#I do NOT intend to appeal to the masses

[aeolianblues]

That song is a deep cut to YOU. I have based my entire personality around it

[meowmeowmeowmeow4x]

Supersons +1 prompt answer

If you asked Danny, 12 year old half-ghost hero of Amity Park, how half-life was going, he'd tell you things were mixed.

On the one hand, he had just spent the last three or four months in family/scientist/'this house is a death trap waiting to happen' therapy with Jazz, and by some miracle, it worked. He wasn't sure if this was some kind of dream as his parents poured over years upon years of research, crossing out lines, rewriting equations, and reevaulating everything they thought they knew about ghosts.

Was the shudders family therapy worth not going over how they'd like to dissect him? he's still not sure. The horror.

Not to mention the attention. Danny was sure he was going to throw up if his parents drag him away for more bonding time, only for a ghost to attack and for him to run off to transform. What made it worse was when the Fentons came barrelling out, guns blazing, alternating between getting mad that he'd interrupted their family time, and asking him questions about "Your suspicious spook culture, if you even have one you dangerous delusional delinquent!"

At least they were trying, but Danny was very much comfortable not spilling the beans on the whole half-ghost situation, thank you very much.

And that's why, when Dad proposed to take him to Gotham to show off their latest invention, he jumped at the chance. The home city of the Batman, one of the greatest heroes known to man (except for Martian Manhunter and Superman of course) and Dad promised to take him to Gotham Observatory too. Not to mention how much he wanted to get away from Jazz's smug looks of superiority. Gotham here he comes!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Damian Wayne scowled as he scanned the crowed of scientists with more smarts than sense. Really, a flying toilet seat. For what deviant?

"Maybe they're for people who can fly." Kent piped up beside him. Father had let the two of them run off together, and his company was mildly more appealing than being alone with his thoughts.

"Why would Superman ever need to relieve himself mid-air. I do not believe you would appreciate your father's rear end being on display for all the world to see."

"True." Jon hummed. His voice lowered to a whisper. "You think indecent exposure is what your dad meant by "scoping out any potential future villains?"

Damian gave Jon a flat look. The sooner this convention ended, the better.

The crowded shifted, and the mass of visitors pushed toward a certain corner, where a man large enough to rival Superman's build stood upon a podium, with a boy their age off to the side.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the latest in FentonWorks' innovations, the Fenton Ghost Zone Radar, soon to revolutionise the study of ghosts!"

"I thought ghosts were a magic thing." Jon said. "You know, stuff Constantine and JLD deal with."

"They are."

"Mixing magic and science is like, like, oil and water. No way this guy's serious, is he?"

"His name is Jack Fenton. That's Daniel Fenton, his son." Damian pointed to the boy in question, looking like he'd seen this scene a hundred times before, but with that knowing glint that promised something deeper. "They're normally spotted alongside Jack's wife, Madeline. Widely regarded as quacks by the larger scientific community for chasing paper-thin theories about ghosts, they've nonetheless gained funding from the government. This is the first time they've left their base of operations in Amity Park for years."

"Woah, you know your stuff, Dami!"

Damian glared at the young Superboy in disguise. "I read the briefing files. Didn't you?"

Kent looked uncomfortable and looked away. "Uhh, maybe?"

"Typical."

"Well, if he's so crazy, then why'd your dad even let him in." Upon another scathing glare, Kent relented. "Oh right, the whole supervillain thing."

"Enough chatter. We'll zero in on the younger Fenton. I intend to squeeze him like a grape, and make Father proud."

"Dami maybe you should be a little nicer-" Only for Damian to march off without him.

Honestly, inane niceties were above someone of his status. Those things were Superboy's job, and if Daniel Fenton wouldn't crack, then Damian was itching to try a new torture technique.

@impyssadobsessions

[apas-95]

the liberal 'actually, it's impossible to tell whats good and bad, so you should never have any authority over anything' approach is, principally, ridiculous, but is also just incredibly weak as a defence.

whether abortion is good or actually murder is a pretty important thing to address: it's good. whether hrt is good or actually delusional self-harm is a pretty important thing to address: it's good. whether being gay is good or actually a sign of a sexual predator is a pretty important thing to address: it's good. in all these cases, going 'yeah, maybe abortion is murder, but it's my inalienable right to bodily autonomy, either way' is laughable. it wins over nobody who doesn't already think abortion isn't murder, and is based on a premise that we should already know is wrong: there are no such thing as universal human rights. all rights are socially-situated and conditional, and in fact, there are good times when 'bodily autonomy' should not be respected - I mean, for god's sake, we intend to kill people with guns.

we have to actually make value judgements and weigh the positives against the negatives for real, specific cases, not just pre-emptively refuse the question out of a solipsism and appeals to universal truths. forcing someone to give blood to save lives at a mass casualty event is more emotionally impactful, despite being identical to, mandating vaccination and handwashing. both of the latter are 'violations of bodily autonomy' that are plainly agreeable on practical grounds. the position that finds no possible way of extricating 'stopping someone from committing suicide', an act generally thanked after the fact, from the abuses that take place in capitalist psychiatric institutions, is not one based on material analysis or an attempt to mitigate harm - it is a juvenile 'abolitionist' approach that refuses to consider class character, in favour of an idealistic condemnation of entire systems and related practices in the abstract.

ultimately, there is nothing incorrect that is not also harmful. a refusal to analyse the positives and negatives of behaviours, procedures, and acts, justified by 'it's impossible to know!' and 'doing anything would be authoritarian!' is not helpful, does not bring about correct behaviour in practice, it is the opposite - it is a cover for harmful behaviours, and promoting it to avoid the hard discussions over whether a given behaviour is harmful is wrong. it fails to defend correct things - like the fact that hrt is good - and works to defend incorrect things. any view that our positions should not be based on practical, material facts is corrosive.

