#it is the ONLY ya dystopia

[potato-on-your-head]

hunger games ballad of songbirds and snakes was SO DELIGHTFULLY FUCKED UP FROM START TO FINISH. absolutely loved it. it was the exactly appropriate amount of horrifying. this is a movie about the villains and how truly fucked up their minds and motivations are and how that directly led to the Panem and hunger games we see by Katniss’s time. the few good people are quashed by the evil ones NOT BECAUSE OF INDIVIDUAL VILLAINY but because the SYSTEM is so horribly corrupt and oppressive and individually they can’t change those systems and it’ll take until the massive collective efforts in the second rebellion for that to happen. Snow is humanized without ever being redeemed; it shows he was not born evil but went from this traumatized little kid to a conniving calculating bastard man willing to cast off said humanity for the sake of his ambitions of power and control. CONTROL - the books hit this home, but a sense of control is what makes him feel powerful, as someone who grew up under the shadow of war watching people starve in the Capitol streets and he himself going hungry for most of his life. and then the movie takes all that into account and shows what he becomes and says “cool motive still murder.” it was so well done I’m losing my mind

[wickershells]

something I think people forget re: taboo fiction or art is how formative it often is for children; either by contrasting normality, or highlighting the absence of it: making kids more aware of their reality and could-be realities, testing the waters of their imagination, warming up their empathy-drive. it’s about understanding, of situations and of character, of choices made then un-made. yapping here but I’m thinking of my childhood best friend telling me in hushed tones about flowers in the attic, or us huddled together watching the phantom of the opera and wishing this time Christine will choose her ostensible (objective) abuser—who we couldn’t help but see our own insecurities in, feel connected to on account of otherness and being othered; I remember talking to her about the peach scene in call me by your name (book not movie; our friendship had stalled by that point) and that one wattpad story where a man kidnapped four girls he named after flowers and raped them; writing our own stories about torn bodies and ghosts and angels who can’t be good and magic that only ruins everything and love that is hurtful more than it is pure — stories that, to us, didn’t reflect on something miserable, only something true. I don’t know. we had only so many words/worlds to grow into; art as expression, not representation

[chaiaurchaandni]

israeli forces have arrested ahed tamimi in the occupied west bank based on false accusations

the first time she got arrested, she was a teenager and it was because she punched a soldier after he shot her cousin. she was convicted and jailed like most palestinian children tried in israeli military courts. now she's been arrested again on the basis of false allegations.

in the beginning of the russia/ukraine war, her pictures and story were circulated, and people applauded her when they thought she was a ukrainian teen who had fought back against a russian soldier - when palestinians clarified the truth, most of the aforementioned people retracted their support. such double standards. israelis posted the bottom right picture as a 'victory' - clearly, israel's idea of victory is terrorizing civilians in their homes, from the occupied west bank to gaza.

[cruelsister-moved2]

this is not untrue but it is kind of funny coming from someone that freely chose to pitch their book as like neon genesis evangelion meets the hunger games or whatever it was and i dont feel like the practice is a problem (in private query letters sent to agents/publishers) because it's literally just a shortcut to discussing the types of audiences it might be relevant to and proving that people would be interested in it. it can be about like themes or style or whatever as much as like ‘these stories both have robots in’ and also does not mandate that books are marketed in this way. also no one in the history of reading has ever been annoyed at the ‘if you like this you also might like this due to some shared similarity between them’ style of recommendations, i think people just object to like artlessly cobbling together as many gimmicks from popular media as you can without any attempt to replicate the meaningful storytelling elements that made the originals popular so they read your book and get disappointed when they realise you didn’t mean it was in the storytelling tradition of the hunger games or nge you just mean its a sci-fi dystopia with a girlboss in 

[tallysgreatestfan]

Despite basically everybody imagining her as Tilda Swinton I really look forward to see what Laverne Cox does with the role of Dr Cable.

