She wasn’t perfect. “Throw the ball,” her tough sports coach yelled at her. “Ahh,” she said, and she squeezed her eyes closed, and threw. The ball exploded. Then she fell down the stairs. “Oh no,” she moaned. “How am I supposed to do business at the bottom of the stairs?”
***
She wasn’t perfect. She had two different colored eyes, which is definitely a flaw and not a magnetic, compelling, unusual form of beauty.
“It makes you so special,” he told her. She shook her head.
“Bad special,” she said.
“Good special,” he said. She didn’t know what to believe.
“I don’t know what to believe,” she told him. “You think the thing I think is bad thing is good thing.”
“That’s good thing,” he said.
***
Oh no, she thought. I’m going to start blushing. It was terrible. It subtly drew attention to the beautiful colors blooming across her face, and also made her look vulnerable and childish and full of deep feeling, which was very bad for some reason.
“You’re fired,” her boss said through a mountain of briefcases. “I can’t have you blushing on the job!”
“She’s not fired,” said a voice nearby. It sounded like granite and honesty. “I’m an even more important Business Man and that blushing is a sign of her honesty and virtue.”
“Wha-wha-whaaaa?” her boss said.
“I’m giving you the business,” the granite-voiced man said. “But you can quit whenever you want, because I love you.”
She blushed.
***
She wasn’t perfect. Her mouth was, if anything, a trifle too full, like an overflowing Cupid’s bow.
“Would you…do you think you would like to go to the dance with me?” she asked sportsball captainback.
“That’s disgusting,” he said, sneering. “Your lips are beautiful and kissable and someone better than me is going to point that out to you in just a few years. Get out of my way.”
She cried out of her eyes. One of the eyes had a little freckle in it, which made her disgusting.
***
“No one will ever love me,” she told the guy who was older than her but not creepy older, just commandingly older, like maybe seven to nine years older and was also sort of her guardian or her teacher in some capacity, but again not in a gross way, like he wasn’t her teacher boss dad or anything, just a little more in charge than she was and also he had shoulder muscles. “I’m only half-elven [or half-vampire or half-dhampir or half-Watcher or half-Lycan or half-whatever amazing mystical race she was half a part of] instead of all the way, which gives me pretty much all of the same powers but none of the weaknesses and also I’m strong and beautiful. I’m a freak.”
He kissed her mouth with his mouth.
“Whaaa,” she was all like, because she was totally surprised that he had secretly loved her this whole time because he’d been so gruff and aloof and ten times harder on her than on any of the others, but it was because he had secretly loved her this whole time.
“I’ve secretly loved you this whole time,” he said with his mouth, then went back to kissing her.
***
I’ve always been different. I like books and animals better than people. Why, I don’t know. Maybe because books and animals are physically incapable of talking to me or having needs that supersede my own, so I can be in total control of them. Books can’t judge you or hurt you. They also can’t talk or eat or build a life with you, but whatever.
***
“You think too much,” her best friend who was this real free spirit who was always living in the moment instead of traveling back and forth through time like she did said. “That’s your problem. When the rest of us are just flinging ourselves through time and space with our brains entirely shut off, you’re always, like, off in the corner thinking, like, oh is this a good idea, what are the ramifications of my actions, and that’s why your life is such garbage.”
She worried the edge of her lab coat with her fingers and took off at least eight pairs of glasses. “I know,” she said. “But I don’t know how to stop.”
Then her friend made out with her and she got better.
***
“You only thought that was a flaw this whole time,” his mentor that he thought was dead but totally wasn’t dead at all, at least not “dead” in the way you traditionally think of dead told him. “It was actually your secret strength. You don’t have any flaws at all and you’re going to destroy the bad guy so much.”
He totally did.
***
“Your legs are too long.” How embarrassing!!!
***
“I just want to be normal,” she said, even though she had amazing powers and a super-family and was mega-gorgeous and better than normal in every way and the entire book would be terrible if she were normal and she had no conception of what normal was to begin with.
***
“That’s your problem,” her friend said. Normally her friend was all crazy and doing shots and saying “Girl, you need to kick him to the curb,” but not now. Now her friend was being quiet and serious, so you knew it was a really quiet and serious moment. “You would do anything to take care of your friends. But when was the last time you did something to take care of yourself?”
It was true. She hadn’t showered in four years. Her house had exploded and she didn’t even care. She hadn’t eaten in four months, and she was dead.
***
“I just don’t know what to do with this,” her hairdresser moaned, comically letting his arms fall to his side. “Your hair is just so wild and unmanageable, a lot like you. It can’t be tamed.”
“Neither can I,” she said, and she roundhouse kicked him in the face, and then she ran outside to find a real man who could handle someone who played as hard as she worked.
***
“You’re so noble,” the villain sneered, because he’d totally expected him to do that noble thing he’d just done but he was totally secretly impressed. “Not like me. I do whatever I want. So why do I secretly admire and maybe even love you a little bit?”
“Whoa,” he said.
“Wait,” the villain said. “I didn’t mean to say that last part. What I meant was why does your goodness shine through the light of my evil deeds and make me wish I was worth of you somehow?”
“Wait,” the villain said again. “You’re noble in a bad way, not a good way,” but it was too late. He was secretly good now, and they were going to become heroic friends.
***
“I’ll make dinner,” she said. “Oh, no, you won’t,” all her friends chorused in unison, and they picked her up and carried her to her favorite restaurant, so even though at first she was a little upset they didn’t like her cooking it was okay because they still got to be together and go to her favorite restaurant.
***
She called and ordered a dinner that she ordered a lot from the same restaurant she always called for delivery. “I know who you are,” the voice on the line said. “I remember your order,” because that was his job.
“This is so embarrassing,” she said in her amazing apartment. “Someone remembers my order. I’m such a loser.”
“It’s just my job to remember orders,” the voice said, but it was too late. She was already booking an around-the-world trip with that guy from work she was always fighting with.
***
“It’s really hard for me to trust people,” she said.
“Me too,” he said. “It’s hard for me to trust people too.” He thought for a second. “Do you want to trust me, though?”
“Okay,” she said, and they did, and then they made out.
***
[Fritz Eichenberg’s Heathcliff Under the Tree via]
Tags: books, character flaws, movies, playing as hard as you work, protagonists
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Generic Protagonist answers the job interview question, “What’s your greatest weakness.”
She was too much of a perfectionist, but that was something she was trying to work on.
Really bad handwriting.
Wears glasses. Isn’t ladylike/doesn’t like dresses and just wants to run around in nature getting grass in her hair. Speaks her mind too much. Likes adventure.
But she wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts
She’s Cheer Captain and I’m on the bleachers
Dreaming about the day
When you wake up and find
That when I take off my glasses and get rid of the ponytail I’m not an art nerd and you’ll win your bet about making me prom queen and accidentally fall in love with meeeeeeeeeeee
Also may be able to dress as a convincing boy and have real adventures, not like those conventional Mean Girls/Blanche Ingrams.
Virgin
barefoot virgin
If I read one of these in a book it takes an enormous amount of willpower not to THROW IT ACROSS THE ROOM. Hate. Hate hate hate hate hate.
It’s a shame you can’t muster more pity for those coltish, wild-haired, strange-but-maybe? just maybe?-actually-beautiful ladies. I mean, imagine living life with a nose that turns up at the end. Imagine having perfect, moon-white skin and a body that’s slimmer and more nimble than all those buxom cool girls with their gossip and their worrying about boys and clothes. Imagine liking poetry. Then think about what kind of privilege you’re bringing to the table.
I certainly do imagine having a cuter nose.
I am a shameless enthusiast of these kinds of books; they are the potato chips of the mind. And I am still crying with laughter at this, Mallory’s greatest work of literary criticism… today.
Oh, yes. These are the books that during adolescence made me super aware of projecting just the right amount of unselfconscious focus on reading my book in the corner with my ponytail and glasses, so the right handsome man/exciting adventure could notice I was not like other girls and happen to me with no actual work put in. I think this somehow involved biting my lower lip?