[qqueenofhades]

Hello! This is kind of a weird ask, I'm sorry to bother you, but seeing as you're a very intelligent studied historian that I deeply respect, I was hoping you could offer some advice? Or like, things i could read? Lately, i feel like my critical thinking skills are emaciated and its scaring the shit out of me. I feel very slow and like I'm constantly missing important info in relation to news/history/social activism stuff. Thats so vague, sorry, but like any tips on how i can do better?

Aha, thank you. There was recently a good critical-thinking infograph on my dash, so obviously I thought I remembered who reblogged it and checked their blog, it wasn't them, thought it was someone else, checked their blog, it also wasn't them, and now I can't find it to link to. Alas. But I will try to sum up its main points and add a few of my own. I'm glad you're taking the initiative to work on this for yourself, and I will add that while it can seem difficult and overwhelming to sort through the mass of information, especially often-false, deliberately misleading, or otherwise bad information, there are a few tips to help you make some headway, and it's a skill that like any other skill, gets easier with practice. So yes.

The first and most general rule of thumb I would advise is the same thing that IT/computer people tell you about scam emails. If something is written in a way that induces urgency, panic, the feeling that you need to do something RIGHT NOW, or other guilt-tripping or anxiety-inducing language, it is -- to say the least -- questionable. This goes double if it's from anonymous unsourced accounts on social media, is topically or thematically related to a major crisis, or anything else. The intent is to create a panic response in you that overrides your critical faculties, your desire to do some basic Googling or double-checking or independent verification of its claims, and makes you think that you have to SHARE IT WITH EVERYONE NOW or you are personally and morally a bad person. Unfortunately, the world is complicated, issues and responses are complicated, and anyone insisting that there is Only One Solution and it's conveniently the one they're peddling should not be trusted. We used to laugh at parents and grandparents for naively forwarding or responding to obviously scam emails, but now young people are doing the exact same thing by blasting people with completely sourceless social media tweets, clips, and other manipulative BS that is intended to appeal to an emotional gut rather than an intellectual response. When you panic or feel negative emotions (anger, fear, grief, etc) you're more likely to act on something or share questionable information without thinking.

Likewise, you do have basic Internet literacy tools at your disposal. You can just throw a few keywords into Google or Wikipedia and see what comes up. Is any major news organization reporting on this? Is it obviously verifiable as a fake (see the disaster pictures of sharks swimming on highways that get shared after every hurricane)? Can you right-click, perform a reverse image search, and see if this is, for example, a picture from an unrelated war ten years ago instead of an up-to-date image of the current conflict? Especially with the ongoing Israel/Palestine imbroglio, we have people sharing propaganda (particularly Hamas propaganda) BY THE BUCKETLOAD and masquerading it as legitimate news organizations (tip: Quds News Network is literally the Hamas channel). This includes other scuzzy dirtbag-left websites like Grayzone and The Intercept, which often have implicit or explicit links to Russian-funded disinformation campaigns and other demoralizing or disrupting fake news that is deliberately designed to turn young left-leaning Westerners against the Democrats and other liberal political parties, which enables the electoral victory of the fascist far-right and feeds Putin's geopolitical and military aims. Likewise, half of our problems would be solved if tankies weren't so eager to gulp down and propagate anything "anti-Western" and thus amplify the Russian disinformation machine in a way even the Russians themselves sometimes struggle to do, but yeah. That relates to both Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine.

Basically: TikTok, Twitter/X, Tumblr itself, and other platforms are absolutely RIFE with misinformation, and this is due partly to ownership (the Chinese government and Elon Fucking Musk have literally no goddamn reason whatsoever to build an unbiased algorithm, and have been repeatedly proven to be boosting bullshit that supports their particular worldviews) and partly due to the way in which the young Western left has paralyzed itself into hypocritical moral absolutes and pseudo-revolutionary ideology (which is only against the West itself and doesn't think that the rest of the world has agency to act or think for itself outside the West's influence, They Are Very Smart and Anti-Colonialist!) A lot of "information" in left-leaning social media spaces is therefore tainted by this perspective and often relies on flat-out, brazen, easily disprovable lies (like the popular Twitter account insisting that Biden could literally just overturn the Supreme Court if he really wanted to). Not all misinformation is that easy to spot, but with a severe lack of political, historical, civic, or social education (since it's become so polarized and school districts generally steer away from it or teach the watered-down version for fear of being attacked by Moms for Liberty or similar), it is quickly and easily passed along by people wanting trite and simplistic solutions for complex problems or who think the extent of social justice is posting the Right Opinions on social media.

