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farlaThe Bartimaeus trilogy is a pretty enjoyable ride, if not actually a coherent story that holds up to examination, except for one glaring problem. Kitty-Sue.
Book 1 of the Bartimaeus trilogy introduces us to our two main characters, Nathanial, a magician in training, and Bartimaeus, the demon he summoned. I really liked Nathanial.
See, Nathanial was living in Evil Magic Britain. He'd been bought from his family at a young age and gets raised in near isolation by his master, who basically ignores him, his master's wife, who's not a magician, has no real power and has to go along with what her husband wants (and honestly, is pretty halfhearted in her own dealings with him), and his tutors.
This results in Nathanial growing up thinking magicians are awesome, commoners are ungrateful/tricked by evil foreigners into rebelling, demons are horrible evil monsters and having a very strong attachment and loyalty to the concept of the government because he doesn't have any other options. His idea of "hero" is his whole outlook in a nutshell - he idolizes a past magician he knows very little about, beyond the bit he was told about the man being so powerful no one would cross him, and that he protected what he cared about and defended his friends. Not the best choice, but neither is it without value - Nathanial has a good idea (be good, help people) that's marred by his views on how to do this (be very powerful, kill anyone who challenges you). At no point in the story is Nathanial ever going to be working off the same information as the reader has.
The rest of the story, obviously, is going to be him fighting his upbringing to be an actual hero, yes? Flawed characters are fun.
Well, it proceeds nicely. Nathanial learns more about the world, but instead of just throwing out his whole worldview he keeps his broad ideas (magicians good, government good) and adds in exceptions (the government magicians who are mean to me aren't real magicians). He ends up on the streets and encounters real commoners for the first time, only for them to rob and almost kill him. He sneaks into the estate of the evil magician who's throwing a party wearing servant clothes, and watches the magicians act like he's invisible while gorging themselves on larks' tongues. But then he saves the day and everyone says he's wonderful and he'll get a new, better master and the Prime Minister compliments him! Nathanial, like a good little poorly socialized twelve year old, forgets everything he's just gone through and goes back to thinking magicians are the best ever.
Because there have to be two more books, and it's much more interesting for Nathanial to be teetering on the brink, right? You can see he really wants to be a good person, he just lives in a world were everyone tells him the way to do that is report traitors to the Bureau of Intelligence and Torturing People a Whole Lot and murder anyone who challenges you.
Now, there are three female characters who show up (four if you count magician woman who's part of the BoIaTPaWL, but she's basically just flavor at this point). One is the magician's wife. I call her the magician's wife because that's what she is. Nathanial calls her Mrs. Underwood. Indeed, when he refers to being upset over the murder and his demon says "What, your master? He was a jackass!" Nathanial fires back with "No, my master's wife!" Because that is literally all she is.
But the two other characters are fine. One of his beloved art teacher's few detailed interactions with him is to treat him badly for blindly repeating what he's told, only to fail to actually explain the truth (but this is understandable given she could probably get in trouble for it). She, too, seems like a good slightly flawed character - basically good, but frustrated and therefore taking it out on the wrong person when she's reminded of it, and not willing to lose everything to try to reeducate Nathanial.
The third is an initially unnamed girl, who was pretty damn awesome in her two short appearances. When the demon is moving the artifact around, she and a gang of boys somehow track him and see through his illusions. She's the ringleader, she's brave, she's got a nice tint of imperfection (she thinks the demons are evil, when they're just servants). She shows up again in connection to the kids who stole from Nathanial - they meet up with her, and she's the one who says not to kill Nathanial after one of the boys tries it.
So, decidedly decent so far. I like the main characters a lot. And aside from the magician's wife, the women are quite decent, if extremely rare.
And then, it's on to Book 2. Nathanial is fourteen, still decidedly imperfect but already showing signs of the better critical thinking skills that he can use to become a good person.
Here's where it all goes wrong.
We jump point of view to a girl named Kitty.
That cool unnamed girl? That was Kitty-it's-short-for-Kathleen. Turns out she really is part of the commoner rebellion, and in fact has her own special powers - resistance to magic. Other members of her group can do other things too, like seeing disguised demons or magic traps. She's in charge of the current raid despite being unable to do either.
The fact this is stupid is pointed out by one of the boys under her. They then proceed to challenge her authority at every turn. No sign of the cohesive group we saw in the first book, and really, they have a point. It will later be explained that Kitty is the leader because she's good at directing them, something we will never see any evidence for. The girl who was in charge because she was competent, giving orders people actually listened to...she will not be reappearing in this book.
Kitty's group are thieves and terrorists, but it's okay! Kitty deeply opposes the terrorism when it might hurt her fellow commoners, because she is A Good Person. You're going to hear a lot about Kitty's innate moral goodness for the rest of the books, because she just has so much.