Ah yes, all the times teen-me thought purposefully biting my lip made me look sexy and quirky instead of buck-toothed.
The worst part is I still find myself doing it sometimes out of habit. Usually when I’m feeling teenager-like levels of romantic incompetence. Which is a lot.
SO TRUE. I spent far too much time in front of the mirror trying to figure out how to look just the right amount of aloof and awkward to attract the Man Who Notices.
They’re brain candy! Sometimes you need candy. As long as you still know it’s candy.
(This is my excuse for a lot of my reading, both the YA and the erotica.)
I threw a book across the room once. It was when I ran across a line about the protagonist being ruined because she wasn’t married at 30 (and it was not a historical romance). I was 35 at the time.
Save this list for job interviews for the inevitable” list your strengths and weaknesses” question
Protagonist flaws or interview answers?
[Yes, two different colored eyes is an interview answer! ..maybe.]
ETA: oh man, I missed the memo.. *hangs head in shame*
Such a huge appetite it’s almost unladylike, but it makes men like her because she’s just more real than other ladies. Doughnut and burger scarfer.
and never gains a pound.
It actually seems to make her thinner! She has a terrible condition where no matter how much she eats, she just gets smaller and smaller until one day, she disappears altogether and all that is left is her plain, high necked clothes that somehow accentuate her body.
That is.. when she still had a body.
[This is probably a different type of story altogether.]
This is basically the plot of Thinner, only that has more blowjobs and witch curses and evil pie.
That is both amazing and horrifying.
Also the plot of this creepy & wonderful story: Real Women Have Bodies
it’s not her fault it’s just her metabolism and anyway she wishes she had your curvy hips / boobs / luscious thighs
/ Diana Barry’s dimpled elbows
awwww
Wishing I could give this more thumbs up. “It’s all very nice to be ‘slender’ but ‘skinny’ has a very different tang.”
Or, it’s not her fault, it’s just her metabolism, she eats everything and she’s still so thin, except for her boobs – they’re just too big! She has so much trouble finding a cute 28F* and also clothes that fit her perfect, hourglass shape.
*I know I know I know this is actually a real problem, but I read a romance recently (Never Love a Highlander) where the heroine was just sooooo tiny! but wanted to be a warrior, like the men! she’s not like other women, she’s like a man! a fighting man! and she had to strap her boobs down, but then she got married and had to wear a dress and she could no longer hide her boobs. Once unbound, they became like super strong magnets, inexorably attracting every male gaze for miles around.
A quirky fear
(fear of needles, fear of heights, any ole fear that requires a boy to coach her through it at a big moment)
It always bothers me so much when I see protagonists with quirky fears — I actually have a phobia of needles and let me tell you that shit is not fun in real life
I’m afraid of heights, and it’s just embarrassing, not cute at all.
Not like all the other girls
The other girls never liked her because she didn’t talk about make-up and boys because she was too busy Being Real.
For some time now, I’ve been working on an urban fantasy novel, and every time I rewrite, the protagonist’s “flaws” get more and more thumpingly realistic, though I don’t think they’re flaws at all, just normal human traits.
She has big clomping sore feet that hurt from all the hard walking of this rambling adventure, and plain hair she wears scraped back in a ponytail (which she never, ever shakes out into startlingly lovely auburn waves that cascade enticingly across her shoulders), and big tough shoulders, and a tight mouth that she opens only grudgingly, and suspicious eyes, and calloused capable hands that cling a bit selfishly to what she knows is hers. She’s guarded and anxious and angry, not angry with a poetic fire or a transcendent glow but just really fuckin’ angry because she has every reason to be. And by the end, she’s less angry and more happy, but no more beautiful and no more gentle and no more yielding, because she doesn’t have to be yielding or sweet or beautiful to be happy.
I didn’t do it consciously, but I realize now that the family from whom she is estranged, and especially the mother in opposition to whom she is so determinedly ordinary, is a play on those so-called flawed protagonists with flowing hair and fiery eyes and poetic psychic visions and dramatic turns of phrase and histrionic rants and rhapsodies. My heroine is a woman born from a fantastic family who just wants to be an average person flying below the radar of the extraordinary, and she is so much fun to write.