As I said above, everything in the world is complicated and has multiple factors, different influences, possible solutions, involved actors, and external and internal causes. For the most part, if you're encountering anything that insists there's only one shiningly righteous answer (which conveniently is the one All Good and Moral People support!) and the other side is utterly and even demonically in the wrong, that is something that immediately needs a closer look and healthy skepticism. How was this situation created? Who has an interest in either maintaining the status quo, discouraging any change, or insisting that there's only one way to engage with/think about this issue? Who is being harmed and who is being helped by this rhetoric, including and especially when you yourself are encouraged to immediately spread it without criticism or cross-checking? Does it rely on obvious lies, ideological misinformation, or something designed to make you feel the aforementioned negative emotions? Is it independently corroborated? Where is it sourced from? When you put the author's name into Google, what comes up?

Also, I think it's important to add that as a result, it's simply not possible to distill complicated information into a few bite-sized and easily digestible social media chunks. If something is difficult to understand, that means you probably need to spend more time reading about it and encountering diverse perspectives, and that is research and work that has to take place primarily not on social media. You can ask for help and resources (such as you're doing right now, which I think is great!), but you can't use it as your chief or only source of information. You can and should obviously be aware of the limitations and biases of traditional media, but often that has turned into the conspiracy-theory "they never report on what's REALLY GOING ON, the only information you can trust is random anonymous social media accounts managed by God knows who." Traditional media, for better or worse, does have certain evidentiary standards, photographing, sourcing, and verifying requirements, and other ways to confirm that what they're writing about actually has some correspondence with reality. Yes, you need to be skeptical, but you can also trust that some of the initial legwork of verification has been done for you, and you can then move to more nuanced review, such as wording, presentation of perspective, who they're interviewing, any journalistic assumptions, any organizational shortcomings, etc.

Once again: there is a shit-ton of stuff out there, it is hard to instinctively know or understand how to engage with it, and it's okay if you don't automatically "get" everything you read. That's where the principle of actually taking the time to be informed comes in, and why you have to firmly divorce yourself from the notion that being socially aware or informed means just instantly posting or sharing on social media about the crisis of the week, especially if you didn't know anything about it beforehand and are just relying on the Leftist Groupthink to tell you how you should be reacting. Because things are complicated and dangerous, they take more effort to unpick than just instantly sharing a meme or random Twitter video or whatever. If you do in fact want to talk about these things constructively, and not just because you feel like you're peer-pressured into doing so and performing the Correct Opinions, then you will in fact need to spend non-social-media time and effort in learning about them.

If you're at a university, there are often subject catalogues, reference librarians, and other built-in tools that are there for you to use and which you SHOULD use (that's your tuition money, after all). That can help you identify trustworthy information sources and research best practices, and as you do that more often, it will help you have more of a feel for things when you encounter them in the wild. It's not easy at first, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes more so, and will make you more confident in your own judgments, beliefs, and values. That way when you encounter something that you KNOW is wrong, you won't be automatically pressured to share it just to fit in, because you will be able to tell yourself what the problems are.

Good luck!

[ganondoodle]

you know, you could argue that totk is just "one bad game" in a series that doesnt have to mean anything for the future, and i should jsut move on and wait for the next one, and generally id agree, but these days i cannot help but feel like its the beginning of the end, so to say

we are seeing it in every type of media, be it series, games, movies, that stories that say anything are too risky so they go for generic slop instead- the recent news about pixar wanting to focus "mass appeal" (despite their reasoning being completely hypocritical?) is just yet another proof of that being a trend that doesnt seem to stop any time soon

and one of the problems that brings with it, besides just being boring, is that "generic mass appeal" stuff ... ends up turning around to repeat tired old stereotypes that often leads to really problematic framing (like even childrens cartoons featuring war somewhere in the middle east against evil arabs .. just like, as a backdrop), bc "mass appeal" in general really means "average white person able to spend money", which isnt the majority of people but its the ones who this is targeted towards and more often than not made by, and, no matter how much some people want to pretend its possible, its impossible to make anything that doesnt say anything, theres nothing non political, if they think something is non political its bc its aimed at them and they agree with it

thats what makes me so anxious about the future of the zelda franchise, bc, while its always been a problem, totk especially.. is exactly that imo, its generic and a boring good vs evil with no nuance to be found if you are in the target "mass appeal" but as soon as you arent, or know about the most widely used ways of framing, its kinda scary how clearly it turns into a white god appointed savior against the evil arabs imperialism simulator, and it might not have been intended as such, its so normalized that its considered simple and standard.. (i know i go on alot about it, and i dont mean media has to be sanitized uwu perfect and not feature anything problematic- i mean this as a critique of how its presented, it expects and wants you to agree with it, its not like a cautionary tale about serious things like some movies ARE, its a fantasy game 'aimed at kids' ..)

and if its true that they outsourced the writing for the game .. for the sequel to breath of the wild, one of their most successful games ever, then what does that mean for the future? that doesnt sound good at all

with the trends of the dominating media, and how totk turned out, i feel like we are seeing the start of a downfall into 'generic slop' that makes them more money more safely than anything more unique or interesting for the franchise like its happening with everything else that isnt indie

if all that wasnt the case i might not be so focused on it, i might be able to move on much easier, but i cant, i care deeply about it and i feel like im clawing at sand slipping into a giant garbage disposal, im not thrilled and excited for the next game like i was just a few years ago, or direct for that matter, im afraid of what they will do next, and i dont think thats good, and i dont think im the only one either, hyperfixation (special interest?) or not

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Idk if anyone brought this up yet but is Malleus calling Yuu "Child of man" supposed to be a reference to Jesus having the title "Son/Child of man"? There's already a few references to religion in TWST so I'm just curious

