My Thoughts Thursday: The New Age

This whole thought train started with a conversation I had with my mother a few days ago. I asked her about country clubs, since she and my father had recently been to a work party at one. Every time that I'm in one or one of my parents is, they begin to talk about how they aren't what the used to be. My question was, why not? My mother told me that it got to be too expensive, and people in my generation weren't looking to join. They became less and less exclusive to continue earning money.

That's actually quite a trend between her generation and mine, not being alike. People my age are, studies show, less materialistic and less concerned about physical wealth. And we're not spending or investing, we're saving. We grew up in a recession and have been surrounded constantly by information with the dawn of computers, the internet, and social media. We are expected to be reachable instantly because of our smartphones that not only call and receive messages like their ancestors, but also browse the internet, play music, download files, post to Instagram, hold data, and run a touch interface. And while every generation is different from the one before, we have quite a bit different from those who raised us.

It's one of the reasons it's pretty evident when there's a young adult author writing that's from my mother's generation. The values of the characters are different and their pursuits go to ends that we don't always recognize as viable. It's like when I go to watch Jonny Quest, one of my favorite cartoons. It was created and aired during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when my parents were kids watching these kinds of things. I love them because of their hope for the future in cases of scientific advance, the subtly sinister villains, and the campy sound effects. But what differs so much of from the cartoons of the 1990s and early 2000s that I watched as a kid is that the plots are simpler. The women are portrayed as women 'should be' - helpful plot catalysts or attractive one-episode crushes for any of the male characters. And most of the villains were Russian, because at that time the United States and Russia were in the midst of the Cold War.

My generation is not the 'Me' generation that many newspapers claim it to be. We are the largest generation, outnumbering all others still living, and we work the most and the hardest. We're also paid the least, and are the most in debt from our student loans. We network better and are more politically and socially active than our ancestors due to our increased connectivity on the internet. And the question now is, of course, why does this matter?

Well, according to American sociologist Kathleen Shaputis, we've delayed passage into adulthood so much we've created a new phase of aging - 'emerging adulthood'. Basically, we've been so affected by economic pressures and by seeing the mistakes of the generations before us that we wait longer than any other generation to make traditional rites of passage into adulthood. So things like buying a house, getting married, and having kids are being pushed back because we can't afford it, and when we can we want to do it right the first time. We're also more likely to be skeptical of religion, more liberal, and more open-minded. That means that young adult characters, especially being written right now, should have those traits to reflect the audience.

I remember when I was a kid reading The Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix - my first true dive into dystopia. I loved it, but I couldn't wrap my head around a bunch of sixteen-year-olds protesting the government. But today? I've seen it. Protests for gay marriage, protests against the U.S. support of Israel, pro-Palestinian movements, you name it. That's one of the reasons dystopia is so popular right now, besides the fact that world seems to be falling apart. Now, more than ever, the young up-and-coming generation is ready to fight back for whatever we believe in. None of this 'good-for-nothing kids' nonsense. We're creators, protesters, petitioners, agitators. We don't take the status quo as fact, we create it in the image we want. But with this whole set of strengths comes new problems - mostly financial right now, but what about later? This whole change in generational perception allows for new plot arcs, new stories, new conflicts. And like our perspective, our literature has to change to reflect our new values and our new struggles. No more stories like Gatsby about trying to get into higher classes. Nowadays, we don't want that. We want closer relationships, we want justice, we want different experiences than sitting in a country club while a struggling college student shines our golf balls. When the target demographic changes, so must we, the writers.

What do you think? Have any other interesting trends you see in the new generation that concern you? Let me know in the comments below!

Hoping to make this generation look good in the history books,
Brie

My Thoughts Thursday: Walk That Line

I really do apologize for posting three things today to catch up, dear followers, but I've been sitting on these ideas for quite some time now. Part of it is the fact that I'm very interested in politics and the human rights of people around me (hence my genres!), and another is just the infuriating fact that we as a species love to either stick our heads in the sand or sit in lawn chairs and complain about what's happening, yet never actually do anything about it.

The other part of it is that I'm on tumblr and that's a very big focus in the lit blogs I follow. There's actually a large part of tumblr, regardless of type of blog, that have noticed the serious lack of sexual, racial, religious, and gender variety. They champion the Bechdel test and note how many non-white faces they see in movies. As a generation, we notice. But here comes the problem with all of that. When you try to represent, that's great. But what happens when you go a little overboard?

You get what I like to call Textbook Syndrome. Does 'Lashawna, Mike, Qian, and Pablo all have seven watermelons' sound familiar? It makes the diversity and representation fake. As much as 'stay with your own kind' seems fake, sticking with everyone of every subset is just as bad. Not everyone needs to be a transgender pansexual half-Indian half-Chinese person. But to err on either side, to be so diverse it's obvious or so whitewashed it's appalling, is just as bad.

