of people is STILL a crappy idea.
I suspect that my opinion is largely colored by 1970s and 1980s fiction, where the creepy boy or girl next door generally turned out to be a LOT creepier than anyone even suspected. Bodies in the basement, that kind of thing. This might not have been a flawless plot, but it did acknowledge that homicidal people were dangerous. Revolutionary concept, I know.
The normalization of stalking in fiction worries me because many people do not think when they read. They simply accept what is presented as good and right AS good and right, regardless of any evidence to the contrary. As these books proliferate, I wonder how many girls will be spotted by predators who can easily spot the vulnerable ones in the herd--the ones who will accept stalkerish behavior,a man's complete control over their lives, and physical and emotional abuse as signs of true love.
And I wonder how many will be hurt or worse because they get into a situation society and culture both say that they shouldn't want to escape.
Because one is too many.
6) What is up with the paranormal characters not having any weaknesses?
I blame Anne Rice for this; she eliminated a lot of the traditional obstacles that her vampires would have had to deal with, like religious symbols and so on. A lot of people have followed her lead--and haven't remembered to replace the traditional weaknesses of vampires with anything. Obstacles are GOOD things, narratively; they give a character something to struggle against, something they can't overcome in a wink and an eyelash. Once you've decided that your vampires can stroll about in the sunlight, have no sensitivity to garlic or roses, can cross running water without breaking a sweat, can't be burned, beheaded or staked, and can deal with that pesky blood-thirst quite easily, don't you know, then you're not writing about a vampire. You're writing about an uber-powered immortal god with no weaknesses. He (or, to be fair, she, but the vast majority of fictional vampires are males) has no problems, no difficulties, no obstacles to overcome. He is, in short, starting not from Square One, but from Square Perfection.
And this throws a monkey wrench into characterization. If the character is effectively perfect from the get-go...well, where can the character go from up?
7) Could we actually have a proactive protagonist for a change?
I've already ranted elsewhere about the Protagonists Who Don't Do Anything--the ones who are effectively useless and who only do dumb things so that something will happen. Nothing annoys me more than a character who sits around whining and angsting about how unhappy he or she is AND YET NOT DOING ANYTHING TO CHANGE THE BAD SITUATION. Protagonists are supposed to solve their problems, not sit around and wait for someone else to do it.
8) Shouldn't I feel that the good guys are...well...good?
This dovetails with the murderous abuser tropes that I listed above. I don't have any problem with morally grey characters. I don't even have any problems with Magnificent Bastard types (why, hello there, Petyr Baelish from A Song of Ice and Fire). But when an angel starts beating up the girl he claims to be in love with or an immortal's obsession with multiple reincarnations of the same girl has led to her family being murdered...well, I get upset if the characters are presented as good, noble, virtuous, etc. Present them as creepy, sure. But don't tell me that "creepy" = "epitome of virtue."
9) How come the heroine is always in such a hurry to give up living in the human world, give up her humanity or die?
Seriously, why? The characters making this decision are generally sixteen to eighteen. That's rather young to be deciding that they'd be perfectly happy giving up their families, their friends, their world and possibly their humanity, and that if they can't have AbusiveParanormalGuy5000, they might just as well drop dead.
I know about teenage crushes and all, but this is just stupid. Shouldn't they waver back and forth on the question? Shouldn't they worry about the things they'd miss--or hell, the people they'd miss? Don't they have any dreams of things that a high school student can't do but that someone in college or after can? Don't they have any thoughts about people they want to meet, places they want to go, wondrous accomplishments they want to achieve?
Why does everyone and everything they've ever known matter so little and the guy they just met a day or two ago matter so damned much?
Which leads me to my final question:
10) Why are these girls falling in love with these creepy guys?
Because this is the Twilight formula. And the formula sells.
What difference does it make if it pushes bad writing, promotes poorly developed characterization and sends dangerous messages?
What, indeed?
***