#uglies

I just made some buuuulllshiiit

I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this! Sometimes when people ask me to explain why I love something I clam up because in the moment I can't think of how to explain Everything and so instead they get Nothing until I forget to respond entirely. Anyway! The series is Uglies, Pretties, Specials, and Extras by Scott Westerfeld (plus the more recent follow-up series that I have yet to finish but have been enjoying so far: Impostors, Shatter City, Mirror's Edge, and Youngbloods). The first three books are all pretty connected as a trilogy about Tally Youngblood, a teenager growing up in a society where everyone undergoes surgery to become "pretty" at 16. From the outside, it looks like pretties have everything they could ever want, but there's a dark side to the utopian ideal, of course, which Tally and her crew discover, initially from the outside, then as insiders, then sort of a hybrid of both as enforcers. (I'm trying not to give too much away, but honestly I've probably posted worse spoilers.) Extras is an add-on to look at the global impact of the rebellion and exploring different subcultures, particularly around plastic surgery, set in Japan not long after Tally's teen years. The Impostors series spins off a bit further in the future and addresses the fallout after the collapse of a global government and how the culture has shifted along with that change. To me, the three biggest draws of the series are 1) the fun sci-fi worldbuilding, in terms of technology, slang, and other everyday elements of setting, 2) Tally herself, in my eyes one of the best-written YA protagonists of the era and very influenced by a friendship that is a classically teenage girl experience, and 3) the themes around beauty, freedom, etc all written in a way to speak to teens but such that I'm still unpacking them 20 years later. Is it a tiny bit dated in some elements, maybe, but I really enjoyed it when I was younger and I still enjoy it a lot now. The recent movie adaptation was so-so and I wouldn't particularly recommend it unless you already love the books and want to see some storylines in a different format. Scott Westerfeld is one of my favorite authors, and if you enjoy his writing based on the Uglies series, I'd definitely recommend his Midnighters series also!

¿quién le dio al pequeño dios el centro gris del abismo?

el jean le apreta la fresa y ella es la reina

y vos allí en mi remolque sin luz, como un polizón

Perks of having an ex girlfriend who's a super soldier