jan-ala:

the conventional wisdom is that there’s so much media about high school because everyone goes through it. it’s relatable to nearly everyone. and it’s the last truly common experience we have.

but that’s not true? the crisis of autonomy in your 20s? shaking off the simplified constructs you learned as a child? navigating “just be normal” workplaces as an anxious inexperienced kid? juxtaposing your self-worth with what they’re willing to pay you and how they want to treat you?

and your 30s? figuring out what you actually want in life? balancing comfort in the present and anxiety about the future? distinguishing between how things are getting worse and toxic nostalgia?

everyone has a shit job, a shit boss, and is surrounded by surface deep people who only want to use you.

it’s just what life is like.

i think the fiction problem is more…market share. a lot more kids into fiction (and uh more strongly). i don’t even know what adult normies like anymore. they used to be into game of thrones???

I think part of the distinction between high school fiction and fiction about actual young adults is the… storyline inherent in the setting

Like. We do have lots of movies and books where the protagonist is a twenty-something with a job. But usually that isn’t the focus of the story. There’s some other important thing for the character to do– fall in love, solve a mystery, get superpowers and save the world, whatever – and the fact of being a young adult with a job is just the backdrop.

Whereas in high school movies, the main conflicts of the movie often are just typical experiences in high school, and the setting is more important to the story because of that.

And I think it’s partly because there is a built-in, supposedly uplifting storyline to the high school experience.

Because no matter how much high school sucks in real life– and no matter how much the time after high school is also gonna suck, joining the daily grind at a job that doesn’t care about you, while you don’t even feel grown up yet–

Despite all that, the fictional narrative can make it look uplifting. The kids are going to graduate. That’s the built-in happy ending. They’ll complete this milestone of growing up and then their future can be whatever they want it to be.

And just like the wedding at the happy ending of a romance, you aren’t really supposed to think about what it’s the beginning of, and how many difficulties there still are going to be. It’s fiction, and you get a neat ending that feels right for the fiction, and it doesn’t have to give you any more.

But if the story doesn’t have that ending built in, the focus has to pull away from the setting and onto something else. Because that setting itself is depressing as hell.