This week marks the release of the latest Young Adult novel adapted to the screen: The 5th Wave, an alien invasion story from Rick Yancey, opens Friday with Chloe Moretz as Cassie, a teenaged girl trying to rescue her brother in the wake of an alien takeover of Earth. The film begins similarly to the book it’s based on with Cassie shooting a potentially-unarmed man in a convenience store rather than waiting to find out if he’s hiding a gun underneath his coat.

Folks, we are so far past the Han Shot First Debate. Today’s teens not only have no qualms with their pop culture protagonists taking drastic steps to ensure their own survival as well as that of their loved ones–they expect it. Just ask Clarke Griffin, the teen protagonist of The 100, another Young Adult novel adaptation, which returned to television this week. Like Cassie, Clarke has demonstrated that she is willing to cross the murder line when it comes to ensuring the safety of “her people.”

Not so long ago, the YA books and onscreen franchises saturating our popular culture were institution-enforcing escapist fantasies like Harry Potter and Twilight (yes, it pains me to lump those two series into any category together). These days, much like The Hunger Games and Divergent, The 100 and The 5th Wave present a nihilistic view of the state of the world, its institutions, and the individual’s ability to affect positive change in it.

If popular culture are our myths, our collective cultural consciousness is (understandably) pessimistic—or at least pragmatic. We often represent youth as hopeful, naive, and unrealistically optimistic. If our current YA pop culture teaches us anything, it’s that the generation currently coming-of-age is anything but optimistic about the future. And, with the release of The 5th Wave and the start of The 100 season 3, this seems like as good a time as any to talk about the evolution of YA phenomena from status quo-enforcing tales of optimism like Harry Potter and Twilight to somber, more pragmatic narratives of resistance and/or struggle like The Hunger Games, The 100, and The 5th Wave.