FYS: Horrible Genre Thought

[jeriendhal]

I could probably adapt it into a semi-decent YA series. Just have to add more teen romance and horribly cruel and unjustified deaths.

Comments

[colliemommie.livejournal.com]

I nearly had salsa come out my nose at the idea of the Groupmind trying to protect humanity from teenaged angst. It fills me with a perverse joy.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Careful when you that. You might have a morph trying to do the Heimlich on you. ;p

And yeah, the Groupmind is already dangerously close to becoming the Happiness Patrol already. Just one little push could tip it over...

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

I just had three separate conversations in the last week which involved the Happiness Patrol. That's far too many in a such a short period of time.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

That's okay, We'll take care of you....

[zarpaulus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and Caroline could be the whiny teenage protagonist.

I had so much more sympathy for Mimsey.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Gets run over by a truck saving Caroline's sorry tail and gets to clean the dishes as a reward. Yeah, Sentient Mimsey is probably going to have Issues with Caroline.

[zarpaulus.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could do a deconstruction of the genre.

Start out looking like a standard YA dystopia, then in the last scene have the protagonists brought to a reeducation camp, see that all their thought-dead friends are there enjoying themselves, and realize they were wrong.

[lilfluff.livejournal.com]

Well, YA protagonists are supposed to lose at least one parent to justify the angst, right?

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

YA protagonists and Disney princesses. The protagonists could easily lose parents either during the Groupmind takeover, or beforehand to the sort of accidents that the Groupmind took over to prevent. Either way, they could blame the Groupmind for either being there or not being there, when their parents died.

However, if you decide to make the morphs sparkle in the sunlight, I will hunt you down and kill you.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Morphs. Don't. Sparkle.[1] Of course they get the Creepy Stalker Boyfriend part of Twilight down pat.

"Hey! Khan isn't creepy at all!"

Shut up, Anna....

[1] No, seriously, it could be a safety hazard if they blind their human at the exact wrong moment.

[lilfluff.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the Groupmind thinks of that post-apocalyptic webcomic in which a group of vampires and werewolves have joined forces to protect the last of the humans from the zombie hordes. "Mmm, humans, to delicious to let the zombies kill them off."

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

I was going to argue, thinking about the "classic YA" I grew up reading ... then I remembered Lackey's Arrows of the Queen series, with plenty of horror and torture... and the only series of Valdamer books to be shelved in YA.
(Not that I don't think FYS would actually make great YA, I do, just not sure it needs romance AND horribly cruel bits)

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Welllllll..... It's hard to do Horribly Cruel with the Groupmind, except in the psychological sense. Maybe there's an island in the middle of one of the Ring oceans where all the Troubled Teens get sent in a sort of The Prisoner Lite setting, and they have to figure things out.

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

That could be fun! I'd definitely read that.

[lilfluff.livejournal.com]

Hmm, so Lord of the Flies, but short circuited by the presence of Very Concerned Camp Counselors who create completely different problems.

"Can't sleep, my teddy bear is staring at me. Can't sleep, my teddy bear is staring at me. Can't sleep, my teddy bear is staring at me. Can't sleep--"

"Would you like some warm milk, Danny?"

"No."

"I could sing a lulli--"

"NO!"

[seawasp]

The YA books *I* read were neither angsty nor filled with cruel and unjustified death.

The problem is that if you wanted it to be a YA series like, say, Hunger Games, you'd also need some chance for people to BEAT the morphs, which is sorta opposite the point of the FYS universe, unless you add in The Doctor or some similar game-changer.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

A good point. The problem is that the Groupmind is so determinedly benevolent that a "victory" would be the kids pointing out Its mistakes so it can do better next time, and the overall situation never really changing. Which comes perilously close to Author Me waving my cane at Those Darned Kids Who Never Listen to Their Elders.

The ultimate victory of humanity over the Groupmind, in my current head canon, is likely going to revolve around the morphs en masse embracing their individuality and telling the Groupmind to get stuffed, to leave humanity to its own devices or in a more even partnership.

[seawasp]

Actually... if you can carry it off, having the teens somehow TRIGGER that individuality and resolve the FYS issues with a climactic but NON VIOLENT confrontation would be pretty damn awesome, and you could still have conflict of physical and nonphysical sorts throughout the preceding books.

The Groupmind really IS benevolent, and if you really, REALLY could convince it that its overprotective approach IS in fact hurting humanity more than it is helping it, I can't imagine the Groupmind NOT backing off; they have to be constantly weighing "damage that's acceptable" versus "damage that isn't acceptable" already. And that would be a resolution of this kind of problem that I don't recall seeing, exactly.

[seawasp]

I should note that when I was typing the above, I mistyped "Groupmind" as "Gropumind" which led me to think about the Hentai version you could create called the Gropemind.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

That's Anna's department...

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

It'd certainly be a nice change of pace from the usual "Blow up the computer's core/Insert a deadly virus" resolution.

Hmm, have an idea thingie involving amnesiac teens, a deserted island, and the Groupmind conducting Experiments which will in no way shape or form resemble either Lost or Lord of the Flies. Must see if I can hang a plot onto it...