We Can Never Go Home #1

[history79]

"I think there is a generation of people coming up whose coming of age stories are very idealized and very clean. It's really sad. The Hunger Games and Twilight are fine I guess, but they wouldn't have meant anything to me when I was 14. They don't now either. I fear for what this means to younger generations. Movies like Heathers, Pump Up The Volume, even stuff like Badlands and River's Edge all had a big impact on me. I loved seeing a fuckup try and make his way through the world because I was a fuckup. I really just wanted to make a love letter to fuckups and weirdos. Those are my people."

- Matthew Rosenberg




Written by Patrick Kindlon and Matthew Rosenberg, Art by Josh Hood

9 pages of 27

Comments

[cyberghostface]

I'd disagree that The Hunger Games books were "idealized" or "very clean" at least after the first book.

[shadowpsykie]

yeah I agree with your disagreement. They dealt with the very messy implications of child warfare. PTSD. forced prostitution on an economic and sexual level.

[cyberghostface]

***SPOILERS***



And I think there was some moral grayness in the last book with what the 'heroes' resort to. There's an additional bit in the last book that didn't make it into the movie where Katniss is on the run and she kills a random Capital woman who recognizes her.

[shadowpsykie]

oh yeah definitely. and read the books. loved the movies but the books delved deeper.

[owlbrigade1]

I kinda agree. I'm not so sure on Twilight series either, it is pretty messed up stuff too just a different variety of messed up from what the author is thinking of.

[lb_lee]

I know, right? I mean, I only read the first book, but my reaction to the post quote was, "Yeah, because when I think of a model of mental stability and non-fucked-uppery, I think KATNISS EVERDEEN."

[bj_l]

I was shocked by just how good the Hunger Games books were (I only picked up the first one thinking it would be a mockable slog) and how dark they got.

This guy has clearly not read them and just wanted to throw out a popular, recogniseable name just to prop himself up.

[locuatico]

If i were to try to understand it, i think he is saying that they were too "good" they did not really make mistakes or did stupid teenager stuff. for example, killing someone in a rage like they do here (of course, that fails to understand the ways in which Katniss was a broken shell of a person in the first book, but that is not here nor there).

[liliaeth]

yeah, kinda shows that the guy didn't actually read the books.

[thezmage]

Or see the movies. They're not particularly clean either

[fra080389]

Uhm, I have the suspect that the boy isn't so good...

[doctor_spanky]

Right? He's creepily fine with everything

[reveen]

The writer cites Heathers as an influence, and in that the big thing in the story was a girl getting involved with a bad boy who turned out to be a school shooter psychopath. So that's a pretty safe bet.

[freezer]

I can't recall a significant period in the last century where coming of age stories weren't idealized.

[veleda_k]

"The media of today doesn't affect me as much as the media I consumed growing up did. Obviously, today's media is inferior."

Tale as old as time.

[liliaeth]

especially male coming of age stories...

[reveen]

Like, the dude cites movies like River's Edge and Heathers. More fucked up movies about teenagers sure, but they came out in a few years of movies like Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

He should have just said "I prefer the coming of age films that were really dark" rather than going off about how movies were so much better in his time, man.

[remial]

what _I_ want to know is why is it that the people who are setting up all these teenage deathmatches are always depicted as the bad guys?

anyone who has EVER spent time around teenagers (including many a teenager themselves) would know that teens are deserving of death.

[bj_l]

I know you're being facetious or trying to be funny, but as someone who was very suicidal as a teen, teens are NOT deserving of death, especially not just for being teens. Specifically horrific forced gladiator death matches.

Man, this sort of stuff normally doesn't affect me in the slightest. I'm having a bad time right now.