#2009 catalog

[crystlelakefarm]

Schleich 2009 Catalog

[notanothermikey]

Came across an old Argos catalogue from 2009!

[throwing-bibles]

[ghostlyerlkonig]

https://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/41612-male-lesbians/

This form has some wild interesting stuff on the topic of male lesbians.

some of my fav pins from the Lesbian Herstory Archives

[ID: 9 close up pictures of a pin against a gray background. In this description, images are numbered 1 through 9.

1. A pale pink pin with purple text. In caps, it reads: "male lesbians unite."

2. A pale yellow pin with cartoonish dark blue text. It reads: "Mr. Lady records • videos. The punctuation points are little white stars." White curvy lines and more stars are inside the word lady.

3. A black pin with gothic red text. It reads: "Serenity through viciousness."

4. A white pin with gray text. It reads: "I'm Hetro-Phobic." The word "I'm" is tilted.

5. A pin with dark gray text. The bottom half is red, and the top half has a bunch of red, distorted smiley faces, with a white background peeking through. In caps, the text reads: "happy gays are here again."

6. A white pin with saturated purple text. In caps, it reads: "don't feed or tease the straight people."

7. A sky blue pin with small gray text. It reads: "fondle with care."

8. A grey pin with a light gray illustration of a shirtless, tired looking cowboy. They hold a mug of beer in their hands, resting against a fence with a saddle on it. The sign next to them reads "Boots & Saddle."

9. A royal blue pin with lilac purple text. The first and last line are in a larger, serif font, and the center line is a smaller, sans serif font. In caps, it reads: "love is a many-gendered thing."

Quoted with slashes indicating line breaks, it reads: "love is / a many-gendered / thing." /End ID]

[just-ornstein]

[JK]  My first job was as an Assistant Producer for a video game company called Interplay in Irvine, CA. I had recently graduated from Boston University's School of Fine Arts with an MFA in Directing (I started out as a theatre nerd), but also had some limited coding experience and a passion for computers. It didn't look like I'd be able to make a living directing plays, so I decided to combine entertainment and technology (before it was cool!) and pitched myself to Brian Fargo, Interplay's CEO. He gave me my first break. I packed up and moved out west, and I've been producing games ever since.

[JK] I loved my time at EA. I was there for almost a full decade, and learned a tremendous amount about game-making, and met the most talented and driven people, who I remain in touch with today. EA gave me many opportunities, and never stopped betting on me. I worked on The Sims for nearly 5 years, and then afterwards, I worked on console action games as part of the Visceral studio. I was the Creative Director for the 2007 game "The Simpsons", and was the Executive Producer and Creative Director for the 2009 game "Dante's Inferno".

[JK] I haven't played in a long while, but I do recall that after the game shipped, my wife and I played the retail version for some time -- we created ourselves, and experimented with having a baby ahead of the actual birth of our son (in 2007). Even though I'd been part of the development team, and understood deeply how the simulation worked, I was still continually surprised at how "real" our Sims felt, and how accurate their responses were to having a baby in the house. It really felt like "us"!

Now for some of the development and lore related questions:

[JK] So I ended up in the incredibly fortunate position of creating the shipping neighborhoods for The Sims 2, and recruiting a few teammates to help me as we went along. 

Around the same time, we started using the Buy/Build tools to make houses we could save, and also bring them into each new build of the game (correcting for any bugs and incompatibilities). With the import tool, we could load Sims into these houses. In time, this "vanguard QA" process turned into a creative endeavor to define the "saved state" of the neighborhoods we would actually end up shipping with the game.

On playtesting & the leftover sims data on various lots:

Basically, we were in the late stages of development, and the Save Game functionality wasn't quite working. In order to test the game properly, you really needed to have a lot of assets, and a lot of Sims with histories (as if you'd been playing them for weeks) to test out everything the game had to offer. So I started defining a set of characters in a spreadsheet, with all their tuning variables, and worked with engineering to create an importer, so that with each new build, I could essentially "load" a kind of massive saved game, and quickly start playing and testing. 

It was fairly organic, and as the game's functionality improved, so did our starter houses and families. 

The thought process behind the creation of the iconic three neighborhoods:

I would not say it was particularly planned out ahead of time. We knew we needed a few saved houses to ship with the game; Sims 1, after all, had the Goth house, and Bob Newbie's house. But there wasn't necessarily a clear direction for what the neighborhood would be for Sims 2. We needed the game to be far enough along, so that the neighborhood could be a proper showcase for all the features in the game. With each new feature that turned alpha, I had a new tool in my toolbox, and I could expand the houses and families I was working on. Once we had the multi-neighborhood functionality, I decided we would not just have 1 starter neighborhood, but 3. With the Aging feature, Memories, a few wacky objects, plus a huge catalog of architectural and decorative content, I felt we had enough material for 3 truly distinct neighborhoods. And we added a couple of people to what became the "Neighborhood Team" around that time.

Later, when we created Strangetown, and eventually Veronaville, I believe we went back and changed Pleasantville to Pleasantview... because I liked the alliteration of "Verona-Ville", and there was no sense in having two "villes". (To this day, by the way, I still don't know whether to capitalize the "V" -- this was hotly debated at the time!)

Pleasantview:

Anyway, to answer your question, we of course started with Pleasantview. As I recall, we were not quite committed to multiple neighborhoods at first, and I think it was called Pleasantville initially, which was kind of a nod to Simsville... but without calling it Simsville, which was a little too on the nose. (There had also been an ill-fated game in development at Maxis at the time, called SimsVille, which was cancelled.) It's been suggested that Pleasantville referred to the movie, but I don't think I ever saw that movie, and we just felt that Pleasantville kind of captured the feeling of the game, and the relaxing, simple, idyllic world of the Sims.

