Ten Things I Want to Stop Reading About
***There are many books that I love that include the following elements. I also love a lot of the movies I used gifs for 🙂 However, I feel as though what I listed is overdone, overexposed, not well enough developed, and/or irritating in a lot of YA fiction that has come out or is coming out recently***
Love Triangles
Love Interests
“Good” Vampires
“Good” Werewolves
Minorities only as Best Friends/Sidekicks
Fairytale Retellings
“Chosen Ones”/Prophesied Heroes
Orphans
Predictable Endings
Weak Female Protagonists
Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish meme hosted by The Broke and The Bookish. Go check them out! ♥
I totally agree with the “chosen one” and “love triangles” SO OVERDONE.
LikeLike
A lot of these are overdone or not done well lately. I agree with love triangles and the chosen one. I also am getting so annoyed with the female protagonist being weak! Sigh.
LikeLike
I agree with most of these! So overdone! But when it comes to “weak” female leads, don’t you think they’re overdoing it instead with “strong” ones? With Characters like Katniss from The Hunger Games and Tris from Divergent, we see female leads who may be strong physically and aren’t very feminine, but that doesn’t mean they’re strong. Wendy from The Shining is a good mom and is the only one (including her husband, son, and other villagers who have been in the hotel) not mentally affected by the haunted house. She knows who she is and that she would protect her son with her life. Doesn’t that make her strong?
LikeLiked by 1 person
If I never read another book with a love triangle in it, it will be too soon! YA is especially guilty about this. What I want to know is, where are all of the people in real life caught up in a love triangle? I’ve never met anyone who has gone through something like that, why is it so ever present in YA?
LikeLike
I so agree about the love triangles! But I kind of disagree with your example for weak female protagonists… I don’t know if you read The Shining or just watched the movie, but in the movie Wendy was weak and such a crybaby. In the book, she’s such a different woman and she wasn’t a badass or strong physically, but I thought she was a very strong character. She was hardworking, earnest, and she was an amazing mother. She also tried so hard to help her husband and I was really disappointed to see her portrayed so terribly in the movies. But awesome list! Here’s my TTT: http://wp.me/p6Erc0-2M
LikeLike
Such good points! I love the Shining (the novel, more so) and I agree with your assessment. I chose that GIF more do to that moment in time it shows than any commentary on her as a character. It was hard to find GIFs of a “weak” female character precisely for your reasons above! There are a tremendous amount of “strong” female characters. I think what I am looking for is more multi-faceted characters. Women who have stories to tell and personalities that have both weak and strong aspects. Wendy definitely is that. But I liked the GIF 😉
LikeLike
I completely agree! Please look at my comment reply to MorganPaige! 🙂 I have read the book, it is actually my favorite. But I am glad my poor choice of GIF started these conversations about the portrayal of women in popular media. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I completely agree!! I have never met any one with that sort of problem in real life either! Not saying it is impossible but it is just completely overdone.
LikeLike
I just want to read something totally different from what has been coming out recently!
LikeLiked by 1 person
YAAS. Aren’t there more stories we can tell??
LikeLike
I’m so happy you think so too 🙂 I was hoping my comment didn’t come across as preachy, your gif is a good representation of a weak female character! She certainly looks like she can’t handle what’s going on in that scene lol and I can’t agree with you more- multifaceted female characters are few and far between! I think fair and interesting representations need to be written more often, rather than one certain label to do defined under. Great post!
LikeLike
yeeeeessss to love triangles – can’t stand them! My TTT
LikeLike
I did the same list this week, love triangles were on there and I also had the love interests one and the orphan one too.
My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/top-ten-tuesday-25/
LikeLike
No of course not! I’m glad for them! Provokes thought and discussion 🙂 Thanks!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agreed.
LikeLike