Kitty's moral goodness lets her know lots of stuff. It lets her point out the obvious holes in the history she's being taught at school (those evil lying magicians!) so cleverly the teachers can't hope to counter her. See, Kitty isn't going to let a little thing like upbringing make her a bad person! It turns out believing this stuff is just a test of your moral fiber. Her moral fiber also lets her know that she should disdain her parents for liking the magicians, and be terribly indignant and confused by basic facts about her world. See, her friend and she will accidentally hit a ball so it hits a magician's car, destroying it and nearly getting him killed, when they're in a park that's magicians only. Kitty will proceed to spend three seconds apologizing before launching into a tirade that there's no reason she shouldn't be allowed to play in the park all she wants. To the guy whose incredibly expensive car she just wreaked by playing in that park. While his scary monster demon is standing right next to him.
Kitty is shocked that the magician responds by telling the demon to beat the shit out of them. Kitty is then certain the justice system in the country she has lived her whole life in that has a government completely made up of magicians will say that the trespassing kids who destroyed an incredibly expensive car and caused a horrible crash at which point they ran for it are totally in the right and punish the magician for hurting them, and definitely won't just jump straight to billing their parents and punishing them.
And you know what? The justice system has it go to trial. Kitty, in fact, almost wins by default because the magician shows up so late, but once he does get there, he lies! Lies about what happened!
The magicians who rule the country with an iron demonic fist respond to accusations they've used said demonic fist on kids who were breaking multiple laws by claiming the scary little kids attacked him and it was self-defense. Because the fact they have a succession process involving mass murder doesn't mean they don't respect the laws of the country.
Kitty is a canon Canon Warping Sue. The world will repeatedly rearrange itself so she can enjoy the maximum level of outrage.
In a shocking turn of events, the judge...well, it's unclear. See, it seems this is like a civil suit or something? So the judge just says that she thinks the guy's innocent and now Kitty has to pay the court fees. Kitty who committed multiple actual crimes and has just been accused of a bunch of imaginary ones.
In a country with a torture prison.
(Incidentally, the civil suit nature of this makes it confusing what Kitty winning would mean. Possibly he'd have to pay hospital bills or something.)
Kitty finds this horribly unfair and shocking. Just because she hates the magician government doesn't mean she isn't amazed that the magician judge wasn't completely fair. But now she extra doubleplus hates them.
(At this point, it should be added that Kitty's story hinges on the demon attacking her with a disfiguring attack, that, thanks to resistance, she doesn't show any sign of. Oh, and she says her friend isn't there because his family thinks they won't win. But clearly, it's the judge being a bitch when she goes with the sane story. Or possibly a slut, because she's friendly toward the male magician.)
To understand my absolute loathing for Kitty-Sue, remember, this was an audiobook. I couldn't, the way I could in a novel, just steadily speed up my reading until I reached uncomprehending skim. The particular audiobook was in two massive chunks, so I couldn't skip either. So I'd be enjoying the actual plot of the book, and then SURPRISE it's time to learn about Kitty-Sue's tragic backstory. For chapters. Then it would end and we'd be back to someone I actually liked and then Kitty-Sue again! Kitty-Sue wangsting about how her parents actually like the magicians, gag. Kitty-Sue grandstanding about how awesome she is compared to the boys and why must they keep challenging her? (Silly Kitty-Sue, it's to establish they're bad people!)
(You may have noticed I haven't said much about the actual plot. This is because Kitty's section is basically taking place in an alternate universe revolving around her.)
By halfway through the book, I wanted Kitty-Sue dead. I mean this literally, I was hoping she would die so I'd stop having to hear about her. I didn't even care if it meant all the other characters would think about how much they loved her and how tragic her death was, at least I'd be hearing it from the other characters.
(I actually get the impression Kitty-Sue is a late addition to the plot, because she takes up so much time all of a sudden. She also serves to wrench the plot sideways - once Kitty-Sue appears, Nathanial, who previously I though was supposed to be understandably flawed, will be treated with a bizarre contempt by the narrative.)
At this point, we hit what's probably the best bit of writing in the book. I was listening to this at night, which also helped. Backstory over, Kitty-Sue and friends are going to try tomb-robbing. A friend has said that a tomb of the Most Important Strongest Magician Ever, stuffed with his artifacts, is actually almost unguarded - by the time he died he was weak and could only bind a minor demon to protect his tomb. It's been left untouched because, being so important, the magicians are too superstitious to touch it.
So. They head in. It's tense and dark and they're traveling through catacombs, and the story is taking forever in that nasty building way that gives the sense that at any moment you'll have stayed too long and be unable to get out. I'm willing to forgive Kitty for the past few chapters. Obviously the writer was just having trouble setting up backstory, not failing at the character as a whole.
And they get to the tomb, and they manage to use an artifact to survive the minor demon's one attack before it dissipates, and then it's robbing time!
Now, to put this in perspective.
The whole commoner rebellion thing? The most people they've ever had was eleven, they've lost people, and their leader is an old, dying man. They can't sell the stuff they steal, and most of it they either can't use, or don't know how to. They can't even go up against the major magicians, who are well protected - they're stealing baubles from the most minor workers in the government or harassing commoners who work for them. If they are ever noticed by a demon and tracked by to their hideout they will all be killed. They are absolutely nothing but occasional news fodder.
What's in this tomb includes a bag of infinite money and a crystal that shows the future. It doesn't just mean being able to fight, it means they'll actually be able to win.
As the boys struggle to open the coffin, Kitty notices something odd about the wall and ends up finding a bunch of dead bodies.