Pleasantview started as a place to capture the aging feature, which was all new to The Sims 2. We knew we had toddlers, teens, and elders to play with, so we started making families that reflected the various stages of family life: the single mom with 3 young kids, the parents with two teens, the old rich guy with two young gold-diggers, etc. We also had a much greater variety of ethnicity to play with than Sims 1, and we had all new variables like sexual orientation and memories. All these things made for rich fodder for a great diversity of families. Then, once we had family trees, and tombstones that carried the actual data for the dead Sims, the doors really blew open. We started asking ourselves, "What if Bella and Mortimer Goth could be characters in Sims 2, but aged 25 years? And what if Cassandra is grown up? And what if Bella is actually missing, and that could be a fun mystery hanging over the whole game?" And then finally the "Big Life Moments" went into the game -- like weddings and birthdays -- and we could sort of tee these up in the Save Game, so that they would happen within the first few minutes of playing the families. This served both as a tutorial for the features, but also a great story-telling device.

Anyway, it all just flowed from there, as we started creating connections between families, relationships, histories, family trees, and stories that we could weave into the game, using only the simulation features that were available to us. It was a really fun and creative time, and we wrote all of the lore of Sims 2 within a couple of months, and then just brought it to life in the game.

Strangetown:

Strangetown was kind of a no-brainer. We needed an alternate neighborhood for all the paranormal stuff the Sims was known for: alien abduction, male pregnancy, science experiments, ghosts, etc. We had the desert terrain, which created a nice contrast to the lush Pleasantville, and gave it an obvious Area 51 vibe.

The fact that Veronaville is the oldest file probably reflects the fact that it was finished first, not that it was started first. That's my guess anyway. It was the simplest neighborhood, in many ways, and didn't have as much complexity in terms of features like staged big life moments, getting the abduction timing right, the alien DNA thing (which I think was somewhat buggy up until the end), etc.  So it's possible that we simply had Veronaville "in the can", while we put the last polish on Pleasantville (which was the first and most important neighborhood, in terms of making a good impression) and Strangeville (which was tricky technically).

Veronaville:

But my personal favorite was Veronaville. We had this cool Tudor style collection in the Build mode catalog, and I wanted to ship some houses that showed off those assets. We also had the teen thing going on in the aging game, plus a lot of romance features, as well as enemies. I have always been a Shakespeare buff since graduate school, so putting all that together, I got the idea that our third neighborhood should be a modern-day telling of the Romeo and Juliet story. It was Montys and Capps (instead of Montagues and Capulets), and it just kind of wrote itself. We had fun creating the past family trees, where everyone had died young because they kept killing each other off in the ongoing vendetta.

[JK] You know, I have never seen The Lone Gunmen, and I don't remember making any kind of direct references with the Strangetown Sims, other than the general Area 51 theme, as you point out. Charles London helped out a lot with naming Sims, and I'm pretty sure we owe "Vidcund" and "Lazlo" to him ... though many team members pitched in creatively. He may have had something in mind, but for me, I largely went off of very generic and stereotypical ideas when crafting these neighborhoods. I kind of wanted them to be almost "groaners" ... they were meant to be tropes in every sense of the word. And then we snuck in some easter eggs. But largely, we were trying to create a completely original lore.

[JK] Well, I think we kind of pushed it with The Sims 2, to be honest, and I remember getting a little blow-back about Bunny Broke, for example. Bunny Broke was the original name for Brandi Broke. Not everyone found that funny, as I recall, and I can understand that. It must have been changed before we shipped.

We also almost shipped the first outwardly gay Sims in those neighborhoods, which was bold for EA back in 2004. My recollection was that we had set up the Dreamers to be gay (Dirk and Darren), but I'm looking back now and see that's not the case. So I'm either remembering incorrectly (probably) or something changed during development.

In general we just did things that we found funny and clever, and we just pulled from all the tropes of American life.

[JK] The alien abduction started in Sims 1, with a telescope object that was introduced in the "Livin' Large" expansion pack. That's when some of the wackier ideas got introduced into the Sims lore. That pack shipped just before I joined Maxis in 2001; when I got there, the team had shipped "House Party" and was underway on "Hot Date". So I couldn't tell you how the original idea came about, but The Sims had this 50's Americana vibe from the beginning, and UFOs kind of played right into that. So the alien abduction telescope was a no-brainer to bring back in Sims 2. The male pregnancy was a new twist on the Sims 1 telescope thing. It must have been that the new version (Sims 2) gave us the tech and flexibility to have male Sims become pregnant, so while this was turned "off" for the core game, we decided to take advantage of this and make a storyline out of it. I think this really grew out of the fact that we had aliens, and alien DNA, and so it was not complicated to pre-bake a baby that would come out as an alien when born. The idea of a bunch of guys living together, and then one gets abducted, impregnated, and then gives birth to an alien baby ... I mean, I think we just all thought that was hilarious, in a sit-com kind of way. Not sure there was much more to it than that. Everything usually came from the designers discovering ways to tweak and play with the tech, to get to funny outcomes.

[JK] Possibly we were just testing the functionality of the Wants/Fears and Memories systems throughout development, and some stuff got left over.

