#or a book on statistics

[headless-horsegirl]

my boyfriend, who has never watched a tv show in his life (he likes to touch grass and "do productive things"), watched season 1 of the bear all by himself without knowing anything about it and the first thing he asked me after was when carmy and syd are gonna get together

[podddcasttt]

Friendly reminder that if you talk about how representation is important and how there's not enough diverse media, I implore you to seek out the media that already exists. And if you live in an area with a public library, go to see if they're available at your public library. And then go check them out.

As a librarian, it is demoralizing to see how low the circulation statistics are on lgbt+ books and books by BIPOC authors. I include them in displays and readers advisory, but people still don't check them out as much. Libraries only have a finite amount of resources, including space. We don't get a book then keep it forever. If not enough people check it out, we have to get rid of it to make room for more books. And when James Patterson Book #69 gets checked out 30 times in one year and cool, subversive Sci fi novel with a Black trans woman main character has never been checked out once, the librarian (me) has to make a hard decision.

If you're looking for something tangible and easy to do this pride month, look for lgbt+ books (there are millions of lists online that you can find. It's easier than it's ever been to find diverse books) and check them out from your library.

No time to read? Look for a short story or poetry anthology and just read as much as you have time for. Or just check out a book cus it looks interesting and read as much as you can. We have movies too.

As cool as it would be for me to just keep the books I want and get rid of the ones I don't, I have to listen to the community on matters of collection development. And the community tells me what books they want by checking them out and leaving the ones they don't want on the shelf.

If you think this doesn't apply to you because you live in a progressive area and obviously the books are being checked out, you're wrong. I once worked in a community with a large lgbt population. Those books were not getting checked out. If you want to tell me you live in a conservative area and your library doesn't have any diverse books, you are legally obligated to check the catalog before replying to this post. I currently work in a conservative community and we have lgbt+ and bipoc books. And if you still cannot find any, you are legally obligated to see if your library has a collection request form that patrons can fill out before replying to this post.

[winterprince601]

unfortunately for jon snow, the role of "dead girl haunting the narrative" is already occupied by his mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, grandmother and step mother x2 so he's going to have to be forcibly resurrected :/

[ad1thi]

Justin baldoni decided to adapt It Ends With Us because he thought that stories about domestic violence, and specifically escaping and life beyond domestic violence deserved to be platformed.

Instead of being supported, he’s been mean girl’d by the cast; that’s treating the film like its this cutesy rom com : and I think this rly encapsulates everything that’s wrong with the book, and the fanbase it’s amassed

[thorinds]

The "BBC" Book List Challenge

[peachesanmemes]

DON'T FORGET!!!

50 is a rough page estimate. The accurate length is 15,883 words.

If you want to visualize and compare it, I've graphed the length of each entry and given some other entry stats in another post linked here.

Google says it takes approximately 5 minutes to read 1000 words, so plan accordingly!

[eightglass]

Made a graph

Pretty self-explanatory. These web serials are long...

[coolnonsenseworld]

(to know more about the story and the calendar on pre-order check out previous posts! LESS THAN 2 WEEKS LEFT)

In September they don't feel like going anywhere or doing any bucket lists - no getting out of the comfort zone this time around. All they need is a little comfort of one another - they take breaks for a movie night when they wouldn't, buy extra cakes they haven't tried previously, go on date-walks and take bubble baths with new scents.

Enjoying simple things in life and appreciating your own presence here feels like it should be a basic part of any bucket list.

How is your September going? Do you have any plans or achievements this month?

[hotwaterandmilk]

I'm seeing "Wedding Peach was unsuccessful" trotted out on Twitter again and it's honestly kind of funny to me. You can dislike the series, but you're rewriting history if you suggest it was a massive commercial flop/astronomical failure — it simply wasn't.

The Wedding Peach TV series maintained viewership throughout its run which is why it aired an entire year's worth of episodes (the full length it was intended to run) and didn't get cancelled like Nurse Angel Ririka SOS, for example.

I'm not going to pretend it did Sailor Moon numbers, dear god, it absolutely didn't get close hence why it wrapped as it did. I would suggest looking back now, that it was the definition of a mid-performing title for the time period. It sold toys decently but not outrageously, it got viewers but not an outstanding number, and it garnered a small but dedicated fanbase of male otaku. All of which is par for the course when it comes to a mid title in 1995.

Wedding Peach DX was produced because the TV series LD sales were decent enough to warrant it. Children were not buying LD box sets at this time, adult fans were and it was this interest that justified the creation of the four DX episodes as direct-to-video releases. If a series doesn't sell well they don't make more episodes, let alone higher quality deluxe episodes specifically for the home video market (and thus for older audiences with spending power).

It is very important to point out that Wedding Peach DX had NO INVOLVEMENT from the original creative team. Tomita Sukehiro and Yazawa Nao did not contribute to its creation, Tadano Kazuko didn't provide designs. Yuyama Kunihiko was the driving force behind the production of the DX episodes and he served as both director and writer for all four episodes (bringing on Wedding Peach animator and soon-to-be frequent Pokémon collaborator, Ichiishi Sayuri to serve as character designer).