Hope they give her a cool afrofuturistic hairdo (the one in the drawing is heavily inspired by Rwandas Amasunzu hairstyle)

Was not sure about the grey eyes, given the trope of not giving POC brown eyes, but on the other hand this is a society that routinely changes peoples eye color surgically, so I did both

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

Towers Trilogy: Radiant, Defiant, Towers Fall

post-apocalyptic YA trilogy in a dystopian world where those with magic live in living floating towers

a nonmagical girl in the under-city who can see ghosts tethers herself to a a powerful ghost, and they find themselves hunted for their power

no romance, female friendship, dark magic

[melonymint753]

see I dislike American over-positivity as much as the next internet sibling, but saying how using "awesome" to describe a sandwich meant that you wasted the chance to use it for your newborn is like. who hurt you

[eldritch-elrics]

so i watched parkour civilization earlier because i could not stop seeing tweets about it and. man. this shit is so funny. it’s such a silly premise - the sort of thing that could only be born out of a community extremely dedicated to doing wacky video game challenges - but the execution somehow manages to be incredibly entertaining. it simultaneously breaks so many rules of storytelling (“telling” over “showing” to the extreme) while also having a super coherent, tight, and tension-inducing plot structure. you have to do away with all your cringing and embarrassment and just take the thing on its own terms. it’s a perfect, over-the-top pastiche of a certain type of shounen anime crossed with a certain kind of ya dystopia. it’s an ultra-accessible tale about class warfare and a fascinating takedown of meritocracy as a concept. it takes itself so seriously it’s impossible not to respect it. major kudos

[alpaca-clouds]

Why the media CEOs will always learn the wrong lessons

Yesterday a friend and I talked about how the entire (AAA) game industrie looked at BG3 being as popular as it is and going: "Oh, we need to produce 100+ hour games, I guess! Those sell!" Which... obviously is not why it is popular. The game is not popular because it has 100+ hours of gameplay, but because it has engaging characters, that are well-acted and that work as good hooks for the players. Like, let's face it: The reason why I so far have sunken 160 hours into this game is, because I wanna spend time with these characters - and because I wanna give them their happy endings.

But the same has happened too, just a bit earlier this year, right? When Barbie broke the 1 billion and every Hollywood CEO went: "Oh, so the people want movies based on toy franchises! Got it!" To which the internet at large replied: "... How is that the lesson you learned from this?"

Well, let me explain to you, why this is the lesson they learn: It is because the CEOs and the boards of directors at large are not artists or even engaged with the medium they produce. They mostly are economists. And their dry little hearts do not understand stuff more complex than numbers and spread sheets.

That sounds evil, I know, but... It is sadly the truth. When they look at a successful movie/series/game/book/comic, they look at it as a product, not a piece of art or narrative. It is just a product that has very clear metrics.

To them Barbie is not a movie with interesting stylistic choices that stand out from the majority of high budget action blockbusters. It is a toy movie with mildly feminist themes.

Or Oppenheimer is not a movie to them with a strong visual language and good acting direction. No, it is a historical blockbuster.

And this is true for basically every form of media. I mean, books are actually a fairly good example. In my life I do remember the big book fads that happened. When Harry Potter was a success, there was at least a dozen other "magical school" book series being released. When Twilight was a big success there was suddenly an endless number of "teen girl falls in love with bad boy, who is [magical creature]" YA. When the Hunger Games was a success, there were hundreds of "YA dystopia" books. Meanwhile in adult reading, we had the big "next Game of Throne" fad.

Of course, the irony is, that within each of those fads there might have been one or two somewhat successful series - but never even one that came even close to whatever started the fad.

Or with movies, we have seen it, too. When Avengers broke the 1 billion (which up to this point only few movies did) the studios went: "Ooooooh, so we need shared universe film series" - and then all went to try and fail to create their own cinematic universe.

Because the people, who call the shots, are just immensely desinterested in the thing they are selling. They do not really care about the content. All they care about is having a supposedly easy avenue of selling it. Just as they do not care about the consumer. All they care about is that the consumer buys it. Why he buys it... Well, they do not care. They could not care less, in fact.

So, yeah, get ready for a 20 overproduced games with a bloated 100+ hours of empty gameplay, but without the engaging characters. And for like at least 15 more moves based on some toy franchise, that nobody actually cares about.