... Wouldn't that imply Yuu is some Jesus-like figure in the narrative 😭 when they don't actually do that much/j Personally, I don't think that's the case! The strongest religious themes that I can glean are featured in an event that isn't tied to the main story, Glorious Masquerade (it makes sense given the source material and is vague enough to not be in reference to one specific religion, though the same sense of general spirituality is still there). I don’t know if the devs would intentionally include religious ideas when it is specifically aimed at the player character when it doesn't really serve a purpose there (especially when this would be putting a spotlight on a few specific religions, ie the ones with Jesus in them, over others) and could potentially alienate non-religious fans or fans who follow religions that don't include Jesus at all. It is for these reasons that I think the "child of man" thing is just a quirk of Malleus's completely unrelated to religion. It’s a pretty common trope in fiction for non-human creatures to refer to humans as “children of man”. However!! I do think that you can still read the text that way if you wish. (I asked a religious friend of mine and they reported that they did see the phrase as an allusion to Jesus.) Maybe I just don't see the religious aspect of it because I'm not religious myself. Part of why TWST is great is because it can have mass appeal and many different interpretations depending on the player/fan, so honestly I'd encourage you to not take my opinion as fact. Everyone is allowed to see the story and its characters however they wish! Brief aside, as I've mentioned in an older post, "child of man" is not actually a nickname Malleus exclusively grants to Yuu. It is not given capitalization (which would make it a proper noun referring only to a specific individual, say “the Chief of Police” or “Principal [Name here]”) meaning the term is not meant for Yuu and Yuu alone. Additionally, Malleus is shown to also use the term to refer to groups of humans—and this is what I believe the intended use of the phrase is. It ("child of man") is actually a general noun to refer to other non-fae beings, whether a single one (be it Yuu or other characters) or multiple people. Note how Malleus uses “a” before “child of man”, implying there is more than one, rather than Yuu being the only one. I think part of this confusion comes from some fans who do use child of man as a proper noun ("Child of Man") or treat it as a special nickname Malleus gives to Yuu. So if the Jesus thing were hypothetically intentional, then every non-human is Jesus/j

Here are some examples (which are in EN, but it is the dialogue is same in JP as well; the text screenshot comes from MysteryShopTLs’ Malleus Broomquet vignette translation, as there is currently no official EN version of the card.)

[sir-adamus]

https://www.tumblr.com/sir-adamus/752028412918530048/so-much-of-the-hatred-rwby-gets-seems-to-be-rooted

I frankly think it's more because it's an initially amateur production that became far more successful than people ever expected it to be, or believed it ever deserved to be, and that grinds the gears of some people who fancy themselves as gatekeepers of what is and isn't "good" in the indie or mainstream area of media.

It's also frankly this thing that makes me scoff at times at the notion of Indie media becoming more valued and "accepted", because I think there is a giant caveat to all of it, fineprint in the contract so to speak. I noted this in a different anon comment I made in response to a different tumblr blog, but I'll repost it here:

People have just become downright cutthroat about indie media, and it feels like it stems from how the online space and fandoms tend to act A LOT like the corporations they despise, but from a mob mentality sort of way and without the systemic power of out of touch executives to back it up. They outwardly praise unique stories and ideas, but in reality are just as pro-conformity and pro-mass appeal and sanitization as the corporations they hate, and if you step out of line in some arcane or unclearly defined fashion that only exists in their minds, you can literally go from hero to hated in pretty much the flip of a switch. Mixed together with the increasingly puritanical way people treat media, like it's some kind of extension of their own morality and thus they have some inherent need or right to tear down anyone or anything they see as "problematic"...and yeah. It's honestly jarring as hell and really just reinforces how fickle and hypocritical the online space can be despite proclaiming to hate it when the corporations do it to them.

And that's what is really the rub about RWBY at times; it's something that looks like it's intended to "fit" into the shallow expectations of an anime made by amateurs, but ends up being a lot more complicated and requiring more nuance to actually get, and people just refuse to meet it on its own terms because they view themselves as the arbiters. The judge, jury and executioner.

Ironic really, given how much they've done everything in their power to constantly insist up and down about how much better and less behind the times they are compared to the "normies" and "establishment", and yet this attitude betrays how they're basically still the same at their core.

oh yeah

[raxistaicho]

Where do you think the people who are specifically pro-Church of Seiros are coming from? Generally fans seem to pick their faction through some combination of their ideology and the lord's personal appeal. However, Church fans seem to mostly rewrite the church's ideology with their headcanons, and while they like the green hairs, it doesn't feel as intense as with the other lords. I guess genocide comes up a lot in their takes, but then they don't seem too concerned with Duscur.

I have noticed a desire from Church of Seiros fans for there to be a religion in a JRPG game that isn't evil (I think the presence of evil churches in JRPGs is somewhat overstated, personally), and I guess they partly project onto that, but that doesn't really explain all of it.

I think the bigger reason is simply that the game gives people a lot of cause to sympathize with Rhea. She's a genocide survivor who never really grew up or escaped from her tragedy. There's several scenes of her emotionally letting down her walls and expressing the long centuries of pain she weathered, and even Crimson Flower, the route where she's at her worst, portrays her end as a wounded, cornered woman, desperately and vainly calling out for her mother to save her. The final panning shot of her corpse is a somber one.