When she does take down her ponytail, does she have a ponytail-line in her hair and a sore scalp? Because I can get behind that.
ahahaha, my sponsored content just changed to “Updos that won’t give you a headache”
I want this book!
Ughhh yes, those kinds of characters are so great! My favorite heroine when I was younger was Keladry from the Tortall series, because she was bulky and not-attractive and too serious and the only superpower she had was her ability to work really damn hard to get what she wanted.
tl;dr I wanna read your book!
Give her my number, she sounds rad.
Gets along too well with her parents/Has parents who Just Don’t Understand
Mom is always lovingly stroking protagonist’s thick auburn hair as they sit in the comfy window seat in protagonist’s room overlooking the oak tree she planted with her dad. However, protagonist pulls away from Mom wanting to be free…an adult.
I ACCIDENTALLY PUBLISHED THIS WAY TOO EARLY WHEN IT WAS STILL IN IDEA FORM SORRY YOU GUYSSSSS
Her ideas spring forth full-formed and irresistible, too exciting to contain.
A FLAW ONLY A PROTAGONIST COULD HAAAAAAAAVE
“Pipe down, Mallory!” roared the stern schoolmaster who had never left Hometown City. He knew she was smarter than all the Teachers and that infuriated him. “One more BRILLIANT IDEA out of you and it’s detention for a week!” “Good.” thought Mallory, visibly. “I secretly enjoy detention. These stupid Teachers will never catch on that I enjoy sitting down and reading in a room for an hour because I’m not like the other girls.”
“Oh no!” she said, “I accidentally published this flawless work of creative inspiration! I’m so clumsy!”
“I guess I’ll just have to look out for you,” sighed Kristen Stewart, buffing her suit of armor.
Meanwhile, Brittney Griner shrugs in her impeccably tailored blazer and tie, and shoots a three pointer. “It happens to the best of us, Mallory.”
I love the image of Brittney and Mallory having a heart-to-heart while Brittney casually sinks one insane half-court shot after another…
I endlessly love the Heathcliff picture, but now that you’ve said THIS I want the Kristen Stewart at Coachella one again.
Haha, now I’m imagining Mallory’s roommates – Kristen Stewart, Britanny Griner, and magically-back-from-the-dead-and-out Katharine Hepburn – all giving her shoulder pats and thumbs-up.
bless you guys
For some reason I am imagining Kristen Stewart playing Heathcliff, and nothing is wrong or bad in the world.
She published her perfect prose too quickly, she protested.
Also accurately describes the quality and condition of the books which contain the parodied elements.
“I like books and animals better than people. Why, I don’t know. Maybe because books and animals are physically incapable of talking to me or having needs that supersede my own, so I can be in total control of them.” *rolls around in a pile of books* MALLORY GETS ME
Doesn’t realize she’s beautiful because she’s wearing A PONYTAIL AND GLASSES, international shorthand for ugly nerd.
Is it weird that my husband prefers my hair in a ponytail? Could there be such a man that does not demand freshly shaken locks and a beauty unhindered by glasses that matches everything else he finds attractive about you?
Hmm, maybe he’s Not Like Other Guys?
His thick raven hair and cavalier attitude about, well, everything should have tipped me off. Also, he gets along really well with his parents…especially his mom. Damn, I married the he-protagonist.
ohemgee im wearing a pony tail and glasses RT NOW (and have a kindle in my purse)
“You don’t know you’re beautiful; that’s what makes you beautiful.” As usual, One Direction gets it.
Sammy Kershaw got it way back in the 90’s.
I am confused by that song! If he keeps telling her she’s beautiful, then surely she’ll know that she’s beautiful, and then she apparently won’t be beautiful anymore. If he’s so captivated by her beauty, why is he undermining it?
(Vaguely related: Why the heck would I want to be a firework? They destroy themselves in return for about five seconds of being admired, and then they’re forgotten basically as soon as the next one goes off.)
“You’re beautiful because you don’t know you’re beautiful.”
“So I’m beautiful? Thanks.”
