That’s like saying that Bella Swan is a force of personality lol.
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Tohru is the kind of person you can relate to, even possibly look up to due to her kindness and optimism.
Of course, Fruits Basket has had more volumes published than there are books in the After series and is longer running. The Japanese (and the Koreans, for that matter) know how to make good romance stories. Though tragic romance is also really, really popular. I remember there was a play back in the Edo Period, I think, where two lovers who couldn’t be together killed each other, it was super popular, but it was later banned because young couples started mimicking the direct method of suicide.
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If Bella Swan was a force of personality, we would have at least gotten some good memes from it.
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It’s also like saying Marvin is an active guy, who runs triathalons weekly.
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Tohru is a sweetheart to me.
The girl went through a lot from losing her father, losing her mother, having to live in a tent instead of living her other relatives, working a job to pay for school tuition while attending school, and trying to just manage life while spending time with her good friends.
She enters the life of the Sohma clan, met Kyo, Yuki, and Shigure and had her whole worldview change upon dealing with the Sohma curse and the other members. Even cried when she had to choose between whether she wanted to stay with her grandfather or move back in with Kyo, Yuki, and Shigure.
Tohru is a good girl who kind to a fault, but hardly ever puts herself first it seems. She does get closer to the other Sohma members who are all dealing with their own problems and strife due to the curse and their wonky familial situations.
Tohru just wants to help the people she cares deeply about even if that mean sacrificing herself little by little in the process.
I admire Tohru thought in some ways. To be a genuinely good-natured person who just wants to care and be there and help others who are important and that “never give up” attitude that her mother taught her is really interesting.
I get it that being too kind and too optimistic in a world full of cruelty is hard and makes you question everything.
Tohru questions herself enough when succumbing to her own problems and meeting the Sohma clan, yet she still never gave up.
I admired that.
NOTE: Sorry I got a bit too into that. I just really like Tohru more than I thought. LOL!
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If more romance novel protagonists were as well-written as Tohru, we would live in a perfect soceity.
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Dear god, can you even imagine?!
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Thinking of the “perfect older sister” stereotype in shojo manga. She’s always got good grades, top of the class, the class president, loved by teachers, has the perfect boyfriend, does no wrong, has perfect friends, and is the most loving, kindest person in all the world. If she makes a mistake, it’s cute, or something. If she even gets involved in something bad, she ends up saving everyone and does so in a perfect way.
She is also pure…so pure that not even her backstory has any tiny bit of “bad” in it, even when she was a child.
I think some people consider this a boring character. She’s too perfect to be a main character and she always has to be someone’s heroine. There doesn’t appear to be an arc for this character if she is a main.
Not flawed enough to cheer on, I suppose.
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Internalized misogyny.
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Is that everything?
The only time I see it works is when the mond pf the person is darker than what thwy show in dialogue.
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Took me a moment to decipher this 
Mind, right?
Right, I thought about that.
That’s when they finally get interesting.
They seem good, but it’s only surface level good. They are a horrible, awful, evil being inside.
But unless they have that, there’s really nothing interesting about a purely good character who is nothing but pure and good.
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Women’s place in society is complicated. A lot of what we want, and how we see ourselves, conflicts with societies view of the “perfect women”. Many women will seek to rebel against this, trying to carve out a place that they feel makes them more equal to (or superior) than men. Other women who present themselves with the feminine traits those women have worked hard to destroy in themselves may feel resentment. Perhaps they feel this way because they see these women as part of the problem, or perhaps they are jealous in some way. Women who have feminine traits are often seen as weak, and we are called weak in general society because of these traits. So, perhaps they see them as weak on top of this–unable to do a “mans” job. They are not equal, in their eyes.
Instead of working together to uplift and support women seeking to be individuals of their own, even if that individual is more aligned to specific gender-roles, people fight against those women. They take their aggression, resentments, etc. out on them instead of the society that makes these qualities (kind hearted, good hearted, etc.) feminine and therefore “lesser” and “weaker”.
