#Modern Tales of Faerie was amazing and you cannot convince me otherwise

[marzipanandminutiae]

you know, everyone talks about “being a teen in the 2000s!” in terms of being either the Wannabe Buffy Extra period (teen c. 2000-2005) or the most mainstream, popular styles of the broader 2000-2010 span

but personally I would like to raise a glass to the YA Literature Golden Agers. my fellow 2006-2011 teenagers who made “dramatic nerd” our entire personalities and were...actually weirdly catered to by adults about that? at least, adults who wanted our money and/or were just happy that The Youths Were Finally Reading

teens reading this, if your local library has a YA section, thank us. (especially if there’s also manga. adults weren’t entirely sure what manga was at the time, but they knew it was Hot With The Youths, so they were determined to get onboard. anything to ride the wave of kids suddenly wanting to spend time in libraries again)

if you ever followed an author’s LiveJournal, you know what I’m talking about. if you ever took style cues from a book with any sort of Dark Angsty Faeries In A City theme. if you had any sort of DFTBA or Pizza John merch in your high school or college days. if you ever had to spend a whole evening explaining your Halloween costume, starting with “so there’s this book about [angels/demons/werewolves/vampires/faeries]...” if you ever read a classic novel just because your favorite Deep, Emotional Teen Protagonist quoted it that one time.

it’s all well and good to be nostalgic for Hollister cologne and Fergie, but spare a thought for those of us with cheap Ren Faire patchouli oil and the three Within Temptation songs we heard in every fanvid ever