It's far, far easier to picture sad, lonely, and burdened Rhea, the woman who did her best to keep Fodlan together all on her own, than it is to imagine the generations upon generations of people who suffered and died in Fodlan, in the the world she created the social framework of when she glorified Crests as the the manifest approval of the goddess. Just as the game never really questions Edelgard's ideals, only her means, it never questions whether Rhea at least tried to do good, even if she ended up causing more harm than she ever intended.

Media simply primes us to care more about characters and less about nameless masses, see how Strikes hyper-focuses on Edelgard striking down Judith while ignoring how she then spares all of Judith's grunts in that very same moment. See how people praise Claude for trying hard to protect his friends at Derdriu, while ignoring the way he futilely throws away the lives the generic soldiers standing between him and Edelgard. See how people just don't give a shit about Fleche despite her being a perfect reflection of Dimitri, the person so many praise for his character arc, in her final moments.

Because Rhea ties all her work and all her identity to the Holy Church of Seiros, Edelgard fighting it means fighting her. People who sympathize with Rhea more than Edelgard are naturally going to oppose her and want to support the church, though this comes at the cost of building up Rhea's positives and ignoring her own flaws and the flaws of her church.

As for the huge difference in reaction to the Duscur genocide, there's a lot of pieces to it. The biggest thing is that the narrative of 3H just doesn't care about Duscur nearly as much as the Nabateans. The only person of Duscur we ever meet is a character who properly exists on only one route and who does not have plot armor, so in every route other than Azure Moon you'll barely hear about Duscur, and unfortunately because Azure Moon is obsessed with tying everything in Fodlan into Dimitri's personal tragedy we hear more about how Duscur effected him than it did the actual genocide victims. Also we just don't see Dedue weep for the slaughter of his people the way we do with Rhea.

Hope that cleared some things up!

[unreal-decay]

Pondering

i have some opinions on the Lords of Chaos movie. i personally somewhat enjoyed the movie, not to say i loved it and would throat its dick, but as a movie on its own i thought it was alright. - The thing that irritates a lot of people is the lack of music in the movie considering it is (poorly) centred around the (halfarsed) history of multiple bands, obviously putting mayhem under a microscope. This movie had to appeal to people, naturally people who do enjoy the music would want it to be centred around black metal, however considering the world isn't made of people who enjoy black metal, it'd be impossible to get enough people to watch it and make a profit. Foul of Åkerlund, he needed to dramatise and make the movie appeal to the masses so he could make a profit and capitalise. - In an interview, Culkin claims the movie was a documentation. Anyone with any grasp on mayhem ins and outs can say with confidence that the movie was not anywhere close to a documentation, its stylised and inaccurate. Its a movie, made for entertainment purposes.

In my opinion, you cant really ignore the fact that the movie failed to be what it was intended to be, it's failure in accuracy and overcompensation with adding scenes/people that didn't happen/weren't there was its downfall from the get go. You cant separate it from what it was set out to be. HOWEVER, as a movie it is entertaining, while not accurate, its a somewhat alright watch. I wouldn't recommend it to people, though i wouldn't really recommend many mayhem related documentaries at all, Until the light takes us is Varg being full of himself and lying through his teeth every now and again for the fun of it so it makes it almost impossible to stand. Yet, on the subject of Lords of Chaos, i did find it entertaining to watch and will probably watch it again.

[olderthannetfic]

I love seeing all the gripes about booktubers and YA authors on here as someone who works in publishing. A lot of the problem from these two spheres has to do with the fact that publishing, especially YA, is suffering right now. There was a boom in YA around a decade ago wherein we saw many YA novels and series received live action adaptions as TV series and movies. This was when YA books were the most profitable for authors. This was a relatively new genre-demographic (technically a demographic, but because there are stylistic and thematic similarities that are consistent across all genres of YA fiction, I will call it a "genre-demographic," "G-D" for short), and publishers were willing to take risks on acquiring more titles because they were valuing quantity over quality. They wanted to fill up shelves with YA novels as quickly as possible. However, this was a problem because they created an entirely new G-D based on a trend. The thematic and stylistic simplicities that were previously overlooked in YA became more well-known. YA began to lose popularity among the masses, and the oversaturation of the market has resulted in increasing competition among YA authors and more YA authors trying to branch out into other realms that will sell better, like "adult" books and middle grade.

Initially, YA was mostly read and purchased by/for teenagers, the intended target demographic. Then, these teenagers grow up, but their tastes did not. Most YA readers are women 26 years old and up. Publishers know this. The readers know this. Yet, the YA readers on book twitter and booktubers continue to push for changes in these books to better suit their needs as they age (slightly older/college aged protagonists, more sex scenes [unless they're sex scenes they don't like], more mature themes [as long as their authors properly prostrates themselves to the readers, of course], etc). They think of YA books as their safe place they can use to mindlessly consume, consume, consume, and anything more complex than an episode of Buffy threatens this veneer of control. The result is YA author Twitter drama. 

