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More Tropes and Things I hate

Daddy issues. Yup, I’m really starting to hate characters who have daddy/mommy issues. I don’t get why so many MMCs need to have them, especially in romance novels. I feel like cheering everytime I find a book where the MMC doesn’t care about their dad’s opinion of them to the point of whining every couple chapters in their head or to someone else. I won’t lie this is something I find irksome about MCU Loki and Netflix Lucifer sometimes. I know both Odin and God suck as fathers but it doesn’t stop me from sighing at the characters’ fruitless efforts. I more so hate when creators give God Loki daddy issues and other insecurities when he’s farely self-confident, down right brazen arguably, perhaps has less self-preservation than MCU Loki, and definitely isn’t as emotionally vulnerable besides showing anger. I know people say that this trope is common because a lot of people don’t have a good relationship with their fathers, which I do get but I still prefer drama steming from others like not agreeing on certain things or getting over their shared bad history. I rowl my eyes when the MMC tries to seek approval from A-hole daddy by trying to be the perfect son or trying to rebel against AD by being reckless and stupid and having a Pikachu face in response to having to be saved. Nevermind the ones who try too hard to be the opposite of AD. I honestly mostly hate the whining consistently in their head or otherwise to someone usually the FMC. I see you Farrendel Laesornysh from the Elven Alliance series.

FMCs have to hate wearing dresses/skirts/no talk of why dresses might be favored practically. This is a bit complicated but let me try to explain. I’m someone who prefers wearing dresses and skirts to pants. I’m not small chested/waisted, so pants/shorts often ried down and that’s just uncomfortably embarrassing, so in warmer months I wear dresses/skirts. Nevermind it makes going to the bathroom somewhat easier. I’m mentioning this stuff because I see a lot of books shitting on dresses and women who wear them. Women can kickass in a dress. I read a book where the FMC used her heel to stab somone while running in a skirt and I loved it. I know people say we need more tomboy characters and I understand why, but I want to find more books where the heroine isn’t comfortable in pants because they just don’t fit her butt right to stay up, she actually has to go to a bra store or online because she doesn’t wear a size or style easily found at Walmart, thinks skirts and dresses fit and hide things better than pants and they don’t go around their whole leg comfortably. Dress wearing isn’t all about dressing up since there are casual dresses and not all women wore dresses that went to the floor historically, which I sometimes hear people saying in movies, books, and online. When I say I hate FMCs who hate wearing dresses I mean I hate this i’m superior to women who prefer wearing dresses and their just lying about not liking pants attitude I see sometimes in fiction and online.

Casual/inappropriate {incorrect} use of the words Narcissist and Codependent. I’ve seen this in a couple books and some fanfics and I can say I hate it every single time without exception. I find it to be a DNF worthy offense too. The Duke Sebastian in the Duke and the Lady by Jessie Clever just casually labels his mother a Narcissist when it makes no sense for someone in that time period to use that word like that, let alone a Duke. It took me right out of the story. Nevermind all the other inaccuracies like useing the words hello, okay, horse back riding, and mate among others. In other media I think creators and audiences confuse NPD with the casual usage which is more so based on the Greek figure than the disorder, which is unfortunately named after him. That’s why we get Loki being described as a Narcissist because he fell in love with a female version of himself I think. I honestly wish they would change the name of the disorder. I hate people using this word casually and I do and will continue to unsob from and DNF anything tasing around psychological labels like they’re lollipops without any consideration to real people even if it’s a psychologist doing it because I’ve begun really not liking certain psychologists over the past few years of researching positive psychology among other things on my own. As for codependent I hate this term because it’s not actually a clinical term. It’s a term that comes out of addiction recovery circles originally. Melody Beattie originally used the term to describe enablers of addicts who would “sacrifice” themselves in helping their loved ones usually by giving them money and spending maybe much of their time driving around looking for them in crack houses or bars to the point they were losing sleep, time, and other relationships in an effort to save/keep that person around. By doing all of these things among others they were considered co-DEPENDENT. Addicts are/were considered dependent, so a spouse/family member giving them resources that would enable them to get their stimulus of choice which would by extension be basically partaking in the SOC so they would be essentially counted as an addict/dependent themselves, which would be to their own detriment of course since much of their own resources would go to the SOC. They would be an addict/dependent by proxy, which is what codependent basically means. Codependent does NOT describe two people who would die for each other or are obsessed with each other to the exclusion of everyone else. That would be toxic INTER-DEPENDENCE. I’m looking at you Loki-Thor centric fandom for both words being used incorrectly in fanfics and meta. On page 35 of For Butter or Worse by Erin La Rosa, the heroine Nina uses this word to describe herself when there are no addicts around her and I just cringed and DNFed because I suspect the author did no research. Please people do your research before using these terms and others.

