And the Answer is, Clearly, Fairy Tales

So I've noticed lately that a lot of popular YA lit these days is purely dystopic in nature, and I've speculated about it.  But something had been nagging at me, and that something was this: what is popular--is there anything popular--that's at all anti-dystopic?  What, I thought, is the opposite of all this dystopia?  (Linguistically speaking, I know the answer is utopia...but for a little while I was stumped about how one would generically answer this question.)

And then it hit me as I watched the season 2 premiere of Once Upon a Time: duh, the answer is fairy tales.

They never fully go out of style; they get adapted and re-adapted; they almost always follow the same general plans.  They're stark: black and white, good and evil.  Hey look, this is the evil queen.  She's bad.  Hey look, this is Snow White.  She's good.  

No in between, only temporary unhappiness, and lots of happy ever after.  Most of the time.

And I guess I just had to write this up to reassure myself that not all of the popular books of the moment are about the world going to hell in a handbasket (or worse).