Carnival Hearts is possibly the most Tally x Shay song to ever exist

Any Uglies fans out there?

I feel so alone on this I don’t know anyone who reads or read these books. Like where are my people. Also does David have a last name? Or shay? I read the books forever ago and can’t remember.

Commission for @tallysgreatestfan of Shay and Tally from the Uglies series. I don’t know the series, but not complaining about getting to draw badass women kissing

Commission Info

It is going to come out in 2024, it is finally going to happen!

This book kindled my love for science fiction and social commentary, and set me on the path of finally accepting how different and weird I am.

Oh my god, I am so beyond happy. Finally (hopefully) people going to see just how good this is

I'm almost done with pretties and I'm only increasingly convinced that Shay is gay and just very very deeply in the closet. I mean, she fell for David sure. But it seems to me that any queer person deeply in denial could trick themself into thinking they love someone when that person can hand you your freedom. Then when they get to new pretty town Tally even says that the people who can fight the pretty brain rot are people who have secrets, who have guilt, or shame. And who fought through the brain rot all on her own? Shay. Her closeted ass had so much turmoil that she healed her own brain. She's a lesbian. Heavily in denial, but a lesbian nonetheless.

If the Uglies books came out today, toxic yuri fans would be obsessed

Unpopular opinion: I hate the Uglies book series

Can someone please get on the fanfic train for the Uglies series? I need some Shay/Tally, Zane/David, or even Tally/femme Zane in my life. Or can someone pleeeaase point me in the right direction!?!

The fact that Tally and Shay are still with each other twenty years later is *clutches heart*

I mean oh my god, as someone who had a lot of very dysfunctional, jealous but also close and somewhat homoerotic friendships with other girls due to being closeted even from myself bisexual at that time and also autistic, I related so much to the absolute train wreck that was their friendship.

Yes, Tallys romances with boys were actually, unlike a lot of other YA dystopias, well written and believable, but for me the heart of the series was always her and Shay, and the way Dr Cable and their dystopian worlds system puts them against each other. I love how Westerfeld really explored that, but also how at the end, they not just were suddenly back to everything being perfect, but that it took them a lot of time to heal their wounds.

I am sad for Tally and David that their relationship did now work out, but also I love how that moment in her talk with Frey kind of implies that Shay and Tally are now together.

Oh god I ship them so much

OH MY GOD i forgot to answer this ask. entirely. i'm so sorry. since i'm answering on christmas MERRY CHRISTMAS

omg yes. tally & shay still being together after 20 YEARS was a sucker punch to the gut (but in a GOOD WAY.) their friendshi pwas One Of A Kind especially w/the jealousy and homoerotic undertones.

i also, definitely agree that shay & tally were the main core of the series. everything kind of branched from them, their budding friendship in book 1 and everything that happened after being a result from being pushed together due to the circumstances of their world which both push them together and also. pull them apart (for them to pick the pieces back up later. they definitely took some time to heal) <33 they are so so precious.

also! tally's relationships with boys were p fucking realistic and i thoroughly enjoyed that because it really isn't seen often, even outside of the dystopia genre. i'm also sad about tally/david but tally/shay makes up for it <3 even if canon doesn't say it outright in impostors at that point they are Practically Together

ty for the ask!! and i am so sorry for answering it so late haha.

There are such amazing female villains in the Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld. Trying not to spoiler, because its sadly not very well known anymore.

There is Dr Cable, the no nonsense cyborg mad scientist leader of the Cities secret service, who regularly outsmarts the heroes and has a super fun sadistic sense of humor. She seems like our typical YA dystopia villain at first, but while she has a lot lesser scenes than I remembered (reread recently) you can always sense that there is more to her. She believes she just prevents humanity from destroying itself again by fairly horrible means, and sometimes you are so close to being on her side. Her schtick is also that she deliberately surged herself to look scary, with eerie grey eyes and a crooked nose and a very angular face, but just conventionally attractive enough to still respect her, which is a cool concept.

Then there is Shay, the main character Tallys rebellious best friend, who is so angry and desperate at the system, and also has this very messy, homoerotic, jealous friendship with Tally, and ends up on different sides to her again and again. Her mental health also nosedives over the course of the series, and she becomes more and more ruthless and unhinged. I wish I could write more about that, because Tally/Shay is the most fascinating aspect of this series, and IMO it is a similar dynamic to Catradora, though its sadly only implied, not canon, and it also shows the scars this leaves a lot more and how long it takes the girls to fix it at the end.

And Tally Youngblood herself. Wow. She already starts out as an anti-hero; and many fans hate her for that, but I personally find it refreshing, trying her best but also being terrified and naive and an immature 16-year-old and having a knack for accidentally hurting her friends and ruining all her relationships. But in the third book she becomes a villain protagonist, and its amazing. And she never fully gets back to being a hero, she always stays slightly... unhinged.

(I have to warn you though, the second and third book majorly include depictions of self harm and eating disorders, and its not particularly well handled; while IMO the author does not glorify it, the characters very intensely do)

Ah, the Uglies Series. The book covers always grabbed my attention, but I never gave this series a shot. I should remedy that; the characters sound interesting! An anti-heroic protagonist who remains morally complicated after turning away from villainhood? Hell yes!

There's an Uglies movie coming out sometime this year. Don't think I'm gonna wait for the film adaptation to check out the story. The books are right there!

Been reading Uglies by Scott westerfeld and wanted to draw Shay and Tally

im reading uglies (i meant to in middle school but never got around to it) and i cant get past the scene where shay is like “first you steal my boyfriend and now you betray us” cuz like my first reaction was like “omg she thought they were a thing and they werent.. how embarrassing” but NO WHEN DAVID WAS FIRST INTRODUCED HE HAD HIS HAND AROUND HER SHOULDER. HE LITERALLY IS HER BOYFRIEND AND HE CHEATED ON HER

seeing u mention the uglies series gave me whiplash those books were wild

truly a series that lives in my head rent free absolute goat of dystopia YA

So odd how long I took until I finally noticed how damn queer their relationship feels. Oh, I always loved how deep but messy and complicated their friendship was, just like mine, but I only noticed long after I accepted my own queerness that it read familiar in another way.

Not sure if they still have Pride, since in their future all prejudice seems eradicated, but I do like to imagine they have.

Sadly not canon, just strong subtext, but in the Impostors Series there are other canon wlw relationships.

I'm rereading uglies and you can't tell me Shay and Tally don't read as bi. I mean, the part where Shay is guessing where Tally got her necklace and basically being like omg you totally fell in love while I was gone and invited them to the smoke!? Omg that's the same thing I did!

Like??? You couldn't be more gay if you tried. The whiplash of Shay being in love with David instead of Tally is fucking wild. I still don't believe it.