I grew up with/was raised by addicts, so I find the term Codependent to be insulting to my grandparents, my uncle, my mom, my sister, and myself because we should not be blamed and shamed for trying to help our family members. Hitting rock bottom is not the end all-be all of addiction recovery. Most people don’t have to fear every phone call wondering if someone is dead, especially if it came late at night or early in the morning but when I grew up this was normal,

#tropes #tropes i hate #daddy issues #narcissim #codepency #marvel fandom #rant #vent

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jcmorgenstern · 6 years

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please rant about the second half of COLS and COHF

this ask opened pandora’s box, consume at your own peril

Basically…my biggest problems with the second half of COLS and COHF as a whole is really just…Jonathan as a character really, truly, utterly, and absolutely makes no sense on a very fundamental level. Like I really don’t say this lightly, I spent almost all of last summer trying to piece together a coherent characterization and eventually came to the conclusion that…there wasn’t one, at least that I could see.

(Readmore for length, heavy criticism of the work (obviously), and mention of canonical attempted rape).

So before I jump right in to providing evidence for that uhh slightly bold claim, I do want to acknowledge that Jonathan in COG totally makes sense, even if certain uhh incestuous aspects of his character do make my eyes roll back into my skull. To me, it always seemed a bit evident that the series was meant to end at COG, and the second half of the trilogy was sort of an ad hoc thing that happened after the series kept building popularity and there was demand from the fandom (and the publisher) for content. If taken alone, Jonathan’s character in COG is relatively self-consistent, and I’ve posted before (also at length….lol) about how Jonathan’s character in COG alone is actually a bit tragic, and it’s not until COLS that he truly makes a villainous turn off a cliff. Though the incest is, from the start, #a bit much, we all know that that’s just how CC novels go and, to some extent, ya just gotta roll with it.

The first half of COLS continues to be pretty exciting from a Sebastian Enthusiast perspective–in fact, for me, it’s really what made me fall in love/hate with the character and his portrayal to begin with. And some of the character work in the first half of COLS is actually pretty good!! We have the moral ambiguity of the Jace/Seb bond, Clary being unable to tell to what degree Sebastian in lying, the slightly random, wild, and jumbled snips of his character coming through (vampire threesome, vampire fetish, wearing Jace’s cologne??, fashion whore, messy bitch, shitty poetry writer?? it’s all free real estate) and then he lays out what could have been such an interesting plot!!

All the mentions of the increasing number of demons coming through to Earth is finally being used after being mentioned ad nausea for three whole books!! We’re set up for an interesting, shades of grey antagonist who thinks the ends justify the means and that sometimes a Wee Murder is needed to end an unjust regime (the Clave) without realizing that removing the Clave violently without any real and just alternative will create a power vacuum that invites even worse outcomes!! And the protagonists have to navigate slightly more complex moral issues than “genocide is bad, really!!”

And then…er, no. Like, really no. The entire book does a complete 180 and says no, all that (questionable) character development was a complete lie, all the human motivations you could possibly ascribe to the villain are bunk, he just wants to destroy the world. And not only that, he tries to rape Clary and….yeah no. (I’ll talk more about that later…I have a lot to say).

And for me that was really a massive disappointment. Like, to be clear: it wasn’t that I wanted Jonathan to be a pure uwu soft boi who did nothing wrong ™, or that he would be anything other than an antagonist. But like….a) rape. no. and b) I did sort of want his motivations OR his goal to sort of make sense and follow any sort of reason but honestly…they don’t.

The rationale CC tries to offer is that Jonathan doesn’t understand the meaning of love and wants to bend the world to his will so that it will love him instead. And like….that works to an extent, but then she also very clumsily attempts to make him a psychopath and…

Look.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you know my feelings on poorly-written psychopath characters but…I’m gonna be real honest with ya here….a true psychopath is, with a very few fine exceptions like the entire population of high-security prisons, super fucking boring. They’re emotionally shallow, both internally and externally, and are usually driven by very grounded and unemotional goals. Winning a promotion. Attaining a position of power. Becoming a neurosurgeon. Having the best lawn in the zip code. “The psychopath next door” isn’t Hannibal Lecter, it’s your shitty boss or that one prick who calls the HOA on you for having your lawn one (1) millimeter over regulation.

