Wolf Pack pilot

[olivermoss]

Wolf Pack, the thing that is definitely not Teen Wolf even though it's from the same studio and has super similar looking promos and other stuff. And it's hard to even find other's reactions on tumblr because almost everything tagged World Pack is Teen Wolf stuff.

This is hilarious, they actually had to put out a #NotASpinoff video to clarify. In the video one of the actors says it's nothing like Teen Wolf ...and they think Teen Wolf fans will love that.

Also, Wolf Pack has Sarah Michelle Geller and I am seeing people upset on twitter because they thought she was going to be in the Teen Wolf movie because they thought the Wolf Pack promo stuff was promo for Teen Wolf. I feel so valid. What a weird mess.



Wow I need to be hit with a 'don't take TV so seriously' bat. But... that is not how forest fires or evacs work. Any bus driver would 100% have been taking actions to get the kids out, not trying to keep them on the bus *that* close to an active wildfire. What a hot mess.

The part I found hardest to make it through is that in this opening segment the MC is arguing with his shrink on a phone call... and rather than trying to do so on the down low he's doing the 'hold the phone and project in it's direction' thing. Just... no. No. No teen would do that and if they did the kids around him would be reacting.

9 minutes in and I have hit 'this is not how things work, this is not how any of this works' so many times. They have forest fire on both sides and just didn't...

I think this is part of why I bounced so hard off of Teen Wolf. I can deal with departures from reality, but this is just a complete failure to ground anything in reality. And there is no reason for some of the wonkiness. They could have had the same outcome while being grounded.

After the title sequence there is a lot more stuff that is super unrealistic, but also production restraints are a thing. There is a lot where I could be 'that isn't how things work', but it's either the show not being able to actually burn down a town for a shot or like typical/acceptable hand waving to keep the plot going.

Most of the rest of the episode, when things are somewhat unrealistic it's for a reason. The opener before the title sequence was just a complete mess. I will keep watching it. It has werewolves and one of the werewolves appears to be a gay werewolf. A lot of genre shows have bad starts. And also I need to keep in mind that while I want to see it for some elements, I am not the target demographic.

Comments

[shipperslist]

Oh, I know the feeling of "I know I'm watching a thing of people phasing through walls so this isn't exactly reality BUT--"

I've had so much fun reading the reaction posts of this mess.

[olivermoss]

Departures from reality should have a purpose, not just have a feeling of 'eh, who cares?'

[shipperslist]

Yes. And also, they should make sense in universe. "Stupid" isn't generally a very effective plot device...

[mistressofmuses]

I am willing to deal with a fair amount of suspension of disbelief in order to facilitate plot and production restrictions. Listening to a group of people making good choices and having good ordinary conversations for an hour would be boring TV in most cases. BUT. I still get *really* annoyed by things that lack realistic grounding for no good reason.

And ha, I have to often remind myself that I am not the target audience for certain things. I do my best to understand what it does well or why it makes the choices it makes in context of who it really is made for... but sometimes there's only so far that'll take me.

I hope the show finds some stronger legs and continues improving as it goes on!

[olivermoss]

I am not the target audience, but I feel like the target audience would have even more of a problem with those first 9 minutes than I did. Unless they are just too used to shitty TV to care? I've read some terrible stuff just for a few bits of Things I Like.

Hopefully, it does get better. It looks like season 1 is just 8 episodes? That's pretty odd.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah... there's the potential that the target audience just wouldn't notice it as bad writing so much. (I know that I failed to notice a LOT of pretty lousy writing choices when I was a teen, lol.) But at the same time... *some* bad choices are likely more ignore-able at that age, like unrealistic evacuation procedures, but ones like a teen feeling okay having a phone conversation while easily overheard? That would likely feel more like a bad "out of touch" choice. Though I suppose it's all relatively forgiveable if it's good otherwise. (Because same. If something hits the right buttons for me at some point, I'll suffer through crappy parts to get there.)

