IM HERE! IM ALMOST LATE... ITS 5:30 AM ON FRIDAY AND THIS IS SUPPOSED TO GO OUT IN... 3 hours? Something like that...

Lovely,

Ok. Lets talk Dystopian.

I got into writing and I was immediately hit in the face with DYSTOPIAN.

It was everywhere... everyone recommended it... to poor sweet almost-fantasy/science-fictionless-Gil.

Poor sweet- *record scratch* Thats ridiculous... Im not repeating that phrase again- anyway. Gil had experience with Dystopian that extended as far as: "Ive seen the Hunger Games movies and they were really horrible. Super violent and I walked away from those movies feeling kinda dark and wrong."

In short. I was told not to read much dystopian. It concerned the parents a little. They left the door open as they always do, "Wait a little while and we will let you read them and tell us what you thought."

Ok. Well. In that time frame Ive learned a lot, and spent a lot more time trying to grow in depth as a person. Id rather be weird geeky and abstract then put in a box, kinda shallow and run of the mill friendly person.

Nah. I wanna be a challenger and a straight shooter. I want to be significantly insignificant.

Anyway. My first taste of Dystopian was the Giver which I got behind 1 trillion per-cent. It was powerful, it was valuable and it was... Dystopian.

I paused getting into the water at that point because I was told the water deeper in would burn me, as I said earlier, concerns were raised so I avoided them.

But now... in the lieu of the big 16. Im reading all of it. Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner... Umm... I have yet to be really burned above what I have already fought with in my existence...

Divergent got a little spicy, but by the time I got to it I understood what it meant and why it was important for me to flag that and honestly it made very little impression on my brain. Whatever type of negativity that could have had has already been dealt with to a large degree, as much as I hate to admit that Ive had struggles there...

It had very little point. Maybe a dulled edge...

Anyway.

Maze Runner was... Umm... really pointless? I couldnt call it out for Cheescake other than its horrific writing style. Sorry Dashner... that hurt my poor writerly soul... Its still scarred...

AND FINALLY... The one the parents really put the taboo on with their concerns... I just read it last week... Right before the conference(So yes this timeline of posts is backwards but bear with me).

I found Hunger Games very well written... the best of the three really... As far as writing style and such... But it also fell flat.

Why did I just read that whole thing... for the plot? Like... you get the neat story-world element... You're literally here to see the world at its darkest... but there is no opportunity to combat it?

Legitimately... I was very disappointed what am I being taught by these books? And the answer was very little.

Of course... each of the stories has minor good behavior on the characters part... for example... Katniss' dedication to Prim and thus Rue... that was good... but like... did you really learn that that was a good thing? Or anything further than that? Not specifically.

Or for another example... lets say the theme is cautionary about being desensitized to violence as a society..

Isn't Hunger Games... kinda being its own desensitization? Especially since there isn't really an assurance of it being anti-violence... Not one that expresses itself clearly.

The lack of themes in these three books really put me at an impasse. They aren't super horrible per se. But they feel very wasteful. They give me a little entertainment... but as I'm turning pages I cant help but wonder why this is important? What really justifies me reading about how hopeless humanity could become?

Its good to have awareness and to understand that worst could come to worst... But I'm not wondering what its gonna look like... I'm more wondering... How is God gonna lead us through this? Where do I go for hope when the world goes through the fan?

That's kinda the expectation for Dystopian that The Giver handed me... But its also the thought process between why I really haven't enjoyed any of these dystopia's.

Anyway.

That's my thought process... Sometime down the line here... prolly after the Collective is reworked... Ill do more intelligent and official reviews of each of these and my other dystopian wanderings.... Cause I figure that folks like me will be interested in comprehending the genre. Its typically non-magic and the expectation is deeply thematic.

Yeah.

Beyond that. As I have alerted Substack. I have just read Anne of Green Gables... and I cannot wait to get into book two. I have some sadness and some happiness and a lot of sentimentality from reading that book and the last 100 pages was exactly the therapy I needed after an exhausting and stressful day(yesterday).

Im gonna post a review on Goodreads shortly after this.

Thanks for sticking around and hearing my Hunger Games Talk.

BYE AND WHILE YOURE AT IT... Dont despair at the bend in the road... my AOGG folks will get that... I hope.