*sits down*

Well, we’ve made it to the end of the week. Blissfully, if you ask me. The last few weeks have been longer than I expected, and I’m so ready for the weekend. Even though I’ll still be working over the weekend, because I enjoy what I do just that much.

Yeah, maybe I’m weird.

Today, as the last post of the week, I’d like to talk to you about the other most common of female characters, the one who shows up in more romance novels than I can count, and more science fiction novels than you’d think possible. She’s the girl who every woman thought she would grow up to be, because most of us really didn’t think we were all that cool, deep down inside.

Nope, we thought we were…

#3: The vanilla girl (that everyone still seems to want)

I guarantee you know who she is, don’t you? But we’ll still start out with the first question of the hour:

Who is she?

Well, she’s the plain jane, the average joe, the girl just walking down the street who just so happens to catch the eye of every single man who passes her by, even though she’s not much to look at. Why? Because they all think she’s gorgeous, even though the writer described her as one of the plainest people known to mankind, someone who wouldn’t get noticed by anyone, for any reason.

And yeah, that’s why I think she’s overdone. 

She's too plain. She's plain to the point of being obviously plain, which makes her not plain at all — and not very real, if you ask me. 

But here’s those last three questions, just to get your head in the right place:

Why should we read her?

What’s her main purpose in life?

What is her draw, for the reader?

See, it’s hard to really find a reason to read her, isn’t it? Because she doesn’t make any sense. She usually has nothing about her that really makes her interesting. She’s very normal, just like we imagine everyone else to be. Nothing special, nothing unique in the slightest. And yet we write her all the time, because we don’t know who else to write. 

She's the girl that many young women thought they would grow up to be, yes, but you know what? She's not what most of them actually grew up to be. And realistically, most of us don't catch the eye of everyone who walks past us. That's normal. That's life. That's real. 

The vanilla girl, if you ask me, is not real at all. 

But fortunately for you, I have someone else to take her place. You’ll meet her next week. 

[love]

{Rani Divine}