And then get ready for all the CEOs to do the surprised Pikachu face, when all of that ends up not financially successful.

Really, I read some interviews yesterday from some AAA-studio CEOs and their blatant shock and missing understanding on why BG3 works for so many people.

Because, yeah... capitalism does not appreciate art. Capitalism does not understand art. It only understands spread sheets.

[fallowfield]

i have an opinion that someone is going to have issue with. but the thriller novel genre has become the horror media equivalent of ya books. that being said i think they can be redeemed still. if we stop letting cishet white people dominate the genres with copies of copies of copies.

[voluptuarian]

another thing that's weird about adults who make an identity out of reading children's books is what they hold up as representative of the values they find in YA/young reader's fiction. They typically bring up wish fulfillment fantasy, morals and clear cut lessons, adventure stories with mild peril, strong centering on friendship and found family, and stories that make them "feel good" and are extremely light on genuinely challenging themes or ethically dubious situations.

Meanwhile when I was neck-deep in YA as a kid in the 90s and early 2000s this was the kind of stuff I was reading, other kids were reading, and that was winning awards, being highlighted on shelves and recommended by librarians:

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, in which a teenage boy survives a plane crash and is stranded in the Canadian wilderness and forced to survive on his own for months. He is ultimately rescued but is permanently altered by the experience. His navigating the drama of (I believe either currently separating or recently divorced) parents is also a major plot element.

Virtual War by Gloria Skurzynski, where real-life wars have been eradicated and instead are fought virtually, (inspired, if I remember correctly, by the disastrous results of a previous nuclear conflict) by specially chosen champions who are trained in combat strategy from childhood. Throughout, the three child champions are forced to question and push back against what the government has told them is the truth as well as against their own prejudices, including toward one of their own who is considered a "mutant" due to his dwarfism; it also details the grueling hours-long "war" in which the kids watch thousands of little 3D soldiers get blown up and dismembered and leaves them feeling genuine guilt for participating in.

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George, which focuses on a teenage Inuit girl who is orphaned, forced into marriage and sexually assaulted, then runs away and ends up lost in the Arctic and survives by befriending and living with a pack of wolves.

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, in which the heroine lives with her parents on a failing farm as the Dust Bowl is beginning, accidentally sets her pregnant mother on fire resulting in her mother's lingering death and the death of her baby, and the girl herself being permanently maimed, after which she and her father become estranged and she eventually tries to run away.

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene, which follows a young Jewish American girl on the WWII homefront who befriends (and falls in love with) a German POW, and when he escapes, hides him in her home for months; eventually the prisoner is caught and killed and the girl is sent to prison after being ostracized from the community and disowned by her parents.

The Ramsey Scallop by Francis Temple, where the heroine, engaged since childhood to her current fiance, is sent on a pilgrimage with him as way of working out his trauma from serving in the crusades. Neither of them feels ready to get married and the fiance is dubious about doing much living at all, but they're able to get to know each other and build trust on the road. It's been ages since I read it but I'm pretty sure there's a scene where a hot single guy who helps patch up an injury she sustained then offers to have sex with her, which she decides to turn down.

Music of the Dolphins by Karen Hesse, where a feral child who has been raised by a pod of dolphins is rescued and taken to a center for rehabilitation. The whole thing follows her progress at understanding to how to be human, and eventually her decision to reject it all and go back to her dolphin family.

The Last Book In the Universe by Rodman Philbrick, whose hero is a teenage orphan living in a purposely abandoned dystopia, ostracized by his community for being epileptic, whose only friends are an old man who is the last literate person in the community and a monosyllabic feral child. The split between the have-nots and the haves, who live in sheltered futuristic cities, and discussion of privilege (one of the main characters is a girl from the cities who comes out to do charity work in the dystopian district) are major themes, and violence is a regular occurrence, including toward the finale when the boy's mentor is murdered by a mob while he watches.