[JK] I can't remember, but that sounds like something we would have done! I'm pretty sure we laid the groundwork for more stories that we ended up delivering :) But The Sims 2 was a great foundation for a lot of continued lore that followed.

--

I once again want to thank Jonathan Knight for granting me this opportunity and taking the time from his busy schedule to answer my questions.

[weaselmcdiesel]

ok so it's not a comic hope thats ok with you but instead it's karkat n nepeta but designed by someone whos madly in love with them both

some more au explanations + transcript beneath the cut

they're maybe around 30-40 yo? This was mostly just an exercise to give both of them adult designs. uh. i'm only calling it an au because I made bs some explanations behind their designs while i was drawing them. so uh, in this universe, sburb never happens + things that happened because of sburb don't happen either, but the alternian society is relatively unchanged. i dont actually know.. what.. karkat does.. like i cant figure out why he wouldnt be culled but it doesnt really matter i just wanted to draw him looking cool! (i am. open to hear about speculation if you have any). also i figured that Kanaya would go to the brooding caverns after her lusus dies, bc the wiki said her lusus would die regardless of the game taking place n whatever, and probaly do something with the matriorb there idk. thats all tho! ill prolly draw them more and maybe develop more lore as i do ^^;

--

Transcript!

i don’t know what their dynamic is in the canon of this au… but that won’t stop me from making them kiss :]

The Vigilant adult karkat on alternia

new highly developed shoosing skill

honestly has a calmer demeanor because he’s learned what’s worth exploding about… though he probably developped a crazy resting bitch face

pleased (arrow to karkat with a neutral face)

The sash doubles as a sling for when he visits Kanaya in the brooding caverns. He’s also very tranquil around grubs because they don’t cause unmanageable problems. He’ll get mad if someone else bothers one

(yes i’m obsessed with dilfkat that’s why i drew this)

The Predator adult nepeta on alternia

Taller than karkat <3

still a silly goober, but better at getting what she wants

she probably got her title from a history of single-handedly slaying fearsome lusii. she likely takes assassination type of jobs because of her stealth. one of the more easy-going trolls from the group

--

also! fun fact. i was having trouble designing kk's outfit so i looked in an old antiques catalog book from the internet archive to get inspiration from objects that had the same colors as those that i wanted to use in his design? not sure why i did that. just had a hunch that it would be fun. so this is the object i found that strangely enough inspired kk's fit

haha.. and i also found one for nepeta, though it was easier to design her fit and i didnt actually need a reference object

the book was "Antique Trader antiques & collectibles 2009 price guide"

[cityof2morrow]

OFB Props: Signs 001 Mix

Published: 7-14-2024 | Updated: N/A SUMMARY 100 posters, tags, and area signs to organize sale items on your commercial lots. Customize poster images, infographics, and barcodes/currency labels. Labels are color-coded in Simlish and English to make sorting objects easier: COOK (white label/for cookables, ingredients), DRINK (red label/ for edible beverages), EAT (pink label/for edible foods), GROW (green label/ for harvestables), HEAL (orange label/for functional medicines, motive boosters), CRAFT (brown label/for craftables, ingredients), STOCK (yellow label/for stockable foods, supplies), USE (blue label/for all other functional items), VIEW (gray label/for deco only items), and “other” (black and purple/barcode). These are general deco items, so you don’t have to sort by function/color unless you want to.

DETAILS Pets EP or higher. Cost: $3 | Environment: +1 | Buy > Deco > Wall Hangings/Sculptures (some signs don’t have to be placed on walls) You need my Poster Pack (Simmons, 2024) for all poster recolors. Sale Poster 7 (barcodes/currencies), and Ceiling Sign Info 4 (infographics) – are also REQUIRED. Recommended textures sizes for new recolors are 512x512 (poster graphics) and 512x128 (bar codes/currencies, infographics). Simlish text is ideal since images may be reversed on the back side of some objects, or slightly stretched. *Thumbnails for the BACK side of the posters may not generate accurately in the catalog (default game quirk). Make sure you can see the back side onscreen when recoloring. Finally, you’ll likely need “moveobjects on/off” and “snaptogrid on/off” cheats when placing some items.

ITEMS 11 ceiling signs (160-440 poly, poster images on signs 1-6 appear on back side). 11 standing signs (188-440 poly) 3 curved standing signs (548 poly) 10 wall signs (220-224 poly) 5 curved wall signs (874-876 poly) 3 curved/winged signs (1072 poly) 7 hanging signs (269 poly) 6 Instore Mini Billboards (4t2 conversion by NekoSayuri, 2018; EA; 116 poly) 5 Lil’ Business Chalkboards (4t2 conversion by itsnotdissimilar, 2016; EA; 128 poly) 7 framed posters (64 poly) 5 unframed posters (12 poly) 4 taped, unframed posters (108 poly) 3 unframed, wrinkled posters (18 poly) 3 wrinkled tags (34 poly) 3 smooth tags (155 poly, poster images appear reversed on back side) 3 info/barcode tags (4-60 poly) 6 easel signs (512 poly) 6 sales card on stands (card mesh by Cathee, 2008; 40 poly).

DOWNLOAD (choose one) from SFS | from MEGA *collection file included

COMPATIBILITY I recommend using Shift Everything (Lamare, 2022) or Object Freedom 1.02 (Fway, 2023) to enable floor-to-ceiling shiftability for all objects. This will also minimize shadow issues when shifting the signs. Some signs show a small gap between the frame and poster when viewed at close range. CREDITS Thanks: Sim Crafters, ChocolateCitySim. Sources: Beyno (Korn via BBFonts), EA/Maxis, Offuturistic Infographic (Freepik), Fonts (Gazifu, 2013; Ajaysims), Sims 3 (EA, 2009; 2012), Sims 4 (EA, 2014; 2020), Sims Mobile (EA, 2018), Supermarket Aisle Signs (Rockethorse, 2014), Synapticsims, Vector_Corp.