I feel this is why characters like this aren’t popular. It’s also fair to mention that many “good” women are not written well in books and tend to align themselves with “Mary Sue” tropes, so the lack of popularity there could have something to do with that. A perfect character makes for a boring character, and they do have a point, a “perfect woman” type of character in a book/movie/tv show can represent women in a bad light–which only adds to the growing resentment and need to rebel against feminine traits.
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I think that’s what they call “morally grey” characters, who are both good and bad, it pretty much sums up all my characters 
But also, the thing is that someon who is always good or bad is pretty boring. A bit of unpredictability is more fun. And sometimes a good person might have to do something bad for a good cause, or a bad person will do something good for a bad cause 
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If I corewcted every single typo, I’d never get any sleep.
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I’ve watched too much anime to know just how ungodly true this is. 
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I’ve only ever known the “good girl” trope through Wattpad, and from there, “good girls” were basically nerdy women who followed the rules, were quiet, shy, maybe introverted, and were always nice. They covered up, they did what they were supposed to do, and more. A good example would be Jamie in A Walk to Remember or Sandy in Grease.
This is the opposite of the “bad girl” trope, basically what happens to Sandy at the end of the musical—she stops covering up, she wears leather to look cool, starts smoking, and does what she can to look different to win back Danny (who is the “bad boy”).
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I think that a huge slew of people hate the trope from the idea “oh she can do no wrong, but the hot love interest shows her a new world and shes secretly good at it” and by it, i mean…yeah.
The virgin turned nonvirgin, in other words.
Now ill be honest, i grew up as the good girl. I got good grades, was the teachers pet, always followed rules, quiet, you name it.
Seeing people hate the good girl trope kimda sucked because i am one, but i see why. Every book does it one way. No, we dont change who we are for the hot guy. And we dont suddenly become experienced after being virgins in the first night.
And just because someone might be a good girl, doesnt mean they dont have strong opinions. Or other traits.
Because of this, i wrote my own good girl. Shes a guardian angel for crying out loud, but she goes through this entire arc throughout three books. She loses who she is along the way when bad things keep happening, and eventually has to find her way back. It was fun to use the trope and write it from a personal perspective as someone who grew up like that. And yes, she does want to wait until marriage for the grown-up stuff, and even the hot guy wont make her change her mind. She sticks to what she believes. Being a good girl shouldn’t mean pushover.
Ive always been this way, but ive never been the people pleaser, and when i was in middle school, i started to stick up for myself. I say no for my own health. Im not afraid to disappoint anyone.
Thats what i had to show in my character. And i want to change the trope for what it is.
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I’m going to have to censor this. Where this trope goes wrong is the idea that experience is better or worse, at all. Its more subjective than people know.
For the individual, YES gaining actualtal experience makes them better at it…but there are people with a natural talent, so they are better at it really early.
But here is the thing. Outside really rare experiences, the person who is not in control of the burnt of the work has 1 job: to be responsive. That’s it. How responsive you are is tied i to your level of trust, your sensitivity, and your natural inhibitions. This is why a lot of people have a drink befire sex–they are givng themsleves false security and heightened sensitivity.
So, for someone who can gain that trust early on? That sex is better than average, as the receiver. And the giver generally takes it as a form of praise.
So yeah, I’d say for people who haven’t been through the highs and lows of over a decade of practice with the same person, that no its not the best sex of their life–they need to wait a decade before declaring that, but it’s possible to have tier 2 level sex from the start.
There’s tons of other variables, like some people being open enough to enjoy it from the start want to be open with everyone, and go chasing experiences rapidly–so somethimes their mechanics outpace the emotional bond. Other people learn to cling because they trust someone when it was more mechanics for them.
So it’s not that it can’t be, but more that most writers either write from their late experience or they are really removed from their first few times.
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