Why dystopia needs to end (for now)

You know the ending. I am not even kidding. If you don't live under a rock and occasionally catch a movie trailer for a dystopian movie (they're everywhere) or book and catch the premise, you know how it ends. The formula, though at first interesting, has been so overused and so unchanged that at this point, it's stupid. It's like the wholes supernatural thing, where vampires and werewolves have been stripped of their former grittiness and darkness and have now become basically the center of parody whereas one hundred years ago these creatures were the thing of nightmares.

I fear the same will happen to the dystopian genre. I can tell you the formula if you'd like:

Girl is normal and lives under rule of Evil Empire run by corrupt government.
Something happens in girl's family.
Girl is thrust into rebellion that the "all-knowing" Evil Empire is unaware of.
Girl proves self.
Girl gets love interest.
Girl goes through teenage angst.
Girl gets head cleared.
Tertiary character dies.
Girl gets angry and becomes "the chosen one."
Evil Empire falls.
Happy ending.

It's always a girl, too. Don't ask me why, I honestly can't tell you why. But it just is.

Not that it's a bad thing. Girls do need more than princesses to look up to, and Katniss is quite the role model (in my opinion I would go more for Hermoine but whatever). These are fairly strong characters...

Outside of this genre. In the genre, they're fairly cut and dry. You know their arc, you can pick out their love interest the second they hit the page/ screen. It gets to a point where you aren't hoping for them to get together, it's more like waiting. That's not how it should be. A romantic connection should be evident, yes, but it shouldn't be so in-your-face that it takes away from the story.

And in these kinds of books, it's never like a major character dies. That's where I think these books falter. You won't ever see the top two protagonists kick the bucket nowadays. They're saved by some strange force I call "The Protagonist" that keeps them from dying. They could literally be at the very bottom of the ocean, and then somehow live. No. Way.

But not only is the story pretty simple, but it's also the villains. The government, the organization, the Evil Empire, whatever you want to call it. I simply cannot buy the fact that the people capable of taking over the entire country are incapable of killing a single person. Most of the time, the domination is wrought through mass genocide. That's thousands of people and yet you can't kill one person? "Nope, they have to toy with them so they can break them down and make them feel like they've lost everything." That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You wanna know the lowest low? Dying. If you kill them, then they can't get back up, which is what you don't want them to do, remember? The villains in these stories have got to be the dumbest characters I've seen.

This is why dystopia needs to end. The premise may seem interesting. The action and the love and the mystery in the middle may be entertaining. But in the end, everything's the same. However, that's not how endings should be. They should be unpredictable. Even if you know a book is going to have a sequel, you want the ending to surprise you to make you read the next book.

In my opinion, killing a major character early on is a huge step in the right direction if people want to see this genre succeed. Why? Because it shows that the Evil Empire will go there over the course of the story. Most other genres do it, fantasy in particular. In Way of Shadows, one of the book's pivotal characters gets axed. What whoa what the heck. Imagine if that were to happen in a world/ setting where the deaths of people who were important was a common thing...?

Most people find a probably with dystopia right now because the central characters are teenagers, and as such, people compare these new series to the Harry Potter series. I don't compare them, because they are not the same genres. Instead, I compare them to the boss of all dystopia, 1984. You really don't get much more bleak and miserable than George Orwell's then-future London. I mean, Big Brother guys. Big Brother never made a mistake. You thought there was a rebellion? Oh, how silly! You are wrong.

Nothing good happens in 1984. You think good things are happening. But in the back of your mind, you know, Big Brother is watching. By the end, you are pretty shocked at what happens to Winston.

At the same time, though, Winston is not the most likable of guys. In fact, he's fairly lifeless. But that makes sense because he lives in a world run by people who know what it means to rule the world, who know what must be done.

In the film V for Vendetta, we get some pretty graphic scenes of the police and totalitarian government taking down civilians, even if it means killing younger people. V's rebellion is strong but is it strong enough? It's sort of left up for interpretation. Ultimately, V does not make it to his final act (well, alive) but he does live on in the memories and in the spirit of the people. The Evil Empire is in control, since they were overall stronger, but the hero has still made his moral victory with hope that eventually humanity will find its morality once again.

I think that's also where dystopia is afraid to go. I think it's afraid to make its characters martyrs. Martyrs, though, are powerful things. Their sacrifice can provide inspiration to spark a rebellion that may indeed overthrow an empire. To be honest, a story is more interesting that way. It gives the people something more to fight for than just freedom, they seek justice for those who have wronged one who would bring back happiness to an unhappy world.

Sadly, though, that is not the case. Instead we get teenage angst and people looking attractive even though they probably can't afford make-up.

Maybe it is that the teenagers are the focus. They have a lot of angst and their creators seem to think that teenagers are only able to come out on top when duty calls. I don't think so, but, dystopia seems to. I feel that a dystopian story is better told through an adult standpoint, like in 1984. Adults understand the gravity of the situation more and allow the audience to get a better feel for the possible hopelessness that awaits them.

Teenagers, in my opinion, are better suited for the adventure stories like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson because those are coming-of-age stories. Those are stories about rising up not necessarily against the odds but against yourself, defining who you really are. That's really what happens in a person's teenage years, they find their identity, they find their strengths. They don't stop an entire world-dominating government with a bow and arrow. They rally forces around them, they learn, they understand their role in an adventure/ fantasy story.

Take Kylar Stern from the Night Angel trilogy. Though we only see him as a teenager for a brief period of time, we get a feel for who he is going to be throughout the rest of the series, we get a feel for the limits he knows he has been placed under. The Sa'Kage own him and he knows that should he rebel he will be killed before he can leave his house. Not that subjugation is a good thing, but he knows his limits and does his work as best he can under those conditions. Then the Khalidorans come and everything gets crazy. But do you get the point?

It's not all about being the person of the people, it's not all about breaking the rules. It's about doing what you can with what you have and making a difference as such. Dumbledore's Army was a powerful force not because of narrative convenience be but because there were legitimately strong witches and wizards in it to stand against an once-unstoppable force.

Dystopia should just die down for a little bit. It seems almost as if they're trying to tell similar stories to that of adventure or even post-apocalyptic, and they are not telling it nearly as well as those two genres. In an adventure/ fantasy story, you don't know the limits of the world. In a post-apocalyptic world, there are no rules and you don't know what's left of the world. In dystopia you've got a big bad guy and someone who is going to change the world because they are so awesome.

But, really darling, you were just in the right place at the right time. And that's really what dystopia is about. A certain character just being at the right place at the right time. Is it evident in many stories? Absolutely. Does it always make sense? No. Does it always work in the story? In a dystopian story, apparently it has to. Otherwise everything fails. Convenience is the bane of these stories, there has to be some level of control, some plan. If not, then, it's just kind of silly. Or it's just so bland it'll be repeated over and over again.

I think it's about time we stopped searching for the "next" Harry Potter because as such we judge books off of something that will forever be way above nearly everything else in the teenage-zone. I think it's about time we started to realize that the more we encourage these dystopian stories, the worse they will become.

Also stop the splitting final books into two movies, that's just a stupid gimmick. Just saying.