[yeah-yeah-beebiss-1]

krafton’s previous catalog consisting largely of live-service games has me leery, and there isn’t much clarity on whether or not all the tango folks sacked by microsoft will be coming to the new!tango (as opposed to it being just a sale of the tango brand name and HFR IP), but i’m cautiously optimistic

i still wish for the executive suite at xbox to experience a live reenactment of the 2009 connecticut chimpanzee incident for all the other studios they’ve pulled this shit on, tho

[sexcromancy]

young adult, new adult, and fantasy fiction: the audience of a book is who reads it

title clumsily based on the purpose of a system is what it does.

before we begin, I want to focus a bit on defining our terms. young adult, new adult, adult, science fiction/fantasy, speculative fiction, contemporary romance - all of the terms I will use in this post are created by marketing companies and readers, and all of them have fuzzy and subjective applicability to any given book. there is no objectivity in cataloging, which is the lens through which I approach knowledge organization projects like this. there is no definitive answer to what any given book or genre "is", because these categories are not fixed values. instead, their values are expanded and developed by what gets placed in which category, by whom, and what criteria they base that decision on. that's what I want to discuss.

to provide some context: debates over age categories and who is reading what books for which age ranges currently dominate discussions among publishers, authors, librarians, and readers. ages of characters in YA are skewing up, sales are slowing down. young adult as a category has existed for 50+ years, but it is currently undergoing some growing pains. here's one more article for good measure. new adult is a term created by the publishing industry in 2009, which developed in fits and starts despite multiple bestselling authors publishing under the category. oh well. in 2015, sarah j mass published her new book, a court of thorns and roses, which is widely regarded as a turning point for the popularity of new adult (more on the classification of ACOTAR itself in a moment). NA stalled out for many years, but has recently very quickly grown in popularity, especially for romance readers on booktok. some of the most popular books listed under new adult on goodreads are colleen hoover's it ends with us and it starts with us, ali hazelwood's check & mate, and rebecca yarros' fourth wing.

I want to look at two of these currently very popular authors as case studies to really dig into what new adult has come to mean.

in this 2014 interview, SJM discusses her currently running throne of glass series and the upcoming release of ACOTAR in 2015. she notes that the book is intended for "a slightly older YA crowd (aka steamy times ahead!)". earlier in the interview, she dodges a question about whether throne of glass will be YA or NA by saying she appreciates her teen and adult readers - if I had to guess, the label was still too new and publishers didn't want to alienate anyone. in 2023, I can't find anything on her website or bookseller sites that specifically identify the series (or any of her series) as YA, NA, or adult. however, Goodreads (which relies on user generated tags and is, to put it lightly, a mess wrt information organization) firmly classes ACOTAR as YA - almost 9k tags in young-adult and ya (lack of authority control is just one aspect of the mess), as opposed to about 3.5k new-adult. the thing is, though, ACOTAR comes up in essentially every blog post and article I read on the definition of new adult. it is a flashpoint in the discussion: it either did or didn't restart the term, it is or isn't too sexually explicit to be classed for teens, the writing is filled with young adult tropes and this does or does not matter. the answers to these questions aren't particularly important to me, but it's very interesting to see how people are attempting to draw those boundaries. I took a quick census of how SJM's series are classed in my library system. her throne of glass series is uniformly shelved in YA; ACOTAR is mostly YA with a few copies in adult, and her newer crescent city series is mostly adult with a few copies in YA. I do think that any discussion of ACOTAR is partially colored by this divisive relationship to the new adult category itself, so I'd also like to bring in a much newer book facing similar conversation.

if you follow this blog you might already know that I have an entirely non-neutral relationship to ali hazelwood; I love her books both as books and as cultural objects deserving of study. previously, she published three adult romance novels and a set of adult romance novellas, which all fall firmly and inarguably into those defined categories, based on age range and content (I have an argument for the love hypothesis being a horror story, but that's a different conversation). last year, she published her newest book, check & mate, as a young adult romance. it was widely marketed as such by the young readers imprint at putnam. however, on reading it, I (and many goodreads commenters) were surprised to find that it aligned more with some hallmarks of new adult. the characters are out of high school, and the challenges and growth moments are more focused on evolution, rather than coming of age. one blog post I read made the argument that YA is about high school firsts and NA is about adulthood firsts. this is amorphous, partially because there is no real one life path into adulthood by which to judge this, so let's switch focus to something more concrete: sex. in each of Ali's adult novels, there are a few explicit sex scenes. they're not as explicit as other romance novels, but they're definitely not fade-to-black. in check & mate, characters have sex, but it happens entirely off-screen and any discussion is fairly chaste or, at most, relying heavily on implied content. this is a real disconnect to me. much of NA lit (ACOTAR included) is quite sexually explicit. among those most popular NA books on goodreads, there are many books that get marketed specifically for their sexual content (spicy🌶️ to the tiktokers, smut to everyone else). to me, this cements check & mate as a YA novel - if she was going to write a book with explicit sex, like her others, she could've. she's mentioned in interviews that her chess novel concept originally featured older characters, and she aged them down once she realized what kind of story she wanted to tell. to me, it is telling that moving from adult to YA creates more clumsy caution around the handling of sex, as opposed to SJM, whose books "aged" upwards over time.

another interesting example I've noticed in the emerging NA space is how the age category intersects with genre. YA as a category has a pretty expansive genre playing field - we've all read YA fantasy, contemporary romance, historical fiction, action/adventure, issue novels, etc. NA so far seems pretty exclusively limited to romance as a main focus, especially in the most popular offerings as discussed above.