(And of course there's Among the Hidden and its sequels by Margaret Peterson Haddix which I never read, but my sister did, and I know at some point a whole bunch of child characters are massacred by the government because it upset my sister so badly she cried.)

And I couldn't forget The Dear America series, which includes:

character who is finishing high school as the Vietnam War begins and watches her social circle split nastily over the issue, lives through classmates and friends getting drafted, and ends up working at a hospital as volunteer where she is assigned to help disabled veterans

character whose mother (and I think siblings), as well as numerous fellow travelers die while traveling alongside her on the Oregon Trail, and later accidentally poisons to death several of her friends after picking a look-alike plant for their dinner; only one survives, who she eventually marries

character who is kidnapped by a local native tribe and eventually adopted, then marries a fellow captive, only for him and other friends and family to be killed when the tribe is attacked by Europeans, putting her into a total crisis of identity and conflicting loyalties

character who is taken from her tribe to be put in residential school, during which she is forcefully acculturated, severely bullied by another classmate, and a childhood friend of hers is accidentally buried alive

multiple books about immigrants in the 1800 and 1900s which highlighted struggles with poverty, cultural pressures, and prejudice; one of them follows a pro-union factory worker who watches as multiple friends die in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and another whose father imports her to America at 13 to marry a coal miner

most of these stories emphasize the young protagonist ending up in situations were they are either on their own, or so alienated from the adults around them that they might as well be. The protagonists have to assume the adult duty of taking care of themselves, but also of thinking for themselves and making their own decisions and judgements about their lives and the world.

they are also going through big changes, often ones created by their parent's decisions, and which they frequently dislike or are straight up Bad for them. This contrasts with later, when the protagonists are able to make decisions for themselves-- often this comes through hardship and abandonment, but ultimately allows them to control their narrative going forward.

the setting and events are often harrowing, deeply unpleasant, and put the protagonist and their friends in danger of victimization by forces around them. Obviously this is exciting for kids to read, but it also allows them to see someone their age on their own, entering into Adult situations and taking on that role. It's also a break from the overtly positive or cartoonishly (but usually un-seriously) bad circumstances that dominate younger kids fiction and an introduction to the idea that life is just terrible most of the time, sometimes massively and unbelievably so. (It's going from the early childhood story of Madeline's thrilling adventures escaping forced labor in a factory, to the older kid's or YA story of seeing the protagonist work at one day after day, getting injured, having friends get sick, and then watching a girl's scalp get ripped off by the machine, something which creates not excitement but genuine horror and sympathy.) These plots also allow adolescents a chance to experience Big Emotions (like the ones they're about to fall head-first into themselves) in a stable, safe way. All of this aims to create a bridge from the juvenile reality to the genuine, adult one. Trite moral lessons are dispensed with in favor of allowing the child to go out and start thinking for themselves. And especially in stories like the Dear America books, it allows a look at things that happened in the past that we have, or should learn from, but also allows for a fuller emotional, ethical, and empathetic development.

often the introduction of sex is part of the story, from initial experiences of attraction (and the resulting self-consciousness, jealousy, etc.) but also sometimes actual sexual experience. Especially in the historical stories, marriage is also frequently part of the story-- either again, as a fantasy introduction to adult experiences, or as a realistic detail separating a child's historical experience from current ones and creating a better understanding of the hardships historical people went through.

and most include some form of rejection of prevailing authority and thought. Instead of blindly "doing what your parents tell you to" these protagonists must do what they think is practical or ethical. The boy in Hatchet cannot wait for an authority figure to guide him, he must figure out how to survive entirely on his own, while the kids in Virtual War are old enough to begin questioning the entire structure they've been raised in, and to develop empathy for figures that structure has deemed outsiders; the heroine of Music of the Dolphins decides the entire experience of being in human society is not for her, and returns to living with animals.