The leader tries to calm Kitty down and suggests that this means they were probably killed before the trap was put in place, or possibly as part of some weird funeral rite (the bodies date to about the time of the tomb). And anyway, they'll only be there another few minutes, just long enough to grab the stuff and escape.
He has contradicted Kitty-Sue. Death will be too good for him.
Anyway, the other tomb guardian shows up and kills one of them.
One of the party runs immediately. (Coward.) Another fights (stupid hothead). The rest are then told to flee by the fighting guy. I want to be clear here. The character fighting to the death to help them escape is going to get condemned as a stupid hothead by Kitty-Sue, and she will not mourn his death long. Kitty-Sue is noble and perfect, unlike those fleeing bastards, and attempts to drag the old guy with her, who proceeds to spend the rest of his short life selfishly asking Kitty-Sue to stop and let him rest before the demon pounces, coincidentally freeing Kitty-Sue to sprint up the stairs unencumbered. There, she meets another party member, who's babbling about how everyone's dead dead and she's lost her pack of artifacts.
This is not taken to mean how awful it is that they've lost all these people for nothing, or how their group is doomed because they don't even have the artifacts they could use to continue the fight, or even just that she's so terrified she's not thinking straight (she's lost in catacombs with a murderous demon).
Oh no. Kitty-Sue realizes, with disgust, that all her party members are greedy by their desire for the artifacts that they can't sell and would have used to fight the magicians. She thinks back with loathing on the greedy look on her leader's face as he saw the artifacts - the man who was yanked screaming from her by a demon to be horribly murdered and left to rot in the tomb.
It's too good for someone who contradicted Kitty-Sue.
Now that Kitty-Sue has decided her teammates are jackasses, it's not long before the girl she's with is also horribly murdered. I call her girl, although I think she might have been an adult - I don't remember her stated age, just that she spends most of her appearance here whimpering and having Kitty-sue order her around, and she's backup for Kitty-Sue earlier. Anyway, Kitty-Sue makes it out. Her other teammate (the one who sprinted immediately) also presumably escaped, but he was a coward, so Kitty-Sue doesn't care. Sympathy is for Kitty-Sue, not those around her. (He'll end up dying horribly later, but we know to hate him because he offers to give up Kitty-Sue. Just because he's being tortured at the time, like that's any excuse.)
(Incidentally, Kitty-Sue is the only one to make it out with an artifact, the magician's staff. But it's okay, since she just didn't realize she was carrying it.)
Kitty-Sue heads home, where her evil family betrays her! It turns out Nathanial put two and two together and had come there to catch her. She's disgusted to see her parent's terrified fawning over the magician, just because he could kill them on a whim and she's committed treason and there's a good chance they'll go to torture prison for knowing her! But it's okay, because Kitty-Sue knows that they're really only siding with the magicians because they're spineless class traitors. And if they had moral fiber, they'd Just Know that the magicians were actually evil and should be opposed at every turn.
So she punches Nathanial in the face and escapes. I think this was where he first starts fawning over how spunky she is. This is also where I start getting really confused narration's constant condemnation of Nathanial. The narration will not shut up about how stupid his clothes are or what a bastard he's being or whatever. And while Nathanial is going to end up doing his best not to get innocent people hurt (for example, even though he's in hot water himself and almost tortured, he still makes excuses for why the police shouldn't arrest and torture Kitty's parents) he will end this book being roundly condemned as an irredeemable jackass, because it only matters that he tried to catch Kitty-Sue.
Kitty-Sue goes on to meet the groups' contact, who had told them how to get into the tomb in return for giving him one object. Her mortal fiber lets her know he's not idly asking about it but actually doesn't care about any of them and just wants the damn stick. So many people are just greedy. So naturally she lies to him and says she didn't get it, deciding to keep it in their massive storehouse of stolen artifacts. Then she goes and arms herself with them, because she's heard her friend was kidnapped by the magicians.
You remember, he was the kid who got horrible disfigured? Yeah, she hasn't seen him in years. His family know a lot about magicians, but she never thought to go to them for help against the magicians. His family actively sabotage the magicians (by screwing up their spellbooks) and get the only known kill in, but again, Kitty-Sue just ignores them. His grandmother gave Kitty-Sue a super pendant necklace (almost forgot - she's got a super pendant necklace) that helped her escape from the demon. But still, it doesn't occur to Kitty-Sue that they could actually be useful in the fight. I mean, do they have magic demon resistance powers like Kitty? I think not. And that's all that matters.
But just because Kitty-Sue has been ignoring her friend for years won't stop her from declaring they're totally BFFs and she'll nobly risk death to save him. Kitty-Sue charges in, and ends up singlehandedly killing various werewolf police because she's just so awesome, before getting snatched up by a flying demon sent to capture her. Does Kitty-Sue give up just because it's certain death if she's dropped? No, it's stabbing time with her special silver knife!
The demon will go on to be impressed by her spunkiness.
