gimme your top 5 hot takes about YA genre
Only 5? Let's see if I can narrow it down haha.
5. Love Triangles
They've been around a while, but truly only popularised by the likes of Twitlight and the Hunger Games. Almost any YA story trying to copy off of either of these will be guaranteed to have a love triangle.
Will they have any of the depth and symbolism and thought put into the THG triangle? Fuck no! The only thing happening here is a case of "oh no! However could I possibly choose between my two love interests uWu".
They're shallow, dull excuses to plump out the story and to set the shippers aflame. Most of the love triangles could be solved because everyone has two hands OR the fate of the relationship rests entirely on how hot both parties are, not chemistry or compatibility or any frame of logic.
Love triangles can fuck right off.
4. There's Like. No 'Good' Adults
You know how it goes. 'I'm a spunky teenager and what I say goes! Fuck you adults with 20+ years experience!' And then the adults get #owned by this badass teen that's 16 with 30 years work experience even though they only learned their skill/secret society/heritage/powers etc last week 🙄
The only good adults are dead, preferably before the story even starts, if not, sterile, unemotional death within the first 20 pages works just fine.
Everyone else is bad. Or dumb. Or useless. Or evil. Like? We get it you don't want any adults around, jeez.
This isn't a hard workaround! There's many many many ways to shunt aside your adults without making them all incompetent, evil or dead.
like I get it, being a young adult means sometimes you want to disobey authority. and what better wishfulfillment than bland white girl #39776× telling some adult (who may even be right!) to go shove it up their ass. It's not even used as like a study of hubris or the character and their development. It's a simple 'fuck you authority figure' and then they wash their hands of it.
Like bestie, young people need more experienced and older people, role models and safety nets and sounding boards and teachers alike! Why you gotta make every fictional adult evil? As if getting older makes you inevitably turn bad? Where is the camaraderie between generations? Where are the healthy relationships between young and old people? Why expect evil as if it's the default when we could simply lift our standards?
3. "Strong" Female Characters
It seems like no author who's heard the phrase knows what it means!
It means we end up with female characters who can kill a bear bare handed but have all the personality and drive of three day old dishwater. No! No no no no no!
A strong female character doesn't need to be strong! What she does need is a personality. Impact on the plot. Drive, decision making abilities. She makes the plot move, the plot doesn't have to drag her around like a limp noodle.
But no. These "writers" are incapable of understanding that 'strong female character' is a goddamn FIGURE OF SPEECH and then work in a field where understanding metaphors and literary devices is really really important. It's the kind of brain fuckery where say, a pet store employee doesn't know what a dog is. HOW. How does it happen?? These people need to go back to like Grade 5 english and literacy skills lessons. Bloody hell.
2. The Almost Constant Racism
YA racism is so *shakes fist* it's not even limited to the writing.
White authors are out here "writing" what essentially amounts to tropes cobbled together with tape and chewing gum, the same kind of shallow, bland plots that are a staple of fanfiction from my 14 year old self. And then you have all these amazing works of fiction rejected because the author is a poc or the characters are "too diverse".
This isn't even scratching the surface of how racist a lot of YA gets. Like, the majority of characters are white, the main character is 99% guaranteed to be white, their love interest/s will either be white or they'll be fetishised until the cows come home. Any characters of colour will either be relegated to 2 dimensional secondary character or will be killed off with little fanfare, depending on the overall mood of the story.
The Wasted Potential
YA could so, so easily be the stepping stone for young readers transitioning out of children's fiction. Like, there's a lot of literature taught to people in high school that is simply beyond their ability to comprehend, but is still important to learn!
Much of classic lit, and literature that's important to study, is simply just. Too much. I know I didn't really understand a lot of what I learned in literature and I was one of the best students in my class. It's hard. Genuinely it's hard.
You know what would make it easier? A midpoint. Writing with similar depth and care and craftsmanship, but written for a younger, less experienced and developed audience.
The likes of Animal Farm and the Hunger Games come to mind because they are both clear cut allegories that, with a little research and help, are easy enough to understand and analyse. Like, can you imagine what kind of stories we'd get if even HALF these trope collàge booktok YA books were written with the same kind of skill as any classic author? The same kind of conviction and power in their stories?
Instead of classics that are beyond the comprehensive range of teenagers that just make them hate reading and leave them confused and upset. What kind of lessons could these kids be learning, if there were high quality works written for them and their level of development? Like, they could be learning and developing their skills as writers and analysts because they wouldn't constantly have to have it pointed out to them what x metaphor means or why abc is important.
Idk. I just think it'd be good for students to have a medium specifically for their age group instead of being expected to comprehend the entirety of War and Peace.
anyway, these are my main thots on YA as a general genre. I have mixed feelings about it, as it was incredibly important for my development as a reader and writer and analyst but also :) most of it is shit :) as in like 99% of it is shit :) and we deserve better as readers.