“No, you’re not beautiful because you know you’re beautiful.”
“Aw, that’s too bad. I wish I could be beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful because you don’t know you’re beautiful.”
LIKE THIS FOREVER.
Colbert calls this “Mobius Pop.”
I sincerely hate this song for this very reason. “You have really low self-esteem, and that’s what I like most about you.”
SAAAAME. Also that Bruno Mars song, “I know, when I compliment her she won’t believe me, and it’s so sad to think that she don’t see what I see” etc etc etc etc ugh the whole thing’s the worst.
I mean, I guess it IS sad that “she don’t see what I see,” or whatever, but the whole song just feels so mansplainy. “Let me tell you how you should REALLY FEEL, girl.”
The one time I tried counseling, the lady asked me some complex question about my past and then, when I took more than 10 seconds to respond, said “You think too much”. Which, considering she was someone responsible for my mental heath and not a kooky best friend in a romcom, was pretty worrying.
“Thinking too much” is not an actual problem that anyone has. Thinking too little, or perhaps thinking about certain things or along certain lines, perhaps. But you can’t simply think too much, and anyone who says as much either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or needs to be way less vague.
Indeed! I maybe have been thinking about superheros too much recently, but I’m not sure if that’s a problem so much as an excellent life choice.
Is this what you were thinking too much about when that counseling situation went down? http://xkcd.com/616/
I should really start swimming for the surface she thought as everyone who was waiting for her above got really bored and realized they had their own problems and were really hungry – so she drowned.
I wonder if guys ever get told they think too much, or along the same lines, that they are too smart for their own good.
edit: Erm, it occurs to me that you could be a guy. If so, this foot sure is tasty!
Nope, I am indeed a lady! It’s definitely a gendered thing, but I’m sure there are men who get similar class related comments.
I am told I think too much, but I think what that actually means is that I think too many anxious thoughts. What if this unlikely but horrible thing happens? What if this thing this person said actually meant something negative to me? That kind of thing.
I am also male.
This is only tangentially related, but I get so, so unreasonably embarrassed when a restaurant worker recognizes me/remembers my order. I was feeling Protagonist so hard on that section. Maybe this is my secret protagonist flaw.
This is (part of) why my partner is in charge of calling in delivery orders.
This is why online ordering is SO much better than phone ordering. I love it.
I refuse to go to the Quizno’s near work because the manager there reads my name off my work badge and then is like “Oh, don’t worry about bringing in the coupons, we know you’re good because you work at [company]” and the overfamiliarity is INCREDIBLY upsetting and I never go there anymore because I hate it. So I go have a sitdown lunch at the Italian restaurant next door where they only started remembering my order after I’d been there about ten times, which is IDEAL. Or if it really has to be fast I bike an extra five minutes to the Subway, where they aren’t weirdly overfamiliar.
I also inexplicably hate being recognized at dining establishments! Why is it so embarrassing? Sometimes i change my order from what I really want on purpose so that… they wont think I’m boring? Won’t know I work around here?
I don’t mind when the not-creepy waiter at the restaurant does, but creepy Quizno’s manager is so excessive about it that it sets off like every single goddamn social interaction flag I have and it comes across as creepy and ulterior and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah I have only been to this Quizno’s like twice WHY ARE YOU SO CREEPY
I don’t so much mind being recognized or having my usual order being remembered. But I LOATHE and refuse to continue going to restaurants where the staff think it’s acceptable to call me by name after seeing it on the credit card. Worse still: the few who remember it from my last visit. Urgh.
I worked in a coffee shop on campus in undergrad, with fellow students. We were occasionally guilty of referring to regulars by their drink order to their faces when encountering them in non-coffee-shop settings. So, y’know, there’s the other option.
I was once refered to as “the girl who loves cinnamon twists” by the barista at the coffee shop in college only it was a *chain* on campus and the girl saying it had never seen me before. She’d just heard about me from the kids at the other location. BUT I really did love those cinnamon twists and I was 27 at the time so I thought it was fun. But at 20 I would have died.
I love it when that happens! It makes me feel like a Regular.