Anyway, she and the demon hang out for a while waiting for Nathanial, whose life is sucking. They chat. Demon thinks about how awesomely spunky she is as she causes him trouble. She bitches that they're evil, he says they only do what the magicians tell them so take it up with the magicians. Kitty-Sue, due to her moral fiber, will end up easily discarding all she knows in favor of this because she is A Good Person and therefore has to go with the "demons are just innocent slaves" that we the readers keep hearing.
Later, Kitty will nobly nearly get herself killed saving Nathanial's dumb ass for absolutely no reason. It's repeatedly stated that she has no reason to, and in fact runs completely counter to her stated goals of overthrowing the government and killing the magicians. She's just that nice. She then escapes, but Nathanial is told she died, so he spends the next book wangsting about it.
By Book 3, Kitty has expunged even her fake sue flaws - she's in total control of her temper, is now on the right moral side of demon innocence, stealing, and terrorism, and also is the only one in the entire series who knows about things like that populations automatically start to develop demon resistance and that the rise and fall of empires has always revolved around this. This is actually very, very obvious, and you'd think someone with an actual education like oh say all the actual magicians would have noticed it more easily, but if anyone else had realized it, Kitty-Sue wouldn't be so special for working it out all on her own.
The demon is spending most of its time in her form because she was just so awesome. Nathanial is wangsting over her death. She's working two jobs under two names while she stealth studies basic magicianing while working as a magician's helper, and then goes on the summon the demon perfectly on her first solo attempt (Nathanial had to spend years of his life learning multiple languages and spending hours upon hours practicing drawing and we're told his ability to summon the demon is still a big deal, but she's too special for that). From her couple hours with the demon, you see, she's realized the form it usually takes of a kid is actually a master it had back in Egypt, and it's taking the form because they were such great friends, and this has to do with who the guy was, and it's the key to revolutionizing demon/human relationships, and so on to complete her usurpation of all Nathanial's character development. And yes, she pretty much makes all those leaps at once.
(Oh, and Kitty-Sue repeats the big sacrifice the ancient magician made to get the demon on board with the plan and is tragically altered by this, and everyone's very impressed by her. She doesn't die. I was really, really hoping she'd die.)
See, Kitty starts out annoying because she's taking up space, doesn't have any real flaws, and is grossly unsuited for the setting (always Just Knowing that something is right or being shocked by the basic functioning of her world). She steadily takes over more and more of the plot. Nathanial's character development grinds to a halt in Book 2 and will only return at the end of Book 3, where it will involve her telling him her outlook and him instantly realizing she is so right, and then he goes and kills himself saving the world. Nathanial has to die because he's not good enough, see. Once we meet Kitty-Sue, we learn that morality is innate, and Nathanial isn't meant to be an understandably flawed character who will overcome his upbringing, he's meant to be a bad person who has to be told he's a bad person so he can redeem himself in death.
And why do we know this is true? Why, because we meet up with his art teacher again, and she's bitchy in response to Nathanial's clumsy attempt to thank her, alternating between jumping on every little thing he says and trying to brush him off, and finishing by insulting him, and then the narration explains this is a sign of how perfect and great she is. See, she Just Knows he's a total dickhead because he told her he works in the government, and this is not because of upbringing or fixable by talking to him like he's a human being, it is a sign Nathanial is an inherently bad person. Remember what I said at the start about her being a good but slightly flawed person? It turns out she was totally in the right to snap at Child Nathanial, because he should have Just Known that things were actually different, and his failing to Just Know the real situation is because of his lack of moral fiber.
(Oh, and the two evil female characters get themselves killed. All women are on pedestals, of course, so evil magician woman one goes out being defiant and evil magician woman two gets herself killed fighting the demons, but at the same time they're not mourned (magician woman two isn't even confirmed dead, they just basically shrug and don't bother looking for her) and the only non-Kitty-Sue female to make it out is Nathanial's secretary. I'm not sure if she's even a magician.)
In sum: Yes, authors really do write female characters completely differently from male ones. Yes, a lot of authors who are basically decent at writing male characters are mysteriously unable to write women without making them spineless doormats, sues, or evil. Yes, this does result in me hating them and wanting them to die so I can stop reading about them. No, that doesn't mean I'm the one holding them to a different standard.
There's a lot of misogyny in fandom, but it really can't be overstated that most of the characters people get to start have something horribly wrong about them, and that hating them, ignoring them or calling them sues is often based in the fact they're horrible annoying sues.
And you know what else? I don't even want good female characters most of the time, because when they're not horrible sues and have actual personality, they're going to lose it. I spent most of my childhood latching on to the occasional female character that actually did stuff, only to watch her be endlessly character assassinated back into her appropriate role as time went on. In general, a female character arc is fixing the fact she's not one of the approved female stereotypes.
I rewatched Digimon Tamers with my brother, remembered how awesome the characters were, and then got to relive exactly how pissed I was about Rika all over again with Ruki. I was happier with Digimon 02, where I was mostly focused on the male characters and the female characters were largely terrible, even though I didn't like any of them anywhere near as much as Ruki or like the overall show nearly as much as Tamers, because it didn't take a character I liked and screw her up once I'd got invested.
So basically, I'm happier if I don't try to seek out female characters in media, and I'm happier with the women being boring or absent because then they're not annoying sues or good characters I like getting ruined.
