Down with those trope traps!

So, I've done my part to promote others and raise social awareness all week, and now it's time to do some whining for me. But, since we've developed this comfy pattern, here's your link to provide the food for my thought. I found myself nodding enthusiastically throughout this fantastic rant about overdone and clichéd American tropes.

I want to do a couple of block quotes first:

I'm tired of the casual acceptance of violence as a valid answer to anything, of the proliferation of guns in movies and books, of how it's always acceptable to go face the bad guys with a sword or a pistol instead of seeking a peaceful resolve.

I don't want stories in which the main character has to be sympathetic and with the moral high ground in order to be worthwhile; in which people have to change in order for the plot to be significant;

You probably know from that second quote where this is going. But in talking about Peter, I often only talk about Peter. I don't talk about all the other people in his story because I didn't want to spoil the experience for you. But, since everyone decided that Peter isn't sympathetic and won't buy his book, I've decided that some spoilers are okay.

First, I want to mention Judy, Peter's foster sister, a cheerleader with a high IQ who hides this from her friends. Working from within the clique, she tries to help people and do the right thing, even if sometimes she isn't sure how to deal with Peter's extreme problems. She's both a stereotype for her looks, and yet she's not a mean cheerleader, nor a ditz. She's Peter's tutor throughout the story, and he frequently acknowledges that without her help he'd be getting grades worse than the jocks. I'm quite proud of Judy for all her patience with Peter, but no one will notice her performance after Peter's lusty appetites for child flesh are revealed.

Next, let's talk about Josie, Peter's best friend. Peter meets Josie through his job at the mall, and she's a foster kid too. She was abused by her father and is now asexual and incapable of intimacy. When Peter tries to seduce her, she goes into tears, and Peter realizes that all she wants from him is platonic love. And, despite his monstrous side, he remains a loyal and platonic friend to her. But no one notices this because Peter isn't so great in how he handles Alice.

Let's talk about Pi, who in book one is referred to in gender neutral terms. Pi is a hermaphrodite and a bigender. But this does not mean Pi is enlightened. When Peter reveals his past, Pi kind of freaks out about it and compares Peter to terrorists. When Peter becomes a social pariah, Pi avoids him because Pi doesn't want any more social problems than they already have for being androgynous. While Pi redeems themself by helping Peter save Alice, I wanted to stress that even a gender variant character can make thick-headed mistakes. I also wanted to show flawed people who don't make the right choices. Again, no one notices Pi, or ANY of the diversity of my cast, because of Peter.

Let's talk about David and Kathy Preston, Peter's foster parents. I got so sick of seeing parents in fiction who are never home, who are always conveniently out of the way so that fictional kids end up looking neglected, even if the effect is unintentional. We're told by the narrator (and thus the writer) that these are "cool" parents, but mostly, they're nonexistent and unrealistic.

So I made parents who try to punish Peter for his mistakes, and who try to keep him from seeing Alice. You know, like real parents. So, like real rebellious children, they have to sneak around behind their parents' backs. Will I win any points for depicting real adults struggling with a troubled teen? No. Will I win points for depicting real rebellious youts? (Not a typo) No. Why? Because Peter's choice of girlfriend is socially unacceptable.

Because Peter is evil. Never mind his past or what his parents trained into him. What he is now, is evil, and nothing about him or his story is worth some people's time because they don't feel evil people have any story worth telling.

Since I'm spoiling this, I'll warn you first…spoiler alert…

At the end of the first book, Alice is kidnapped by Peter's mother, and she is raped, tortured, and bitten, infecting her with Naomi's curse. Despite Naomi's efforts to goad Peter into a fight to the death, Alice prevents Peter from killing Naomi. Alice says this will make Peter a monster as evil as her. Peter lets his mother live, and then he and Alice are tracked down by the FBI. Naomi goes back to prison. As a result of her abuse, Alice is just as traumatized as Peter. The burden of guilt adds another invisible weight on Peter, because he knows Alice would be safe if he'd just walked away from her in the beginning. Despite this guilt, he still cannot stay away from her.

