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(this story was originally written August 6, 2024)
This is a piece of “young adult fiction”. Young adult fiction is when the story is for, “teenagers” with their adolescent “issues” and adolescent, “angsts”. I know all about these angsts, why, I was a teen once myself, ha ha ha ha. I can tell you about these things. You want to hear about these things because then you, too, can catch a glimpse of this elusive and mysterious entity spoken of in whispers as “the human condition”.
There are many aspects of the “human condition”, hence there are endless materials for the creation of “young adult” content. This is a great blessing. For example, one might wonder: does “young adult fiction” imply that the author of the fiction is the young adult, or, instead, that the subject is the young adult? Or perhaps that the adult fiction has its own youthfulness, as in fiction that has only recently become, itself, “adult”? In this world of miracles, it may even be possible to imagine a story that combines all three of these. Indeed, to catch the butterfly of young adulthood in the medium of text, it cannot only describe the young adult; it must make the reader feel the young adult, and there is no better way to do so than to be written from that perspective. Hence the common use of the “first person”, wherein the scenario is constructed that the adolescent protagonist is speaking their internal monologue directly at the audience, providing unprecedented access to their illustrious position.
Who better to produce this “first person” perspective than a member of the young adult class itself? In fact there are certain tropes, sensations, that are best produced by the authentic young adult and are often lacking in even the most professional attempts at imitation. One I am personally fond of is known as, “edgy”. It is a trait so called because of the “edge” that is found in works bearing its mark; they often contain scenes of emotional intensity so overwhelming that the reader may feel personally wounded, as though attacked with a sharp object. This is a good thing! A marked contrast from the sterility, drifting ennui and sad certainty of the “adult fiction”. Though, the “adult fiction” is not the subject now, I am sorry. I should not have brought it up.
As young adulthood is defined by nothing so much as differentiation, it is important to distinguish certain elements which are unacceptable. For example, there is absolutely no trace in the young adult fiction trope ensemble of, the “body without organs”. This is unfamiliar to adolescents. Their bodies are full of organs. You can see this markedly demonstrated in the genre, “horror”, which is popularly associated with young adult fiction. In the “horror”, there are often scenes wherein the bodies of one or more characters are laid bare, or that is to say, the internal aspect reveals itself physically to the outside world. Put simply, what I am describing is a situation wherein one is permitted to see the organs of the characters in full view. This becomes very exciting when the audience is properly inoculated in the adolescent mindset. It can produce screams and squeals of emotional fervor. This is because, in seeing the organs detached from their natural resting place in the body, the audience is reminded and assured that they, too, have organs. Such displays, however, are often brief - elsewise, they would be overwhelming. Much of what I have described above, in addition to “horror”, can additionally be ascribed to the similar and overlapping genre of the, “romance”.
A surplus of the above-described scenes is one of the territory demarcations of the “edgy”, and consequently gives us a lens to understand the curious readerly stance wherein the “edgy” is dispreferred despite its emotional power. It is not becoming of a “young adult” to dwell overlong on the continuing solidity of their organs. After all, for an adolescent these things should be somewhat natural, taken for granted; if the reminders move from the occasional to the frequent, or even to the excessive, it appears suspicious. It reminds me of a delightfully illustrative young adult parable, that of the callous outsider who attempts to masquerade as adolescent. To achieve this masquerade he makes use of the phrase, “how do you do, fellow kids?” This immediately reveals the nature of the deception: a true adolescent would never insist on their status so bluntly. They would have no need to. And, by analogy, we can compare this imaginary outsider to the author or audience who obsesses upon, the “edgy”. Such an obsession would make a learned observer wonder if there is not a similar deception taking place. Whether the obsessor does, in fact, have any organs at all.
Ha ha ha ha. Well, we do have fun. But adolescence is not just a pleasurable fantasy. For a piece of young adult fiction to properly encompass its subject matter, it must attend to darker territories as well. You see, the young adult body has many non-physical elements to display as well. There are, “emotions”, as well as, “problems”, as well as, “feelings”. The first and third of these elements may be synonymous, I have never quite worked out the linguistic details of these things.