Book 1 of the Bartimaeus trilogy introduces us to our two main characters, Nathanial, a magician in training, and Bartimaeus, the demon he summoned. I really liked Nathanial.
See, Nathanial was living in Evil Magic Britain. He'd been bought from his family at a young age and gets raised in near isolation by his master, who basically ignores him, his master's wife, who's not a magician, has no real power and has to go along with what her husband wants (and honestly, is pretty halfhearted in her own dealings with him), and his tutors.
This results in Nathanial growing up thinking magicians are awesome, commoners are ungrateful/tricked by evil foreigners into rebelling, demons are horrible evil monsters and having a very strong attachment and loyalty to the concept of the government because he doesn't have any other options. His idea of "hero" is his whole outlook in a nutshell - he idolizes a past magician he knows very little about, beyond the bit he was told about the man being so powerful no one would cross him, and that he protected what he cared about and defended his friends. Not the best choice, but neither is it without value - Nathanial has a good idea (be good, help people) that's marred by his views on how to do this (be very powerful, kill anyone who challenges you). At no point in the story is Nathanial ever going to be working off the same information as the reader has.
The rest of the story, obviously, is going to be him fighting his upbringing to be an actual hero, yes? Flawed characters are fun.
Well, it proceeds nicely. Nathanial learns more about the world, but instead of just throwing out his whole worldview he keeps his broad ideas (magicians good, government good) and adds in exceptions (the government magicians who are mean to me aren't real magicians). He ends up on the streets and encounters real commoners for the first time, only for them to rob and almost kill him. He sneaks into the estate of the evil magician who's throwing a party wearing servant clothes, and watches the magicians act like he's invisible while gorging themselves on larks' tongues. But then he saves the day and everyone says he's wonderful and he'll get a new, better master and the Prime Minister compliments him! Nathanial, like a good little poorly socialized twelve year old, forgets everything he's just gone through and goes back to thinking magicians are the best ever.
Because there have to be two more books, and it's much more interesting for Nathanial to be teetering on the brink, right? You can see he really wants to be a good person, he just lives in a world were everyone tells him the way to do that is report traitors to the Bureau of Intelligence and Torturing People a Whole Lot and murder anyone who challenges you.
Now, there are three female characters who show up (four if you count magician woman who's part of the BoIaTPaWL, but she's basically just flavor at this point). One is the magician's wife. I call her the magician's wife because that's what she is. Nathanial calls her Mrs. Underwood. Indeed, when he refers to being upset over the murder and his demon says "What, your master? He was a jackass!" Nathanial fires back with "No, my master's wife!" Because that is literally all she is.
But the two other characters are fine. One of his beloved art teacher's few detailed interactions with him is to treat him badly for blindly repeating what he's told, only to fail to actually explain the truth (but this is understandable given she could probably get in trouble for it). She, too, seems like a good slightly flawed character - basically good, but frustrated and therefore taking it out on the wrong person when she's reminded of it, and not willing to lose everything to try to reeducate Nathanial.
The third is an initially unnamed girl, who was pretty damn awesome in her two short appearances. When the demon is moving the artifact around, she and a gang of boys somehow track him and see through his illusions. She's the ringleader, she's brave, she's got a nice tint of imperfection (she thinks the demons are evil, when they're just servants). She shows up again in connection to the kids who stole from Nathanial - they meet up with her, and she's the one who says not to kill Nathanial after one of the boys tries it.
So, decidedly decent so far. I like the main characters a lot. And aside from the magician's wife, the women are quite decent, if extremely rare.
And then, it's on to Book 2. Nathanial is fourteen, still decidedly imperfect but already showing signs of the better critical thinking skills that he can use to become a good person.
Here's where it all goes wrong.
We jump point of view to a girl named Kitty.
That cool unnamed girl? That was Kitty-it's-short-for-Kathleen. Turns out she really is part of the commoner rebellion, and in fact has her own special powers - resistance to magic. Other members of her group can do other things too, like seeing disguised demons or magic traps. She's in charge of the current raid despite being unable to do either.
The fact this is stupid is pointed out by one of the boys under her. They then proceed to challenge her authority at every turn. No sign of the cohesive group we saw in the first book, and really, they have a point. It will later be explained that Kitty is the leader because she's good at directing them, something we will never see any evidence for. The girl who was in charge because she was competent, giving orders people actually listened to...she will not be reappearing in this book.
Kitty's group are thieves and terrorists, but it's okay! Kitty deeply opposes the terrorism when it might hurt her fellow commoners, because she is A Good Person. You're going to hear a lot about Kitty's innate moral goodness for the rest of the books, because she just has so much.
Kitty's moral goodness lets her know lots of stuff. It lets her point out the obvious holes in the history she's being taught at school (those evil lying magicians!) so cleverly the teachers can't hope to counter her. See, Kitty isn't going to let a little thing like upbringing make her a bad person! It turns out believing this stuff is just a test of your moral fiber. Her moral fiber also lets her know that she should disdain her parents for liking the magicians, and be terribly indignant and confused by basic facts about her world. See, her friend and she will accidentally hit a ball so it hits a magician's car, destroying it and nearly getting him killed, when they're in a park that's magicians only. Kitty will proceed to spend three seconds apologizing before launching into a tirade that there's no reason she shouldn't be allowed to play in the park all she wants. To the guy whose incredibly expensive car she just wreaked by playing in that park. While his scary monster demon is standing right next to him.