Even though all the authors are adults (also: most of their customers are adults, and an increasing amount of teenagers have begun skipping over YA alltogether and reading books for adults), they will fall back into purity culture and use "think of the children" which necessitates we prioritize the metaphorical innocence of the child (read: the adult YA enjoyer) over art, which unfortunately results in the consumer-led sanitization of the G-D. The YA readers are doing this for typical anti-esque reasons: control, moral postering, etc. The YA authors are taking part for two primary reasons: 1) they want to appeal to their consumer-base and the author-as-internet-personality-for-marketing demands this, and 2) they are eliminating their competition. The authors are using purity culture to demonize their fellow authors and victimize themselves. This is what led to the redefining of OwnVoices. It went from being a simple hashtag to help authors get more eyes on their work to being a requirement of YA authors, lest they want to risk persecution from their peers and customers. Publishers are aware of this but do not do much to combat this because it’s free marketing for them, and they don’t want to alienate the only people who spend money in that G-D. Publishers use people like me to follow YA authors and YA consumers on socials to keep track of their comments, as well as how they review books—assuming they actually read the books at all, which we know many do not. This has led to more book hauls are speed reading challenges among reviewers and booktubers, but that’s another thing for another time.

This is the last thing I’ll say before I go. This briefly cut into the mainstream consciousness last year. Book twitter drama (think Isabel Fall, Amélie Wen Zhao-Kosoko Jackson, Sarah Underwood, etc) is outrageous and insipid, but it seldom gets on the radar of those outside these circles. Last year Barnes and noble announced publicly they wouldn’t stock hardbacks of new books, something that was already in practice, to be honest. Cue disgruntled YA authors screeches. This wasn’t an issue and was very understandable. Paperbacks sell more. Hardbacks are larger, more expensive for buyers, and more time-consuming to produce. publishers were notified of this change over a year in advance. None of the authors with upcoming books would be affected because their publishers already knew to print paperbacks, unless their publisher decided to ignore B&N’s warning. People in publishing knew this, but the public did not. YA authors fell back into self-victimization mode and guilt tripping to strategically sell more copies of their books. However, publishers and agents alike noticed this, and some authors were punished behind the scenes. Those same authors then went on Twitter after the fact to target more of their peers in hopes of selling more books. [There are other factors influencing their behaviors, of course, but this ask is long enough.]

That’s all it is, really: YA authors are people in a failing G-D within a failing industry where they constantly need to eliminate their competition and compete to see who’s more moral than the next in hopes of selling books because their publishers don’t market them and give poor advances. YA readers in book twitter/booktubers are functionally conservative anti-intellectuals. (YA authors are also anti-intellectuals if it means they believe they'll sell more books. See the plethora of pathetic Twitter threads around back to school season: "The classics are all boring and bad and spread x ideas. School libraries should purchase more YA. Students should read more YA in class instead, like my book.") If you’re following any of them, please consider stopping for your own sanity. If you see them make or signal boost call out posts, always be skeptical because every other professional with repute around them already is.

--

Back in my teen years in the 90s, the term 'young adult' existed, but the only books I remember seeing were a few Judy Blume titles about realistic teen problems or something. I went straight from kids' books to plain old genre fiction for adults. It's amusing to hear that current teens are going back to that.

A lot of YA boom fallout feels to me like every other time something was a brief blip but a brief blip just as a person came of age: they spend forever waiting for "the normal status quo" to reassert itself and wondering why it does not.

[deeply-unserious-fellow]

...The love potion is Hell Viagra. Guys tHE LOVE POTION IS HELL VIAGRA-

Like okay maybe its not *exactly* that. I don't think Viagra like, actively turns ppl on or whatever, BUT I think it's primary intended purpose IS something similar. It's get horny juice. Cuz like, think about it for a second. Why sell something that's JUST advertised as a date r*pe drug? Why would you do that? Like, I get that it's hell, and bad people gonna do bad things, but the audience for that kind of thing is probably relatively limited. Plus, there are definitely people down there that would be VERY put off by a company that sells something being actively advertised as for date r*pe. Like, a lot of the sinners we see seem to be. Normal people. Which is also why Val shooting up the hotel would be considered bad for the Vees image- A lot of the truly nasty shit the Vees do has got to be kept at least kind of under wraps because a decent portion of Hell's population probably still wouldn't be okay with actively supporting that shit, no matter how much they're being encouraged to indulge in their worst impulses. It's like how, in jail, a lot of the time ppl will gang up on the worst criminals and beat the shit out of them or smthn. Like even the drone ad that explicitly stated one of the features was spying on your neighbors felt more like it was implying just spying rather then like, peeping on them naked. People are more likely to openly say they've been sticking their nose into their neighbors business then they are to say they've been peeping. Still not good, but like. Vaguely more socially acceptable and appealing to a wider market.

There's also the fact that, from the advertisements we've seen, it doesn't really look like that's what it's being advertised for? One of them is Velvette doing a magical girl pose and the other is Val(who is the porn guy. Aka the romanticized sex genre) and Vel just like, laying there together all sexy like. It's vague, but none of it, besides the name if you're genre savy(which I'd like to point out that not everybody is involved in media criticism enough to realize the issues w/ the love potion trope, which wasn't even taboo until a couple years ago tbh), really screams "use this to make people have sex with you against their will!" That, along with the fact that the love potion definitely CAN'T act how love potions normally do in fiction(making the person who ingested it fall deeply, head-over-heals in love with specifically the person that gave it to them), because that would be too difficult to mass produce, and the other usual approach(fall in love with the first person you see) is just too impractical unless someone is truly desperate, I think the use that gets ADVERTISED is "use this to make your sex better and more fun, just like in those pornos we also sell!(buy our shit)" rather than date r*pe.