I do hope it gets better. I don't love how many shows are going for these super short seasons as default! I can see that magnifying the "can't ever find its legs" problems that we've talked about with a lot of spec fic season ones.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, that's a good point. Teen shows are seen as so disposable that they may not even know what good writing looks like. They might be so used to the tropes and hand waving that they don't even realize shows can be better without being boring grey shows for olds.

And there is a lot to be said for tv that just has diversity, certain topics, vibes, boys kissing, etc even if it's written dumb

Honestly, as upset as I am at there being so much less scripted TV I gotta say there is a lot of bad TV out there. There is also a lot of just not-for-me TV out there, but also a lot of it is just not well written despite all the budgets and everything. Something about how a lot of TV is produced is just not going great.

[mistressofmuses]

I feel like that's unfortunately the case. And I'm not saying that to say that teens are bad judges of things or have bad taste! But like you said, it's largely considered a relatively disposable genre, intended to be produced quickly and cheaply to stay on-trend. (Or such is my impression, haha.)

But it's true: things that hit the right id buttons can be appealing regardless of objective quality, and I have had a grand time with fairly shitty movies or shows just because they gave me something else I was looking for.
There's that graph that measures "enjoyment" and "quality" on the x and y axes - like, there's objectively high-quality stuff you love, stuff that objectively isn't good but that you love anyway, the stuff you recognize is probably "good" but that you don't personally like, and stuff you think is shitty and that you hate.

Unfortunately it does seem like there are a LOT of misses when it comes to TV production, though. I think a lot of it comes down to studios only wanting to go for "the sure thing", but also being unwilling to commit any real resources to much of ANYTHING (see... Rings of Power apparently having a great costume designer, but shit costumes, presumably because "eh, painted mail is good enough and so much cheaper" despite the project being fuckoff obscenely expensive.)
Writing is mediocre, or at least inconsistent, and so are plot and character arcs (or characterization altogether) because no one seems to be trying to ensure the episodes flow together in a cohesive way if they have different writers and directors for each episode.
Things have to be set up to lead into more seasons... but often won't get them, so there's no opportunity to tell a complete story... and also no opportunity to set things up for a future payoff, because that payoff is likely to never come.
I could probably whinge about that for a long while, but yeah... as a whole I hear a lot more discouraging things about shows than I do encouraging ones.

[olivermoss]

I was reading a fic the other day that was not my id, but I realized it was way better written than most of what I'd read in a long time. (It was this always-a-cis-girl!Steve Steddie fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44567719/chapters/112106113 ) Reading better writing helps my writing. The actual structure of the imagery was great. Some of the lines made me feel like an absolute hack.

Yeah, the axis of those two things are tricky because a lot of crap that has caters to ids, even if it doesn't cater well, serves a good purpose and can go very well. Sadly, liking niche things means smaller audience, fewer writers and more putting up with whatever just because it at least exists. There are a lot of shows I watched just because there were almost no genre shows at all.

I saw a review of Wolf Pack that was all 'they were so concerned with being mental health is important! that they failed to ground in the reality of what was going on'. On one hand yeah, but also if a teen really wants the validation of heavily didactic messages about mental health that's going to work for them. I've definitely liked some heavy handed stuff because at the time I needed just anything with that POV.

Yeah, in general how a lot of shows are being produced is just broken. Creators will always be blind to some flaws in their own work but so much of what gets put out today is like 'how did you not see the problem here?'

[mistressofmuses]

I love when I find a way a certain author describes something, either to set a scene, or to give a sense of how an emotion is conveyed, particularly if they manage to be subtle about it yet give me a very clear picture... those are things I can struggle with, so when I find a piece of writing that does those things well, I definitely try to pay attention to *how* it does it so effectively.

That's a good point - the more niche your taste, the more likely you're going to put up with mediocre works because it's better than nothing. (And that isn't the worst! I'm glad that there's an audience for things that aren't the best of the best! I also like that people won't always agree on what is the best of the best, because if they did, the creative landscape would be boring as shit!)