Kitty is shocked that the magician responds by telling the demon to beat the shit out of them. Kitty is then certain the justice system in the country she has lived her whole life in that has a government completely made up of magicians will say that the trespassing kids who destroyed an incredibly expensive car and caused a horrible crash at which point they ran for it are totally in the right and punish the magician for hurting them, and definitely won't just jump straight to billing their parents and punishing them.
And you know what? The justice system has it go to trial. Kitty, in fact, almost wins by default because the magician shows up so late, but once he does get there, he lies! Lies about what happened!
The magicians who rule the country with an iron demonic fist respond to accusations they've used said demonic fist on kids who were breaking multiple laws by claiming the scary little kids attacked him and it was self-defense. Because the fact they have a succession process involving mass murder doesn't mean they don't respect the laws of the country.
Kitty is a canon Canon Warping Sue. The world will repeatedly rearrange itself so she can enjoy the maximum level of outrage.
In a shocking turn of events, the judge...well, it's unclear. See, it seems this is like a civil suit or something? So the judge just says that she thinks the guy's innocent and now Kitty has to pay the court fees. Kitty who committed multiple actual crimes and has just been accused of a bunch of imaginary ones.
In a country with a torture prison.
(Incidentally, the civil suit nature of this makes it confusing what Kitty winning would mean. Possibly he'd have to pay hospital bills or something.)
Kitty finds this horribly unfair and shocking. Just because she hates the magician government doesn't mean she isn't amazed that the magician judge wasn't completely fair. But now she extra doubleplus hates them.
(At this point, it should be added that Kitty's story hinges on the demon attacking her with a disfiguring attack, that, thanks to resistance, she doesn't show any sign of. Oh, and she says her friend isn't there because his family thinks they won't win. But clearly, it's the judge being a bitch when she goes with the sane story. Or possibly a slut, because she's friendly toward the male magician.)
To understand my absolute loathing for Kitty-Sue, remember, this was an audiobook. I couldn't, the way I could in a novel, just steadily speed up my reading until I reached uncomprehending skim. The particular audiobook was in two massive chunks, so I couldn't skip either. So I'd be enjoying the actual plot of the book, and then SURPRISE it's time to learn about Kitty-Sue's tragic backstory. For chapters. Then it would end and we'd be back to someone I actually liked and then Kitty-Sue again! Kitty-Sue wangsting about how her parents actually like the magicians, gag. Kitty-Sue grandstanding about how awesome she is compared to the boys and why must they keep challenging her? (Silly Kitty-Sue, it's to establish they're bad people!)
(You may have noticed I haven't said much about the actual plot. This is because Kitty's section is basically taking place in an alternate universe revolving around her.)
By halfway through the book, I wanted Kitty-Sue dead. I mean this literally, I was hoping she would die so I'd stop having to hear about her. I didn't even care if it meant all the other characters would think about how much they loved her and how tragic her death was, at least I'd be hearing it from the other characters.
(I actually get the impression Kitty-Sue is a late addition to the plot, because she takes up so much time all of a sudden. She also serves to wrench the plot sideways - once Kitty-Sue appears, Nathanial, who previously I though was supposed to be understandably flawed, will be treated with a bizarre contempt by the narrative.)
At this point, we hit what's probably the best bit of writing in the book. I was listening to this at night, which also helped. Backstory over, Kitty-Sue and friends are going to try tomb-robbing. A friend has said that a tomb of the Most Important Strongest Magician Ever, stuffed with his artifacts, is actually almost unguarded - by the time he died he was weak and could only bind a minor demon to protect his tomb. It's been left untouched because, being so important, the magicians are too superstitious to touch it.
So. They head in. It's tense and dark and they're traveling through catacombs, and the story is taking forever in that nasty building way that gives the sense that at any moment you'll have stayed too long and be unable to get out. I'm willing to forgive Kitty for the past few chapters. Obviously the writer was just having trouble setting up backstory, not failing at the character as a whole.
And they get to the tomb, and they manage to use an artifact to survive the minor demon's one attack before it dissipates, and then it's robbing time!
Now, to put this in perspective.
The whole commoner rebellion thing? The most people they've ever had was eleven, they've lost people, and their leader is an old, dying man. They can't sell the stuff they steal, and most of it they either can't use, or don't know how to. They can't even go up against the major magicians, who are well protected - they're stealing baubles from the most minor workers in the government or harassing commoners who work for them. If they are ever noticed by a demon and tracked by to their hideout they will all be killed. They are absolutely nothing but occasional news fodder.
What's in this tomb includes a bag of infinite money and a crystal that shows the future. It doesn't just mean being able to fight, it means they'll actually be able to win.
As the boys struggle to open the coffin, Kitty notices something odd about the wall and ends up finding a bunch of dead bodies.
