There are several types of teenage clichés.
Some go like this: a lonely, awkward, scrawny boy or girl has a mediocre best friend who happens to be more adventurous and drags them along a journey in which they find their soul mate-that boy or girl or whomever it may be, and they find closure or a happily ever after and the end.
An alternative is that the boy and the girl are bfflaf's (best friends for life and forever) and all of a sudden they decide, "oh whoopdeedoo, let's be soul mates" and they get married and, as usual, live happy ever after and the end. Now, tell me if I'm wrong, but if I'm a lonely, awkward, and scrawny girl, wouldn't I have found my soul mate by 15? Would my best guy friend and I be in love at this point? I mean...if my life were exactly like every teenage cliché, then probably.
These clichés are killing me.
Sincerely, I knew exactly what was going to happen the second I cracked open An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns, and Looking for Alaska, and most every book which John Green wrote. I swear to God, he had one plot for all his books and as he went along, he tweaked them each one by one. As I was saying before, many of my teenage clichés I've read started with a lame teenager searching for love and ended with this same teenager having found his/her own heroism inside him/herself, with the help of their newly found, you guessed it, partner, who loves him/her for who he/she is.
Like what the actual(pardon my french) fuck. I have a question for you, dear teenage cliché authors; is this how your life went when you were my age? Because it's sure as hell not how mine is. Honestly, is this what adults think teenagers do in their lives? I mean, I get how all of these teenage clichés, or...this is getting hard to type, how about "TC".
So I get how all these TC's include lust and teenagers being annoyed. Because sincerely, every teenager I personally know is both lusting and annoyed 99% of the time. But the plot of it all...and the mediocre best friend. Seriously? You couldn't think up a moderately interesting character? Instead you dwell on a kind of funny, kind of nice, kind of annoying best friend who doesn't do shit for the plot. I apologize that I'm somewhat generalizing...I know that some teenage stories are genuinely unique and heartfelt and totally out of the norm. I get that. I've read many of those, too. But the number of these annoying and overdone clichés is getting quite out of hand. For example, look at this wonderful list from a wonderful blog! http://veemoze.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/the-friday-five-popular-book-cliches/I somewhat disagree with Number 4, but that's your call.
As I previously stated, there are several types of TC's. The first is the John Green/Best Friends In Love. The second, which is very specific, is Sarah Dessen. She is the absolute Queen of lame romance novels that she must pound out in a month(kind of like Nanowrimo, except edited). Here are some reasons why she writes the TC's of all romances:
1. I'm very aware that this is the style, but EVERY SINGLE BOOK is romance, after romance, after romance. It gets exhausting.
2. The heroine starts out as a girl with family problems, friendship problems, romantic problems, etcetera, and ends up with all of these issues suddenly seeming "okay" since she now has a new boyfriend. Like yes, definitely, achieving a loving boyfriend is suddenly going to fix all the booboos in your life. I wish!
3. This is sort of a touchy subject, but these are lusting, annoyed teenagers. They're not going to just have a magical peck on the lips and have that be their perfect night. That's incredibly unrealistic.
4. These Sarah Dessen books have hit every single possible issue prevalent in our times. Hard to believe, I know, but not every teenager is going to have daddy-issues and drinking problems and a pregnant best friend(these are examples of books I have read of hers). Period. And adding to that, not every teenage girl is going to meet a mysterious and intriguing young man that takes an interest in said troubled female and whisks her off her feet. Nope!
5. The vocabulary is super basic and I can't stand it. (That's just my opinion though.)
The third type of TC is the love triangle.
Some that I can name right now are: Peeta, Katniss, and Gale; Jacob, Bella, and Edward. One of the corners of the triangle is the one that is sought after: the Katniss, the Bella. Another is the best friend who happens to want something more...and could get it, if the other corner of the triangle wasn't "the one": the Peeta, the Edward. They might have a billion flaws and maybe the best friend who wants more is a better fit, but no...the annoying vampire/baker takes the cake, as usual.
All these TC's make me very angry. In fact, dear readers, I may just hate them. Of course, in order to review these, I must have read them, right? RIGHT! And in fact, some of these books(with the exceptions of Sarah Dessen's) are very well written, like The Hunger Games and Paper Towns. Sometimes, TC's are necessary to the plot...
Well, those are my reasons to hating Teen Clichés.
Next post, I shall take a look at my fave dystopian books!
