Hello, dear readers! Earlier this week, we relaunched our Patreon. If you don’t know what Patreon is, it’s basically a way that any fans who feel so compelled can support us with monthly donations, and then they get rewards in return. We’ve added a few new reward tiers, but one of the main draws (we presume) is access to exclusive extra posts.
These are generally extra thoughts we have about the books we read, but we don’t have the space or a good opportunity to really dive into. To give you an idea of what these are like, last January we had a discussion about Erik Night, how much we hate him, and the concept of the “nice guy”. Since we redid our Patreon and we’re reading House of Night again (and Erik Night still sucks), we figured it’d be great to share that conversation with everyone!
If you like stuff like this, there’s a way to get more.
Ariel: So I’ll start this off bluntly: I really do not like Erik Night.
I keep running into the same problem we had with Zoey about the Cast’s intentions with this character, but it seems like he’s genuinely meant to be this really kind, excellent guy who everyone idolizes.
Similarly to what we were saying about Zoey, I think it would be way more interesting if the Casts knew he was actually pretty mean deep down, and a lot of his ‘great guy’ act was either completely false or much more complicated.I think maybe we see glimpses of some of this when Aphrodite criticises Erik, but I’m still not convinced he isn’t supposed to be read as a genuinely nice guy. I see him as more of a “nice guy”, one who is nice to you when he’s getting what he wants.
Matthew: Ariel, I am torn! I agree with your main point: Erik Night is awful. And he unquestionably reads like a “nice guy” (which still kind of amazes me is a Term now, but once you see it you can’t unsee it). But I’m not entirely convinced that the Casts DO think he’s genuinely good. It feels a bit too easy to kick off every criticism of House of Night with “because the Casts don’t know what they’re doing” by this point, but he really is quite a mess of a character in ways that the others aren’t. I see your point in that they clearly want him to be a universally loved, genuine good guy, but I’m less skeptical than you are that they did intend for us to question that. The Casts tend to use Aphrodite as a mouthpiece for hidden truths (which is super weird because they spend so much time slut shaming her, but that’s a whole other can of worms), and I think we’re supposed to take her criticisms of Erik Night seriously. She talks about how awful he was as a boyfriend, albeit a bit too vaguely and cryptically to bother seriously analyzing. But if nothing else, the theme of jilted lovers is one that the Casts are clearly in love with, so I’m willing to give them this one.
What I think gets messed up, however, is that Aphrodite’s “understanding” of Erik doesn’t totally align with the type of awful guy that the two of us are seeing, because it’s too shallow. There are so few dimensions to Erik Night. He’s a perfect student with perfect looks and perfect charm. Zoey betrays him, and he wears his broken heart on his sleeve. We’re clearly supposed to FEEL HIS PAIN, but there’s too little to him to give a shit about, so what happens is that his lashing out at Zoey comes out of nowhere, and he’s every asshole ex-boyfriend everyone’s ever seen ever.
The problem that I see is that I don’t think the Casts see – like you said – that deep down, he’s really mean. I think they want us to see him as a great guy, but with some demons, and they just got brought to the surface. They think we’re going to feel primarily sympathetic for him. Which, oh, honey no.
That’s the disconnect that I’m seeing, at least. I’m curious why you don’t think the Casts are trying to write him as at least a little flawed.
Ariel: You are definitely right about Aphrodite being a mouthpiece for his potential flaws. I think the reason I think the writing falls short (surprise surprise) is that it’s not really given significant attention. Zoey herself never reflects on anything Aphrodite says, none of Zoey’s friends echo any of this. Not a single person besides Aphrodite is like, “I totally get he was lashing out but wow that was cruel to try to ruin all of your friendships. Sorry we all turned our backs on you so quickly because of Erik.”
I think for me this is so personal because I’ve been involved with people like this who are SUCH NICE GUYS. They are super helpful to the world, everyone thinks they’re amazing, but the second you hurt them even in a small way, that cruelty comes out.
I’m not saying that isn’t interesting to read, I’m just saying I wish it would be brought to the forefront a bit more if it is the case that the Casts want to write him as this great guy with demons. But like you said we really don’t know anything about him to make these demons all that compelling. It just reads like the Casts needed him to be mean in a certain situation but then everyone else (except Aphrodite) is like BUT OH HE IS SO WONDERFUL.
You could argue that people should be saying the same things about Zoey, I guess, she’s done some pretty icky things. Then again, you’d think her friends would have been like slightly concerned Loren took advantage of her rather than just being like, “OMG you kept a big secret from us and Erik is right about your lies!”
I’ve read a little bit ahead, and maybe these flaws are about to get more explicit/interesting but so far all I’ve seen is Zoey being like, “Actually I love him so much. I have to get back together with him. Okay, we’re back together!”
Matthew: I could see that. I mean, Aphrodite managed to get legitimately more interesting. Not really entirely in ways the Casts intended, but she’s still our deepest character. They could manage the same thing for Erik. Maybe this is actually the thing the Casts are… best at? Characters who seem mean/nice but are actually sometimes THE OPPOSITE? Because REASONS?
I totally agree with you that I’d be super into this is he were straight up a Nice Guy, for a number of reasons. First, I feel the need every couple months to point out that problematic characters and themes don’t make a book bad, but when the story doesn’t realize that that’s what it’s doing is the problem (see Christian Grey).
Second, it would be LOVELY to have a young adult novel tackle toxic masculinity. Especially in a more nuanced way than House of Night’s “durr manly men don’t like the gays” attempts at it. Because the thing about the Nice Guy is that the behaviors themselves aren’t the problem, it’s the intent, and that’s a more subtle character flaw and a more nuanced signifier of patriarchy. I think there’s some especially important that could be said there. This kind of clicks with me personally too – looking at my own personal life and early relationships, I can see that I had a lot of Nice Guy behaviors. It was a really gut-wracking wake-up call when I read about the Nice Guy and saw some of myself in it.