I've seen many a tiktok alleging that despite the drawn out fight scenes, extensive lore, and huge interconnected web of characters, the ACOTAR books are not "real fantasy." even more so for the fourth wing books. I've seen these books compared to Tolkien, as if to say, well, if you didn't invent a language, you're not really on the same level. that's entirely unfair, imo - plenty of fantasy doesn't engage at that level. but there is a wide array of contemporary fantasy I do think we can contrast with ACOTAR and other popular NA series.

we've discussed some of the hallmarks of YA and NA as categories: the age range of characters, coming of age, explicit sex for NA. i'd add fast-paced, immersive writing, especially in first person or close third, because so much of the appeal described on booktok is a book sucking you in completely. now, i want to bring up a few books that, on the surface, might check several of these boxes: dune by frank herbert has an 18yo protagonist, and the first book is very much a coming of age story. eragon (christopher paolini) and the name of the wind (patrick rothfuss) focus on a young person coming into their magical abilities through school/mentorship, a similar setting to many YA series. mistborn (brandon sanderson) and game of thrones (george r.r. martin) both have prominent protagonists that are 18 or younger when the story starts. of all these series, only eragon has young-adult as its most popular age-related tag on goodreads, and eragon was, at the time of release, very specifically marketed to and shelved in young adult in bookstores and libraries. some of these books have explicit or non-explicit sexual content, but only GOT has even close to as much as your average NA novel (to my knowledge).

i am not alleging that any of these books should be classed as YA, necessarily. but the glaring difference in their marketing and readership does point to one thing: these books are largely about men, and they are all written by men. i am not the first person to point out this gender gap in fantasy writing, and i don't have anything particularly new to say about it, except to bring it back around to my original point. none of these novels "are" adult fiction, and plenty (plenty!) of teenagers read them, in an interesting reversal of the trends in YA. who is making the decisions about where these books go, and why? what can we draw out about the books and their marketing? how is the future of "adult fantasy" shaped when these are the benchmarks by which we measure new entries?

i did also look into a few of my own favorite sci-fi series by women to see how they ranked by similar parameters. parable of the sower by octavia butler, featuring an 18yo protagonist and sexual content, has no age category at all in the top 20 most popular goodreads tags. it's in adult fiction in every library in my system that owns a copy. ive seen gideon the ninth (18yo protag, and yeah lets go ahead and say explicit sexual content) on YA shelves in bookstores, but its adult tag on goodreads is more popular, and almost every library in my system has it in adult. in my opinion, these books are important in rejecting the "women write YA, men write adult" narrative around speculative fiction, but they're not necessarily an exception to a different trend. it is not difficult for me to think of more adult scifi/fantasy books by women, because i actively seek them out. however, almost every single one of them has a protagonist under 25, as is the case with so much of the adult fantasy written by men listed above. last year, i read the adventures of amina al-sirafi, by s.a. chakrabotry, which was (i believe) the first non-contemporary/realistic fiction book ive ever read with a middle aged mother as the main protagonist. the book club at my library branch, mainly composed of middle aged and older women, read it, and expressed such genuine joy and excitement over a fantastic, adventurous book featuring a woman they saw themselves in. representation really does matter, and it matters to everyone, not just young people. but that's a different soapbox.

young readers are extremely picky. i've watched many a teenager (or younger) browse the YA section and turn up their noses at books with a cringey cover, an overly dramatic blurb, or just because. marketing books to teens is hard. booktok is an incredibly powerful marketing tool and divisive social force. it skyrockets an author one day and by the next week, other accounts are tearing that same author to shreds. in this environment, its no surprise that the sensationalized books - extremely good or extremely bad, blatantly sexual, shocking, consumable - become flashpoints of discussion. who should be reading ya? who is it for? what is inappropriate for young teenagers to read? what is inappropriate for adults to read? i think about these topics a lot, especially as what the publishing industry terms a "gatekeeper" - i'm a children's librarian; i control the access teenagers in my community have to these books. i take that role seriously, and i want to be thinking deeply about the books i put in my YA section and who will read them. our decisions, about where we class books, how we label and present them, how we discuss them: that is part of what dictates what genre and age classification a book "is", in addition to marketing.

[kimmipettie]

8/22/24 - A recent Christeen Classic

11/26/23 - 470 - The thought of anything to do with weddings had never crossed Chris's mind until becoming Aunt Julia's niece. But now, wearing seductive lingerie and gazing through the Boys Bridal Collection catalog, becoming a stunning bride has begun to seduce Chris. Just look at Chris's portrait on the wall. There is so much more to Chris as a Miss.

Debuted in late 2009 on Carole Jean's Petticoat Punishment Art. Thanks Christeen and Carole Jean.

___________________________________________________

It may be years ahead, but there will come the day that Chris is indeed a stunning bride, with her very own hair down to her shoulders. What fun she will have at the salon as she imagines bridal bliss as a Miss only hours away in the day.