I know that sometimes as a teen, I *did* want those heavy-handed messages. Like... as a closeted queer teen in the early 00s, I did not have an abundance of options for queer content. (Some existed; I struggled to find it.) The first time I ever encountered someone giving a passionate, supportive "love is love! How can anyone say it's wrong for you to love each other?" speech was in a slash fic, the dialogue given by a side character lamenting the main couple's reluctance to admit their feelings.
Now I'd likely roll my eyes at the "love is love" phrase coming directly in serious dialogue, because it's pretty cliche, and definitely heavy-handed. (It's a decent, pithy slogan that makes a fine bumper sticker or button, but not so much a heartfelt dialogue option.) But at the time? I was ALL IN on "OMG, they said that! It's so true! You get me! How CAN anyone say it's wrong?"
And a kid who needs to hear about the importance of taking care of mental health, then something making that absolutely explicit, rather than keeping it to subtle subtext or making it a more background element, may be exactly what they're looking for.

It sucks that we went from "new golden age" of streaming shows to... what we've got now. I hate that it feels like I'm a broken record blaming it on capitalism, but... capitalism does a terrible job of making good art.
Gutting costuming/props/set departments because those are union jobs, and we can just CG in some crap later is cheaper... but almost always makes for a worse-looking (and sometimes worse-acted, as the actors have less to work with/against) product.
Cutting scripted shows entirely because "house-hunting reality show #5785" and "rich white people complain about things over brunch show #3297" are SO much cheaper.
Because we're making so few scripted shows, they must be Sure Things, which means less creative risk, and more things that look and feel the same as what was popular before. Then when audiences complain that they seem bland and samey, we can cancel the series and say "see, no one likes scripted shows anymore!"

But also... seriously, there are times where it feels like the issues that are keeping a mediocre show from being a fairly good show are OBVIOUS. And I wonder if they really just didn't run it by *anyone* before release, or if there was some higher-up who really liked whatever the problem thing was and refused to let it be changed.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, subtle but evocative is so good. I really need to focus on that in my editing a lot more.

I'd probably be a happier reader if I wasn't also trying to write, but so few things so at a good place on the axis of well written and also has the vibes. And there are still vibes I only find in fanfiction, partially because a lot of other media is trying for a larger audience. fanfic is very both for an by specific communities, it's not trying to explain things to outsiders.

But also fanfic has a lot of strengths like being less formulaic and more experimental.

Channels wanting to be netflix rather than license to netflix caused a shattering of potential audiences and tanked budgets. Things are just a mess right now.

[mistressofmuses]

I think that focusing on that sort of thing would be good for me in editing passes, too. I feel like it's a fine line between trying to make sure that details aren't missed (especially with longer fic, where if you're posting chapter-by-chapter, it could be a very long time since your audience read the earlier parts)... and tipping over into the "not trusting your reader" territory, or overstating things that are better left as subtle things.

Lol, I've heard that as a sentiment before, and I know exactly what you mean. It's a bit of a shame because I do LOVE reading... except I often do have a hard time reading as a reader only. I catch myself analyzing word choice and dialogue flow, or the pacing of a scene. That in and of itself isn't *not* enjoyable in its way, but paying that much attention to the craft elements make it harder to really get lost in the story.

I've seen a certain style of story described as "AO3 House Style", which refers to that sort of vibe and style that is hard to find outside of fic. (Some self-pub stuff, and especially m/m stuff, probably has that style to it these days, but finding the good self-pub stuff is hard, too.)

There is SO much current "wisdom" in terms of publishing that I really dislike, and I enjoy fanfic in part because it DOESN'T have to follow those conventions. Things like "every scene must advance the plot"... not just "every scene should serve the story", but "must advance the plot." So you can't ever have breathing room with the characters, or interactions that are just fun rather than plot-critical.

But that is exactly the issue and frustration - everyone wanted their OWN streaming service and their OWN steady subscribers... and it fractured the available media into so many little slivers that no one service has even close to "everything." So your audience is super fractured as well, because I know very few people interested in paying for 10+ separate subscriptions just to watch one or two things on each of them. And every service seems stuck between sadface and surprised pikachu that they don't do the sorts of numbers that Netflix did in its heyday, and they blame the shows for it. It's just... deeply a mess.