That doesn't mean I think the Vees like. Actively discourage other uses though. A sale's a sale and one of them is fucking Valentino there's no way they care that much. Any negative reviews along the lines of "somebody used this to fucking drug me" probably get deleted and nothing is ever done about it because, in the end, as long as the suffering is invisible nobody's gonna care. This take doesn't really make the Vees any less shitty, it just makes them more ~realistically~ shitty.

It also makes the love potion a little bit funnier. Like just a lil bit. Bcuz it means you can make Hell Viagra jokes :)

[astrum-aetherium]

henry with a pillow princess IM SORRY I KNOW IVE SUBMITTED A LOT BUT THERES ONE LEFT AFTER THIS

-8

no need to apologize, dear. remember: you're appealing to the masses, which, as i'm sure, they will be quite grateful for ;)

i mean, he's a giver at heart. it might sound strange considering his character composition and whatnot — indifference, stoicism, coolness — but i've already discussed why he very well may find himself on the relentless giver side of things and it makes perfect sense to me. he's an overachiever; he strives after greatness; he intends to excel at anything he does, and an intimate framework will definitely pose no exception. therefore, he would know just how to cater to a pillow princess. hell, he'd encourage you to be one — on a good day, that is.

let's take one of those exemplary good days and run with it. foreplay with henry, considering you're offered enough time to engage in it in the first place, would be excruciatingly long. at times annoyingly, he would feel the teasing need to explore each nook and crevice of your body with his tongue every time as though he was unfamiliar with it; only then would he proceed to your aching center, not without having profoundly palmed and grazed it as though by accident on numerous occasions prior. he will not detach his tongue from your quivering heat until you have come for him at least twice — thrice or more on a very good day — having stretched and prepped you open for him en passant as well, assisting with his long and skilled fingers.

with you already spent but nevertheless yearning, he'd ultimately arrive at the notion of actually, physically fucking you — and, each and every time anew, he would do so expertly and adeptly, in a way that would cause each one of your cells to threaten to burst from the heat and electricity he'd channel into you with each motion. due to already being so worn out and drunk on the remnants of your past orgasms, you'd naturally be reduced to a pillow princess in that case; even if he asked you to get on top — which he would only do if he felt devious enough — you'd slump back into him upon the very first leap, thereby proving your utter exhaustion, and he would therefore be forced to maneuver your body more than you'd ever be willing to yourself and thrust up into you from beneath. he would think better of it in most cases, instead ruining you in positions that would grant him more control and, most importantly, freedom of movement.

all things considered: a pillow princess dynamic would work perfectly with henry, as i largely see him as someone who would prefer pleasing over being pleased every single time. in fact, i don't even think he would enjoy sex as a whole if he was the only party being catered to during it. as i said, he would be a giver at heart, and he would never expect to receive anything in return. he would feel distaste toward frequent blowjobs or handjobs — sex, to him, would be wholly about pleasing his partner above all else. he would feel undeserving and in no need of the very same pleasure given to himself, though. on most days, he would reject you and push you off were you to try anything of the sort on him, and instead fling you over his knee and finger you or flip you on your back and eat you out — both until you'd cry.

the general consensus, therefore, is: henry would be utterly fond of a pillow princess. to all those who are intrigued by this, i say: get in line.

[acourtofthought]

I'm so shocked at the constant hate Feysand and Nessian receive in the fandom, to the point I'm just going to delete Tumblr because it's really here where I see it. Canon couples aren't your thing, that's fine but let's not pretend Sarah wrote them with the hope her readers would hate them, and perceive them as toxic and problematic. That is 100% projection and if they are triggered by some of sjms decisions, they are not books meant for them imo.

And It's wild to turn around and bully the fandom for enjoying content positively, just like the author intended.

I do think it's ok if readers don't prefer them or their ships, it's ok to even hate them but I do agree it is unnecessary for them to bully others for liking them. Because you're right, Sarah wrote these books in hopes that people would like them as she does. That doesn't mean she succeeded for every single person out there (we're all far to different to achieve that level of mass appeal) but to actually shame the people who say "I got lost in and love this fantasy world just as the author hoped I would!" is ridiculous. Imagine thinking it's ok to actually bully someone for seeing the author's intended vision? That's like bullying someone for enjoying a sculptors sculpture, for appreciating the time and effort they put into their craft and understanding the message the artist conveyed simply because you don't see it.

It's ok not to see it, not to get it, to prefer something entirely different but to hate on others for their enjoyment of it? I think you have to be a miserable person to be angry over something like that.

[macleod]

Since everything is getting worse, maybe you should get into anarcho doomerism. It's a mood booster because you're right about it never getting better

That response was mainly as a joke, sort of. The idea that in the consumer market everything is becoming more expensive and that the megacorps are making less quality products are just the natural end-goal of late-stage capitalism (do people still call it that?).

I am above all a positive longtermist (not in the effective altruist way, mind you), nihilistic at times, pessimistic sure in the short-term, but forever hopeful for the longterm end of humanity to do the right thing, become better, and that life will become monumentally easier for everyone through the use and development of innovative new technologies that help usher in and bring better social attitudes and equality in all forms. Anarcho-anything (especially 'doomerists') are not positivist, nor are they equality bringers. The only outcome in those societies is fragmentation of beliefs and standards (and a rapid increase in "them versus us", "Our blessed homeland versus their barbarous wastes") which will bring insurmountable amounts of human rights violations, and long-term static developments of scientific, technological, and social change for the masses. Anarchism is beneficial in small sects, but not for all. It is not scientific in nature, and against the sharing of knowledge and development. While I understand the momentary appeal of a "land without rulers" it just logistically doesn't make much sense. Have you ever tried working on a group project? or plan an event for more than one person?