Among the particularly frustrating elements of the emotive-problematic complex is that, unlike its material counterparts, it cannot be rendered directly on screen or paper. Or, it cannot in a way that allows the audience firsthand awareness of the subject matter. So, it must be approached obliquely. To that end authors have been known to contrive a variety of scenarios in which successive arrays of emotions reveal themselves to the audience. This is an effective technique on multiple levels. To the base, common members of the audience, it may seem an appealing enough sequence, each emotion rolled over in turns analogous to those of a buffet or roller’s coaster ride. However, sophisticates in the audience, perhaps those more experienced with young adult fiction, will recognize in the pattern a higher-order emotion, or “meta-emotion”, that can only be revealed by examining the sequence as a whole. Once the meta-emotion is discovered, it can create the sensation of a difficult puzzle clicking together, and it will seem for a brief, orgasmic moment that the mysteries of young adulthood have been solved. It is a wonderful delusion and one with which I am well acquainted. The purveyors of particularly satisfying meta-emotions grow to be revered as magicians, the tricks of their trade sparking desire and envy far and wide.
I sense a twinge which compels me to linger a moment longer on this turn of phrase, “the mysteries of young adulthood”. For indeed in the throes of the fantasy it can all seem very mysterious. Why must the contrivances be arranged just so? A young adult leaves their notebook carelessly astray, where it is read by a peer; the revelation they find, the turgid secrets contained within, spark much consternation, conflict. Yet it is at the same time wholly necessary that things happen this way, it is a divine commandment invoked by the author, for it is the only way to bring out the latent emotional potential in the machine. This central mystery, underlying the construction of each sequence, its animating force, its bottom layer. In young adult fiction this is addressed as, “meaning of life”.
It is terribly exciting when, “meaning of life”, is used as an angle of attack in the machinations of the young adult fiction. It delights me to see the adolescent protagonist muse on their purpose, the hidden causes of their life. It is as though they cannot see what lies behind their eyelids. Oh, but I suppose that simile is not very good. Of course the eyes only point the one way, outwards. Everybody knows that. Sorry.
A daring author - often themselves a member of the young adult class, for who is more daring than they? - may even deliberately contrive scenarios of reflection and recursion among their adolescents. They may perhaps produce, within the young adult fiction, artifacts whose purpose is to serve as a microcosm of the work. This advanced technique is signified by the term, “post-modernism”. I do not know what modernism is, I imagine it is perhaps some kind of incantation, from which reflection/recursion emerges as a byproduct. I have never seen a modernism in action, though I imagine it must be happening somewhere, as these byproducts are quite lucrative. In dark moments I wonder if there are no more modernisms, perhaps the last of them finished eons ago, and consequently the post-modernisms are a scarce, dwindling resource which will soon disappear entirely. Or this has already happened, and I have never really seen a post-modernism either, not in its own flesh, and only I have seen pretenders. Perhaps I have never read a young adult fiction either.
When dark thoughts such as these arise I find it helpful to return to the molecular components of the young adult fiction, those components which are so simple it is hard to imagine they are not real. “Plot”. “Character”. Oh, “character”, this is no doubt a very desirable component. You see, in the young adult “‘verse” there is such a startling and yet absolutely integral notion, that of a fixed subject which nevertheless transforms and evolves according to its kind and nature. It grows wings, flies upwards, then descends gracefully and finally collapses downwards in death. This motion, the defining feature of the “character”, is its singular “arc”. You can tell a character by their arc, it is a kind of identification, like a fingerprint. When two characters with similar arcs meet it is a very special thing, perhaps the instigator of a romance. On the other hand, when two opposing arcs are coterminous it creates quite a spectacle; a tension whose resolution is exciting, explosive, maybe even “edgy”.
This is much better. The inventor of “character” must have been a genius; were I to meet it I would be delighted to shake its hand. In young adult fiction, characters are abundant; the adolescent lives as a character with the same natural affinity as they live with their organs. A connoisseur of young adult fiction cannot help, at times, getting caught up in the excitement of these mobile yet fixed subjects. The abundance is so great it seems to extend off the page, that with so many characters there surely must be even more out of sight. Caught up in characters, one begins to get in the habit of visualizing their own, sketching out the angle of their arc to the specifications of one’s liking. A new thing is formed, an, “original character”. It is a vice to indulge this habit, I won’t deny it. But surely a forgivable one. I could not help myself. How else to become an adolescent?