(0)

[thefugitivesaint]

Banksy, 'Donutes (Chocolate), 2009 Source

This was taken from a Christie´s art catalog and the price of this screenprint was labeled as $60,000-80,000. The art world is a scam and, I think, its primary role is to enable the rich to launder money.

[demifiendrsa]

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection - Reveal Trailer

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection will launch for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC (Steam, Microsoft Store) on September 6, 2024 worldwide for $39.99.

Key visuals

Screenshots

Overview

About

Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit finally come together for a highly anticipated collection! Both titles were originally released on the Nintendo DS, and Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit was previously only available in Japan. Now, both Ace Attorney spin-off titles will be remastered, localized, and available worldwide with the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection.

In Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, players embark on a legal journey as the esteemed prosecutor and navigate through a collection of puzzling crime scenes and challenging witnesses. In the series’ second installment, Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit, players prepare for bigger challenges and confront new nemeses as Edgeworth fights to keep his job. In this newly available title, players will learn to interrogate witnesses, find incriminating evidence, and use the power of logic to solve mysteries.

Key Features

Experience Ace Attorney Like Never Before – Unlike the mainline Ace Attorney games, these titles focus more on point-and-click puzzle and adventure gameplay, offering a fresh perspective within the Ace Attorney universe. Players will explore crime scenes, interact with diverse environments, and solve puzzles to uncover the truth, providing a more hands-on investigative experience.

Crime Scenes and Witness Confrontations Optimized for Newer Consoles – Ace Attorney Investigations Collection will be available on modern platforms including Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, and Steam for the first time ever. The highly anticipated release also features improved resolution with more fluid character animations, as well as richer expressions for both classic and new sprites—all created by the Investigations series’ original character designer. Players will have the ability to change between classic sprites and the new character sprites. Each game will also have text and voice-overs available in English, Japanese, French, German, Korean, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese (Mandarin).

Newly Added Features for a More In-Depth Gameplay Experience – The collection allows new and veteran players to experience both titles in an exciting and more in-depth way. With the History functionality, players can review any dialogue they may have missed and can freely choose which game, chapter, or section they want to start from or revisit. With the Story Mode feature, players can immerse themselves in the twisting tales of each case with a story and puzzles that progress automatically. Mind Chess is another new feature players can explore from Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor’s Gambit, where they engage in mental battles to pull important information from witnesses.

A Collection of Special Items for Passionate Prosecutors – Players can delve deeper into the world of Ace Attorney Investigations with the Gallery, which features a catalog of illustrations, sketches, character animations, promotional art, and accolades, as well as all 106 in-game background music tracks, 23 orchestral tracks, one completely new song, and five arranged tracks from the original Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth.

**Arranged Tracks from Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth include:

“[AAI Collection] Confrontation – Allegro 2009”

“[AAI Collection] Confrontation – Presto 2009”

“[AAI Collection] Miles Edgeworth – Objection! 2009”

“[AAI Collection] Pursuit – Chase Down the Truth”

“[AAI Collection] Pursuit – Chase Down the Truth (No Intro)”

[throwing-bibles]

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Feral Friday! 

This week we’re taking a look at Taschen: Oliver Payne & Nick Relph. This beautifully designed exhibition catalog was printed by Busch Druck Medien Verlag (Bielefeld, Deutschlan) and published by Kerber Verlag in New York in 2004. It accompanied the exhibition Oliver Payne & Nick Relph, which was presented by the National Museum of Art (Oslo) and the Musee d'Art Moderne (Paris) the same year. Designed by graphic designer and artist Halvor Bodin, the text was authored by Payne & Relph in collaboration with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Andrea Kroknes (Senior Curator of the National Museum), and Sune Nordgren (director of the National Museum at the time).  

Oliver Payne & Nick Relph are a British artist duo who internationally exhibited film, video, & installation works from 1999 until 2009. Their practice grappled with themes of cultural identity, subcultures (such as skater, gaming, and DIY cultures), and corporate imperialism. This publication is particularly interesting within the context of our collection because it juxtaposes the design language of Fine Press movement forerunners like the Kelmscott Press with the lo-fi aesthetics of early internet & DIY culture and advertising, bringing the principles of the Arts & Crafts movement into critical conversation with the aesthetic and cultural landscape of our time.

In their early video work Driftwood (a "psycho-geographical tour of London"), Payne & Relph call to 'smash the symbols of the Empire in the name of nothing but the heart's longing for grace.' They demonstrate this ethos by gaming information and cataloging systems through their choice of the title Taschen, the moniker of one of the most ubiquitous and celebrated publishers of art books, thereby hacking their way into in a realm where artists working in new media and experimental art were rarely represented.

--Ana, Special Collections Graduate Intern

View more Feral Friday posts.

View more Fine Press posts.

View more Book Arts posts.

[mythosidhesdollhouse]

Morning, all! Just barely XD Got a bit of a late start today, but I'm in the mood to post and wanted to start with some pix I took several days ago of my lovely new Toffee Hazel! I've wanted a Toffee doll for fifteen years, ever since they premiered at Toy Fair 2009, but for a number of reasons I was never able to acquire one. Then, fortuitously, a recent windfall that gave me the budget for a bit of recreational spending happened to coincide with this girl turning up on ebay for a price I thought was reasonable, so I snapped her up right away. Happily I can report she was well worth the wait ^_^ She is so well made and has such a fun, quirky personality...I am absolutely thrilled to finally have one (soon to be two ;p) of these in my collection.

