#ok to reblog btw :>

[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.

[iamramonadestroyerofworlds]

I am not joking I am not exaggerating the thirst on this fucking website for cis dudes w a lil extra fat on their chests... And the insistence on referring to those as titties and boobs and big naturals. Has made me (trans man) feel significantly better about my boobs! Everyone here sees a dude with big ol bazoonkas and goes fucking apeshit. Hell yeah. Men's tits. I got those too! Maybe they're also hot on me! Holy shit! Men's tits!

[wetslug]

ppl who r using poll results as a way to Prove Something about society or come to any conclusion.. i hope you are aware that tumblr users are one of the most biased population groups you could conceivably find. gob bless

[akkawi]

fr it's so crazy how people expect Palestinians to live up to some impossible standard just to deserve the gracious privilege of not getting bombed so hard that children's body parts are flying everywhere in refugee camps

[pop-punklouis]

not to be too sappy but idek what i would’ve done if i didn’t have a space to talk openly about all of this with those who truly understand it. it’s one thing to talk to distant friends or family members about this passing, but it’s another to talk with a community who just understands without any explanation or judgement. we’re all just wading around this fandom with each other— those names i haven’t seen pop up in ages— trying to process whatever we’re trying to process and giving virtual hugs and sending love and making edits and posting encouraging words. fandom is so powerful. community is so powerful. i hope i never ever forget that. because it’s always been here for me in ways that no one else besides those who are here or been here understands.

just fortunate for all of you. no one gets this place like y’all get this place. and that’s special.

[xumoonhao]

web badges inspired by this post <3 / second set / third set

[kotoneshiomiofficial]

when transfems talk about how we live in a society, we mean that US culture only recognizes two sexes and two genders, and then equates them. male = man and female = woman, and its despises anyone who steps outside of those bounds (intersexism and transphobia). so when we talk about how you cant be perisex afab and then call yourself a transfem, what we mean is that society has (whether you like it or not) treated you as a girl/woman because thats what it said on your birth certificate. you cannot transition to be a gender you already a part of. and there are already plenty of nonbinary labels for people who have a feminine gender but dont feel 100% like a woman. and to imply that you can suggests trans women are not the same gender as women. so at best third-gendering us or at worst saying we're not real women. and when it comes to intersexism, listen to tma intersex people about it and not tme perisex people. and i mean actually listen, dont just use them as hypothetical talking points.

[nordidia]

vent/comfort art to keep myself present during ptsd flashing

[lazylittledragon]

what do you mean youre technically a detransitioner cause of terf bullshit?

it's a v long story but i detransitioned for a couple of years when i was 16/17, for multiple reasons but mostly because i fell into the blaire white/kalvin garrah chamber of "you have to be This way to be trans otherwise you're not real".

i was already Deeply insecure about myself and my 'passing' and i was led to believe that i couldn't want to wear makeup or skirts, and i couldn't choose not to have bottom surgery, and i couldn't do anything but bind for 12+ hours a day to the point that my ribcage is still misshapen. basically i thought that if i wasn't suffering enough doing 'feminine' things, i couldn't really be trans, so i should just go back to being a girl and suck it up.

the terf bullshit is because i'd seen a lot of terfs/detransitioners talking about the 'dangers' of testosterone and how it would turn me into a horrible ugly evil monster and how there was nothing worse than wanting to be a man. which combined with 'you need to fully medically transition to be valid at all' creates some very dangerous and upsetting feelings to cope with.

it also came from trying really hard to put myself in a little box before i realised that my sexuality/gender are very fluid and it's FINE for me not to have a label and just do whatever i want. when i was 19 or so i went back to using they/them (and eventually he/him) and changed my name again because even though i like doing 'feminine' things, i don't want to be seen as a woman.

tldr: i was conditioned by transphobic/terf rhetorics to think that i was being trans the 'wrong' way so i couldn't be trans at all, so i believed i must actually be a girl if i still wanted to do 'feminine' things. nowadays i am a transmasc who does feminine things because i don't give two shits about what any transmed prick thinks of me anymore.

[nixiecat]

welcome to the gun show~

OF

[voidpunker]

psst hey hey do you want to see a wip :3

[pjharvey-moved]

former old soul gifted kid pleasure-to-have-in-class tenderqueer adults when they find out sometimes mental illness makes you perform poorly in school and be badly behaved and mean to people

[loveydoveylex]

!!! EVERYONE LOOKLOOKLOOK I HAD THE ABSOLUTE PLEASURE OF COMMISSIONING @jils-things FOR THIS DELIGHTFUL PIECE!! ❤️❤️❤️😭✨

SO IN LOVE WITH THIS. SO IN LOVE WITH HIM. HE'S GONNA GIVE MY HAND A LIL KISS... OHHHH MY HEART IS WEAK (POSITIVE)!!! commissioning jil is always SUCH a treat and I am so happy I could get a chance to do it again!! 🫶

[smokbeast]

(UPDATED) COMMISSIONS ARE OPEN!

Hi hello hi! Commissions are open! if you are interested here is a google form below with all the info at hand about my commissions and workflow! If you have any questions my DMS are open to answer and talk it out, thank you so much, reblogs are extremely appreciated to spread the word as I would like this to be my main post for commissions from now on!

Busts sketches(colored/BW):20$ Fullbody sketches(colored/BW): 30$ Busts cleaned Lines(colored):30$

Fullbody cleaned Lines(colored):40$ Full Rendered illustrations:80-86$ (price range may change depending on complexity)

-an extra character counts as another illustration and will be a fee of the price doubled of what you have chosen. 

-There is an allowance of 3 revisions after the line art is complete, 

after that if you want changes, it will be a fee of 5+dollars for any additional changes after the line art has been considered approved.

-simple backgrounds are allowed for the Cleaned Flat commissions if the client so desires. 

-sketch commissions may be shaded in black and white or simple flat colors (no rendering). lineart commissions can be with or without colors if so desired.

-Illustration pieces are large entirely intricate rendered scene artworks with very detailed backgrounds and character.

-tips are optional and greatly appreciated!

[pink-pone]

little vent doodle, feeling better now tho

[seven-oh-four]

"it's okay as long as you're not hurting anyone"

me, whose pronouns are punches to various different body parts to denote the type of pronoun: