Love Triangle

There are very few things that immediately ruin a good book for me. One of them is love triangles.

Edward, Jacob and Bella. Peeta, Gale and Katniss. Maxon, Aspen and America. This trope is used with such frequency it makes me want to pull my hair out. It’s apparently the easiest way to show inner turmoil, to create waves and put bumps in the road of the heroine. But I hate it, and I am going to tell you why, because writing about the things that make me angry is my form of therapy.

Let’s get one thing straight, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility are not examples of a love triangle by the same definition I am going by (and if I read one more blog post or article saying that Austen was the master of the love triangle I am going to break something heavy and valuable). Wickham-Lizzie-Darcy- not a love triangle. Lizzie liked Whickham while she hated Darcy, and it wasn’t until Lizzie learned what an utter douchebag Wickham was that she sees Darcy for who he is and falls in love with him. There is never confusion expressed in Lizzie’s mind over which man to accept, and only one ever proposed! This is not a love triangle, it is a pair of non-intersecting lines. It is a young woman learning that the outward expression of personality does not dictate the inner character of a good man. Darcy may have loved her the whole time (I heartily believe that he did) but he does not express that to her until late in the novel, at the same time that she discovers Wickham’s true character, and Lizzie does not reciprocate Darcy’s affection until later.

I am talking about the kind of love triangle used in Twilight, where Bella is actively pursued by two men at the same time and she actively leading on both men, until she is able to make up her mind. She uses Jacob to make Edward jealous, and both men know this. In later books the two men are not shy about the fact that they are both romantically linked to Bella and make their aggression towards one another well known. They actively fight for Bella’s affections, while Bella hems and haws and can’t make up her mind and this is somehow meant to be romantic.

There are several reasons that I think this trope needs to die a painful and ungraceful death, ranging from the fact that it is an indication of lazy writing, to the fact that it is downright sexist.

1). It never changes. Pretty girl who doesn’t realize she is pretty is desired by both the long time friend or home grown, local boy and a deeply mysterious stranger or dark and moody bad boy. The girl is overwhelmed by the process of being wanted by one boy, much less two and she could not possibly make up her mind which one she likes more. So she lies. She lies to both of them, she lies to herself, and to everyone around them. And instead of calling off the half baked relationships, she attempts to carry on with both at the same time and everyone ends up angry and hurt. And somehow, her lies, her indecision, and her inability to see her own beauty (and therefore experiences shock that two men would ever look twice at her) somehow makes her desirable. Or at least that is how the author portrays her desirability.

There is little or no variation in how this plot plays out in novels across the YA landscape. You can see it coming a mile ahead and you know what the outcome will be from the word  “Go”. Meanwhile, you have to slough through three books (and four movies) of the characters making fools of themselves. For me, this makes it difficult to take the characters seriously, and to see them as mature, interesting characters when they can’t decide which handsome, perfect boy makes them feel more tingly inside!

2). It’s frankly sexist. The formula is always one young woman and two men fighting for her affection. It is never used the other way around, because a man leading on two women instantly labels him a scumbag. Every reader immediately writes him off as a cheating, lying lowlife.

Case in point The 100 (the television show, sadly, I am a bad english major and did not read the book first…). Clarke and Finn find themselves falling in love after stranded on Earth. When Finn’s girlfriend, Raven, from their space station home appears on Earth, there is the brief introduction of a love triangle. Except for the fact that Clarke simply WALKS AWAY (so easy) the minute she realizes Finn is taken. She is understandably hurt that Finn kept a girlfriend under wraps, but she has no intention of carrying on a relationship with him now that she knows. Raven, when she finds out about Finn and Clarke, is angry. She calls Finn unfaithful, accuses him of cheating. The girls do not fight over the axis of their triangle, there is no lying or hiding of one relationship behind the back of the other. Finn is torn between the two young women he has fallen for, but he works it out with one AND THEN the other (very simple). Although, there is a considerable amount of hurt feelings and anger to work out first, which is much more honest than everyone being okay with the situation.  It is never given the opportunity to turn into a long, drawn out lover’s quarrel, because the parties are not willing to carry it on.

Since this is the case, that a woman in always the object of the combined affection of two men, I call shenanigans. It paints women as weak willed objects of romantic attention who will lie to maintain a level of romantic attention. And while everyone recognize the behavior as deplorable when a man is in that position, a woman in that place is normal, we see it all the time.

3). It's overused, and often in novels where it doesn’t seem to fit and then seems forced. Like the Hunger Games. Few love triangles have irked me quite like the Peeta- Katniss- Gale relationship. Everything that Katniss is; strong, fiercely protective, laser focused, serious, and she gets trapped in a f#$ing love triangle! A wishy-washy, I don’t know what I want, what do you mean you love ME kind of attitude that makes women appear to only care about their appearance and whether the boy likes them back. There is nothing in Katniss’s character as she is described in the books that makes her indecision seem plausible.

Also, these relationship issues could often be avoided with my favorite bit of romantic advice from author John Green.  “Use your words!” A few words of explanation could save everyone a heap of trouble in the long run. “I have a boyfriend” “I like so-in-so” “I don’t know how I feel”. Voila! All done.

So it is, in my opinion, lazy writing. Used in place of more unique or interesting conflict in the romantic relationship of the characters. To prove to the readers that although your heroine is awkward or doesn’t see that she is beautiful, that she is in fact desirable. See, look how desirable she is, two men are in love with her, two men are fighting for her! Instead of trusting your audience to be smart enough to realize that she is smart and kind, and has perfect aim with a bow, or loves her family dearly, and that is enough to make her worthy of being wanted.

