trujellyfish
replied to your post “I cannot help but notice people only started to mock dystopian novels…”
i think its mostly just the ya dystopian novels bc theyre all like the same and there isnt much character depth?? idk thats more what ive seen
How many female-led YA dystopian novels/franchises really are there, though? There’s The Hunger Games (the big hitter), Allegiant, Uglies (yet to become a movie), Mortal Instruments (?) and…that’s kind of it as far as the really well-known ones go.
But dystopian stories with a man in the lead total hundreds. And a lot of them are completely ridiculous cliche-fests with a straight, white, able-bodied Chosen One/Only Sane Man as the lead. You know the type. Women fawn over him (there may even be a love triangle involved), his enemies grow to fear him, he ultimately succeeds in his overthrow of the authorities. Hell, just in the last couple of years tons of these male-centric dystopian movies were released: count ‘em! And well, when you get really down to it, well…a lot of them are the same and they don’t have much character depth.
But a handful of female variations, some of which are sub-par, and boom! Mockery, and hand-wringing from a particular genre of movie critic, and lots of discussion about do we really need Tris if we have Katniss and endless jokes along the lines of “Hi my name is [something inane] and I have to overthrow this evil government but I can’t because A BOY LIKES ME!” as if you couldn’t reverse the genders of that and essentially get the plot of 1984. This isn’t to say the new female-dominated dystopia trend doesn’t have problems, it does (it’s overwhelmingly white and straight just like its male counterpart) but it’s very obvious that the world doesn’t much like female Chosen Ones.