[olivermoss]

I watch some youtube videos by authors meant for people who want to become professional writers and it's all about knowing trends, conforming to very tight, specific genres, etc. It's depressing.

There are some weird conventions that fanfic writers fall into, mostly out of weird wank. (using epithets sparingly is a very good way to avoid fatigue from re-using words and confusing pronoun attribution, this is who pro writers do this) But god the world would be a bleak place without fanfic and other origfic writers who can be freer with form and mixing styles and even going for very un-mixed styles like hard sci fi or old school fantasy or even fairy tale re-tellings. There is a lot of content people want that these systems just can't cater to. Add in niche stuff like LGBT+ interests and yeah.

I really don't like the 'current wisdom' of publishing and while I (perhaps stupidly) do still intend to write novels and shop them, I don't intend to conform to that stuff. Writing that would be miserable. Having a good job and being free to write what I want on the side is infinitely preferable to full time trend chasing and catering to the mainstream. ... though sometimes I wish my interests / tastes / demographic wasn't quite as niche as it is. I wish I was more at a happy medium, but there's no fix for it.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? Publishing is SO very much about chasing trends. And I get it - I get that it's a business, and trying to hit on something popular is the best way to succeed. But UGH. It does feel utterly soulless. I hate the feeling of all the edges of a work being filed down.

And oh yes, there's weird fanfic stuff too, and the whole anti thing is a plague. There's also some serious overcorrecting for perceived issues (like the epithet thing!) But still - people who are able and willing to just... write what they want to write, without worrying about how well it fits into genre restrictions is *chef's kiss*. I love seeing experimental styles that I know would NEVER get mainstream publishing. I love things that are clearly designed for a writer's id, even when it doesn't cross over with my own.

I think that it's worthwhile to shop for publishing. Sometimes places are willing to take chances on works that don't fall into those narrow categories - it's just frustrating how often that IS all they focus on.

I'm definitely with you on the job part - doing writing as a side gig while supported by a regular job is much better than having to desperately try to play the numbers game with writing as a full-time thing.

Bleh, same there, too. I like a fair amount of stuff that makes it into the mainstream, but almost never the stuff that gets MEGA popular. Having relatively niche taste is a bummer at times, because I'd have so much more available if my tastes were a little different! (Also rough when it comes down to hard to quantify factors - that's part of what can make reccs so hard.)

[olivermoss]

Yeah, someone needs to start the trends to chase and there is always a market for a breath of fresh air, even if that market is small. It's just weird to see so many who 'made it' and became a full time author can't write what they want and their output is very directed. Someone I know who writes for a living had to switch from m/m to f/m to sell books which she doesn't enjoy. Yeah, I couldn't write f/m romance... well maybe I could but it would be so divorced from what I like or want that it would be like painting by numbers and completely fundamentally different from what I currently consider writing.

I feel like the writers I grew up with weren't so restricted... was this because I just didn't see it? Or where some of them just so established they could do what they wanted?

[mistressofmuses]

Right? The things that *become* the trends being chased are often new and different, and that's why people get so into them. And honestly... writing something you love for a niche market that loves it too sounds way better than trying to clone something you don't care about in the hopes of drawing a wider audience. Courting the *widest* audience makes for a lot of bland art. Not that mainstream taste is necessarily terrible! I'm not trying to be the hipster "if it's popular it's bad" asshole... it's just that trying to appeal to everyone without pushing anyone away turns things into products more than art.
The idea of people changing *what they write* because something else sells better, and that's what they have to do to make a living strikes me as so sad. I mean, do what you've got to do to make a living! But I'd rather write queer genre fiction than crowd-pleasing het romance, even if the het romance has the waaaay bigger audience.
Maybe I *could* do that, but yeah, that's like the write-to-spec type jobs... very paint-by-numbers rather than personal creativity.

