#toby hawthorne

[rainforcsts]

[beautifulmusicengineer]

Strengths and weakness in each tig-tgg charecters

Avery

Strengths : she has a good balance between logic and emotions, her arc wasn't reduced to the love triangle and she still feels like she has an identity outside of her romantic relationships.

Weakest: she's extremely, extremely safe, it feels like JLB was trying her hardest to make sure Avery could do no wrong but that ends up hurting her characterization because she rarely makes genuinely questionable choices or creates meaningful consequences. Unfortunately, that makes her pretty forgettable when she's not being mentioned.

Jameson

Strengths : He has a nice storyline and an interesting foundation as a character.

Weakest: He went from having his own personality, trauma, and struggles to essentially having his personality become "Avery's boyfriend'' there's barely any meaningful character development, he got POV for two books and I'm still looking for that character development.

Grayson

Strengths : hands down one of JLB's most individualistic characters, he has his own personality, trauma, motivations and emotional struggles, he actually feels like a character who exists independently of everyone else.

Weakest: he's the series punching bag, so much of the emotional weight gets dumped onto Grayson that he ends up carrying the emotional burden of the entire series. Ironically this makes him overshadow the rest of the characters.

Nash

Strengths : unfortunately I don't really have one.

Weakest: he feels like a background character, that's why it's difficult to give him a genuine strength, there simply isn't enough characterization there to work with.

Xander

Strengths : he's extremely helpful but more importantly, he has his own struggles that could have been explored much more, especially his experiences with racism.

Weakest: he got SIDED, the narrative had interesting material for him but barely gave it the attention it deserved and his only significant struggle seems to be racism, which is frustrating because POC characters should be allowed to have problems, flaws, ambitions, insecurities and conflicts that aren't exclusively connected to their race.

I'm so DONE of white authors reducing POC characters struggles to "they experience racism" and treating that as sufficient characterization, racism can absolutely be an important part of a character's experience but it shouldn't become their entire identity or the only meaningful conflict they're allowed to have. Xander had the potential to be much more than that.

Libby

Strengths : her backstory works really well with her characterization, she's a victim of parental abuse and domestic violence but she's not written as a perfect victim, her emotions and actions contradict each other which makes her feel much more human.

Weakest: her story should have highlighted her backstory much more, unfortunately so much of her characterization eventually gets reduced to her romance with Nash instead of exploring what made her who she is in the first place.

Alisa

Strengths : she has a genuinely good backstory, she's a girl who was essentially stripped of her own identity and molded into something she wasn't, there's a LOT of potential in that.

Weakest: her backstory isn't explored nearly enough, her presence gets reduced to Nash and the narrative gives importance and power to other characters when Alisa is the one who was holding the power and doing the job..... in short, she's underappreciated by the narrative.

Lyra

Strengths : she has good characteristics, she's emotional, intuitive and her initial storyline is interesting.

Weakest: JLB seems to struggle with writing her because Lyra doesn't fit the FMC archetype Jen usually writes, her characteristics don't naturally fit the way Jennifer approaches her female protagonists, and instead of leaning into that difference, the narrative seems to reduce her storyline, eventually, her story becomes largely about her romance with Grayson, when she had the potential to be much more than that and her plot unfortunately got...... I don't know what to say, wasted potential.

Gigi

Strengths : she's a strong character and surprisingly self reflective.

Weakest: lazy writing, she doesn't really have a substantial storyline, she has the personality to be interesting but the narrative doesn't give her enough of a plot to actually do anything with it.

Rohan

Strengths : probably one of the most interesting characters in the series, he has this great combination of chaos and order, which gives him a very distinctive personality.

Weakest: and once again, his storyline gets reduced to romance.... seriously what's wrong with JLB and reducing everything to romance lately ? Rohan had enough characterization to carry a storyline of his own but the narrative chooses to center him around a romantic relationship instead.

Savannah

Strengths : rage, her anger gives her presence and makes her feel more emotionally charged than some of the other characters.

Weakest: she falls into the stereotypical girl boss archetype, instead of developing that anger into an actual character arc or giving her a meaningful storyline, the narrative eventually leaves her with almost no plot at all, her characterization had potential but her plot became basically nonexistent.

Eve

Strengths : she has almost no narrative protection, which makes her one of the freest and most human characters in the series, she's morally gray, flawed, unpredictable and actually has an impact on the story.