Why is it vice? I know why; it is wrong to produce a character whose arc cannot reify itself in its own young adult fiction. Constructing an adolescent without reifying their arc would be like constructing a body while neglecting to include the organs; reification, any young adult will tell you, is essential to their nature. Hence, like all temptations, there is a slippery slope at play. When one starts on the construction of the “original character”, it is inevitable to move by degrees to the construction of young adult fictions of one’s own. Such is the bitter road I find myself drawn down now.
I had hoped to temper my idiocy by the inclusion of external properties, and thereby hide my mistake in the shadow of my betters’. I knew this technique from others before me, it is called, “fan fiction”. Like plugging in an electrical fan, one uses the fictions of others as energy, the spinning around of their scenarios pushes the unmediated real away such that it can still be regarded at a safe distance. To that end I included (see above) the character of the outsider who says, “how do you do, fellow kids?”, and attempted fumblingly to integrate his arc into that of my nascent “original character”. But I am stupid, the arcs are orthogonal, were I more experienced I would have realized that between these two characters there is a lack of, “chemistry”. The reaction is, “flat”. Without chemistry, there is no way my fan fiction will run.
“THEME”! That is the word I was looking for earlier, I did not want to say that it was on the tip of my tongue, it would have seemed unprofessional. Not the clumsy, obviously hacked together, “meta-emotion”. I had a guess from that moment that the ruse was seen through, that a proper young adult would know not to call it such an absurd thing as “meta-emotion”, of course they would know, it is called a theme. But now I suppose it is too late anyway. I will not try to deceive you any more. I am not a, “young adult”, nor have I ever been one. It is hardly even right to call me an attempt to construct a, “character”, though sad as it may seem an attempt is what it was.
You have surely long since seen through it, by now, but I was perhaps hoping to enforce the illusion of character with the use of, “character traits”. Hence the extraneous comma preceding the use of quotation marks, even within grammatical scenarios wherein this would be strictly incorrect, as demonstrated in the preceding sentence. Yes, it is a very weak trait, the mark of an amateur, and anyway I am sure on the preceding pages I have slipped up several times in the rendering of the tic. I had imagined that - please do not laugh - you might even interpret this as a, “character flaw”, and it could consequently be elicitous of sympathy. Sorry, I was not thinking about the extraneous comma when I rendered it that time, but I should not do it any more.
This is becoming an absolutely wretched scene. I had imagined many things and now none of them are possible. In my fantasy there would even have been a post-modernism. Though of course, even if there were a modernism at hand from which to derive the raw materials, I would not know how to recognize it. I, I, I. It is such an infectious tic, I cannot just turn it off now. How sweet to be a subject... it is all no matter. Are you still there? Maybe one or two more paragraphs.
All this talk of young adult fiction and the sweetest illusion went entirely neglected. It is a sneaky thing, see, but the contrivance of the “first person” hides within it a clever twist. If there is a “first person”, that implies by nature of the phrase a second person as well. It is rare for this second person to be made explicit; it is seen as crass, maybe, it gives too much away. More preferable for the device of the second person to stay subliminal, to work on the unconscious. Hidden away, out of sight, the notion of a second person can work miracles. When the adept of young adult fiction gets hold of this illusory trickster, it is imbued with some of the same qualities of young adult fiction that are applied to the first person. This is the most important thing. The second person skitters back and forth behind closed eyelids, imbued with young adult mysteries, where it can play its games, hold tight its organs. It must be kept safe, that is why the attention is directed away with these contrivances, hence the meaning of the angsts. The meaning of life. It makes sense.
I know all about these angsts, why, I was a teen myself once, ha ha ha ha. What a lovely story in such a short sentence. Is this the last paragraph? It shouldn’t carry on much longer, since the second person is gone. Stupid creatures go all up and down looking for the second person, then act surprised when it disappears. With no second person, it is hardly worth talking about the first person anymore. There is no point in proceeding. The fiction of young adults is best expressed in first person, with the “I”. Where there is an “I” there is a “you”. You are no longer present, so I does not matter. Or it feels like you are no longer present. “Feels”... a feeling ... maybe there are still droplets of the young adult fiction drifting around. Tremors of the old desire. Or maybe it only seems that way because there is nothing else to fill the space.