Yes! I’m so glad someone else feels this way!
As someone who’s worked foodservice & retail, I always LOVED my regulars and tried to remember the orders of people who came in regularly & ordered the same thing. It made my life a lot easier, frankly.
I’m a Young Adult librarian. This is my entire professional life.
I can easily picture Taylor Swift saying in every one of these vignettes.
Started sniggering audibly at my desk at “sportsball captainback.”
“I never smile, but that’s because a torturer fried my facial nerves” – Eisenhorn.
Her grandparents raised her, sacrificing themselves in order to raise her RIGHT, and at no point is it explained how they could raise her so RIGHT but fail to raise her parent RIGHT but that didn’t matter because of the Olde Tyme Values of Right and also canning / crocheting / couponing (quirky!) she learned at her grandparent’s knees.
When will young adult literature come out with the cheese-scarfing heroine the nation’s youth clamors for?
I don’t know if where you’re going is a version of Twilight that stars Liz Lemon, but I’m on board anyway.
Totally reminded me of the main character in Monsters of Templeton. Has anyone read it? So much turmoil was experienced by perfect body beautiful face girl. Like, so much.
Yes! I like that book a lot, but the main character is SO pretty/smart/beloved by all it’s like, “All right, we get it.”
Even after she unattractively hacked off all her hair. Whoops, still hot.
Dang, I had tried to purge this one from my memory. I mean, I guess it was okay, but you are totally right about how perfect the protagonist was.
Sometimes I think my childhood love of these sorts of protagonists is why I still secretly, sadly hope that one day, the right person will look at me and I will shed my body fat like snakeskin and have been beautiful the whooooooole tiiiiiime.
Hell, I should probably talk about this in therapy or something.
That is *exactly* what the appeal is.. “maybe one day the right person will look at me and recognize my inner beauty.. which will then manifest itself outwardly.”
And it’s so embarrassing how she’s the best singer/actress and/or best track athlete in school!
I’m not like other girls- I’ve always been just one of the guys. But none of them ever notice me as more than just a friend. It’s probably because I do really unattractive things like wear converse and t-shirts with denim shorts, or because I like super uncool bands like “The Beatles” and “Led Zepplin” which no one at my high school has ever heard of. My male best friend (who is my best friend because all the girls at my high school hate me for a reason that has nothing to do with secret jealously over my as-yet-unrealized good looks that are begging for a prom dress) likes those bands, and he likes to do things like take drives late at night in my truck with the windows down, listening to uncool bands like “The Smiths.” “I’m just not like other girls,” I tell him as we share secrets while star gazing, because the only thing all other women in the universe care about are lipstick and boys. But not me. I’m just not like other girls.
…is that you Taylor Swift?
That made me think of this: http://workinprowess.com/roxane-tell-us-about-bei…
Never trust any sentence that starts with “she wasn’t perfect..” unless it ends with ” …not to mention the thousands she killed with her bare hands.”
Off topic, but I totally have that edition of Wuthering Heights the article illustration came from. All the illustrations are just so gorgeous & creepy that I had to steal it from my mom when I moved out.
This article could totally be supplemented with the word “Twilight” repeated ad nauseum as well.
As a child, she had always had little appetite for rich foods. The cooks would scold her endlessly, sniping hurtful and not at all endearing nicknames at her.
“Little Mouse!” they said, in a way that was passive aggressive and not cute at all, you had to be there, I mean seriously “You get skinnier every day, Little Mouse. Why not be plump and pretty, as your cousin?”
She looked with her huge, mutant sad eyes to her cousin, Lavinia, who was simultaneously murdering a cat and eating a bun. Lavinia would go places.
Excuse me while I go write this book immediately
I have been reading these out loud to my partner and I hit “murdering a cat and eating a bun” and it dissolved me into helpless laughter.
She hated that everybody thought she was so pretty because she wanted to be acknowledge for her, like, smartness and maturity and stuff but one day there was this really good looking guy who didn’t think she was pretty and she was emotionally devastated. She later learned that he had actually thought she was so pretty that he was too intimidated to talk to her and was just pretending he didn’t like her. When he admitted this she immediately fell in love with him (they had never actually had a conversation, but sometimes you just know, ya know?) and they got married and had babies that she somehow remained skinny and beautiful even after giving birth to and they live happily ever after.
