Goblin Hollow/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Character Alignment: As explained by Ben
  • Marty Stu: Ben - though that's been toned down, post-reboot.
  • Values Dissonance: When the response to Penny's Crowning Moment of Awesome above was this, the fans revolted. Some went so far as to consider it a Kick the Dog moment for Lily. Hayes seemed genuinely surprised and even angered by this attitude. Apparently, the taboo against "making a scene" at a church event (the confrontation took place after actual services ended) or talking back to a preacher is so strong in his family and denomination that it never occurred to him that his readers might feel otherwise.
    • Similarly, we're supposed to find this a deeply-shocking sign that Penny is seriously out of control and on her way to real trouble. You'd think they'd been in flagrante delicto.
    • This. For context, Ben has been putting large and apparently frivolous charges on a credit card that they'd agreed was only for emergencies.
    • And now it turns out that Penny is not only a virgin, but she considers any suggestion that she might not be to be both insulting and ridiculous. Unless she's a substance abuser of some kind and we just haven't seen it yet, then we're supposed to buy her as a "troubled teen" - enough so that she needed to be sent to live with her sister in order to get her away from her friends - based on black clothes and a surly attitude.
    • Perhaps this Christian troper can clarify some things. In a lot of Christian homes and churches, a "surly attitude" is treated as a symptom of a troubled teen. The whole teenage rebellion is not considered a normal part of growing up, and any amount of it is considered a sign that the kid has, at the very least, issues with authority. So, really, the Values Dissonance in this situation lies between the Christian attitude that teenage rebellion, in and of itself, is bad, and the average belief that it's perfectly normal and all teenagers will rebel at some point.
      • You should be more specific about your denomination. That belief is not shared by all Christians. But yes, that does make this a textbook case of Values Dissonance.