That's a good question. I wonder if it's something that I'd just missed, or because it's the ones who didn't fall into that sort of standardized production that had staying power? Though I think publishing as a whole has definitely changed. It's been consolidated down to fewer publishers who are much more interested in "sure things." It's always been a business, but it seems more cutthroat now... That may not be true, but it at least appears that way.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I think changing stuff somewhat to be marketable is not necessarily bad, or doing a split where half of your projects are to build an audience and half are projects you want to do. There are ways to do it. I hear a lot of creators talking about the 'one for you, then one for me' approach to making things. Just as long as you are not comprising values or meaning.

I think writing a project or two to spec could be an interesting challenge, I just couldn't write a het romance to spec without being miserable and hating it. But again, 'to spec' is so different from what I want to do.

I feel like it's YA specifically that is narrow and trend chasing, but YA has eaten and blended with some of the larger fantasy market.

I'd probably have more readers if I could figure out a short Leverage or Stranger Things fic that is 'what fandom wants'.

[mistressofmuses]

No, it's certainly not a bad thing to want to please your audience... but I think there is a difference (or at least one that I would feel) between "give the people what they want (that suits the interests I have and that they have in this genre)" and "make something that is generic enough to potentially please anyone." It DOES come down to whether it feels like it's compromising in a bad way.

The "one for you, one for me" isn't a bad strategy, either.

And agreed - writing to spec could be a fun challenge. (And I know that it was a bread-and-butter type gig for a fair number of people who COULD churn those out for those monthly or weekly Harlequin clubs or whatnot, where the formula is the entirety of the draw.) I don't know that it's something I'd be good at... I struggle to keep to my OWN outlines, lol.
Paradoxically, maybe it would be easier to do with something you don't really care about - like het romance, hahaha.

YA does seem to be one of the worst culprits, though like you said, there's a LOT of stuff that really *isn't* YA that gets absorbed into it for marketing purposes. I realize that it's largely because YA is a successful category, and has done a lot to keep traditional publishing alive... but it also turned into one of the worst examples of soul-sucking churn.

*sigh*, I wish sometimes that I could write to trends, ha. It would be the best way to build an audience and attention, to write the crowd-pleasers for a big ship in a big fandom. Alas, that's never where my interest falls!

[olivermoss]

Working within a tight format can be interesting. Having those restrictions, from writing romance or writing a 3 act 45 minute tv script, can produce great stuff. If I was into romance I'd probably vibe with the typical format and want to play in it. Poetry and lots of various forms of writing work due to having restrictions.

I feel like when I was trying to get back into writing I wanted a set format to follow as a way to train up some skills and be productive... instead I fell down a multi-year rabbit hole of trying to figure out why the hero's journey and what people claim is a typical fantasy plot rubbed me the wrong way.

Yeah, YA is just strange. I've tried to get into it, but it's just not for me. It's it's own thing, even if it has genre flavor a lot. I'd like to read all this fantasy and paranormal stuff, but it's just not for me.

[mistressofmuses]

Restrictions like that can definitely help produce good stuff! But yeah, some of the strongest formulae are in romance. And I *like* romance... as a secondary genre. Not so much as the sole plot in most cases.

I feel like I did some of the same stuff trying to dig into "writeblr" advice blogs and things. There's certainly plenty of well-intentioned advice, and some of it is genuinely good... and a lot of it is really terrible, lol.

I wish YA had been more of a thing (it was beginning to be a thing, but not the juggernaut of a category it is now) when I actually *was* a YA. I've read YA that I enjoyed, but a lot of it falls short of what I'm looking for. Mostly, I think I just really am not the target audience, and maybe back when I was, it would have been more to my liking.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, a lot of the TV writing I love and writers I enjoy are dealing with unforgiving structure and ongoing interactions with studios and producers. Strong format doesn't mean bad, but most of the strong formats for professional write just do not vibe with me.

What I've seen of YA, I am not sure if that would have been good for me... but them I was reading Mercedes Lackey and IDK is better or worse. Also the hand-me-down Xanth books.... yerg

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah. Strong format can be positive, neutral, or negative imo... but that doesn't mean I *like* a lot of them.
(Which is a bit of a bummer sometimes - I spent a lot of time looking for some sort of "foolproof" outline template that would work to help slot things into place before a first draft. While I've found some that help some stories, a lot of them really don't suit the stories I want to tell, and wind up requiring me to create filler to space the important beats out the way the outline calls for... and that's largely the opposite of what I'm trying to do! I realize that the real answer is "there is no easy foolproof thing that works for every story" but... *whine* I want there to be!)