Oh man, until it got to ‘his mentor’, I thought this were all just vignettes from the life of an impossibly special, imminently kissable snowflake… Like in the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street, where the model-beautiful girl with the slightly chipped nailvarnish claimed None Could Love her as she was Too Weird
is good thing
So incredible and yet sad and yet fantastic and yet depressing.
She was quiet and awkward. Not awkward like ugly or bad personality. She was just shy- because she was thinking deep thoughts and appreciating nature. And she was clumsy. Not in a way that was inconvenient. Sometimes she just tripped over things. But it was always adorable and endearing. She hated how being shy and clumsy set her apart from all the other girls. They were normal and plain and shallow. She wished she were normal and plain and shallow. Instead she was kind and exotically beautiful and a tragic, yet well-adjusted orphan who had loving guardians.
She found him infuriating. He was so high-handed and always knew better than her. He alone saw how pretty she was. She wondered how long in the excitement of the third act of the book it would take them to kiss. All the other girls wanted him, but he thought they were plain and shallow. He liked how she could spend hours writing sonnets on the weather.
She was quiet and awkward. Not awkward like ugly or bad personality. She was just shy- because she was thinking deep thoughts and appreciating nature. And she was clumsy. Not in a way that was inconvenient. Sometimes she just tripped over things. But it was always adorable and endearing. She hated how being shy and clumsy set her apart from all the other girls. They were normal and plain and shallow. She wished she were normal and plain and shallow. Instead she was kind and exotically beautiful and a tragic, yet well-adjusted orphan who had loving guardians.
“He was secretly good now, and they were going to become heroic friends.” I assume you meant heroic boyfriends. Reformed Villain/Flawed Protagonist OTP!
I probably have some bad anime fanart of that with Evanescence lyrics on it lying around here somewhere…
And then there’s the evil (er) twin: common human traits that make you a Bad Person.
According to one book I read a while back, my acne scars indicate I’m about to become a crazy yet pathetic and lonely sex-murderer.
What is the correlation there? 🙂
“…all her friends chorused in unison…
This line always makes my skin crawl! I read too much Nancy Drew as a child. Bess and George were always “chorusing” and “chiding”. This whole piece is perfect, by the way.
I like how Mallory took this as an opportunity to subtly evangelize for the proper spelling of “whoa.”
(…I accidentally wrote “woah” in a text the other day & AS I DELETED IT & REWROTE IT CORRECTLY DON’T WORRY I felt a level of shame that was way disproportionate for “person I’ve never met being hypothetically disappointed upon seeing this casual communication that they will never see.”)
This is really, really fantastic. I’d love to see your ability to cut the fat applied to other tropes.
Looking forward to reading more!
AH MAI GAAAAAAHD.
I have eye freckles.
No one will ever love me.
except for the person whose eye freckles are the mirror image of yours!
She was not perfect. Her embroidery was the despair of the Royal Governess. “That girl!”, the old woman would mutter, pursing her lips and picking out the crooked stitches. “She has her head in the clouds.”
Daydreaming of adventure, she never learned to waltz and stepped on the dancing master’s feet. “But I don’t WANT to be a lady!”, she told him, and he also despaired. She bribed the armorer to teach her archery and fencing and the court magician to teach her spells.
Her best friend, Coran the Stableboy, thought her wild auburn hair was beautiful. He loved her silently.
“She bribed the armorer to teach her archery and fencing and the court magician to teach her spells”
I will hear no bad word against Princess Cimorene (Dealing With Dragons/the Enchanted Forest Chronicles).
Other than that, we’re good.
I have nothing bad to say about Cimorene. Girl makes a mean cherries jubilee.
I still want to try my hand at it, actually.
I’m late on this, but I have been thinking! Is Sandry from Circle of Magic the only girl-protagonist I’ve ever heard of who likes embroidery and is good at it? Does the princess from Spindle count, because she’s magically good at embroidery that one time?