Xoxo gossip girl
Some go like this: a lonely, awkward, scrawny boy or girl has a mediocre best friend who happens to be more adventurous and drags them along a journey in which they find their soul mate-that boy or girl or whomever it may be, and they find closure or a happily ever after and the end.
An alternative is that the boy and the girl are bfflaf's (best friends for life and forever) and all of a sudden they decide, "oh whoopdeedoo, let's be soul mates" and they get married and, as usual, live happy ever after and the end. Now, tell me if I'm wrong, but if I'm a lonely, awkward, and scrawny girl, wouldn't I have found my soul mate by 15? Would my best guy friend and I be in love at this point? I mean...if my life were exactly like every teenage cliché, then probably.
These clichés are killing me.
Sincerely, I knew exactly what was going to happen the second I cracked open An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns, and Looking for Alaska, and most every book which John Green wrote. I swear to God, he had one plot for all his books and as he went along, he tweaked them each one by one. As I was saying before, many of my teenage clichés I've read started with a lame teenager searching for love and ended with this same teenager having found his/her own heroism inside him/herself, with the help of their newly found, you guessed it, partner, who loves him/her for who he/she is.
Like what the actual(pardon my french) fuck. I have a question for you, dear teenage cliché authors; is this how your life went when you were my age? Because it's sure as hell not how mine is. Honestly, is this what adults think teenagers do in their lives? I mean, I get how all of these teenage clichés, or...this is getting hard to type, how about "TC".
So I get how all these TC's include lust and teenagers being annoyed. Because sincerely, every teenager I personally know is both lusting and annoyed 99% of the time. But the plot of it all...and the mediocre best friend. Seriously? You couldn't think up a moderately interesting character? Instead you dwell on a kind of funny, kind of nice, kind of annoying best friend who doesn't do shit for the plot. I apologize that I'm somewhat generalizing...I know that some teenage stories are genuinely unique and heartfelt and totally out of the norm. I get that. I've read many of those, too. But the number of these annoying and overdone clichés is getting quite out of hand. For example, look at this wonderful list from a wonderful blog! http://veemoze.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/the-friday-five-popular-book-cliches/I somewhat disagree with Number 4, but that's your call.
As I previously stated, there are several types of TC's. The first is the John Green/Best Friends In Love. The second, which is very specific, is Sarah Dessen. She is the absolute Queen of lame romance novels that she must pound out in a month(kind of like Nanowrimo, except edited). Here are some reasons why she writes the TC's of all romances:
1. I'm very aware that this is the style, but EVERY SINGLE BOOK is romance, after romance, after romance. It gets exhausting.
2. The heroine starts out as a girl with family problems, friendship problems, romantic problems, etcetera, and ends up with all of these issues suddenly seeming "okay" since she now has a new boyfriend. Like yes, definitely, achieving a loving boyfriend is suddenly going to fix all the booboos in your life. I wish!
3. This is sort of a touchy subject, but these are lusting, annoyed teenagers. They're not going to just have a magical peck on the lips and have that be their perfect night. That's incredibly unrealistic.
4. These Sarah Dessen books have hit every single possible issue prevalent in our times. Hard to believe, I know, but not every teenager is going to have daddy-issues and drinking problems and a pregnant best friend(these are examples of books I have read of hers). Period. And adding to that, not every teenage girl is going to meet a mysterious and intriguing young man that takes an interest in said troubled female and whisks her off her feet. Nope!
5. The vocabulary is super basic and I can't stand it. (That's just my opinion though.)
The third type of TC is the love triangle.
Some that I can name right now are: Peeta, Katniss, and Gale; Jacob, Bella, and Edward. One of the corners of the triangle is the one that is sought after: the Katniss, the Bella. Another is the best friend who happens to want something more...and could get it, if the other corner of the triangle wasn't "the one": the Peeta, the Edward. They might have a billion flaws and maybe the best friend who wants more is a better fit, but no...the annoying vampire/baker takes the cake, as usual.
All these TC's make me very angry. In fact, dear readers, I may just hate them. Of course, in order to review these, I must have read them, right? RIGHT! And in fact, some of these books(with the exceptions of Sarah Dessen's) are very well written, like The Hunger Games and Paper Towns. Sometimes, TC's are necessary to the plot...
Well, those are my reasons to hating Teen Clichés.
Next post, I shall take a look at my fave dystopian books!
Xoxo gossip girl
