Dear Authors, Please Stop...

 I've been reading a lot of YA series recently, and I thought it would be fun to make a list of things I wish authors would stop doing in their books. 

1. ...including petty rivalries.

I've mostly seen these between two girl characters, and the whole grudge consists of this: Protagonist hates Other Girl because Other Girl is prettier than her, except not really because no one can be better looking than our special snowflake Protagonist, which Other Girl recognizes and hates her for. 

What the heck? I mean, you see this all the time. There's Clary and Isabelle in The Mortal Instruments. Ringer and Cassie in The 5th Wave trilogy. Alyssa and Taelor in Splintered. And that's just to name a few.

This trope needs to stop. For one thing, it's completely unrealistic. I can't speak for everyone, but if I see someone who's pretty, I don't think, Oh, no! I've been upstaged! I must smolder in jealousy and hate her guts for all eternity! My thought process is more like this: A person. Interesting. It would be nice for authors to take note of this and maybe consider making the "rivals" friends, because there just isn't enough friendship in YA literature.

Let's take an example of this being done well. In Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, Nina and Inej don't hate each other. They respect each other and encourage each other. Can we please see more of that kind of friendship?

2. ...writing amazing, perfect, wonderful love interests.

To be fair, this annoyance mostly came from The 5th Wave, which is the trilogy I just finished reading. Evan Walker and Ben Parish/Zombie are Cassie's two love interests. To be fair, it's not a full-blown love triangle--more like a well, this is awkward situation--but Evan and Zombie are both completely and utterly perfect. 

It's agonizing to read about. How Zombie is really good with kids and really good-looking and has the most amazing smile in the world. How Evan has perfectly clipped nails (I'm not even kidding) and knows how to wash hair (again, not kidding) and is willing to sacrifice himself to save Cassie. They're both horrible for their lack of horribleness!

Has Mr. Yancey heard of, gee, I don't know, CHARACTER FLAWS? You know, those things that make characters fleshed out and realistic? 

Behold an example of when a love interest has not been The Best: Rowan Damisch from Neal Shusterman's Arc of a Scythe. Sure Rowan is brave and righteous, but he comes close to being corrupted by the New Order scythes, and he will kill unabashedly when he feels he's doing the right thing. That is a character flaw. That is the kind of thing that should be in more books/series.

3. ...romanticizing clumsiness.

As someone who is actually clumsy, let me tell you that it's not cute or funny or quirky or anything like that. Clumsiness in real life is running smack into a pole that you definitely should have seen, then apologizing to it by accident and tripping over your own feet as you try to inconspicuously flee the scene. Clumsiness in books is more like this:

Snowflakette was so lost in thought that she tripped over her own feet and fell down the stairs! She let out a soft, delicate scream before stumbling right into Lovintrest's arms. "Clumsy me," she sighed as he carried her off into the sunset.

(I made that up. It would be sad if anything that bad was actually published.)

It's downright depressing how many examples of this I can think of. Since I'm in the mood for ranting, I'll pick what I consider the worst one: Sophie Foster from Keeper of the Lost Cities. There are a great number of things I hate about Sophie, her "clumsiness" ranks high on the list.

I was going to end this with an example where clumsiness was done realistically, but I can't think of one. Which just goes to show...