OK, new one for the pile:
Faux Action Girls.
I'm reading the Percy Jackson series right now and just finished Book 3 and though I *did* enjoy it, I'm just about to call Faux Action Girl on the whole series. There are 5 main female characters in the book, and they hash out thusly:
2 girls spend the entire book in need of rescue.
1 girl has a debilitating phobia that comes up in a plot-relevant manner no less than 3-4 times and which is not overcome through adversity or pluckiness. (This phobia is itself recycled from ANNABETH'S crippling fear of spiders in the earlier books.)
1 girl is several thousand years old, but spends the entire book being distracted by petty, childish grudges despite it being utterly out of her (informed) character.
1 girl does something incredibly stupid and dies in a meaningless manner. Her entire role is being "X's sister" so that X can experience angst when she dies. And if she'd been a "good" sister and stayed home, her meaningless death wouldn't have happened.
The boy character, of course, never gets captured, doesn't need rescuing, has no debilitating phobias, never engages in petty grudges in important situations, and doesn't do incredibly stupid stuff that gets him meaninglessly killed. Apparently, the author has sons but not daughters; it's hard not to notice in the narrative. *sigh*