So these books offer harrowing circumstances, protagonists who are isolated literally or through moral or political alignment, and who must learn to live on their own and make decisions for themselves, often in defiance of prevailing attitudes. They usually emphasize finding one's place (even if that place is completely alone and unsupported), fostering understanding and sympathy with others, even with people who are considered "undesirable," who are different, or who have behaved badly to you in the past. And they frequently involve violence, budding sexuality, exploitation and abuse by authority figures/structures, and a heaping helping of death, including the deaths of beloved friends and family members. What is "feel good" and "unchallenging" about that? And like, I can't speak for what YA is bringing to the table now, but these people are overwhelmingly adults, they were reading YA at around the same time I was, I don't think it would be possible for them to have somehow missed the plethora of books with these hallmarks. So where did they get this idea that YA is some land of comfort where no complicated idea can ever reach you? Even Harry Potter is full of them, and we know they read that!

[patrickzvveig]

The Hunger Games is such an interesting series but I'm always floored by how genuinely good and smart it is. I think it's easy to look back at the absolute nothingness that the YA dystopia genre became and curse out all of its leaders, but The Hunger Games was always a smart and interesting series that even in the first few pages of its first book gripped the reader with possibility.

And I think that's why it continues to be successful and loved in a way that even its popular contemporaries are not. Because there's nothing about the world it takes place that seems strange or impossible, yes even with the child murder games. Katniss tells us that Panem has formed from the ruins of North America, the countries of which ultimately fell due to conflict caused by climate change and lack of resources. Not only is this situation not impossible- it is literally probable, and seems more likely each year we go by the with our leaders pretending the climate crisis is not real. Like North America didn't fall under an evil "foreign power" who took away American (specifically the United States') values. This world wasn't formed over night. It emerged out of the brutality and greed of the world we currently live in.

And even with The Hunger Games as an event, the world still seems so immersed in this reality. It helps that events similar to this have taken place throughout history. The comparison between Rome and the Capitol is not exactly subtle, but it helps ground the Capitol's brutality in a very real history. Using this sort of barbarism as punishment AND entertainment (even to the ones being punished) has happened throughout history, and happens now in ways that are more concealed. Also, the Hunger Games being used as a reminder of the Capitol's control over the districts and a tactic to dissuade rebellion (with the idea that they will be crushed if they try to revolt) MAKES SENSE.

And making sense is why it is so successful. You know what doesn't make sense? Dividing the US into 5 character traits and making people who have more than one *dangerous,* or any of the other strange and contrived plots that came after it in the wake of its success. It works because its possible, and in a sick way, rational. It reminds us that humans can be brutal, and greedy, and evil. But they're not stupid. It's not improbable or even ineffective (for the rich at least) to create this world. class difference MEANS THINGS, and drives the conflict. It's the USA if we keep going down this path and ignore our impending doom.

[secundus-cinaedus]

tfw you list adult authors whose books are well written but hardly contain anything that necessitates critical thought

the notes on that post are going to make me lose my fucking mind

the average iq of the "smart" people this person has encountered is room temp at BEST

[squib-2006]

I find it so funny when people say the new uglies movie is an unoriginal ya dystopia that retreads old grounds when the first book that the movie is based on came out before most of the well known ya dystopias. The hunger games, maze runner, divergent, etc. alll came out after uglies so if anything they copied uglies. The only reason people say that it’s “unoriginal” is cuz it was the last to get a movie (how ever mediocre it was in the end) and I suggest that you read the book series cuz it is amazing. Also the fourth book in the series literally predicted tik tok influencer culture in 2007 and I don’t think we talk about that enough.

[serial-unaliver]

There's this girl in my class who read "Shatter me" though I didn't know shit about it. I only remembered the name bc it was in English and since we aren't in an Anglo country it just stuck with me idk. Seeing it alongside other booktok books now is really concerning to me. What the fuck is it about and why did she bring it to a public space. If it's anything like a Colleen Hoover book that should only be consumed in the privacy of your own home

from what I know it's a YA fantasy dystopia. it's like the hunger games type genre but bad

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Empire Wars

brutal YA dystopian fantasy, start of a duology

set in a future climate-ravaged world taken over by a white supremacist empire

a girl raised feral has to survive being hunted along with other foreigners and political enemies on a deadly magical island

and a princess of the Makari-African people newly married into the regime, intent on bringing it down if she can find a way