Lol, my young reading life was a LOT of Lackey. Like... so much. And random other high fantasy nabbed from my mom's shelf. There are a few things I loved when I was younger - The Darkangel Trilogy sticks out to me - that have been retroactively slotted into YA when republished, but that wasn't a category when they were written, so they really don't fit the expected vibe of YA now. Other stuff, like Tamora Pierce's work, does suit YA a bit more, and has also gotten shuffled to that section, but still lacked a lot of the current structure and vibe.
A few of the YA titles I've read more recently are ones that I feel like I could have really loved when I was younger - Strange Grace is one I read last year - but as an adult I run out of patience for some of the younger protagonists, and want more depth to a lot of the characters and interactions. And that stronger format leads to a certain amount of predictability that I don't always enjoy. (And I don't even hate certain types of predictability! Just... some of them.)

In that sense... you're right, I don't know if it really would have been better for me to have been able to read YA as my major foray into longer lit, particularly if it had "replaced" the things I did read. I don't want to be an ass about YA, but because it IS a genre that's currently so heavily molded into a certain format to suit what publishers think will sell, there's a lot of samey feeling to a lot of what I have read. The things I enjoyed more break away from some of those conventions more strongly.

I mean, I definitely read a lot of fantasy that turned out to be forgettable and samey-bland, too. But I think that NOT being confined to the current trends of YA gave me a wider range of stories when I was younger, and that probably IS a good thing.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, YA has both strong format and also very tight trend chasing... but also it's not my genre. I tried it here and there. I read some reccs from lists purporting to prove that any genre fan would love it if they gave it a chance.

I looked for a format, a unifying pattern, to some of the stuff I liked to just help guide me. I was hoping for something I could copy at least sometimes, but really couldn't find anything and when I asked for help or tried to look up information everything I read was just leading me in the wrong direction. Learning to write is hard and the level of discourse about how to write doesn't help.

I don't know who I'd be if I hadn't imprinted Lackey so hard, but at least some of the impact was good even if... yeah, it probably all wasn't. It's impossible to untangle now. I know I read other stuff, but nothing that stuck with me as much.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, and that's fair, too. I've found a few YA books that were enjoyable to me... but far more that were kind of average at best, even when certain elements should have been to my liking. The ones I do enjoy break farther out of the "typical format"... but often to the degree that I feel like they probably shouldn't have been bundled into YA in the first place.
I try to judge things on their own merits, rather than comparing them to something different that I wish they were instead... and it often does turn out that I am just not the target audience, and they just aren't for me.

Ugh, writing craft stuff can be so frustrating. I found a LOT of bad advice on writeblr, often presented with such self-assurance that I second-guessed EVERYTHING I enjoyed about writing for a while. Mostly it seems to come down to "take what works for you and leave the rest behind", and while I can appreciate that... it doesn't really put me in a much different position than I started in, haha. I *want* a simple outline template that I can slot things into, but it turns out that an outline that works for one story won't necessarily work for another. That shouldn't be surprising, but.

Same. I really do wonder how different I'd be/my writing would be/my ideas about a lot of genre storytelling would be had I not been so strongly influenced by and absorbed in Lackey's work when I was younger. I really don't think it was all bad by any stretch, and my love for a lot of those books remains very genuine, even as time has revealed a lot of flaws. I'm sure that any kind of strong attachment to something at that age is going to come with positives and negatives later on... I'm certain I could have done way worse, but my relationship with her work *now* is definitely complicated, ha.

[olivermoss]

I always want to try thing, so I tried. It's possible those lists actually gave me a terrible impression of YA.

I guess Shadow and Bone is possibly YA though? I saw it referenced that way somewhere, but looking things up about the book gives mixes information. Any fantasy with younger protags is going to be at least somewhat marketed to the massive YA audience. Yeah, the lines are blurry now.

