Discussion question

[rolanni]

Some While Back, I read an interview, it may have been, with an author who writes adult post-apocalyptic SF and also YA post-apocalyptic SF.

The single comment that stuck with me from this interview was that the author worked to make sure the YA work had a happy ending, because young readers deserved hope.

The implicit statement -- I don't remember at this remove if it was explicit -- being that adult readers don't deserve a happy ending.

Discuss.

Comments

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

Oh, oh man, the VC Andrews stuff! Gave me nightmares... no happy endings there.

Hope is important now, too; I notice my tastes in RP and in reading very depending on how things are going IRL.

[eseme]

I never tried VC Andrews for the vibe it gave me.

And I don't get the Lurlene McDaniel stuff either - all of them are romances where one half of the teenage couple has a terminal disease or something. But some teen girls love it.

I'll agree that my reading tastes also cycle with my moods, how things are going in my life, and the state of the world in general. I've been reading a lot more upbeat, positive stuff, or romance, sine the economy tanked. Oddly, I am getting rather bunt out on the paranormal romance (there's a lot of world-ending stuff in many of them, so that may be it) - I may have to turn to science fiction based romance or something.

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

Lyrics: http://www.lyricsera.com/604950-lyric-THE+BAND+PERRY-If+I+Die+Young.html

I don't get it, but I think there's a certain romance to funerals, weddings and funerals and never growing old.

[eseme]

I also don't get it. But yes, it does seem to be popular.

[attilathepbnun.livejournal.com]

Actually, there are a few Lurlene McDaniel books where the main characters do get to survive! Though it's true that someone usually dies ... I think those sorts of books are so popular because of the my-life-isn't-so-bad phenomenon ---'I may have a rotten life but at least I'm not dying of leukemia-murdered by a serial killer/etc.
That said, I much prefer happy endings, myself

[eseme]

Thanks! That's good to know. The last library I worked had had a bunch of them, and from what I could tell, they all had romance ending in death.

And I can see the "at least it's not me" thinking.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

It's not a new thing, a lot of Victorian literature had a similar thing. There was (and possibly still is) a feeling that "true love" is never consummated and is made more 'pure' by one of them dying (for that matter, look at Romeo and Juliet, who were held up as an ideal of 'romantic' love for dying rather than as blithering idiots for not running away and saying to hell with their families). I was certainly exposed to that as a teenager in England in the early 70s, that the 'purest' love is unrequited preferably by causes out of anyone's control (like death).

It may also be connected with the fashion for "teenage angst[1]" and the 'goth' culture which seems to glorify being miserable.

[1] Interestingly, the German meaning of 'angst' is 'fear', rather than the now-common English one of depression, despair, being miserable, etc.