The problem of YA where everything the author knows about teens they learned from watching after-school specials of the 80s and 90s DRIVES ME UP THE WALL.
I am also a little worried about slipping into this once my second actual teen grows up and moves out (she's in 12th grade this year). Some of how I manage authentic teen voices is that I have some actual teens in my life to listen to.
But yeah, the jock/geek divide is just ... not entirely how it worked even in the 1980s, when I was a teen. One of the things I loved about Spider-Man: Homecoming was that Peter's nerdy high school's super-competitive activity is Academic Quiz Bowl or something similarly nerdy, and the lines form around THOSE rivalries. My younger kid goes to an extremely nerdy high school where the super-competitive activity is Mock Trial. They totally have sports but the sports enthusiasm tends to be a lot more going through the motions compared to the excitement when the Mock Trial team goes to Nationals. (My older kid did Mock Trial -- their team took 2nd at Nationals. My younger kid got recruited and was like "ABSOLUTELY NOT, that is [sibling]'s thing," and is aggressively a theater nerd instead. Do not even get me started on the lines of competition, rivalry, and resentment just within a theater crowd at a small high school, we will be here all night.)
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Date: 2021-08-25 04:12 pm (UTC)I am also a little worried about slipping into this once my second actual teen grows up and moves out (she's in 12th grade this year). Some of how I manage authentic teen voices is that I have some actual teens in my life to listen to.
But yeah, the jock/geek divide is just ... not entirely how it worked even in the 1980s, when I was a teen. One of the things I loved about Spider-Man: Homecoming was that Peter's nerdy high school's super-competitive activity is Academic Quiz Bowl or something similarly nerdy, and the lines form around THOSE rivalries. My younger kid goes to an extremely nerdy high school where the super-competitive activity is Mock Trial. They totally have sports but the sports enthusiasm tends to be a lot more going through the motions compared to the excitement when the Mock Trial team goes to Nationals. (My older kid did Mock Trial -- their team took 2nd at Nationals. My younger kid got recruited and was like "ABSOLUTELY NOT, that is [sibling]'s thing," and is aggressively a theater nerd instead. Do not even get me started on the lines of competition, rivalry, and resentment just within a theater crowd at a small high school, we will be here all night.)