The leader tries to calm Kitty down and suggests that this means they were probably killed before the trap was put in place, or possibly as part of some weird funeral rite (the bodies date to about the time of the tomb). And anyway, they'll only be there another few minutes, just long enough to grab the stuff and escape.
He has contradicted Kitty-Sue. Death will be too good for him.
Anyway, the other tomb guardian shows up and kills one of them.
One of the party runs immediately. (Coward.) Another fights (stupid hothead). The rest are then told to flee by the fighting guy. I want to be clear here. The character fighting to the death to help them escape is going to get condemned as a stupid hothead by Kitty-Sue, and she will not mourn his death long. Kitty-Sue is noble and perfect, unlike those fleeing bastards, and attempts to drag the old guy with her, who proceeds to spend the rest of his short life selfishly asking Kitty-Sue to stop and let him rest before the demon pounces, coincidentally freeing Kitty-Sue to sprint up the stairs unencumbered. There, she meets another party member, who's babbling about how everyone's dead dead and she's lost her pack of artifacts.
This is not taken to mean how awful it is that they've lost all these people for nothing, or how their group is doomed because they don't even have the artifacts they could use to continue the fight, or even just that she's so terrified she's not thinking straight (she's lost in catacombs with a murderous demon).
Oh no. Kitty-Sue realizes, with disgust, that all her party members are greedy by their desire for the artifacts that they can't sell and would have used to fight the magicians. She thinks back with loathing on the greedy look on her leader's face as he saw the artifacts - the man who was yanked screaming from her by a demon to be horribly murdered and left to rot in the tomb.
It's too good for someone who contradicted Kitty-Sue.
Now that Kitty-Sue has decided her teammates are jackasses, it's not long before the girl she's with is also horribly murdered. I call her girl, although I think she might have been an adult - I don't remember her stated age, just that she spends most of her appearance here whimpering and having Kitty-sue order her around, and she's backup for Kitty-Sue earlier. Anyway, Kitty-Sue makes it out. Her other teammate (the one who sprinted immediately) also presumably escaped, but he was a coward, so Kitty-Sue doesn't care. Sympathy is for Kitty-Sue, not those around her. (He'll end up dying horribly later, but we know to hate him because he offers to give up Kitty-Sue. Just because he's being tortured at the time, like that's any excuse.)
(Incidentally, Kitty-Sue is the only one to make it out with an artifact, the magician's staff. But it's okay, since she just didn't realize she was carrying it.)
Kitty-Sue heads home, where her evil family betrays her! It turns out Nathanial put two and two together and had come there to catch her. She's disgusted to see her parent's terrified fawning over the magician, just because he could kill them on a whim and she's committed treason and there's a good chance they'll go to torture prison for knowing her! But it's okay, because Kitty-Sue knows that they're really only siding with the magicians because they're spineless class traitors. And if they had moral fiber, they'd Just Know that the magicians were actually evil and should be opposed at every turn.
So she punches Nathanial in the face and escapes. I think this was where he first starts fawning over how spunky she is. This is also where I start getting really confused narration's constant condemnation of Nathanial. The narration will not shut up about how stupid his clothes are or what a bastard he's being or whatever. And while Nathanial is going to end up doing his best not to get innocent people hurt (for example, even though he's in hot water himself and almost tortured, he still makes excuses for why the police shouldn't arrest and torture Kitty's parents) he will end this book being roundly condemned as an irredeemable jackass, because it only matters that he tried to catch Kitty-Sue.
Kitty-Sue goes on to meet the groups' contact, who had told them how to get into the tomb in return for giving him one object. Her mortal fiber lets her know he's not idly asking about it but actually doesn't care about any of them and just wants the damn stick. So many people are just greedy. So naturally she lies to him and says she didn't get it, deciding to keep it in their massive storehouse of stolen artifacts. Then she goes and arms herself with them, because she's heard her friend was kidnapped by the magicians.
You remember, he was the kid who got horrible disfigured? Yeah, she hasn't seen him in years. His family know a lot about magicians, but she never thought to go to them for help against the magicians. His family actively sabotage the magicians (by screwing up their spellbooks) and get the only known kill in, but again, Kitty-Sue just ignores them. His grandmother gave Kitty-Sue a super pendant necklace (almost forgot - she's got a super pendant necklace) that helped her escape from the demon. But still, it doesn't occur to Kitty-Sue that they could actually be useful in the fight. I mean, do they have magic demon resistance powers like Kitty? I think not. And that's all that matters.
But just because Kitty-Sue has been ignoring her friend for years won't stop her from declaring they're totally BFFs and she'll nobly risk death to save him. Kitty-Sue charges in, and ends up singlehandedly killing various werewolf police because she's just so awesome, before getting snatched up by a flying demon sent to capture her. Does Kitty-Sue give up just because it's certain death if she's dropped? No, it's stabbing time with her special silver knife!
The demon will go on to be impressed by her spunkiness.
Anyway, she and the demon hang out for a while waiting for Nathanial, whose life is sucking. They chat. Demon thinks about how awesomely spunky she is as she causes him trouble. She bitches that they're evil, he says they only do what the magicians tell them so take it up with the magicians. Kitty-Sue, due to her moral fiber, will end up easily discarding all she knows in favor of this because she is A Good Person and therefore has to go with the "demons are just innocent slaves" that we the readers keep hearing.
