#sure it doesn’t fall into the same problematic tropes as the trilogy sometimes does

[nellasbookplanet]

'Enjoy it despite its flaws' is one thing, but Mass Effect somehow invented its own category: 'simultaneously one of the most flawed and the most well-crafted sci-fi stories I've ever experienced'. These games are incredible. They’re the worst. All the women are sexualized. All the women have deeply flawed and complex personalities without being either demonized or romanticized. The first available f/f ship seems to be written along the guidelines of 'what would a straight man find hot'. As the games go on, they effortlessly include multiple same sex romance options given just as much care and development as the the opposite sex ones. You can play as a xenophobic murderhobo asshole. You can play as someone genuinely caring but also harsh, who inspires growth and co-operation wherever you go but who makes hard choices when you have to. You can kill civilians and punch reporters and commit genocide. You can stop a generational war and mediate peace and save several species from extinction. The robots are stereotypically evil cannon fodder. The robots are deeply complex with a tragic history. Your team mates are assholes with xenophobic opinions or justifications for police brutality and genocide, or they just want excuses to Do Murder. You team mates are deeply flawed and can be urged to grow alongside you. The most important aliens are all humanoids. There are plant aliens and jellyfish aliens and insect aliens and elephant aliens and aliens who can’t share an atmosphere with us. You have to drive around countless identically boring planets with little to show for it. You get to discover hidden secrets and civilisations millions of years old and live through some of the most emotionally harrowing scenes in storytelling history. I am going absolutely insane about it.

[smalltownfae]

Top five problematic tropes from your favorite authors you'd want shot ala Old Yeller-style?

I don't know the name of many tropes so I will just describe what is common to happen and that I dislike. I am fine with most things and the problematic aspects depend more of the way something is presented than that element in itself.

1 - Paedophiles presented in a good light. This goes for Robin Hobb and her male adult characters that end up with minors way younger than they are. This is especially true for the character named Reyn, but Hobb uses this so much. Liveship Traders and Rain Wild Chronicles are the worst offenders. I also think "Fledgling" by Octavia E. Butler is going the same way, but I haven't finished yet. The excuse given is that this vampire that has the body of a 10 year old is actually 50 something so it's alright if full grown adults have sex with her (no, it's not. Not for me and I wish I didn't make movies in my head while reading). Honestly Butler has problematic content in her other works but so far it has always been well addressed so this one so far is really disappointing. "Daughter of the Forest" by Marillier also has a minor/adult relationship and so does "Fire and Hemlock" by Diana Wynne Jones. It's way too common especially in fantasy and I am begging authors to stop this bullshit.

2 - Consent is not sexy. Another Hobb one, but I like to think she got a little better at it given the character of Alise. A lot of female characters seem to not like men that actually care about consent. Althea is the main one that comes to mind for her reaction to Grag being careful compared to Brashen and their awful first time together that she apparently liked and it was so messed up. But, besides female characters there is also the shady situation of how Sedric's relationship with Carson started. Sedric did say yes, but I am not sure that counts as consent given that he had just attempted suicide and was in a vulnerable state, you know? The Xenogenesis trilogy by Butler also has a lot of consent issues but given the alien perspective and that the humans keep addressing the issue I don't find it as problematic there.

3 - No women left single/Everyone must pair up until the end of their lives. Hobb has this issue once again. Let women be single! Sometimes it doesn’t make sense for them to end up with the ones they end up with. This is especially bothersome and obvious in the Rain Wild Chronicles. There is also the fact that Fitz never seems to move on from Molly, ignoring the message of wiser characters like Kettle. The first love is forever is a really tiresome trope in fiction given how unrealistic it is in real life. Juliet Marillier absolutely has this problem too, but she writes romance and I think it happens even more often in those books. It’s not enough that the main characters have to end up with a man, their sister also needs to have some. Both often use the same love interest forever and ever and if something happens that separates them, they mourn their loss until the end of their lives and never fall in love again (unless first love interest was evil then it’s ok to be together with someone else).