I plan to do a more detailed post on the general history of the Toffee line soon that will include some photos of the documentation and mini catalog that came with Hazel, but for now please enjoy these pix from her unboxing and a little play with some atmospheric lighting :)

(Photodump under the cut)

Very easy to remove her from the box, only a few ribbons holding her in place.

Toffee dolls have a rather unconventional build XD They were all handmade with soft jointed bodies, cast faces & hands (I'm not sure of the material) with hand-painted details, and glass eyes. The fur and ears on her head are not removable.

Despite the bat-themed outfit, Hazel is a catgirl! All the Toffees with the pointed cat-like ears share the slitted pupil eyes and sculpted fangs (bunnygirl Toffees have round pupils and no fangs).

Hazel is the perfect harbinger of Spooky Season

...well it's possible there's one Toffee who might outdo her ;p

(sneak peak of what I'm expecting tomorrow, shhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

[chiarrara]

the authentic 2011 indie kid playlist

"real 2011 pandora radio recreation: the songs that always played on my hypercurated matt and kim radio, is this it radio, and pumped up kicks radio a.k.a. the authentic 2009-2012 indie kid playlist (ft. my actual authentic 2011 facebook profile pic)"

including full liner notes (typed out below the cut for readability):

- for @justrustandstardust <3

Daylight - Matt and Kim: one of the most iconic songs of my teenage years. I feel like me and Michael based our life off this song. Matt and Kim is one of the bases for the radio stations I picked for this playlist (the ones I listened to constantly). There will be more Matt and Kim on this playlist, but not enough. You really should listen to this whole album (this will not be the last time I say this)

Kids - MGMT: everyone knows electric feel. I picked the underrated classics I was obsessed with after I loved electric feel

Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros: a staple. so silly, but so iconic

Midnight City - M83: the first of the songs that I only listened to on Pandora & never learned the names/artists. also, became car commercial songs. banger

Is This It - The Strokes: you simply must listen to this album. half of it is on the playlist, but still you must. This album is the second base of a radio station.

Automatic Stop - The Strokes: listen, there's gonna be a lot of Strokes on this playlist. I fell in love with them listening to this radio station.

Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second - STRFKR: the second of the Pandora exclusives. why is it named that? so iconin

Float On - Modest Mouse: as classic as classics get

Hard to Explain - The Strokes: I found this album at the library and picked it up based on the album art alone. this was back when I got all my music from the library & burned cds onto my computer to make mix cds, listen in windows media player, or upload to my ipod nano

Flourescent Adolescent - Arctic Monkeys: we're in the pre "AM" era! their back catalog is so fucking good, and this is one of the best examples of that. I love this song

Soma - The Strokes: it's gonna be a lot of Strokes. trust me, it's authentic to the experience

Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand: ICONIC BANGER.

Breezeblocks - alt-J: (so groovy) another Pandora exclusive. mainstay on the channel. like these songs would play every 30 mins & I loved it

Song For No One - Miike Snow: ah! Miike Snow my beloved! never listened outside of Pandora for some reason but SO iconic. they were so popular

Loud Pipes - Ratatat: the beat just gets into your body with these ones

Shut Up and Let Me Go - The Ting Tings: Icons! defined the era. watch the music video.

1901 - Phoenix: we played this and the next Phoenix song so. fucking. much. goin hey hey hey hey hey hey hey!

40 Day Dream - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros: when you thought of indie, this is what you thought of

Skinny Love - Bon Iver: jk jk this is what you thought of. This was hipster before it got picked up by Hot Topic

Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare - Matt and Kim: full volume, windows down, 100 mph screaming <3 (I love this song sm)

Intro - The xx: another Pandora exclusive car commercial song but listen, I was obsessed. hearing these songs again is like waking up dormant genes

Lisztomainia - Phoenix: this song and 1901 are a bonded pair. do not separate.

Lessons Learned - Matt and Kim: it was so impossible to pick from this album it's all so good. let it turn your love into a coming of age movie

Sleeping Lessons - The Shins: The SHINS bro THE SHINS. every indie movie had the Shins on their soundtrack. They're so good.

Here (In Your Arms) - Hellogoodbye: listen I didn't want to pick their most popular song but it's so definitive I had to. I saw them live like 4 times. This album is so important to me. All my love songs for my 13 yr old relationship came from this album

Crystalised - The xx: not a listening session would go by that I wouldn't hear this song

All My Friends - LCD Sound System: he's so good

Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend: THIS ALBUM IS SUMMER 2011. it was one of 2 or 3 go to CDs in my first car. I listened to it over and over and over again. it always brings me back to my ugly brown 2001 Chevy Malibu outside Michael's house, or driving down to the lake. I seriously couldn't pick songs from this album it's all one big song to me. formative. what else can i say.

Time to Pretend - MGMT: I'm feeling rough I'm feeling wrong in the time of my life. underrated classic

Cough Syrup - Young the Giant: a late addition but I know every word

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear: THE Pandora radio song. I would listen just to hear this song eventually

We Used to Vacation - Cold War Kids: One of my favorite bands ever. Their first two albums were on repeat. This song is my favorite. It just rips something out of me

Rhinemaidens - The Envy Corps: The Envy Corps have made their entrance! I've seen them more than Hellogoodbye. The epitomal hipsters. and some of the best music of all time. They're absolutely foundational. (listen to the album!)

Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People: The third and final base for a radio station is this song. That's how much I listened to it. One of those songs that just got into my bones. Forever favorite song it never gets old. also, listen to the album. so good

Animal - Miike Snow: the Miike Snow song. One of the first songs I ever discovered on Pandora <3

Young Folks - Peter Bjorn and John: iconic. I don't know what to say

The High Road - Broken Bells: Michael was on the hs radio station senior year & he played this whole EP straight one day

Call It What You Want - Foster the People: BANGER ("what's your style and who do you listen to" WHO CARES <3)

Walking On A Dream - Empire Of The Sun: I did not know the name of this song or the band or even recognize the cover art but I know this song. They put them in car commercials because they're good

What You Know - Two Door Cinema Club: this and the other two door cinema club song came up all the time. bops.

A-Punk - Vampire Weekend: (ay! ay! ay! ay!) most iconic riff of all time! can't understand a damn word but I was screaming them anyway (100mph)

Rill Rill - Sleigh Bells: (Pandora Exclusive!) iconic! can't help but groove to this song. the mood of this song is so representative of this lane of music

Something Good Can Work - Two Door Cinema Club: the opening to this song gets me so hype! I know you'll like this song

Dragon Queen - Yeah Yeah Yeahs: you know Heads Will Roll but did you know this underrated banger? they're awesome, their other songs should get more attention

Don't Slow Down - Matt and Kim: 100mph dancing like a maniac lol look I should not have been allowed behind the wheel of a car. Don't slow down (listen to the album!)

All I Want - LCD Sound System: he's just really good idk

That's Not My Name - The Ting Tings: we were obsessed with them. this song was everywhere

Story Problem - The Envy Corps: for the longest time I didn't know any names to Envy Corps songs because I mostly listened to them live, on a mix cd, or someone else was playing them. so i always got surprised by each song like, oh! I love this one! to be honest I still don't know the titles lol but every song is so damn iconic. at the concerts they would split the audience in half and have half of us do the "dada dada dadada da da da" part and the other half do the "oooooh wa oh wa oh" so you were singing your part throught the end of the song while they played. it was so magical <3

All Time Lows - Hellogoodbye: underrated banger. this album is like the definitive electronic indie sound of the mid-aughts

Somebody Told Me - The Killers: incredible song, incredible band. mainstay. they're so much more than Mr. Brightside

(starting the list over bc of tumblr's character limits. add 50)

Reptilia - The Strokes

Someday - The Strokes

Under Cover of Darkness - The Strokes: listen, this is accurate to how often they would play on that station. just Strokes back to back. and I loved it. their discography is just that deep. they don't miss.

Fell In Love With a Girl - The White Stripes: had to get some Whte Stripes in here. had to.

New Slang - The Shins: this song and Caring Is Creepy just, so iconic. they're so good

The World At Large - Modest Mouse: gonna float on maybe would you understand. ah ah ah ah ah ah aah (dashboard by modest mouse should also be on here but i couldn't find a spot for it :( played all the time) my thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth <3<3<3

Black Balloon - The Kills: does anyone remember the kills? I wanted to be them so bad. this was the era of iconic indie duos (ting tings, matt & kim, white stripes, she & him...)

When Did Your Heart Go Missing - Rooney: one hit wonders, my beloved

I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You - Black Kids: I'm convinced no one listened to this song but us. that's not true, and thank god cuase it's such a bop but we felt like we were in on a secret or something. the true 2010 hipster experience lol

Kid Gloves - The Envy Corps: I would literally put this song on a t work and walk around like I was a manic pixie dream girl in an indie movie. unironically amazing song tho (listen to the ep)

Henrietta - The Fratellis: there should have been four more of their songs on here. broke my heart to cut them

Phantom Limb - The Shins: I don't think I've said listen to the album on this one yet. the way this song just vibrates in you

Naive - The Kooks: another underrepresented band. She Moves In Her Own Way, Ooh La, Seaside!? all staples. I mean... if you need another album to listen to... im just sayin

Finer Feelings - Spoon: a bop. fun song <3

Mardy Bum - Arctic Monkeys: this was my first Arctic Monkeys song <3<3<3 forever. the coda is everything. god I love this song

Such Great Heights - Iron & Wine: listen, the original song by The Postal Service is so so so good and we listened to it just as much as this cover. this cover had us in a chokehold. go listen to the original tho. and the whole Postal Service album I promise it's so fundamental

Janglin - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros: the last of the three iconic ES&TMZs songs. This is like the progenitor of Stomp Clap corporate indie. everyone wanted to be them

Tighten Up - The Black Keys: the opening base notes on this song make me go feral. there should be way more Black Keys on here but if you have to pick one this is an easy choice.

Last Nite - The Strokes: the most iconic Strokes song. try not to scraem the first words. you can't. Last Night!

Australia - The Shins: time to put ear covers on! just makes me smile :)

All These Things That I've Done - The Killers: got us screaming "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" (are we human or are we dancers is also the killers. icons of the era)

Two Weeks In Hawaii - Hellogoodbye: I felt so bad when your mom caught us eating ice cream in your room at three in the morning. the best parts of my adolescence consolidated in this incredible song. the first of this type of album closing song to deeply affect me (followed by only in dreams by weezer in college). coming back to this album was part of me coming out of my depression last summer. my inner child just lives here, and I love her so much <3

A Certain Romance - Artctic Monkeys: I don't know, this song just gives me warm feelings. I know every shape of this song. I'm pretty sure it's about how America is a cultural wasteland lol. over there there's friends of mine, what can I say I've known em for a long long time, and it might over step the line, but you just cannot get angry in the same way, no not in the same way.

Daylight Outro (Remix) - Matt and Kim: back where we started. thx for listening <3