Maddy asked Rin Chupeco:

Nearly all the reviews I read, both positive and negative, cited the (potential?) love triangle in The Bone Witch as one of the novel's negative aspects, and it had me wondering: do you find it peculiar that YA authors are increasingly writing love triangles because it sells, while the apparent critical response in the community regarding love triangles become even more vocal?

Rin Chupeco TLDR: There are no love triangles in the Bone Witch.

THE LONGER EXPLANATION / A PERSONAL ANECDOTE:

Some might think that how love triangles are written in YA tend to be cliched, and they do have a point - but that's not always the case in many, many YA books. At the risk of tooting my own horn, I think I can fairly, very very safely say that there are no love triangle cliches in The Bone Witch.

In fact, I would like to make things clearer: there is no love triangle in the Bone Witch. Love triangles suggest reciprocation. Of the three boys Tea frequently interacted with in the first book, only one of them eventually reciprocated, and she was never romantically involved with both of them at the same time.

A crush is not a commitment. And when she had that particular crush, she had no feelings then toward the other guy she would eventually be involved with. Nor did she ever say that things ended badly with one guy BECAUSE of the other.

So what Tea actually did, was to have a relationship with two people AT TWO DIFFERENT POINTS IN HER LIFE, but she tells her story in such a way that she frequently compares them both. Just because she talks about them when she tells her story doesn't mean both relationships actually happened at the same time.

In fact, I'm pretty sure a lot of readers still have no idea how that other relationship started romantically, or even if it did, because I made pretty damn sure not to write anything about it at all in the first book.

It's very telling, I think, when most people think a protagonist that has two love interests makes them automatically assume it's a love triangle - even when she was never involved with either of them at the same time, and when no one was ever jealous / resentful of anyone else at any point. It says a lot about how we contextualize books according to the pre-conceived stereotypes we already have before we even read them.

But I will admit: most people focus on a present timeline, and I obviously did not do that. This was a writing experiment on my part - I wanted to compare past!Tea and present!Tea to show how the past version of you can be very completely different from the present version of you - and how that doesn't mean past!you was better than present!you, and vice-versa. And a big part of showcasing the difference means talking about past and present relationships, and how they defined you as a person, for better or for worse.

So that's my answer. No love triangles, and I think a few reviewers have misinterpreted things because I deliberately decided not to reveal the full story (that was my doing, because I wanted to try something different. So if you have issues with that, criticize *that*, and not some vague "I hate love triangles!" notion, because you're missing out on a lot of great books that way.)

But if you'd like to understand a little bit of where I think other authors are coming from when they write love triangles, do read on, because it gets a little personal for me here ---

When I was a teenager, I was egged on to jump into the deep end of a swimming pool despite not knowing how to swim. I nearly drowned. My mother, quite rightly, chewed me out on it - except she did it in front of a crowd of my peers, which was never good when you want to maintain your social position (and I had a pretty good one, too). Two of those 'peers', who I thought were my friends then (and were also the people who had egged me on in the first place), decided it would be hilarious to tell everyone they knew who wasn't present during my social gaffe. As a result, I was the laughingstock of my school the next day.

A couple of years after that, I was in a confusing love rectangle with three guys who wanted to 'court' me, two of whom were also themselves best friends. Not to toot my own horn again, but after that swimming pool incident I had mostly learned not to give in to social pressure, and had acquired a rather sarcastic attitude that I supposed appealed to certain segments of the all-boys' school that was right next to the all-girls' school I studied in. Think Bianca from Kody Keplinger's The DUFF - that was me. The irony was that I wasn't romantically interested in any of those three beyond friendship - I was interested in ANOTHER guy, who was starting college around that time.

College guy died unexpectedly. I was devastated. I went out with all three of the other guys without promising anything more, then decided I didn't feel the same way and soon distanced myself from all of them. It was a very emotionally turbulent and confusing time for me. I was lonely, and it took awhile for me to realize that being with someone was not the same as being with the person you really wanted but is no longer there, even if you were filling the gap with three someones at the same time.

I understand that not all teens went through the same things I did, but that is exactly the point. Some readers seem to think that teens have had it easy: that teens have only ever had One True Love and stuck to it, had never waffled between several guys/girls they liked, had never done stupid things in their lives and made wrong decisions. I never got into trouble with the law or broke any rules in high school, but that didn't stop me from being stupid.

AND THEREIN LIES THE RUB: had I been a character in a YA book, I would have been labelled a slut. A tease. Those poor guys - what a bitch I must be, leading them around like that! It's the most prominent, easiest trait people can single out, so that's going to be the more prominent description in a lot of reviews, too. My reasons for doing that takes longer to explain, and quick, snappy, rather controversial soundbytes attract better attention and more views. Don't believe me? Look at the US elections. "But it's their opinion, and they have the right to it!" Sure - but it's not the whole story, either.

It might be because there is a desire by many readers to have good representation of teens in literature - teens who kicked ass, were confident about what they wanted, and never made bad decisions or chose the wrong love interest. That's a good thing to want, but it shouldn't be conflated with the REALITY of what teens were most likely to experience. Teens can get scared. They aren't always confident. They DO make bad decisions. And they do a lot of stupid things for love, or even what they think is love, sometimes to several guys or girls at once. And I think that it's important that teens who make those mistakes also be represented in young adult fiction. Abstinence-only sex education might be what you hope your kids follow, but the reality is that they make mistakes, and you need to show them why it's still okay, and to offer them other alternatives. That's how teen rep in kidlit should be, too.

That's why I find writing teens as ne'er-do-wrong role models in literature to be extremely problematic. Teens need people they can relate to, and that includes characters who make a lot of horrible life decisions that sounded like a good idea at the time, in situations they can relate to themselves. And it's infuriating, at least to me, because I know a double standard exists when comparing female protagonists who fucked up to male protagonists who fucked up. Harry Potter is given a pass when he makes bad teenage emotional attachments, but it's Cho Chang and Ginny Weasley who bear the brunt for doing the same thing. In fact, I sympathize so much with Cho Chang because what happened to her literally happened to me, (minus all the wizarding and tournament stuff, of course). But, like I would have been had I been a YA character, Cho is labelled a tease for leading poor Harry on like that. (I broke down in tears while reading Order of the Phoenix, because how Cho tried to deal with her emotions / grief was exactly how I tried to deal with mine, and it brought all those memories back.)

Actual statistics show that most people have, in fact, been in love triangles, whether unwittingly or not. To reject a book just because it has a love triangle in it is not taking the book on its own merits, and denying something most people have actually experienced, whether you're a teen or an adult.

I don't mind negative reviews - it's their opinion, and I thank them for taking the time to actually read my books, even when they eventually decided they didn't like it. But I think I speak for all authors when I say - please don't pigeonhole love triangles into a binary of cliches when they're actually a very full spectrum of experiences.

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