I see this quite often on tumblr where users tend to fly off the handle towards the underrepresented. I mean, there's even this post going around saying that in the Disney movie Frozen, which has caused both controversy over supposed 'whitewashing' and acclaim for allowing a mainstream, successful movie to not depend on the prince-saving-the-princess plot scheme, Elsa should be a lesbian, and that her lover should be an African Muslim who controls fire.

As nice as this sounds, this completely disregards the Muslim religion entirely. For the faithful, it's stated quite clearly that same-gender sexual relations are sin. This is an example of non-Muslims pushing this image just to represent a racial and sexual minority while not actually thinking of whether or not these combinations can exist. It's what I like to call pandering, trying to represent without respect.

So I guess this MTT's theme is simple: in life, you will meet people who are unlike you. Different experiences, genders, religions, sexualities, and races. But recognize in our shows, stories, and movies, that there is a difference between no representation, representation, and too much. Like many things, our living conditions, for example, there needs to be a balance.

Walking the tightrope,
Brie

Think Tank Tuesdays: Monochrome

So, I may be posting these a little late, but it 's not for lack of thought. In fact, it's for an overabundance of thought, where I'm trying to narrow down  what exactly I want to say. This is a big topic, and definitely one of controversy. Public figures like Sandra Oh, George Takei, Whoopi Goldberg, and others talk about this topic all the time, and there's even a nationwide campaign, #weneeddiversebooks, that strive for this.

In a word: representation.

It's no secret that most book markets are almost disgustingly white: the YA industry features about 98% non-POC (person of color) protagonists. And those that do are either delegated to the 'black voices' section or set in some strange genre few browse, like 'world cultures' or the like. This is why the Legend series is so important, it's both a protagonist that isn't white and isn't a racial stereotype. Not to mention the fact that it's very, very successful, especially for a woman writing young adult fiction (I'll post on that later).

It's really well-highlighted by the group Dear White People, who started as a satirical tumblr page that now have a movie deal. Watch the trailer, and see that they ask real questions no one wants to answer: Why are the black faces in the movies either ghetto queens, gangsters, rappers, slaves, or Uncle Toms? Where are the black faces that reflect who they are, the young professionals, the overachievers, the surfers, the tops-of-their classes? The answer: they're just not really there.

The topic of today's post is representation because it's an important part of a world. Not only is it important that it's there (because no real country is entirely comprised by one race, sexuality, or gender), but it's important that these things don't define characters. I can't tell you how many books I've read where there's one gay chracter and their sole duty is to be gay. Be the butt of gay jokes, and be ridiculously oversexed. Or a black character who's a ghetto king or queen. What about the random smart, quiet Asians?

It's 2014, people, why are we still reducing each other to these stereotypes? The United States especially has had a hard time with racial differences in the past (hello, 1960s Civil Rights movements) and even still, there isn't equality. But as a writer, it's important to include other races, other sexualities, other genders in the world. We can't all be Wonder Woman and come from an island full of only white women. Even though race isn't even a real thing (we're literally all humans just with different skin tones based on how much sunlight we're exposed to and various traits that are built to help us best survive in our native environments), the literary industry is pretty hostile to non-white, non-heterosexual people.

I'm not saying that you need to have a gay Indian protagonist with a transsexual, lesbian Chinese best friend. And if you do, that's great. But imagine having an entire medium of books devoted to talking about people who don't look like you, don't value what you value, and take people like you and twist them into these images that just do not reflect you. The phenotype we consider white is, in fact, a minority in the world. And even though not every country may be predominantly one certain look or another (Italy is 92% white while the United States hovers around 72%) that doesn't mean that certain types of people don't exist. In your world as a writer and your true world as a reader, people of all kinds thrive here. It's about time that our media, and books especially, reflect that.

Because apparently it's too impossible with magical fantasies to include anyone not white,
Brie

Think Tank Tuesdays: Madrid and AP crunch studies

Hello, my loves. I'm sorry it's been so long since I last posted - it's been a hard couple of weeks.

I came back to see that I'd written a line for what was supposed to be a Maniacal Monday post from a couple months ago. Let's start this over. Obviously I've been on hiatus for a stretch - one that goes on for more than a couple of weeks. The last you guys heard from me, I was gearing up for my trip to Spain (my heart flutters at the mere thought) and bracing myself for the AP test gauntlet I was going to run in a couple weeks after.

Well, APs have been over for a week now.

If you guys haven't figured out by now, I'm what some people might call an academic achiever. I have taken a total of eight AP classes (four this year) and spent pretty much every night doing my homework until at least 12:30 am just to wake up at 6 am and begin the process all over again. During the school year, I live for my classes. Is it healthy? Probably not. But up until now, about three days until I am officially released from school as a senior and a week before I don my cap and gown, I haven't been able to write a blog post. So forgive me that, if you please. I thought I'd be able to get things I wanted done back up and running after APs but my classes had different ideas. I'm now swamped with a quiz and a project three days before I leave high school forever, and I'm definitely not amused.