Relationships are hard. In real life and in literature romance is complicated and full of emotion. But no one in real life is permitted to act in this way without consequence, no one would put up with this treatment (I should hope). Novels are supposed to be places for us to escape the lives that we live, but they are most interesting when they are decent representations real life. There are better ways to create romantic tension than this.

Too Many Women

I have read two blog posts recently about how there are too many female protagonists in YA literature. That it is in fact “getting annoying” how many women there are in lead roles and how few male main characters there are. I was reminded that “you can write about male characters too”. One blogger pointed out that the reason was probably because all the writers are women and where are all the male authors?

(John Green, Ransom Riggs, Rick Riordan, Eoin Colfer, James Dashner, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman… sorry just the first names that came to mind when answering that question. I don’t think the male authors are in hiding. They seem to being doing pretty well for themselves, creating interesting and new content, making movies, writing best sellers...)

I am appalled. These are female bloggers. Women who are annoyed at how many female main characters there are in YA novels and how few men are taking the lead in the genre. These are women who want to see their sisters thrown back into the boring secondary character pool. The love interest, the sex object, the bitch, the cheerleader, the mean girl, the girl next door.

For so so long, there was no such thing as a female protagonist. For the longest time women weren’t even allowed to be published! Those who did, changed their names, or were considered less respectable for their chosen career. For so long, the few female characters we were given were two dimensional, weak, or love interests for the strapping male hero.

For the first time in a long time, we have strong, complex, interesting female characters who save the world, who lead the charge, who sit on the throne, who overthrow the government, who make the jokes, who save the guy. And the minute it happens, we are subjected to the complaint that there are too many. Too many strong women, too many interesting women, too many women who don’t need a man’s help, who don’t need to be saved.

JK Rowling was told to change her name because “boys don’t read books by female authors”. That was less than twenty years ago! Do you really want to tell the female writers seeing success today that you are sick of seeing their names in bookstores? That we need more men in a male dominated career?

We aren’t writing from a female perspective because it’s what “all the cool kids are doing”, we are writing women’s stories because they deserve to be told. Because we are sick of sitting at home and waiting for the hero to come back to us, waiting in the tower to be saved, waiting for the world to end with wrung hands and anxious brows.

These arguments are the same ones that fuel the anger that the new Ghostbusters movie is all women. Sure there can be women in the movie, but why did they ALL have to be women? Couldn't there have been one? Wouldn’t that have been enough representation?

No. Being the token woman is not enough to make up for years of being ignored or stereotyped or abused.

Fifteen years of successful female authors writing interesting female characters does not make up for the hundreds of years when their stories were considered second class.

The solution is not to move backwards, but to keep moving forward. Keep writing strong characters and make their gender the least exciting or important thing about them. Leave romance out of the quest to save the world. Turn the gender roles on their head, upside down, sideways, backwards. Read books by people different than you, read about people different than you. Write books about women that appeal to all people, write books about men that appeal to all people.

And in the meantime, let’s not forget to mention that diversity that we drastically need. LIke the fact that more than 95% of the main characters in novels in the last two years were white. That only 4% of characters were black, 1% were latino. When is the last time you read a book about someone who was less than what we consider “able-bodied”? There are so many stories to be told and we are stuck telling the same one over and over again and complaining at the perceived lack of white boys at the helm.

Girl in Blue

She likes to visit the cemetery on gray days. The days when the air is full of the coolness of clouds and the edges of shadows blur into nothingness.  She moves gracefully through the lines of stone grave markers, her white fingers running over the rough top of tombstones as she passes. She hums a tuneless melody as she walks, her hair blowing around her angular face in the cold breeze. A white rose dangles from her fingertips. She wanders aimlessly through the rows of stone monuments, pausing now and then to read a name, to ponder on  a life summed up in the single dash between two dates.

She comes to a secluded corner of the cemetery, a small space overrun with weeds and fallen leaves. A stone stands tall in the far corner. A stone with the simple engraving, in memory of the girl in blue. There is only the date of death scrawled under the notation, killed by a train. There is no birth date and no dash. No indication that she lived a life at all, only the description of her dress at the time of her death.
Everything else about her was forgotten.

She lowers herself to sit by the stone, the cold in the air seeping into her bones and making her movement slow and halted. With frozen fingertips she brushes away the layer of dead leaves along the bottom of the stone, searching for the words that bring peace to a tumultuous existence, unknown but not forgotten.

The girl in blue who was killed by a train many years ago on a cold Christmas Eve has not been forgotten, but she was never known. Those who buried her here did not line the coffin with love notes and flowers, they did not know who to send the heartbreaking telegram to, which newspaper to run the obituary in, who to invite into mourning. They left her in the blue dress because it was the only thing they knew about her. Her broken body too twisted and shattered to tell any story except for the gruesome one of her death. They could not tell her age, or even whether she had been beautiful in life. No one is beautiful in death, the cold grey mask of emptiness covers the features so perfectly, but hides them so completely.  

But she was not forgotten. The girl buried in the blue dress lay here still with no one come to claim her, but the stone stood tall and proud, declaring, here I am. Here I lay until the end of days, a girl in a blue dress.

“But I know you,” she whispers, the words leaving her dry lips like the scream of wind through a canyon.

She rises from her spot among the weeds and lays the white rose atop the gray stone. She runs her gray hands down her blue dress, smoothing out the wrinkles and the moth eaten holes. Her gray skin turns to smoke, and the transparent fog over her thin, sharp face shifts and shutters as a cold wind whips through her bones. She turns away.  A few stones down from her own quite tomb she vanishes into the cold gray air.