4 - Queer/Queer-coded characters are evil. Look, I like a well dressed gay villain, but it’s a problematic trope. Why must the good guys be identified by wearing potato sacks? Hobb often makes her well-dressed characters evil and they are often queer-coded at least (Regal, Illistore, Dwalia, Hest, Kennit...). There are a few exceptions, but often if it’s noted that someone wears perfume and spends time caring about their clothes and hair they will turn out to be evil or at least not very nice at first (Malta, Sedric). This can include Terez from First Law because even if everyone in that world is pretty shitty, Terez often gets the worst end of the stick because not enough time was given for readers to understand her and she is just see as the men-hating lesbian. Meanwhile, the fans are still worshipping a mass murderer and a torturer. Then there are also people thinking Leo is the worst ever for what he did (even if that is on the fandom, but it’s still bothersome that 2 of the most hated characters in the fandom are gay). I can also include that one character from “Parable of the Talents” by Octavia E. Butler, even if he isn’t the main evil.

5 - Men and women can’t be just friends. If there is a deep friendship between opposite sexes it will more often than not lead to romance. I am not saying this doesn’t happen, but it doesn’t happen as often as fiction makes us think. I always had male friends. This makes me appreciate Rin and Kitay’s relationship in the Poppy War so much more because authors often refuse to let men and women be just friends. On the other hand, characters of the same sex can’t be in love. Are you joking? They have this deep bond because it’s the extreme power of friendship and nothing else. Who cares if that relationship is the most developed? Who cares if they are the first in each others’ minds? There is a character of the opposite sex waiting for boring interactions. I really had enough with this shit. Authors either learn to make characters of the opposite sex interesting and have a great dynamic with the love interest or just stop trying to force a character to be heterosexual, especially when it doesn’t make any sense that they are still hung up on a character they seldom see in their lives.

[persepholline]

I've read that article about the romanticization of the Darkling and while I absolutely understand people who are pissed off/sad and I agree that it's shitty, I find LB's attitude towards Darkles stans very funny in a "girl what are you doing" sort of way because it's so petty like I've never heard of a bestselling author writing a portion of their fans into their books as a crazy cult before, it clearly hit a nerve

I'm new to the fandom but the feeling I get is she wrote something problematic ten years ago and became very embarrassed about it afterwards so she turned on the fans that liked it as a way to absolve herself. Especially since fandoms in general have become a lot more focused on discussion of what constitutes healthy/acceptable relationships to write about. And in a way I get it I had a huge Twilight phase in high school and afterwards I was super embarassed about it because of how problematic and cringe it was. But now with distance and more maturity I'm able to both still see why it was problematic and also why I was drawn to it (mostly the very unhinged representation of female desire) and like...it's really not the end of the world and no it never made me believe that breaking into somebody's room at night to watch them sleep was actually ok in real life lmao. This feels so obvious to me but apparently it needs to be said.

(More under the break this is turning into an essay, I've been thinking of this a lot recently)

And of course it's good to have these discussions about how historically romance tropes have echoed social dynamics of men's shitty behavior being romanticized and excused. But these days they often are so simplistic and focused on chasing clout that they become this weird new puritanism and moral panic about oh now women are reading novels it's going to make them hysterical or something

So you have these weird assumptions that you can't like a character and also be critical of their actions, or enjoy certain parts of a character and not others, or wish they were written differently and like them more for their potential (which I'm sure stings a bit for an author lol) - it assumes that if you like a character it means you would approve of their actions in real life, or that people just stupidly reproduce whatever they see on TV. That tendency to treat fictional characters like real people is the thing that actually worries me, to be honest, because it indicates a lack of distance and critical capacities regarding how stories are used and received. But people - fans and authors - are so scared of being called out as problematic and harassed for it that they're going to shy away from any nuance.

And yeah I think that it's good that standards of what constitutes an ideal relationship are evolving and becoming more feminist and communicative and all that and we definitely need more of that. But not all fiction has to be aspirational! Sometimes you just want to read about fucked up shit, because it's cathartic or fascinating, even healing at times because with fiction you are absolutely in control and can choose when to close the book. Toxic relationships in fiction can have an appeal specifically because they go to extremes of feeling that we don't want to go to in reality, in exactly the same way as horror movies or very violent action movies - which I don't see a lot of people besides fundamentalist Christians argue that they turn you into violent psychopaths (and that feels very obviously sexist). And for women, who are often taught growing up that love is the purpose of life, the "saving someone with your ability to love" can be a power fantasy in the same way that being a buff superhero who saves the day with their capacity for incredible violence can be a power fantasy for men. Still doesn't mean those women are going to fall in love with actual murderers or that those men are going to start beating up people at night. And love is scary, and weird, and weirdly close to horror at times, with all the potential for loss of self and being vulnerable and overwhelming feelings and potential for being horribly hurt and it should be possible for stories to explore that without anybody screaming about how this is going to Corrupt the Youth or something

