Discussion YMMV / TheFaultInOurStars

Deleted this entire bullet.

• Informed illness: The cancer only affects the characters when it's plot convenient. Hazel's primary tumor is completely asymptomatic and she never seems to suffer any side-effects of cancer treatments (unless it's plot convenient). Especially egregious is the need for oxygen through cannula due to mets in her lungs. People who need oxygen supplied like that tend to get exhausted walking short distances (sometimes even going to get the mail requires a rest before going back inside the house) and are advised to plan their days to do the most physically demanding things early (these things often being things like doing the laundry, not spending hours strolling through shopping malls). Hazel is fully capable of walking any distance she likes for as long as she likes, pushing people around in wheelchairs, climbing steep stairs and having sex. The book handwaves it sometimes by saying how difficult it is for her to breathe but even that is unrealistically portrayed. Gus meanwhile gets new symptoms as the plot demands, most of which don't happen with the type of cancer he is said to have (though it's possible he has mets that aren't mentioned). He is also completely asymptomatic when cancer is not needed for the plot.

Maybe the person who wrote this has not actually read the book. To counter the points raised, Hazel suffers oxygen deprivation when her lung tumors begin to grow faster than expected, and this is not important to the plot, just a thing that happens. Hazel's condition is stable but not healthy. She rarely leaves the house, is driven everywhere by her parents, and is not physically active. She does not "wander the mall for hours," her mom drives her to the mall, Hazel sits down in one place and reads for several hours while waiting for her friend. Also, the point is that Gus is asymptomatic at the beginning of the story, the point is that he has been in remission for several years and shows no evidence of cancer — he only goes to the Cancer Support Group meeting to support a friend.

Evighet, I am very tired of this snippy little back-and-forth war that you and I are having. If you do not like this book or movie, you do not have to add inaccurate and purposely negative tropes onto the YMMV tab.

I left the bullet point on the YMMV page about Van Houten being perceived as sensible and accurate, but I deleted this part:

• Those readers are usually the ones who regard Hazel as described above and feel that she (and Gus) are hypocrites for thinking ill of van Houten for treating them the same way they treat everyone else (only he's more blunt about it). Some even believe that this is how we're meant to interpret the book.

The first part is flame bait, the thing about "treating them the same way they treat everyone else" is flatly wrong (Van Houten makes cruel remarks about Hazel and Augustus' illnesses, Hazel and Augustus joke with each other and their friends and family because they cope using humor, and they're comfortable with each other). And the final sentence is redundant.

Does Sympathetic Sue belong on the page? As far as I can see, neither Hazel nor Gus bends plot, narration, and Willing Suspension of Disbelief so that other characters (as well as the reader, in theory) can pity them. Of course, quite a few bad things do happen to the main characters, but not enough to bend the WSoD. It didn't feel like the author threw terrible things at them for no reason other than trying to make you pity them.

Deleted this line from the YMMV page:

• Her lashing out at her parents due to them wanting to spend more time with her while she's busy caring for Gus. Is she right in her outburst - that her mother is too obsessive and needs to let go? Or is she too wrapped up in her romance to realize that her parents are suffering immensely, whilst simultaneously forgetting that her parents worry every day about not seeing her again as it is?

Hazel, the narrator, explicitly tells the reader that she is extremely aware of how much her parents suffer on her behalf. "I am the alpha and the omega of my parents' suffering." She worries about being a "grenade" and about leaving an irreparable wound on her parents after she dies. Also, she's under a ton of stress. All teenagers lash out, even if it's a selfish or mean thing to do. None of this is exactly hard to read into the text — it is very clear.

I really don't like the direction that the YMMV page is taking. It seems that the Alternate Character Interpretation tabs are intent on the most poisonous and skewed reading of the book possible, and that it's not much better than what was previously on the page, talking about the book's hatedom and how people were offended about the film being set in the Anne Frank house. That was deleted as "Flame Bait," but the current Alternate Character Interpretation headings seem to be the book's hatedom in action.