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YA Fiction
There is an attitude towards life in a lot of YA fiction that I absolutely detest: the idea that being angry is always unjustified and being nice involves letting people walk all over you.
Oh, not fighting evil. YA will let you rage against outright evil all day. Go kill the dragon, fight the wicked king, discover that no, really, you *can't* redeem that bad guy. The problem lies in closer relationships. Friends. Family. Every time I try to read a YA novel, especially a contemporary one, I run into situations where protagonist's family or friends are terrible to the protagonist in a more mundane way-- constant belittling of her hobbies, or breaking her stuff, or ignoring her interests, and the book very clearly takes the side of the family, insisting that being upset about their constant boundary violations is the real problem here. It's always set up so she learns a "lesson" about being more accepting of other people, or "people are more important than disagreements," or your family breaking your prized guitar isn't something you should hold a grudge over because "people are more important than things."
I have never been especially inclined to any sort of YA other than the epic hero fantasy stories where there's barely a romance-- and truly, not even very many of them-- and I wonder if this being *incredibly* common is part of why. Especially given that I adore Claire Kann's YA romances, where the primary theme is "let's think about what boundaries mean"... and where I frequently have to pause and remind myself that this is Claire Kann so this thing where people are hitting the protagonist's boundaries is going to be resolved in a way that acknowledges those boundaries are fine. Good, even.
But we really do need to start thinking, when we analyze a story, about more than just "does it have any obvious sexism or prejudices", because honestly I find the implicit message that having boundaries is a bad thing to be far more damaging.
And I don't like the world twisting to make the protagonist wrong, as in this current one I'm reading. It's differently angled from the usual "guy is a jerk except he lets *only you* see his deeply wounded core!" stories because there are strong hints guy is only a jerk to the protagonist and not generally a jerk to everyone, but that's still not... *good*.
(Also someday I really want a story where the "secretly we are pen pals and don't know it" trope is *not* infused with extra melodrama about their real identities hating each other. It is *possible* to pull that off well, but most writers are not Sherwood Smith. Can I have one where they're just kind of generally in each other's social circles but not close?)
Oh, not fighting evil. YA will let you rage against outright evil all day. Go kill the dragon, fight the wicked king, discover that no, really, you *can't* redeem that bad guy. The problem lies in closer relationships. Friends. Family. Every time I try to read a YA novel, especially a contemporary one, I run into situations where protagonist's family or friends are terrible to the protagonist in a more mundane way-- constant belittling of her hobbies, or breaking her stuff, or ignoring her interests, and the book very clearly takes the side of the family, insisting that being upset about their constant boundary violations is the real problem here. It's always set up so she learns a "lesson" about being more accepting of other people, or "people are more important than disagreements," or your family breaking your prized guitar isn't something you should hold a grudge over because "people are more important than things."
I have never been especially inclined to any sort of YA other than the epic hero fantasy stories where there's barely a romance-- and truly, not even very many of them-- and I wonder if this being *incredibly* common is part of why. Especially given that I adore Claire Kann's YA romances, where the primary theme is "let's think about what boundaries mean"... and where I frequently have to pause and remind myself that this is Claire Kann so this thing where people are hitting the protagonist's boundaries is going to be resolved in a way that acknowledges those boundaries are fine. Good, even.
But we really do need to start thinking, when we analyze a story, about more than just "does it have any obvious sexism or prejudices", because honestly I find the implicit message that having boundaries is a bad thing to be far more damaging.
And I don't like the world twisting to make the protagonist wrong, as in this current one I'm reading. It's differently angled from the usual "guy is a jerk except he lets *only you* see his deeply wounded core!" stories because there are strong hints guy is only a jerk to the protagonist and not generally a jerk to everyone, but that's still not... *good*.
(Also someday I really want a story where the "secretly we are pen pals and don't know it" trope is *not* infused with extra melodrama about their real identities hating each other. It is *possible* to pull that off well, but most writers are not Sherwood Smith. Can I have one where they're just kind of generally in each other's social circles but not close?)