/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6895293]

What makes YA fiction so bad that /lit/ despises it?

[Anonymous No.6895310]

It's generally shallow. The characters are boring and not complex and the stories are generally generic and inspire very little thought. I don't care about them enough to have an opinion but the "highbrow literature connoisseurs" that make up /lit/ tend to blow up about it.
It also may just be banter, m8.

[Anonymous No.6895312]

It reminds them of their own writing

[Anonymous No.6895320]

Also the covers look like shit

[Anonymous No.6895323]

>>6895310
It's all banter.
Everything is banter.
Read your Wittgenstein.

[Anonymous No.6895327]

>>6895293
Because mainstream fiction is already written at the YA reading level. And this genre dumbs the writing down even further. Also most everything in YA are serial characters which are the antithesis of literary art.

[Anonymous No.6895328]

>>6895293
>that /lit/ despises it
it's nothing personal, it's just cheap filler meant to be consumed and disposed of by little kids.

[Anonymous No.6895329]

>>6895293
oooooh well, It's not that it's actually bad.
It's just that writers approach YA because they don't think they're good enough for adult literature but the truth is they just don't care about quality, they resort to saccharine plot lines typical of teenage television because that's where they learn about teenagers and what they like. They '"'create'"' 2 dimensional characters that teenagers can JUST BARELY relate to and then imprint themselves on to fill in the rest. And a lot of them have no true inspiration behind them since they'll write whatever a publisher asks for because they need money. I don't hate YA writers, I hate their weakness and the publisher's greed.
>>6895312 is totally right, because /lit/ is mostly teenagers and they write like immature teenagers and YA is cold soulless unenlightened imitation of them, making it a particularly salty group when discussing YA.

[Anonymous No.6895334]

The fact that most of it is very "samey" and written only to appeal to the base fantasies of teenage boys/girls. Truly good YA would be relevant to people of all ages, even if it is geared towards a younger age group.

[Anonymous No.6895338]

>>6895293
What a adolescent reads will affect how they write. With YA fiction the baseline for their own writing gets lower.

[Anonymous No.6895801]

Elitism.
Forgetting that reading is supposed to be enjoyable sometimes, even if what you're reading is shallow and simple.

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.6895809]

>>6895293
Capitalism

[Anonymous No.6895825]

It doesn't make you think very much.

[Anonymous No.6895830]

Will you enjoy highbrow YA ?

[Anonymous No.6895839]

>>6895293
It's not hate. It's intense jealousy most commonly associated with manchild sperglords that inhabit /lit/. It baeically reminds them that although they are consumers of the highest level of literature, mastered prose and are knowledgeable in so many fields, they will never, and I mean absolutely never get something published.

And you know why? Because of their mentality and attitude.

Stay mad /lit/, in the meanwhile let people like myself get published because unlike you, YA authors have enough will power to get something done.

[Anonymous No.6895848]

>>6895830

>Grenier will collaborate with Dell to promote healthier, more sustainable choices and actions through digital storytelling

>>6895038

[Anonymous No.6895859]

>>6895293
It's mostly the fact that it's taken so seriously by adults when it's shallow shit that you shouldn't be making a fuss over even in your late teens.

[Anonymous No.6895879]

>>6895293
when it comes to characters, plot, themes, setting, and prose it's the same thing over and over again

[Anonymous No.6895896]

[Anonymous No.6895898]

>>6895293
It's literally named after the fact that it's dumbed down for children.

I don't think that /lit/ hates YA fiction as much as they hate the fact that it's become acceptable for adults to read it and claim it's as good as or superior to actual literature.

It's basically like a diaper fetish. Most people find someone so attached to something so unambiguously infantile to be unnerving at best and generally disgusting.

[Anonymous No.6895909]

>>6895293

It's a genre created especially for marketability.
It's a betrayal to a writer's integrity - agreeing to dumb-down or tame what they really want to say because the kiddies can't handle it.
The sell-outs who write this shit are wealthier than me (there, I said it).

[Anonymous No.6895917]

>>6895898
I guess this is Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.

[Anonymous No.6895928]

Is harry potter, skullduggery pleasant, keys to the kingdom and his dark materials considered young adult? If so than I don't despise it, I just lost interest in it around the age I entered middle school. Honestly some of the books are quite fun reads and had me day dreaming all of the time about these fantasy worlds.

[Anonymous No.6895931]

>>6895896
If that guy was talking about anime he'd be right.

As far as fantasy literature goes he's barely touching 10% at best

[Anonymous No.6895932]

>>6895896
Smug sophistry. /lit/ in a nutshell

[Anonymous No.6895938]

>>6895917
I understood and enjoyed your infinite jest reference.

[Anonymous No.6895975]

>>6895293
It's bad literature.
Bad writing.
Bad plot.
Bad prose.
Bad themes.
Bad development.
Bad style.
Bad authors.
Bad everything.

That's why it's for children. And in an age of information, it's the easiest absorbed information that gets popular.

Hence:

1. manufactured country music
2 nigger speak beatbox
3.YA
4.app games

[Anonymous No.6895976]

have you read an average YA novel? It's not entertaining, on even the most base level. It's like a Hollywood movie, except there's no visuals, music, or acting to make up for it. Being for YA in itself is not bad, Alice in the Wonderland, good anime and video games prove this, it's just that writers use the demographic for exploitation rather than education.
>>6895896
I don't what's worse, the fact that you capped your own post or your own post's pretentious projections.