I need to spend more time writing about what does and doesn't work for me in writing. Rambling helps me figure things out. And, as always, I need to find more writing that I actually like! It helps a lot... I just need to find it...

[mistressofmuses]

As we've discussed before... rec lists are often super hit or miss, haha. And ugh, I've seen a few "this book is SO amazing!" recs that left me utterly cold. Again, it's great that not everyone has the same taste! But it sucks when you can't find anyone reccing stuff that IS to your taste!

I think most of Leigh Bardugo's stuff gets lumped in with YA. Shadow and Bone is, and I think the Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom duology was marketed that way, too. I haven't read Shadow and Bone yet - though I should! - but Six of Crows is one that to me doesn't feel very YAish outside of having younger protags.
But I recall that when Ninth House came out (same author, also on my TBR list), it was hailed as her "first adult novel".

I know there's been a lot of talk from authors who have been frustrated by their work being marketed as YA when it wasn't intended to be. (Seems to happen a lot to female authors and especially to non-white authors, from what I've seen of the complaints.) I think the lines have definitely gotten blurry, especially if publishers think that's the hottest-selling category for genre fiction (which I think it has been for a couple years.) Then again, is it actually that YA is what sells best, or is it that companies try to sell everything as YA?
There's also "New Adult" which was supposed to be YA's slightly sexier and more mature older cousin, but that seemed to never catch on outside of a seemingly mostly-crappy romance subset.

Rambling can be very helpful, haha. And also same - finding good examples of things I like is often one of the best things to help me figure out what sort of thing I want to do! Finding it really is the trickier part.

[olivermoss]

I haven't read the Grishaverse stuff yet. Soon, though! Based on the show I don't see them as very YA, but it's possible my definition is not great. Basically to me YA means fiction this is very morally... uncomplicated. It's popularity almost seemed a backlash against flawed protags, moral greyness, dark elements, etc. It's all very didactic and morally straightforward and black and white. I know at least some of the early YA that was involved in the rise of YA was like that.

But idk what the line between YA and genre with teen characters is. I'm not into YA enough to know, but I am pretty sure that at least used to be it. I am sure it's not reading level because a lot of fantasy authors try to write to diverse reading levels. Neil Gaiman is very outspoken on the idea that not writing for a broad an audience of reading levels is terrible. He tries to make sure his reading level is not about 6th grade or something, but that does NOT make A Game Of You YA ... hoo boy (I think that's the Sandman Arc with the diner scene?)

[mistressofmuses]

I should read the actual main trilogy rather than just the spinoff, haha.

But yeah, to me that does wind up being part of the central vibe of a lot of YA. There's a pretty strong sense of good and bad, and there's little overlap or complexity. Though weirdly, it seems to want to superficially "explore" that sort of moral greyness... but it always remains really shallow, and never really does more than dip a toe in "but bad boy hot?"
Now that you mention it, it really might be the lack of that trait that has made certain nominally YA titles feel significantly less YA.

It's true. I think that's part of the frustration with the category - ANY genre stories about young characters seriously struggle to be considered anything else. And plenty of genre stories about adults still get tossed into YA for various reasons.

Oh yeah, the diner scene. I think that one is "24 Hours", which was collected in Preludes and Nocturnes, but point stands. NOT YA! NOT YA AT ALL!
I tend to be of the same opinion - I enjoy complex use of language, but complex and evocative does NOT have to mean inscrutable. Writers who seem focused primarily on trying to make their writing difficult to parse do not impress me, lol. It's great for writing to be clear and easy to understand... but that absolutely does not mean simplicity of ideas.

It's also kinda shitty that so many people seem to think that YA SHOULD exclusively be the home of those sorts of simplistic moral stories. No complicated motives or characterization or the like... I feel like that HAS taken over the genre in a lot of ways, but... I don't know, it comes across as trying to dumb it down for the kiddies, when an awful lot of younger people (at least me when I was younger/most of the friends I had at the time) hate when it feels like they're being talked down to.