And I mean I get it LB wanted to write a cautionary tale for teenagers, but it just did not work for reasons a lot of people have already written about - the fact that the Darkling is the leader of an oppressed minority and is the only one with a real political agenda to end that oppression in the first trilogy, the fact that he helps Alina come into her own power while her endgame LI is someone she keeps herself small for, that she's shamed for wanting power after growing up without any, a generally very wonky conception of privilege, and a lot of other stuff with yucky regressive implications to the point where stanning the villain actually feels liberating and empowering which is a surefire sign that the narrative is broken (unless it's a villain focused story lmao). But of course that Fanside article makes almost no mention of the political dynamics, it's all about interpersonal stuff which is an annoying trend in YA, there are those massive events happening in the background but it's made all about the feelings of the hero(ine) ; war as a self-development quest (which is kind of gross). Helnik is kind of an example of this too - I like them, I think they're fun ! But Matthias spends a big part of the story wanting to brutally murder Nina and her kind, and he mostly changes his mind because he finds her hot. Like you don't feel there is some sort of big revelation that his entire moral system and political framework is completely rotten ; it's all better because of feelings now.

As a teenager that kind of sanctimonious bullshit would have annoyed the hell out of me ; I read those books in my early twenties and I found the ending so stupid I wouldn't have trusted any message or life lessons coming from them. And I liked reading/watching dark stuff as a teenager, as a way to deal with the very intense inner turmoil I was dealing with - and I turned out fine ! Meanwhile I've seen several times women in very shitty relationships being obsessed with positive energies and stories ; they were so terrified of their life not being perfectly wholesome they ended up being delusional about their own situations.

Like personally I think the Darkling is a compelling, interesting, alluring character and also a manipulative, murderous piece of shit and that Alina should get to punish him (like in a sexy way) - but he's also the end result of centuries of war, oppression and trauma and reducing that to "toxic wounded boy" feels kind of offensive ngl ESPECIALLY since the books don't offer any kind of systemic analysis or response to oppression beyond "the bad guy should die" and "now the king/queen is a good guy our problems are solved!!!!"

In Lives of the Saints, we see how Yuri is abused extremely badly and almost killed by his father, and so when his father dies when the Fold swallows Novokribirsk, he thinks the Starless Saint has saved him. Later in KoS/RoW he's turned into this fanatic who explains away all the Darkling's crimes. The other followers talk about how the Starless Saint will bring equality for all men. Then the Darkling comes back and actually thinks his followers are pathetic, which feels again like a very pointed message to his IRL stans. Which is absolutely hilarious to me. Like oh no, if he was real he would not like you and think you're pathetic ! Yeah ...but he's not. Real. Damn right he would not like the fics where Alina puts him on a leash. I'm still going to read them. What is he going to do about it, jump out of the page ? Jfjfjjdhfgfjfj

Anyway I think the intended message is "assholes will use noble political causes for their own gain and to manipulate people" and "being abused/oppressed is not an excuse to behave badly." Which. Sure. But that's kind of like...a tired take, honestly ? A big number of villains nowadays are like this ; either they've been bullied as kids, or they're part of an oppressed group, or they have "good ideals but too extreme". This is not surprising because a lot of mainstream heroic narratives present clinging to the status quo as Good and change as chaotic and dangerous. And like sure in real life people often do bad shit because they're wounded and in danger. But if you want to do a story like that, you have to do it with nuance, talk about cycles of violence, about how society creates vulnerable people to be exploited, about how privilege gives you more choices and the luxury of morals, etc. The Grishaverse does not have this level of nuance (maybe in SoC a little bit but definitely not in TGT). So it kind of comes off as "trauma makes you evil" and "egalitarianism is dangerous" and "if you're abused/oppressed you're not allowed to fight back". And ignores the fact that historically, evil generally comes from unchecked privilege.

I guess my point is that there are many things I like about LB's writing, she knows how to create these really exciting character dynamics, and the world she has created is fascinating. But these stories are not a great starting point for imparting moral lessons. And her best characters tend to be, at least in canon, the morally grey ones. I hope one day she'll be at peace with the fact that she wrote the Darkling the way she did and leave his fans alone but in the meantime I'm just not going to take this whole thing seriously I'm sorry