And you know what? I’d take a story about Hannibal Lecter, lawn fascist. I’d maybe even take a story about Jonathan Morgenstern, shitty CEO, though honestly that sounds dangerously close to 50SOG so maybe not. Because if written well, the sensational serial-killer psychopath can be genuinely thrilling in fiction.

But honestly in this case?? It doesn’t work. Not even getting into the issue of “are signs and symptoms of psychopathy diagnostic in a child soldier” issue (pro tip: almost definitely not), why does he want to burn down the world? Why does he want to kill downworlders if he is basically one? How does he react to his father’s ideology? Does he even have a consistent ideology? Why doesn’t he stay at home playing Mario Kart?? If you can’t answer any of these questions, psychopath or no, anything he does is literally just not convincing and falls flat.

And now I’m going to segue into my “demon blood as a metaphor for child abuse” rant, which will hopefully segue into my “the demon army and ending of COHF is bullshit” rant, and maybe round it all up with my “you don’t have to have your villain graphically try to rape his sister to convince your audience of teenagers he’s a Bad Dude” rant.

So! Demon blood. So full disclosure, the scene in question is probably my actual favorite scene in COLS and the series at large, god knows why really, but it was actually pretty well-written as a hook for a thread that was totally dropped and never ever ever mentioned again. I’m talking about the scene where Jonathan asks Clary for a strength rune, and he tells her Valentine whipped him as a child with demon metal. His wounds will never heal, and serve as a reminder of the “perils of obedience” which is, quite possibly, the most chilling and interesting turn of phrase in the entire series.

And if you think about it, “wounds that will never heal but hurt constantly” are a pretty canny metaphor for the emotional abuse that shapes Jonathan and his ability (or lack thereof) to relate to others. Valentine never particularly loved or even cared for Jonathan, and used him as a child solider (drop me another ask if you want to know the rationale behind that one, kind of not a lot of space for that here) in his genocidal crusade, complete with brainwashing and pretty obvious physical and emotional abuse. That stays with him, twists the way he views love and truth, and leaves him with a permanently negative view of self and worldview that he doesn’t seem to put much effort into overcoming. To be clear: being abused doesn’t make you evil. But in the absence of love and support and positive role models to help you unlearn things, anger and pain can twist even good motives into bad actions, and lbr, Jonathan doesn’t have an over-abundance of good motives. The real peril of obedience is never questioning what you’re told.

But of course it’s never mentioned again, so like, fuck me or whatever.

The show does a better job of it, and almost directly links Jonathan being Like That to what Valentine, Jocelyn, and Lilith did to him and…does a pretty good job of not woobifying him or dismissing his pain. Him having demon blood is almost completely uncoupled from him being “evil” (or, more accurately, doing evil or cruel things) and is instead his responsibility. What makes him “incapable of love” is that he was never shown love, and what makes him violent and cruel is that he was only ever taught violence and cruelty.

But in the books demon blood is definitely intended a metaphor for psychopathy. “He had the humanity burned out of him because of his demon blood” “he’s incapable of love because of his demon blood”…you get the picture. But considering she honestly doesn’t really hit psychopathy and (to me) pings in more at ASPD (antisocial personality disorder, the DSM-V approved version of psychopathy, with some MAJOR and important differences in diagnostic criteria) or NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), I sort of…don’t like how demon blood is directly used as a metaphor for mental illness. And once the demon blood is gone…poof! so is his “evil” so uhh yall read between the lines with me on that one.

(If you want a rant on why I think book Jonathan fits better with ASPD or NPD than psychopathy, drop me an ask, but god please consider the consequences. Also, I generally don’t feel comfortable “”diagnosing”” villains for the hell of it, but in this case since the canon itself has already Gone There and I’d be operating mostly off the DSM, I’d feel slightly less shitty about it).

Anyway. So what I deeply, passionately, truly hate about COHF is the ending, when the demon blood is burned out of Poor Green-Eyed Jonathan and There Is Not Enough Good In Him So He McFucking Dies. What fucking enrages me about this is like…the ENTIRE series is about how “blood doesn’t equal morality” EXCEPT in the case of this one guy apparently because fuck him and fuck consistency!! Also on a slightly different tack it completely erases all culpability of him as a person and like….what, “the demon blood made me do it” is now a viable excuse?? what the fuck. no. what the fuck. also what does “not enough good in him” even MEAN in the context of someone who LITERALLY DESCENDED HIS MOTHER’S BIRTH CANAL THAT WAY oh my god its??? so fucking stupid and the philosophical implications ENRaGE me especially like.,,,as a geneticist….we kind of had a wee run-in with that kind of thinking….it was called “eugenics” you may have heard of it….G OD !!!

