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[cimplybe]

To the writers of the last several YA books I've read:

Authority figures are not evil just because they are authority figures. But thank you oh so much for impressing on teenagers that this is the case. It really helps when parents want to do reasonable things like enforce a curfew or make them do homework

Comments

[in_excelsis_dea]

Ugh, I hate the common tropes found in most YA fiction now. I adore YA fiction, but I've found that most of it leaves me feeling "meh" at best and "full of seething rage" at worst. Non-fantasy/sci-fi/action/thriller/some-genre-that-actually-gives-books-a-plot YA is so bland, and yes -- the characters are often extremely exaggerated, or not developed enough. Sure, if you're writing through the POV of a fifteen year-old who has just been told that she can't go to the ultra-cool party she's been dying to go to, she's going to be pissed off. I get that. And she's not going to realize at the off-set that hmm, maybe there is a reason her parents didn't want her to go. But you'd think that eventually she would realize, or at least the author would manage to portray it that parents actually interested in parenting aren't bitches of the highest order whose one duty in life is to ruin their teenage child's life

[nuranar]

Word. So much word. And I haven't even read much YA.

I've grown up with some awesome parents, and know quite a few more, so it's always made me cringe and wonder at the perception in so many books (and fanfic) that All Parents Are Horrible.

I've also grown to dislike the aggressively obvious Average Character As Hero[ine] trope. This is in more than just YA. I first really hated it in the LotR movies, because Aragorn's character was dumbed down so much to an insecure unlikely hero, instead of the truly superhuman person he actually was. That's one of the reasons Alistair MacLean is one of my favorite authors (of adventure/adventure); he's got some extraordinary plots, and his protagonists are correspondingly extraordinary in several ways, but still quite human. It's possible to write Real Characters that are above average. And, y'know, give kids an ideal to aspire up to, instead of an Everyman who panders to their existing self-image.

On that same note, teaching things like history, dancing, deportment, penmanship, and how to eat

[cimplybe]

Oh. That did come across as confusing, didn't it? Her uncle was King, and then her uncle, father, and mother died, but her father's body was never found. So her aunt the Queen declared that her father was the new King (since they couldn't prove he was dead) and that she was the Regent holding the throne for his eventual return. And I guess after it became clear that he wasn't coming back...people just didn't think too hard about it? It was a good excuse at first and then kind of fell apart.

[maldoror_gw]

' And I guess after it became clear that he wasn't coming back...people just didn't think too hard about it?'

Probably because they were glad to have someone on the throne who knew politics and diplomacy and penmanship rather than an uneducated teenage brat. Yeesh, this is why I give YA a wide berth, even if there are a few gems in the manure pile.

[falconwhitaker]

Word on the authority figures thing!

And I hate to make a fuss, but would you mind possibly changing the word you use to describe the Queen from "spastic" to something else? It's just that "spastic" is one of those words with the sort of history that makes it... well, really quit offensive to a lot of people, and it might save a fuss sometime in the future :)

[fairest1]

Agreed so much. Also, for every author of a coming-of-age story for girls: The girl whose breasts come in first is not automatically a bitch. The girl whose breasts come in last is not automatically a dweeb. And stuffing your bra with cotton balls or kleenex does make you look like a dork, but it's more due to the fact that you've given yourself the appearance of misshapen breasts than anything.