#problematic faves

Forbidding a partner or dependent from having their own bank account

Sabotaging someone's ability to work

Stealing money

Using rent, food, or medicine as leverage in arguments

Lavishing gifts early on, then using that generosity to guilt/trap someone later.

Monitoring and/or policing every purchase a dependent makes

Making someone feel guilty for spending on themselves

Deliberately keeping someone financially illiterate

Hiding job or promotion offers from someone

Controlling access to child support or using parental status to extort money

Secretly hoarding resources

I've noticed a bit of a trend that runs through the above characters: they attract the ire of fans and critics of their canon works who determine that they're "badly written" as the brilliantly manipulative decievers they're meant to come off as becasue nearly all of their lies, ruses, gambits and emotional manipulation ploys are too stupid or convoluted or just so transparent in their fakeness and easy to poke holes in that anyone should be able to see through them and not fall for them, so the other characters just have to be made too stupid to do so in order for the lies and trickery to succeed. (Dahlia gets this less than the others because her frequent incompetence and failings are a very clear narrative point, but there are some detractors all the same.)

And if one wishes to critique the quality of the writing that they believe is not up to par and lets down the concept of these characters as great liars and manipulators, that's perfectly okay (lord knows there's a lot to criticize in the writing of where those bottom two characters come from!). But it gets bothersome to me when I notice that these sticking points are being used not merely to critique the writing but to hate on and fully dismiss the character. Like to claim that the character is just a really stupid, unimpressive, unlikable and unwanted one who has never said or done anything truly smart in their entire fictional existence and should never have been able to outsmart anyone else and should be held up as examples of how not to write a manipulative deciever.

And I really do not wish to jump to a conclusion, but it’s impossible to ignore that there's another trend that runs through all of these characters that just might be a factor driving this for some haters....

It just tends to reek of "hating to see a girlboss winning" energy, or accusing the female villain of being an author's pet or a Mary Sue protected only by the writer's favorable treatment that dumbs down other characters in order to make the blatant lies told by these blatantly shady characters work (and in Celeste, Dahlia, and Cozy Glow's case it's also "hating to see a girlfailure losing" since they do inevitably prove not very capable or successful!), like a female character cannot possibly have a truly high level of intellect, savvy and competency to be skillfully manipulative and successfully deceitful without their wrtiers "cheating" for them and making their prey into total dumb-dumbs to make it easy for them to get ahead. That the very concept of them being so smart as to make them formidable threats to be reckoned with is a dumb one that ought to have been discarded, with the lying bitches getting easily seen through and exposed and failing at every turn being the "correct" way to write them and their stories. It's sort of sussy to me since I don't think I've seen nearly as much of the same flak given to male characters who lie and manipulate and decieve others regularly, but I'm not going to make any judgment definitive and am always up for discussion on what these characters are convincingly good at and less convincingly good at, if not outright bad at, and what could've been done to improve the writing for them so that they do feel worthy of their own hype.

At the end of the day, can we at least all agree that whatever the faults in their writing, none of these girl liars are craptastic writing disasters like this character?

Elliot is literally the funniest, weirdest little dude and his comebacks always have me giggling like a mad man. Plus the reluctant friendship-turned-m9re with Luke? The dramatic declarations of love to Serene in the first part of the book? I have to say he's simply iconic. Probably my favorite fantasy book character ever (tied with Cardan from TCP, he's my baby) and I just need to give his cheeks a pinch and give them all a hug and some really fattening desert. Like cake.

Anyways!! Just wanted to pop in and say how much I've enjoyed thw book!! I'm hoping to start Long Live Evil next!

Cheers!

Thank you to your friend for recommending my books! Tell them I greatly appreciate them.

And thank you for telling me you enjoyed In Other Lands! (A wonderful reader brought me a copy to sign in Leeds, and didn’t seem sure it was okay to do so ((not their fault, it’s my job to make things clear to the kind people who come to spend time and talk books with me)) and I wanted to say it’s always a true pleasure. Especially as I know In Other Lands isn’t simple to get in the UK or in Spain ((the two places I last signed IOLs)) - you’re showing me love and effort and I am grateful.)

Elliot is a character I always think about now, when writing tricky and highly individual characters. Lots of readers liked him from the jump, but lots of readers hated him… and yet now years later, what has stayed and carried on is the love. I think he had to have the flaws people disliked him for, to seem real and win that enduring love. I’ll take the trade, every time.