What inspired these to be fanservice dreck to the level they ended up being is honestly beyond me. I mean the otaku market definitely wanted more episodes featuring the characters (and more songs featuring the seiyuu, if you want to see how keen otaku were for FURIL please see this post) but part of what they liked about the characters at the time was their (barfbarfbarf) perceived purity and innocence. The DX including panty shots and swimsuits kind of threw them for a loop. Even now, if you look at discussions about the DX among otaku there's a bit of a divide in opinion.

The DX episode sales were (as far as I can tell based on magazines from the time) also mid, but enough to cover four episodes. Three and four don't seem to have sold as well as one and two, but again the stats from the time aren't comprehensive. I think the fact that there weren't any after episode four says it all, honestly. OVA episodes are expensive to produce and it was extremely common for them to stop immediately if the sales weren't there. DX didn't justify its existence beyond those four episodes and Yuyama moved onto a far more successful project in Pokémon.

On that topic, I think it's important to note that Wedding Peach was OLM's first television series (albeit a coproduction with KSS). If it and the studio's adaptation of Mojacko hadn't made some level of profit it would have been quite difficult for them to adapt Pokémon. Neither Mojacko nor Wedding Peach set records with their viewership or sales numbers, but they both did "OK". It was in Pokémon however, that that OLM truly found a successful property with the series still running today. Sometimes you've got to have a few runs at producing things before you find success. Wedding Peach was one of these early runs, a project where a lot of people cut their teeth but one that didn't justify its own continuation beyond a certain point. Just a very standard media mix from the mid-90s, in other words.

Wedding Peach is a problematic title with indifference through to outright objection to representing love outside of heterosexual romance. Looking back now it feels like an absolute dinosaur on so many levels. Between the anime's fatphobic episode and Momoko dropping some gender essentialism, I'm not surprised people want to relegate it to the dustbin of history.

However, I think it is very telling that Tomita Sukehiro, when presented with the opportunity to tell a similar story in the modern day, chose to represent not just queer love, but platonic and familial love in Wedding Apple. While he can't undo the regressive and cringy elements of the original series, as a creator he has progressed and I'd like to think we can all continue to improve our outlooks and output as we grow.

Disliking Wedding Peach in the modern day is completely understandable. I'm not going to pretend anyone should watch it in 2024 without knowing that it is a camp, cheaply made relic of a time when heterosexuality was considered magic. However, just because it pandered to all the worst things trending at the time doesn't mean it didn't sell enough products or hold enough viewers to justify its production. It did, it just wasn't a strong enough property to go beyond that and that's representative of mediocrity rather than mind blowing commercial failure imho.

[kafkasapartment]

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“Just 1 in 10 American high school seniors have read at least 6 books beginning to end, an article titled, "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books," cites.

[kmesons]

a series of unfortunate events 🤝 the hatchetfield series (repeatedly putting the same characters through situations of varying degrees of misfortune)

[a-typical]

Profits earned by the state, after paying winners and ticket merchants, serve as a major source of revenue that often funnels into social programs, especially kindergarten through high school education, creating a moral dilemma to vote against this form of legalized gambling in your state.

That got me thinking. Is probability and statistics even taught in US public schools? Recent surveys show that the answer is mostly not. In the few places that do teach it, classes are taught as a novel elective or as part of an advanced placement college course.

If instead, probability and statistics were a fundamental part of the K-12 curriculum, taught to every student, across multiple grades, and if state lottery revenue were allocated to make that happen, then the lottery might just put itself out of business by inoculating its own citizens against the lottery itself.

— Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization - Neil deGrasse Tyson (2022)

[koukouture]

I saw someone somewhere say that not all the Aphrodite kids are “conventionally” attractive AND I WILL STAND BY THAT!!!!

Because yes!!! They’re not all white and skinny there’s gotta be some variety. They’re the children of the goddess of love and beauty, self love is a given. Confidence makes the most beautiful people.

Like even if some of them have braces or acne or whatever, I know they’re all beautiful and charming like it’s the vibes you know? People try so hard to make braces seem awkward but some of the prettiest girls I know have braces and they LOVE to laugh and show them off.

I also just know the Aphrodite boys are ACTUALLY CLEAN. They all actually wear chapstick, put on deodorant, brush their teeth and T A K E B A T H S. Nothing is more attractive than a man that actually washes his ass let me tell you.

What makes all the Aphrodite kids beautiful is that they’re all confident, there’s no way all of them have pretty baby blues or the metabolism of fucking cheetahs. And I just know they’re supportive like come on. Hot bitches don’t gate keep

[multi-fandom-lunatic]

something something booktok has a BIG problem with white feminism

[jan-mj]

“average parents all around the US are calling for book bannings” factoid is actually incorrect. Book Banner Georg, who lives in a cave and calls for 10,000 books to be banned each day, is a statistical outlier and should not have been counted.

[ronanceautistic]

literally what happened to the ronance fandom in the last 6 months why has everything i written recently flopped so fucking bad. making me question my writing prowess shiii

^ in seriousness though if it is my writing don’t worry i absolutely fucking hate it too recently 😭 i can feel myself flopping as i type it’s so dialogue heavy recently and i have no clue how to get out of that hole.