Let me skip a few events and give you the punch line. Hey, you won't buy any of the books in between, so it's no biggie, right?

In book four, after fulfilling the harpy's task and returning to Dallas with an adopted psychic vampire child to care for, Peter begins coming to terms with his sexuality, and with his animal appetites. He struggles to avoid Judy and Alice. But when Josie and Pi have their commitment ceremony, it's Peter and Pi who end up developing a soul bond while Josie watches on. This further confuses Peter, who's already having enough issues sorting out whether he's in love with Alice or just in lust. Then there's Judy, who is still trying to return to intimacy with Peter despite the fact that he raped her and that she now has a steady boyfriend.

Peter is also dealing in bitter pack politics with the weredogs because of his foster family becoming unsanctioned werewolves. Peter's biological father arrives in town and reveals that he planted the bomb from book two as a plot to kill some weredog elders. Peter seemingly agrees to join his father, but this is revealed as an FBI undercover operation. After his father's capture, Peter decides that he doesn't want to be a monster like either of his biological parents. He wants to be good, like David and Kathy, and so he also lets the FBI take him in for training. And that's the end, with Peter realizing that the best solution is for him to go away and leave all of his friends and family alone.

Along the way, Peter will do things I'm sure many people will not like. Because they only want to see stories about strong heroes with good moral values. Peter's story is the complete opposite of this. Peter is a weak person who wants to be better, if he could just get rid of the crap in his head. He's not a hero. In another book, he'd be the villain with no character development beside a quick flash of child rape detail so you know he's "one of those kind." Then he can justifiably be killed by a righteous hero.

It's a shame that I put all this effort in trying to create something unique and challenging with a diverse cast of flawed people, only to have some readers focus on one element in their mental picture. But I can't make people see the rest if they don't want to. I can't make people accept that there is merit in this story.

I don't suppose I have a final point this time. I just want people to know, there's a lot more to this story than the sexuality of the main character. Alice and Peter have exactly two chances for intimacy over the course of this 90K book. In the first scene, Peter molests Alice, and then confesses to his and her parents. Nobody just accepts this or lets it happen. Peter and Alice are separated, but Alice begins sneaking over to see Peter.

In the second intimate scene, two years later, Alice attempts a clumsy seduction during a gymnastics competition out of town and is busted by the team captain and her uncle before her plan can lead to sex. Again, punishments are dished out, with Peter being kicked off the squad and warned by Alice's parents to stay away.

The one time Peter has sex in the book, it's with an adult woman, and it's consensual. But because Peter sticks his hand down Alice's pants, he's evil. And since Alice sticks her hand down his, she's unrealistic. Because young girls don't have any sexuality of their own, not even years after they've been initiated into the world of sexual intimacy by someone older. Real life girls probably have their sexuality injected into them after puberty in small doses using tampons. Or maybe it goes on in layers from watching clothing commercials. In any case, there's no way that people could accept the idea that Alice might have a mind of her own. So she's unrealistic for displaying an interest in Peter.

I'm sorry for ranting about this, but I made a story unlike anything you'll pick up from the bestseller rack. In a world of werewolf stories all covering the same ideas and tropes, I made a unique monster, and my interpretation of the werewolves used an old cast off facet of the lycanthrope legends that I promise nobody else is using in the current crop of weretales. (weretails?)

Despite its uniqueness, I don't expect Peter's series to be popular. I don't expect that this explanation will change any minds about the merits of the story, or about Peter's merits as a character. But in reading over Aliette's rant, the first thought that came to me was, Hot damn, if more people really felt like this, Peter might have a hope in hell of finding an audience.

Instead, I'm begging and pleading for anyone to try my stuff, and the books that promote mindless violence and "might makes right" will turn over a few thousand copies, easy. Talking about a major sexual and social problem is taboo, but promoting justifiable murder is profitable.

Feh. Sometimes it sucks being different.