And may I add you have wonderful taste. Cardan is also one of my favourites, and a character I was thinking about particularly when writing Long Live Evil and considering favourite characters and especially morally dubious book boyfriends - he’s a highly specific and individual character, and his weirdness and his flaws are both a reason he inspires so much love and why he can’t be effectively copied. (I remember seeing a post that went something like there are 2 types of faerie prince: 1) 500 year old warriors with wings and 2) Cardan Greenbriar.) I did an event with Holly Black where I discussed how another writer remembering Cardan as good at something he wasn’t was a specific inspiration, so I think it’s okay to say online…

Also, Holly helped me write Letters to my Lady from the Abyss, which is extra content in the FairyLoot Long Live Evil edition, and I helped her write Cardan’s letters to Jude, so a) huzzah for epistolary torture teamwork and b) perchance you will like Long Live Evil! (Perchance not. There are no faeries. Faeries are tricky for the Irish. For my general thoughts on the fey, see: Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies, and Peadar O’Guilin’s The Call. Still love you, Cardan.)

Additionally… if anyone is in or around Seattle for Worldcon next month, I will be there. So will Holly Black. So will Leigh Bardugo. I am just saying. I will also be doing an event on the Sunday with Caitlin Rozakis at Elliot Bay Books!

Can I get Zamasu and Goku Black (or just fused Zamasu, basically just the same person anyway lol) (IK feel free to cook me alive for my fuckass taste in men 😔😔🙏🙏🙏) with a nb reader who functions like a gag character (IE; the near-indestructibility, the physics of being able to be squashed and just becoming a pancake that returns to a normal state after a minute), who is desperately trying to redeem and befriend/romanceify those two with VERY badly thought-through hijinks? Mfs are just trying to complete the zero mortal plan but they can't figure out how to kill this stupid fucking mortal who won't leave them alone.

Bonus if reader wears ultra-neon-fluorescent ahh rainbow fashion, so everyone who looks without sunglasses basically gets the Grunkle Stan treatment (which I would link below, but tumblr won't let me >:( - so if you don't know what I'm talking about then pls search up "grunkle stan rainbow blindness")

Hcs pls, thank you! Flexible as alwayzz!

Girl, Goku Black is one of my first crushes, no cooking you alive

This is so Luffy core LMAOOO

Zamasu:

Zamasu hates you instantly.

Not because you’re mortal.

Because you are:

loud

bright

violating every law of physics and decorum

You get obliterated by a blast.

Become a smoking, flattened pancake on the ground.

One minute later: boing, you’re fine.

Zamasu stares at you like you just committed blasphemy.

“That should have erased you from existence.”

You respond:

“Yeah, that happens a lot.”

Your rainbow, retina-destroying outfit genuinely offends him.

He refuses to look directly at you.

Calls you:

an aberration

a cosmic error

“that thing”

You call him:

“Zam-Zam”

“grumpy god bf”

You keep insisting mortals can be redeemed.

He keeps insisting you shouldn’t exist.

Over time, your indestructibility unsettles him more than any mortal ever has.

You are proof his worldview has a glitch.

That terrifies him.

Goku Black:

Black finds you infuriatingly amusing.

The first time he kills you and you just… come back?

He laughs.

A lot.

Starts experimenting:

slicing

blasting

dropping you from heights

You keep bouncing back, cheerfully asking: “So… did that count as a date?”

Your fashion physically hurts to look at.

He squints every time you approach.

Still doesn’t tell you to change.

Lets you follow him around.

Calls you:

“persistent vermin”

“colorful nuisance”

You flirt badly.

You trip.

You get obliterated mid-sentence.

Finish the sentence when you regenerate.

At some point he stops trying to kill you constantly.

Not mercy.

But curiosity.

You’re the only “mortal” he doesn’t immediately erase.

That alone makes you special, whether he admits it or not.

Fused Zamasu:

Cannot deal with you at all.

Your existence contradicts:

divine order

narrative tone

his aesthetic

You get smacked into a mountain.

Slide back down, flattened.

Pop back up and wave.

He screams.

Literally.

You keep trying to “redeem” them with:

friendship bracelets

poorly planned interventions

aggressively positive affirmations

The Zero Mortal Plan keeps getting delayed because:

“WHY WON’T THEY DIE”

Somehow, impossibly, you become a constant.

An unkillable, fluorescent, affectionate constant.

And when someone tries to erase you specifically?

Both Zamasu and Black react instantly.

No hesitation.

No explanation.

They may hate mortals.

But you?

You’re their problem.

Masterpost

DBS Masterlist