History YMMV / Uglies

* {{Expy}}: Westerfeld admits to enjoying Buffy the Vampire Slayer and if you take a close look, you can see parallels to some of the characters' personalities.
** Tally Youngblood=Buffy/Willow, Shay=Faith,David=Angel, Zane=Spike, Dr. Cable=Glory,Croy=Xander, both of them are skeptical. Xander doesn't trust Angel and for most of Uglies Croy doesn't trust Tally. Aya Fuse=Dawn

** A noticeable aversion to this trope is [[spoiler: 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 faced public embarrassment and lost 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.]]

** 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.]]

** David. Unlike Tally and Shay, he's grown up without the Pretty culture to accept or reject. [[spoiler:The girl he likes turns out to be TheMole for that culture, though she switches sides, and destroys his home by accident.]] He keeps forgiving her but [[spoiler:she keeps turning him away]].

* OlderThanTheyThink: A new reader picking this up might dismiss this as a ''HungerGames'' or ''Literature/{{Divergent}}'' clone - except it was written three to five years prior.

* Expy: Westerfeld admits to enjoying Buffy the Vampire Slayer and if you take a close look, you can see parallels to some of the characters' personalities.
** Tally Youngblood=Buffy/Willow, Shay=Faith,David=Angel, Zane=Spike, Dr. Cable=Glory,
Croy=Xander, both of them are skeptical. Xander doesn't trust Angel and for most of Uglies Croy doesn't trust Tally. Aya Fuse=Dawn

Tally Youngblood=Buffy/Willow, Shay=Faith,David=Angel, Zane=Spike, Dr. Cable=Glory,

* {{Moe}}: All young Pretties have to look young and vulnerable.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: 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 [[spoiler: 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.

Tally Youngblood=Buffy/Willow Shay=Faith David=Angel Zane=Spike Dr. Cable=Glory

Tally Youngblood=Buffy/Willow
Shay=Faith
David=Angel
Zane=Spike
Dr. Cable=Glory
Croy=Xander, both of them are skeptical. Xander doesn't trust Angel and for most of Uglies Croy doesn't trust Tally.
Aya Fuse=Dawn

Tally Youngblood-Buffy/Willow
Shay-Faith
David-Angel
Zane-Spike
Dr. Cable-Glory

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: One essay in the companion book Mind-Rain paints Shay as a PsychoLesbian.
** And another essay portrays her as a DracoInLeatherPants.
* LesYay: Shay gets awfully jealous whenever Tally gets a boyfriend. This arguably becomes [[spoiler: FoeYay later on as Shay becomes more and more villainous.]]
** Somewhat intentional -- the author purposely used gender-neutral terms when Shay asks Tally where she got her locket in Uglies.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: 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 [[spoiler: 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 blameless, as ''Shay's Story'' points out, they still end up at odds from the trilogy's beginning to end.

** Somewhat intentional -- the author purposely used gender-neutral terms when Shay asks Tally where she got her locket in Uglies. Westerfeld was careful not to make his utopian future a heteronormative society.

* OlderThanTheyThink: A new reader picking this up might dismiss this as a ''HungerGames'' or ''{{Divergent}}'' clone - except it was written three to five years prior.

* UnintentionallySympathetic: 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 [[spoiler: 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''.]]

* FridgeHorror: Zane went to a costume party dressed in a [[PuttingOnTheReich black outfit with a red armband.]] And the Pretties don't even know how bad the Nazi's were, even if they knew who Zane was dressed as.
** In all fairness, the story does take place at least several centuries in the future, more than enough time for the scars of World War Two to fade. It's highly improable that the Pretties would treat the Nazis as any worse than the Vikings or the Mongals or any other of the historical bad guys out their.

* NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity: In-universe in ''Extras'', thanks to their new economy system.

* {{Moe}}: All young Pretties have to look young and vulnerable.