Speaking as a more aware male ally and feminist now, it’s impossible to not periodically realize there is something you didn’t even know you, as a man, were doing wrong, and it’s a very frustrating feeling to be like, “well, if someone had just TOLD me”. But this is what brings me back to House of Night and my frustrations with its ham-handedness: House of Night has a pretty superbly established Nice Guy and doesn’t even REALIZE it. Or what it can do with it.
I feel like Zoey’s ickiness is its own thing entirely. I have no idea what’s going on with this girl. So I think it’s fair to criticize Erik separately for what he did to Zoey. What really gets to me about that scene where Erik slut shames Zoey in front of her friends is exactly what you point out: the book has no awareness that what he’s doing is a UNIQUE problem, as opposed to just a reaction to the pain Zoey caused him.
Sigh. This book is exhausting. I’m so sad that teenagers read this.
Like, it’d be one thing if the book were like “Hey, young adults! Look at all the shitty people that exist!”, but instead it’s “Heath feels hurt by Zoey, but Zoey ALSO feels hurt by Heath! Loooook! So complicatedddddd! Two siiiiides…” and it’s like “Uhhhhhhhh not… not really”
Ariel: hahaha yes, stories about shitty people can be great! This is not one of those stories.
Maybe as House of Night starts alternating point of views in the future, we’ll get to see Erik’s perspective, and he’ll become more interesting? Only time will tell about that, but given what we have now, it’s hard to see him as anything more nuanced than “guy who is supposed to be perfect and amazing but everyone just ignores that he is also a jerk?” Like he just gave no fucks about Zoey being depressed about Stevie Rae. I know the twins are assholes, but Damien is meant to be pretty observant and emotionally intuitive, and there’s not a scene where he asks Zoey if she’s noticed that Erik is basically like, “Can you be over Stevie Rae and have movie marathons with me whenever I ask you to? Also, I’m going to bribe your friends by using my hot friends to discover your whereabouts.”
I know Zoey is a silly teenager in love and these blind spots are super realistic, but come on. Have a flicker of doubt. That is also realistic.
I think it’s so interesting what you said above about having these moments where you’re like, “Oh shit…I’ve done those things.” I totally had “Nice Girl” tendencies when I was younger, and my life has substantially improved since I ditched them. How cool would it be if as the books go on, Erik matures and kind of gets some awareness around this? Or would that require better writers?
Matthew: I think I can say without exaggeration that House of Night getting out of Zoey’s head would be the best thing that could possibly happen to the series. I say that optimistically, but I’m sure they could find ways to make the other narrators just as cloying and unreadable. Like we’ve pointed out, there’s not much character to work with, even with the “deep” ones.
I don’t think it’d be impossible for the Casts to have Erik (or anyone else) mature. It might not seem very natural, but I think they’d be perfectly capable – at the very least – of suddenly writing a character totally different and then having Zoey narrate “X is so different now! Like they’ve matured.” Realistically, I think we can only raise our hopes as high as that example.
I think it seems possible that the Casts could write Erik maturing as the books go on, but the roadblock I see is that they’ll never identify what maturity means.
But then again, there are like thirteen books in this series. We’ve seen essentially no character growth through the first four of them, but even the Casts couldn’t possibly drag out a series that long and think the characters shouldn’t change over time, right?
Ariel: hahaha “Like they’ve matured”. You could basically write on point fanfiction for these books, Matthew.
Matthew: How hard could THAT be? Oh my god. Can you imagine the original characters from the House of Night fanfic crowd?
Ariel: What would your fanfic be about?
No one cares about Erik Night anymore, this is the topic.
I’m going to read House of Night fanfic soon. I need to know what the original fanfiction was like.
Matthew: My fanfic would be Loren Blake and Stark meet up in the vampire ghost world, and initially quarrel over how they both love Zoey, but then realize it is EACH OTHER that they love. They then go to the mortal world to seek out Zoey’s other former lovers, in search of a crazy hatefuck orgy.
…this probably already exists
Ariel: OMG my fic would be that a heartbroken Erik goes to the local Starbucks to stare sadly into a cup of coffee. Heath is there trying to come to terms with no longer being Imprinted with Zoey. They bond over the horrible night they both have in common and find out they have other things in common too…THE EPIC LOVE STORY OF HEATH AND ERIK.
This also definitely, 100% has to exist in this world. And I bet 80-90% of the time Heath immediately Imprints on Erik. And then 70-80% of the time Zoey loses her mind with jealousy. 60-70% of the time it ends with a threesome. A mere 5% of the time Nala interrupts the threesome to just be like ‘MEUF-OW’ or whatever the fuck.
Matthew: I’m amazed that we legitimately started discussing our fanfic scenarios and neither of us said Zoey/Aphrodite. Is that too obvious?
Ariel: ONE THING AT A TIME. Everyone knows I’m Zoey/Aphrodite all the way. It’s not funny!
Matthew: Do you think the Casts have any idea what an obvious pairing Zoey/Aphrodite is, or are they super oblivious? I’m not looking for evidence here. I just want our imaginations to run wild.
Ariel: I feel like they’re super oblivious. But Zoey is clearly overcompensating with her need to fall in love with every boy. Just to make Aphrodite jealous. Also Aphrodite is just flirting with Darius so much to make Zoey jealous. IT’S LURVE.
I love how we don’t give a shit about Erik being a “nice guy” or not anymore. This is a good direction for this thread to go in.
Matthew: Fair enough. We gave the appropriate amount of shits about whether a fictional man is one kind of a dick or another.
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