Later, Kitty will nobly nearly get herself killed saving Nathanial's dumb ass for absolutely no reason. It's repeatedly stated that she has no reason to, and in fact runs completely counter to her stated goals of overthrowing the government and killing the magicians. She's just that nice. She then escapes, but Nathanial is told she died, so he spends the next book wangsting about it.
By Book 3, Kitty has expunged even her fake sue flaws - she's in total control of her temper, is now on the right moral side of demon innocence, stealing, and terrorism, and also is the only one in the entire series who knows about things like that populations automatically start to develop demon resistance and that the rise and fall of empires has always revolved around this. This is actually very, very obvious, and you'd think someone with an actual education like oh say all the actual magicians would have noticed it more easily, but if anyone else had realized it, Kitty-Sue wouldn't be so special for working it out all on her own.
The demon is spending most of its time in her form because she was just so awesome. Nathanial is wangsting over her death. She's working two jobs under two names while she stealth studies basic magicianing while working as a magician's helper, and then goes on the summon the demon perfectly on her first solo attempt (Nathanial had to spend years of his life learning multiple languages and spending hours upon hours practicing drawing and we're told his ability to summon the demon is still a big deal, but she's too special for that). From her couple hours with the demon, you see, she's realized the form it usually takes of a kid is actually a master it had back in Egypt, and it's taking the form because they were such great friends, and this has to do with who the guy was, and it's the key to revolutionizing demon/human relationships, and so on to complete her usurpation of all Nathanial's character development. And yes, she pretty much makes all those leaps at once.
(Oh, and Kitty-Sue repeats the big sacrifice the ancient magician made to get the demon on board with the plan and is tragically altered by this, and everyone's very impressed by her. She doesn't die. I was really, really hoping she'd die.)
See, Kitty starts out annoying because she's taking up space, doesn't have any real flaws, and is grossly unsuited for the setting (always Just Knowing that something is right or being shocked by the basic functioning of her world). She steadily takes over more and more of the plot. Nathanial's character development grinds to a halt in Book 2 and will only return at the end of Book 3, where it will involve her telling him her outlook and him instantly realizing she is so right, and then he goes and kills himself saving the world. Nathanial has to die because he's not good enough, see. Once we meet Kitty-Sue, we learn that morality is innate, and Nathanial isn't meant to be an understandably flawed character who will overcome his upbringing, he's meant to be a bad person who has to be told he's a bad person so he can redeem himself in death.
And why do we know this is true? Why, because we meet up with his art teacher again, and she's bitchy in response to Nathanial's clumsy attempt to thank her, alternating between jumping on every little thing he says and trying to brush him off, and finishing by insulting him, and then the narration explains this is a sign of how perfect and great she is. See, she Just Knows he's a total dickhead because he told her he works in the government, and this is not because of upbringing or fixable by talking to him like he's a human being, it is a sign Nathanial is an inherently bad person. Remember what I said at the start about her being a good but slightly flawed person? It turns out she was totally in the right to snap at Child Nathanial, because he should have Just Known that things were actually different, and his failing to Just Know the real situation is because of his lack of moral fiber.
(Oh, and the two evil female characters get themselves killed. All women are on pedestals, of course, so evil magician woman one goes out being defiant and evil magician woman two gets herself killed fighting the demons, but at the same time they're not mourned (magician woman two isn't even confirmed dead, they just basically shrug and don't bother looking for her) and the only non-Kitty-Sue female to make it out is Nathanial's secretary. I'm not sure if she's even a magician.)
In sum: Yes, authors really do write female characters completely differently from male ones. Yes, a lot of authors who are basically decent at writing male characters are mysteriously unable to write women without making them spineless doormats, sues, or evil. Yes, this does result in me hating them and wanting them to die so I can stop reading about them. No, that doesn't mean I'm the one holding them to a different standard.
There's a lot of misogyny in fandom, but it really can't be overstated that most of the characters people get to start have something horribly wrong about them, and that hating them, ignoring them or calling them sues is often based in the fact they're horrible annoying sues.
And you know what else? I don't even want good female characters most of the time, because when they're not horrible sues and have actual personality, they're going to lose it. I spent most of my childhood latching on to the occasional female character that actually did stuff, only to watch her be endlessly character assassinated back into her appropriate role as time went on. In general, a female character arc is fixing the fact she's not one of the approved female stereotypes.
I rewatched Digimon Tamers with my brother, remembered how awesome the characters were, and then got to relive exactly how pissed I was about Rika all over again with Ruki. I was happier with Digimon 02, where I was mostly focused on the male characters and the female characters were largely terrible, even though I didn't like any of them anywhere near as much as Ruki or like the overall show nearly as much as Tamers, because it didn't take a character I liked and screw her up once I'd got invested.
So basically, I'm happier if I don't try to seek out female characters in media, and I'm happier with the women being boring or absent because then they're not annoying sues or good characters I like getting ruined.
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Date: 2010-02-01 09:42 am (UTC)As for the other stuff, a wizard did it.
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Date: 2010-02-01 01:19 pm (UTC)