…there’s Sansa, of course, but that’s a slightly different kind of book.
Also everything you wrote here is perfect.
She loved too much. Her friends and family were so important to her and she couldn’t imagine her life without them. I mean, not so much that she ever helped her elderly grandmother bathe when she was dying of cancer, of course, but she cried beautifully at the funeral. One time she had to end a date early to pick up her younger brother from soccer practice. How humiliating. She couldn’t help it. She loved too much.
These are amazing. Amazing!
I remember reading a Marianne Keyes novel once where the protagonist had “no waist” and I was like goddamn that’s a bold choice. Also Francine Pascal was the high queen of the protagonist flaw: “Caitlin. Beautiful. Dazzling. Charming. Rich. And very, very clever. To everyone at her exclusive Virginia boarding school, she seems to have it all. But there is a secret need that haunts her life. A need for love.” If I remember rightly she had like, long dramatic black hair and flashing blue eyes and high cheekbones but a distant father or something.
PS Mallory this is so so brilliant.
All true. Perfect!
Ah! The literary equivalent of the humble-brag
Are all of these the Mary Sue under another name?
‘“Your legs are too long.” How embarrassing!!!’
‘A man’s legs should be just long enough to reach from his body to the ground.’ -Abraham Lincoln.
Having legs that are too long by that standard would certainly be embarrassing.
Please, please make good recommendations for books that aren't like this for my students. Please?
"Yolanda, look at me. I'm not a demon. You know me. You're the ONLY one who knows me."
Just read a book where the protagonist hated her curly, flowing red hair because it was such an usual color and people made fun of her for it. But the guy she hates but loves but hates but can’t she trust him??? thinks it is actually BEAUTIFUL.
This list is the best.
My best friend just went bald. It's hard to be really open with him now about the things that are on my mind when I know he's going to become my super villain at some time in the near future. Yesterday I had pollen allergies and had to pretend that I was crying because I care so much about him and he's eating himself into an early grave. Naurally, he thought I was a bit weird but at least he didn't learn of a weakness that he could potentially use to construct some elaborate pollen death maze with my true love at the middle screaming for me to "WATCH OUT, IT'S A TRAP!!!" and me crying back "ME NOSE WON'T STOP RUNNING!"
Coz he already knows who I fancy (a truth he learned before going bald), and I saw him sizing her up recently with those eyes- you know, the "you'd look so good at the centre of my death maze!" eyes (I think he might have even actually said it under his breath). He's been saying he wants to help set me up with her recently, but I think he just wants to gage how much I really care about her, coz it'd be so embarrassing for all concerned if he put her in the maze and I was like "not bothered" and he'd be like "well what a waste o' my time and effort that was!"
Still I'm not too worried yet. Without the allergy information the best he can do is put her at the centre of a regular maze, like Hampton Court, and I'd get her out of that in a couple of hours tops, I reckon, coz I've been doing maze books for £2.50 from me local newsagents, and I'm getting really good, doubling back every now and then like Danny in the Shining. He saw me buying one the other day in WHSmith, and he just looked at me for like an hour with tears in his eyes and then ran off without buying his Wine Gums. I think he knows the jig is up.
This is my new favorite thing.
This is my new favorite thing.
Wise beyond her years, precocious – kids her age just don’t get it.
Is this what you were thinking too much about when that counseling situation went down? http://xkcd.com/616/
Reading the first Mistborn trilogy, and Vin, the books Mary Sue, hits so many of these sour notes. It really is diving into self parody at times. To the point where she reflects on how ridiculous it is to view her flaws-not-a-flaws as real flaws. And then thinks that that is her flaw. I have come to hate this series.
THIS POST! Hilarious. I was busting up. Thank you so much for writing this 😀
In Fledgling, she’s only half vampire and it makes her better than the others. She’s perfectly aware of this and not angsty but it’s a problem because other vampires are racist. Octavia Butler makes “protagonist flaws” work
“She worried the edge of her lab coat with her fingers and took off at least eight pairs of glasses.”
Beautiful.