[Anonymous No.6895995]

Generally, I hate it for the total lack of subtlety.
I've noticed in almost every YA book I've read, that if there's some kind of sub-text at work or creative literary device employed then most times the author will make it a point to either literally explain the significance of the literary device, or emphasize it to the point of redundancy. Reading John Greene blew my fucking mind. It was like doing a crossword puzzle with 90% of the letters penciled in already.
>. . . I've never lit one. It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing."
I get that it's dialogue, but he does this shit all throughout the book. You can tell at what exact spots in the text where Greene is so fucking proud of himself that he feels the need to make sure you know exactly how clever he is. I've seen stuff like this done in a lot of other YA books, though most of the time it's the author shoving his symbolism into your face to the point where it's barely even implicit anymore. It's just a very transparent style of writing that doesn't hold any complexity or depth to it, there's nothing compelling about it.

I like YA when it doesn't take itself too seriously though, sort of like a departure back to pulp. When YA is pulpy and creative in it's modesty, it can make for very entertaining stories. Also I find that when the characters are well developed, and not just blatant self-inserts or mary sues, YA can be compelling on a certain emotional level.

[Anonymous No.6896004]

>>6895975
you're acting like those qualities are restricted only to YA

anyone who says YA cant be good obviously hasn't read the Hobbit or even fucking Roald Dahl

[Anonymous No.6896016]

>>6896004
Roald Dahl isn't good.
Hobbit isn't good either.

Both authors are extremely shallow and are bad writers. Imagination counts for nothing if you can't act on it.

It's not good. It's bad. It's overhyped. It's garbage.

[Anonymous No.6896022]

>>6896016
kek whatever you say bud

[Anonymous No.6896032]

>>6896016

[Anonymous No.6896033]

>>6896022
>>>/reddit/ tbh

[Anonymous No.6896037]

>>6896033
hbu fam

[Anonymous No.6896041]

>>6895830

>postmodern culture of relativism, irony, and pastiche" is over, having been replaced by a post-ideological condition that stresses engagement, affect, and storytelling

[Anonymous No.6896044]

>>6896004
I think YA fiction is usually meant to represent the tidal wave of shit published in the last 10 years or so, trying to become the new Harry Potter/twilight/hunger games.

No one thinks that all fiction written for young people is bad. The criticism is aimed at the recent trend of selling absolute shit to everyone, to the point where they're making "new adult" fiction, which are comprised basically of dumbed down books for adults.

[Anonymous No.6896048]

>>6896041
Praise Jesus

[Anonymous No.6896053]

>>6896044
So all we're really talking about is the distinction between good and bad fiction, genre has nothing to do with it.

[Anonymous No.6896062]

>>6896053
>genre has nothing to do with it.
The entire problem is publishing companies turning bad fiction into a genre.

[Anonymous No.6896099]

>>6896062
>The entire problem is publishing companies turning bad fiction into a genre.
This has been a thing for last 40 years. That's what pulp was: lots of books belonging to cash-crop genres pushed with little to no quality control by mass publishers.

[Anonymous No.6896129]

I don't despise it. It's perfectly fine for kids to read. I read some of it as a kid. I think it's a bit odd how popular it is among old adults but then again I willingly frequent a website where people post pictures of their own dicks, look at pictures of "girls" with dicks, laugh at people dying, and jerk off to pictures of human like dogs, bears and even sharks with dicks fucking. It's all relative.

[Anonymous No.6896134]

>>6896099
>This has been a thing for last 40 years.
That doesn't mean that people have to be accepting of its most recent manifestation in the form of YA fiction.

[Anonymous No.6896139]

>>6896134
Or of adults that vocally enjoy acting like children.

[Anonymous No.6896157]

>>6895928
I think that's all just children's lit, which is lesser

[Anonymous No.6896179]

>>6895293

YA is to fiction what light verse is to poetry. The thing is, people enjoy light verse, people write light verse, etc, but they have no illusions that it is somehow better than the rest of poetry, and they don't just read light verse and then try to pretend regular verse is sexist or something.

[Anonymous No.6896212]

>>6895293
Personally, I don't despise it as a genre. I read YA fiction when I was in elementary and middle school and I associate it with some of the best parts of my life. However, what I do despise is adults who read YA fiction and then act like they're "readers" because of it. I've met too many tumblrina's who claim they read a lot and then only read YA dystopian fiction and John Greene novels. That pisses me off beyond belief.

>It's ok to read YA fiction, just don't claim you're some kind of super special "reads all the time" person afterward.

[Anonymous No.6896348]

What about stuff like The Outsiders?

[Anonymous No.6896364]

>>6896212
What if they read shit YA fiction all the time?

You are just putting undue value in the idea of a person reading all the time. No wonder you're surprised when some people who do are worthless to you.

[Anonymous No.6896432]

>>6896348
>It's still YA. I found the main character to be unrealistic as both a gang member and high school overachiever. And I can't escape the idea that the author was schlicking the whole way through at all the intimate male bonding going on.

[Anonymous No.6896439]

>>6896364
It's like the old cat ladies who play bingo and voraciously consume Stephen King and random murder mystery/detective novels and do crossword puzzles. They've probably read more books than you do, but they're looking to be entertained rather than challenged.

[Anonymous No.6896590]

>>6896004
Saying "all x is shit" is not the same thing as saying "the categories that make x shit are restricted to x". Don't project onto people ya dingus