Weakest: the narrative eventually reduces her to a villain which feels incredibly lazy considering she's much more an antihero, her arc shouldn't be about simply deciding whether Eve is "good" or "bad'' she's an antihero, and yes we said she's a well written character but where is her actual story?

Slate

Strengths : his mysterious and aloof personality, there's something inherently intriguing about him, and his relationship with Eve was... Let's say the best duo, it had a dynamic that could've been explored much more.

Weakness: WASTED POTENTIAL. That's genuinely the biggest problem with him, the narrative barely does anything with that potential.

Toby

Strengths : he's difficult to form a simple opinion about, which is interesting in itself, he has a good backstory and genuinely questionable aspects to his character.

Weakest: his entire story and arc eventually become about romance specifically his undying love for Hannah, despite having a solid backstory and an interesting foundation, he gets reduced to his relationship, he's also heavily protected by the narrative and unlike Avery, Toby actually does questionable things, so the constant justifications for his behavior sometimes go way too far, the narrative seems determined to make sure everyone understands why Toby should still be loved, regardless of what he does. Eventually he gets milked so much that he becomes boring and outside of Hannah it feels like he barely has a personality.

Hannah

Strengths : her family lore is genuinely interesting and gives her character a fascinating background.

Weakest: unfortunately her family lore ends up overshadowing Hannah herself, she's difficult to read not because she's inherently complicated but because it's hard to understand who she is outside of the mythology surrounding her, then she gets reduced to the ultimate dead wife and like Toby she gets milked for the emotional impact of her romance rather than being allowed to exist as a complete character in her own right.

Tobias

Strengths : he haunts the narrative in a genuinely unique way, he's morally gray and his presence continues to affect the story even when he's not directly involved.

Weakest: honestly I struggle to find one, if anything, I think the narrative is sometimes afraid to fully acknowledge Tobias as a villain, it wants to preserve his moral complexity, which is fine but sometimes it feels like it's unwilling to actually confront what his actions make him, still, compared to most of the characters, his moral ambiguity is one of the things that actually works.

Nora

SHE CAN STEP ON ME, RUIN ME, BOMB ME AND I'LL THANK HER 🤭😝😝😝

Tag: @the-tig-essay-writer @alwaysthefangirl @sadiecece @asalmiel @whismywinx @thankmyluckystarrs @reminiscentreader @lyrakanefanatic @nothinggggg7 @nonerrata-myarchives @masasinsanity @athena-888 @prophecywaiting @hs4atm1dnight @aquamagrine

Oki who wants to be added to the tag list???

[alarasglorxx]

grayson after avery got the inheritance

how jameson was feeling after looking at lyra

avery after she told everyone eve shouldn’t have been trusted

the pinterest fandom after seeing lyras name

jameson after rohan was trying to hit on avery

savannah when rohan called her savvy or love

eve when toby

nash when he had to run after fully grown adults on a yacht moving like subway surfers

xander whenever he was kicked out of a conversation because he was the “baby”

[herondalesbooklover]

Why were the men in tgb so aggressive? The only one that did not get on his aggresive side was Xander, all the others were following their most killer instinct. Rohan hit grayson and wanted to fight nora, jameson wanted to kill almost everyone and grabbed savannah, grayson wanted to choke nora, knox fought brady, brady was looking for a fight too, toby thought about fighting katalin, and I am so sure I am forgetting other important moments.

I honestly hated those parts, it reminded me that they are just men after all.

I would have rather if the girls had gotten aggressive, avery should have had a gun, and lyra a bat.

[bellarosereads1810]

Thank you Slate for doing us all a favour 😭😭 OMG SHE WAS ANNOYING ME SM

[tooprecious2gamble]

Karla @iheartkars made another bingo card for all of you and asked me to post it 😼

If you know spoilers stfu and shout out to everyone who gave us predictions cos we already knew everything 🥹🥹

[masasinsanity]

No one knows Avery and Jameson better than me and i decide that they don’t marry before avery is 26 and has got that degree and no one’s allowed to disagree with me on this

Oh and lyrason get married first

[sadiecece]

So you're telling me that your daughter was JUST kidnapped and as soon as she comes back you have the audacity to talk to her about AVERY even tho you know how sensitive she is about this topic? And you just dumped her on GRAYSON AND LYRA to go find avery?