YMMV / Uglies

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • One essay in the companion book Mind-Rain paints Shay as a Psycho Lesbian. And another essay portrays her as a Draco in Leather Pants.
  • Scott Westerfeld claims that Shay willingly became a Special when Dr. Cable made her the offer. Considering her state of mind, however, with how betrayed she felt that Tally shared the cure with Zane but not with Shay, there may have been more manipulation than what has appeared in canon.
  • Maddy claims, and Dr. Cable confirms, that the lesions inside the brain are designed to keep the Pretties as vapid and brainless, so they just pursue pleasures and not try to destroy the world by overusing resources. There may be another reason for the lesions, however; it could be a mercy to help transitioning Uglies that don't respond well to surgery. After all, the operation literally cuts your whole body up and changes you from the inside out, including eye and hair color. That is a little bit traumatic. Perhaps the lesions started as a way to help Uglies adjust to being Pretty, and the mind control was an added benefit. It may also explain why the Specials are all a bit on the violent and melodramatic side; in addition to Dr. Cable brainwashing them, they're given nanotechnology for a Healing Factor and uber-sharp fangs and teeth.
• Fridge Horror: Shay gets furious when she learns that Tally shared the Cure with Zane and not with her. Consider if Tally had done it, however; then Shay would have received the pill that was designed to eat the lesions, but it would have eaten her brain as well. It may have been Shay in the hospital bed at the end of the trilogy and taken off life support rather than Zane.
• Les Yay: Shay gets awfully jealous whenever Tally gets a boyfriend. Zane is even worse than David since Shay said she knew Zane before Tally did and she's not cool with them dating. Somewhat intentional; the author purposely used gender-neutral terms when Shay asks Tally where she got her locket in Uglies.
• Moe: All young Pretties have to look young and vulnerable. Tally lampshades that when Dr. Cable corners her, since a normal Pretty would be scampering away like a rabbit.
• Moral Event Horizon: Dr. Cable crosses it in Uglies when she kills Az while attempting to operate on his brain in the hopes of removing his memories as well as adding lesions. To make it clear she's the antagonist in Specials, she hides evidence that Tally and Shay accidentally destroyed a museum to have an excuse to declare war on Diego for housing the runaway uglies, and then imprisons Tally when she returns home to confess.
• Narm: The fact that Shay took the time to write her cryptic directions to the Smoke for Tally in rhyme before running away. It's not a case of the poem being a mnemonic device passed down between fugitives to the Smoke; it refers to details that are personal to Tally, showing that Shay wrote the poem herself.
• Not So Crazy Anymore: Extras has the presence of a "reputation" economy in Japan, where everyone has their own personal feed and citizens track their face rank obsessively to see how popular they are and if they're gaining or losing fame in society, with the main character Aya carrying around an artificially intelligent camera to capture as much on film as she can. In 2007 this seems somewhat over the top and silly that people would care so much about being famous through their reputation and fantastical that Aya can just film wherever she is. As social media has become more and more prominent with the rise of various internet celebrities (and people famous just for being online and/or going viral) and people having cameras everywhere in their cellphones that can capture anything anywhere, this doesn't seem so ridiculous.
• Older Than They Think: A new reader picking this up might dismiss this as a The Hunger Games or Divergent clone — except it was written three to five years prior.
• Once Original, Now Common: This book actually predated The Hunger Games, as well as multiple trilogies. After that craze? This can seem kind of "light".
• Tear Jerker: Zane's death. Diego takes him in and tries to repair his brain, but his body tissue rejects the implant and his body starts to fail, and not helping is Tally's city starts dropping bombs on Diego. Tally cries when she sees Zane in a hospital bed, reduced to a vegetable on life support. She has to make the difficult choice to take him off it because other bombing victims are coming inside.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The world is a post-apocalyptic collection of city-states with shady ideologies and government-mandated shaming and brainwashing programs, most people are shallow, self-absorbed idiots by design, an increasingly ambiguous protagonist that regularly ends up betraying her friends through circumstances outside of her control, and both heroines increasingly suffer tragedy, bouts of plot-relevant Aesop Amnesia that reset their characters back to square one, and a villain that conspires to get what she wants, time after time. This does ease up a bit by the end of Specials, and the sequels that follow are more optimistic in tone.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: It's really hard to hate Shay when you consider that she has legitimate reasons to act villainous. Trusting your best friend with all your secrets only for her to steal your boyfriend, destroy your home, get you kidnapped and have a mind-warping chip put in your brain must really suck. This was Scott Westerfeld's intention, to show that Tally and Shay could never really be "best friends forever" as Shay creepily puts it at the end of Pretties. Although Tally isn't completely to blame; as Shay's Story points out, they still end up at odds from the trilogy's beginning to end.
• Vindicated by History: While Uglies was never a flop per se, it was a rather uncommon find in bookstores prior to The Hunger Games, a series which enabled Uglies to get another chance because people would recommend this to other teens and adults who were fans of Hunger Games.
• The Woobie:
  • Tally Youngblood. She wants to become Pretty so she can hang out with her friend Peris again, and grow up. Then she gets blackmailed into being The Mole for Dr. Cable, only to learn that the pretty operation makes people brain-damaged with lesions and thus isn't all that is cracked up to be. Her impulsiveness to destroy Cable's locket ends up betraying the Smoke, and leads to her crush's dad dying.
  • Shay. Her attempts to help Tally explore a lifestyle that doesn't rely on being pretty backfire badly. Due to leaving hints for Tally to find the Smoke, she loses her home, her boyfriend and her free will. Then when Tally reveals that she has a cure, Shay is understandably upset about it and starts cutting herself to get the same high. No one, least of all Tally, blames her for becoming Special. Then, she gets cured, which causes her to have a Heel Realization.
  • David. Unlike Tally and Shay, he's grown up without the Pretty culture to accept or reject. The girl he likes turns out to be The Mole for that culture, though she switches sides, and destroys his home by accident. He keeps forgiving her but she keeps turning him away.
  • Zane. Losing the girl that you love to Mind Control and when she starts to come around and love you back, you wind up dying. This is after you have had part of your brain chewed away by nanotechnology.
  • Peris. Losing his Childhood Friend as well as his friendship with Fausto and being too cowardly to runaway from the city because he has brain damage. Also, Zane who is another friend of his, winds up dying.
  • Maddy. Having your son’s girlfriend be responsible for the death of your husband and his father and your attempts to keep your son away from her only result in you pushing him away.
  • Andrew Simpson Smith. Discovering that your entire life is a science experiment done by a cruel and uncaring government. Also, having your father murdered by a rival tribe and seeking revenge.
  • A noticeable aversion to this trope is Dr. Cable, who is the only character who is not a Woobie in some regard. Even though she is cured in the end and possibly faces public embarrassment and losing her job, that hardly seems like a fair punishment considering that she gets to keep one of her Specials alive and was responsible for the misery of every other character. Not to mention manipulating her city into starting a war with another city that could've resulted in the death of millions and would've gotten her promoted. Tally stopped her, but still her plan almost worked. If Dr. Cable wasn’t in the story, none of the previously mentioned characters would be Woobies.