I realize this response is more than what you were likely intending, but I am not in any way, shape, or form a doomer. Humanity for the past hundred years has gotten insanely better, insanely more complex, and insanely more equal and knowledgeable. We have hard times, we create problems, but we solve them, and we innovate. A hundred years ago nearly no one had electricity, children died en masse, mothers died in childbirth, most couldn't read, and disease was rampant and far more deadly. We are living in the greatest epoch of humanity, we surely have our own problems, but those will be solved, eventually, and new, better, problems will arise.

[theicarusconstellation]

into the dark news + poll

i will also be announcing this in the notes of the next chapter update, but i just want to inform you all that i will be going back through and mass-editing/rewriting all chapters from act one (chapters 1-40). all throughout act one, i really let outside forces influence how i wrote this fic. i pandered to the fandom because i was afraid to make anyone upset rather than writing what i wanted to write. i saw people saying that their precious sirius would never do The Prank, so i made peter do it when i really wanted sirius to. i added 540957345 povs (most of which will stay because i do believe they shape the story) rather than just keeping it to regulus + james because i saw people saying that not giving each and every character an in-depth plotline in an mlm fic was misogyny and neglect. i came up with an elaborate scheme to keep lily alive on halloween 1981 because killing lily is misogynistic. (lily will stay alive on halloween like i promised yall because i have grown so fond of her and i know that you should kill your darlings but i've never been very good at that). i planned a lot of elaborate schemes to keep a lot of characters alive and spread myself thin trying to shove intricate plots for the black sisters, marypanlily, peter, remus, dorlene, rosekiller, etc. into this fic because i didn't want to offend anyone or make anyone upset. i truly do not give a fuck about james and sirius’ friendship, but i threw it in this fic's face since so many people regard it as The Holy Grail and i didn't want to disappoint them in any way. i wrote the black brothers way more tame than i wanted to because if regulus doesn’t want a relationship with sirius it’s framed as him blaming sirius.

the truth of the matter is, this is a jegulus fic, centered around regulus black, james potter, their relationship, and no one else. not lily. not sirius. not anyone. that isn't to say that i can't have complex plots devoted to other characters, because i can, i will, and i love to do it. every plot i inserted into this fic will remain the same, just with a few tweaks and possibly with less pagetime.

the biggest change will be that i am going back and rewriting The Prank. sirius will orchestrate it like god intended. i completely understand if these changes make this fic less appealing to you, and i absolutely respect that. DLDR is one of my biggest mottos and something i heavily encourage, so if you don't like this fic, it is totally okay to "don't read"/DNF.

i also want to draw more attention to pandora’s past sexual assault. it’s been quietly in the background, which was - in part - intentional since she herself shoves it down and blocks it out, but there are so many instances where it could have been addressed and wasn’t. idk i think id just like to have it be more front and center because it is such an important aspect of the story that im afraid gets lost in the sea of other plots in this fic.

again, there won't be very many "big" changes, but the little things will add up a bit yk? the rewrites won't be published until every chapter has gone through it, which won't be for a few months, but i will let yall know when they are.

i also don’t know how i want to orchestrate the rewrite. that’s what the poll is for because i truly do value your opinions as readers. once the rewrite has been completed in my drafts, im unsure whether i should just keep them in the original work, delete the original altogether and start from scratch posting the rewrite as its own fic, or leave the original up and post the rewrite as a separate fic (but still titled into the dark — rewrite)

[silvysartfulness]

Just a week into the US election year of 2024, and I'm already seeing some Takes™ on my dash.

Please. No.

I know you hate your options, guys, but third party will not win. They simply won't, not in 2024, no matter how much you wish they would. Building that kind of voting power takes time, and with the current voting-suppression systems and gerrymandering in place, you're just not there yet.

And you know the people who are tempted to try it anyway are the people on the left and some lost-looking centrists. And you know that taking those votes away from the Democrats while the people on the right turn up to vote en-mass as they always do means that Trump will win.

I cannot overstate how much you can't let that happen. You can't.

You can feel betrayed and be frustrated with the Biden government all you like, but you can't hand that position of power back to Trump and the conservatives. People will suffer. People will die. Within your own country and globally.

If you seriously think Trump in power will mean less genocide and fascism in the world, I'm sorry, but you're straight up delusional.

Please think really hard about what narratives you're buying into, supporting and spreading this year. Not immune to propaganda etc. People who try to cloud your judgment by appealing to your anger and sense of helplessness, telling you not to vote, or vote third party may genuinely believe what say - or they're manipulating you into throwing your vote away. Either way, the end result is the same.

And frankly - the choice is yours, but if you intend to chase the third party pipedream right now and thereby allowing a fascist government to take over and dictate global politics for the next four years at least (provided their next insurrection isn't successful, leaving them in power indefinitely...)

Then kindly unfollow me. Right now.

I have zero patience for the leftist "perfect or nothing" mindset when the alternative is outright open and proud fascism. No fucking dithering. You have one job this year. You can either vote for the lesser evil like a fucking grownup and then work within the system for further change, or get right out of my face.

That's all.