But back to the original intention of this post, besides apologizing for my absence: What the heck have I actually been doing all this time?

Barring studying, homework, and sleeping, I've been living life. I have to tell you guys about Spain, because I think I've found my mother country. I mean, I'm an American, but the Spanish culture and lifestyle just feel so much more like me than how I live in Ohio. The people dress nicer, they are kinder, they are more open, and they're more worldly. The food is more to my taste, too. Fresher and cleaner and better on my body. I was there for a week, starting in the south of Spain, ferrying over to Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar, and then north to Sevilla, Grenada, Toledo, and then spending my final three days in Madrid.

Sevilla, also two of our teachers, Snas. Braun and Weiant.

Not only was it beautiful and wondrous, but I met so many amazing people and learned so much from the locals and from my guide, Ulrich, a German living in Barcelona up north. It taught me that I need to come back to this beautiful country and stay longer, and that The Artist is in need of some serious changes. It was hard to write about a country I'd never visited, but now that I've been there, it's really going to need some work. Fortunately, I have time for that, and I have a reference now! But seriously, I am still giddy about that trip, and it's been two months. My need to study abroad there is stronger than ever.

So, what have you guys been up to these last couple of months? I've missed you all, come talk to me! Tomorrow I'll try to actually post something writing-related, but until then, I'm going to try and update you all on my personal endeavors in small blocks on the Mondays of summer. (Spoiler alert: I'm going to college and I got my first real job.)

Hasta luego, mis dulces,
Brie

Free-for-All Friday: Spotlight on the World

This week has been one of turbulence. From the riots in Venezuela that have claimed many civilian lives and the riots in the Ukraine that have been the focus of American global news to my week of being injured, cripple-swagging my way to my classes and wading through school work that obviously pales in comparison. I was going to do something stupid and happy for Friday, but I think that something that everyone needs to address, no matter who they are or where they come from, is that the world turns in ways we don't always want to watch.

America is famous for it's global ignorance. We're the go-to butt of stupid jokes in the global consciousness. And why? Because from our media and our own apathy to finding sources, we just don't get the memo. I had friends today who didn't know about the riots, nor the flooding in England or even the droughts in California, which is (in case you forgot) IN our country. Both as a dystopian writer and as a citizen of the world, I think we've got to wake up. Not just in one country, but in all of them. We are a human family, we affect each other. And to sit in our own respective town, city, state, province, country, and flip the channel to something happier is just a symptom of some of the problems we have.

This is a reason why dystopian fiction is so popular right now: everyone's seeing that the world seems to be getting darker and darker. Riots, rebellions, threats of war, economic turbulence. It's not a great thing to see, and at the scale these things take place in it's easy to feel helpless. But what we can do isn't always necessarily attacking the problem like you think you should. We can't all be Tris Prior or Katniss Everdeen and head a revolution. That would be actually awful. But what can we do? Be more like Emma Stone. And as much as I would love to do that all the time, I'm talking about this instance of her:

I know it sounds ridiculous and stupidly simple, but being better to each other really helps. And not just the holding-the-door-for-strangers thing. Although that's nice. I mean we have to really think outside ourselves and our microcosm that we call life here. The United States did it in WWII - we sunk a bunch of money into Europe in an action known as The Marshall Plan that acted as an economic stimulus to keep European countries in the black and strengthen them against communism. Regardless of political analysis, countries helped each other. Countries who had been fighting against each other a few years before were helping. And we need to do so in a similar fashion today, whether it's showing humanitarian aid, supporting on social media, or simply talking about it with your friends, family, teachers, coworkers, or anyone who will listen. It's a great big world out there, and we can't afford to live on it like we're the only ones.

What makes us unlike Tris, Percy, Katniss, Clary, Harry, and other heroes/heroines that save the world? We don't have legions, nor opportune chances or prophecies or 'chosen one' status. We don't have a clear enemy, whether it's President Snow or Voldemort. There is no 'us' and 'them', no 'good' and 'bad'.

What DO we have? We have their traits. Bravery. Passion. Kindness. Intelligence. A sense of duty. Compassion. We all can recognize that something needs to change, and that we have to lend a hand if things are going to get any better. We have hope they can be better. We are just like these characters, which is why we're attached to them. Bits and pieces of you are in every character you read - the good ones, anyway.

I can't single-handedly bring peace to the Ukrainian riots, nor stop the killing in Venezuela. But together, we can all make a difference, big or small. Let's be better citizens of the world.

Live long and prosper,

Brie