Popular

Preface

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For those that have loved and been hurt,

and those that have never loved at all.

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THE AIM

This is a novel that seeks to challenge the belief that all popular's are evil. For some reason, if a character is labeled as popular in teen fiction, they become the antagonist. The amount of books I've read on this website in which the popular female character is written as the crazy bitch of an ex-girlfriend or the dumb bimbo that sleeps around to hide her insecurities is incalculable. I am sick of it. Similarly, the popular male character is usually written as the asshole jock who treats women like objects until he meets ______, the nerdy girl who is immune to his charms. Switch out jock with player or bad-boy and yet again you have a slight variation of the same shit.

That isn't to say some of these novels aren't great. I'm not embarrassed to say I enjoy reading them. I just want to ask why the word popular seems to be synonymous with evil. Why these novels often glorify an unhealthy relationship that somehow, despite all odds, ends with a happy ever after. 

In real life, if you fell for the bad boy who had cheated on every girl he had ever been with the chances are he's gonna cheat on you too. If you started dating the player, chances are you're gonna be played. 

I am all for cliche's. I think they become that way because the reader can relate to the characters and often times, what happens within the novel is a dream. Something everyone wishes would happen. But why does no one write of the kind and caring popular students? The ones that are popular because everyone loves them rather than fears them.

The reality is this: it's much harder to sustain popularity when everyone hates or fears you as opposed to the opposite.

This story aims to redefine the negative connotations that accompany the word popular. These characters are people. They have morals and values, and believe it or not but most people have a little something called compassion.

However, it doesn't revolve around their social status. I am trying to acknowledge that popular people are just like any others. They struggle with the same things everyone struggles with and they are not perfect, much to everyone's surprise. 

DISCLAIMER

For all of you who may or may not have read 'Miles + Violet' you may or may not notice that this novel is set in the same location, a fictional town called Callister. I'm allowed to use these places (as I am a co-writer of Miles + Violet), and it is intentional as both myself and the other co-writer thought it would be interesting to set our own individual stories within the town we created. In simple words: we fell in love with the fictional town and couldn't bear to restrict it to just one story.

PLAYLIST

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Open Book — José González

The Only Lo Lo Lo — Cyn

Let Her Go — Passenger

Gagging Order — Radiohead

Talk Is Cheap — Chet Faker

A Moment's Grace — Boy & Bear

Heartbeat — Claptone

City Sounds — Howqua

Home — Gabrielle Aplin

Hiding — Florence + The Machine

Red Eye — Vance Joy

Honey Jars — Bryan John Appleby

I.Walk — Owen Thiele x Zack Sekoff

Magnets — Disclosure, Lorde

Cigarette Song — Raury

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