Also that doesn’t even get into the contradictory nature of Jonathan’s actual characterization (I use the term loosely) itself like…sometimes his dialogue reads almost like Jace’s, but by the end of COHF he literally quotes Jesus Christ (render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s), says “FOOLS!!11!!1!” like….literally once a page, I think at some point dips into vaguely Shakespearean English while violently whiplashing into whatever “ ‘You’re insane,’ said Simon. ‘You’re dead,’ said Sebastian” is?? and is overall an editor’s literal worst nightmare. There is NOTHING driving this character other than pure, unrestrained literary chaos, and absolutely nothing he does or says seems to make a hell of a lot of sense and is designed purely #4 the evulz. It’s just so painfully cartoonish that it physically pains me to read it and yet, here I am, holding the physical (hardback) copy that I own, reading it, and physically shuddering jesus CHRIST

(You did uh, definitely ask for a rant, right?)

OH yeah uhh and to round it all off…the “you don’t have to have your villain graphically try to rape his sister to convince your audience of teenagers he’s a Bad Dude” rant:

Look my friends there’s nothing wrong with Clebastian but there is definitely something wrong with rape and lbr: there’s a lot of it written into this character and his relationship with his SISTER and fuckign thanks!! I absolutely hate it. Apparently, when asked why she chose to include the graphic attempted rape scene in COLS, CC apparently said she “wanted to make sure the audience knew he was beyond saving.”

Look.

When a guy builds a demon army to obliterate the world and everyone in it, I generally get bad vibes. Worse vibes, in fact, than from a guy who tried to rape his sister, though that’s pretty fuCKING bad. The point is, there is absolutely no fucking reason to do that. Seriously, there’s not. And when your entire NYT bestselling fanfic series is based on the incest fetish HP fanfiction, it’s?? proBABly not the best idea to like…include an attempted rape scene between two siblings in a work that already has a lot of UST between presumed or actual siblings because people WILL talk and.,,,can u blame them lol

On a more serious note…female protagonists are so often forced to undergo rape or sexual humiliation as part of a narrative (or worse, for titillation of the viewers–looking at you, GOT and also yeah lbr COLS). Even in the show, which has definitely improved on some weaknesses in the original narrative, Clary is nearly raped by a demon in order to awaken her rune powers. That’s disgusting, honestly, and unnecessary, and you know what? Luke Skywalker didn’t have to face a rape threat to get his powers, and neither should a female counterpart. The show didn’t even ADDRESS this later, or even bring it up at all, and that’s even more upsetting, and part of why I don’t have faith in the WR to bring the concept of a Jonathan-Clary bond in 3b to life in a way that doesn’t make me want to curl up into my epidermis like a chrysalis and never emerge again. (See also: Lilith’s unaddressed sexual assault of Jace, and Camille’s equally unaddressed assault of Simon).

And what bothers me almost more than all this is…it’s not like Jonathan’s creepiness is subtle. He constantly invades Clary’s personal space, makes comments she’s uncomfortable with, puts her in situations she doesn’t like. You could leave it there and I guarantee most of your readership (especially your female/female-aligned readers) will INSTANTLY pick up on the fact that this guy is Bad News and you know what?? Clary isn’t subjected to that bs for….the heck of it?? Not that subtlety is ever the strong point of this series but like…that’s a huge glaring issue and one I can never overlook, and why I’ve honestly chosen to basically Ignore Canon And Do Whatever The Fuck I Want.

In summary: Jonathan was basically shoed in as a) a half-assed foil to Jace and b) a plot device/fix and c) fodder for more incest after Jace and Clary were no longer brother and sister and tbh?? Not entirely here for it.

tldr: jonathan morgenstern is a dumb bitch and no one is valid, more at 9.

#i love a crispy boy #i CANNOT put ths in the tag there is way too much hate #anti tmi #anti cc #like honestly for safety but also bc i do sort of rip into it #YALL ASKED #obvs this is just my personal onion but y e a hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #anyway!!!! i love how i said hiatus and post a like. 2.5k ask a few hours later #but thats them breaks folks #rape tw #rape mention

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