#the scholastic book fair era

[brunhielda]

Ah… the moment when you want to make an OC that is a responsible ADULT to take care of the children and make them feel safe.

Maybe even handle a few of those life threatening situations for them.

Happens to us all.

I mean… mine first happened for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it’s always wild watching it happen to any fandom with teen heroes. I feel like the Auntie in the corner drinking like-

“Oh, ready for the adult table are we? Let me tell you some shit about that poor tyke in the Avatar series. At least it’s not the insanity of the Animorphs series. Still war, but less torture, so there’s that. Also, don’t be fooled by the idiots in Harry Potter either. “Oh no, there’s a monster in the castle!” - and yet somehow it is still an institution of learning the next year, I swear, don’t even get me started on the dealt tournament for “building international cooperation” in the fourth book- here, have a glass of wine, you’ll need one if you’re going to keep up in this corner of the room.”

Insert mad cackling here.

Anyways, if you want a show with decent parent stuff happening, Teen Wolf isn’t bad. As soon as they know what’s going on they are INVOLVED, you know?

I think we all agree that Stranger Things is the high example for doing it right- in a perfect world the kids would handle nothing, but it’s not a perfect world, and they are smart enough to help save it so we will respect that- A+ parenting in impossible situations. You love to see it.

For a fuller discussion of the whole issue- “Fantasy High” in its third season on streaming at “dropout” is handling this exact theme beautifully. Could write a whole analysis on that, but I am pretty sure some else already has so…

In my opinion, the OG of this discussion is Buffy. She wanted to be a HS kid. Her friends wanted to help her and slowly realize the price for that. Giles had some internalized backwards thinking that he had to overcome to actually be helpful, but the fact that he really tried to do that was so beautiful. I think the key moment is the moment her Mom finds out and tries to force her to stop, and Buffy has a moment where she chooses essentially saving the world over her Mother’s love. Like- Mom was coming from a place of trying to protect her kid, but didn’t fully understand the stakes. Buffy understood the stakes, but was also somewhat conditioned at that point to think she had to handle everything on her own, which blows up later in the episode.

It is the beginning of re-examining the “absent parent” trope of the nineties and moving into the “over protective” trope that leads to kids saying nothing (also bad) of the early 2000s, which gets us to the “how do we support and keep as much of the crushing weight of the world off thier shoulders” discussion we find ourselves in today.

If you join the “protective aunties drinking in the fanon corner” you gotta, at some point, discuss Buffy is all I am saying.

Also, side point: we get to explore all that in Buffy because of the frankly insane amount of episodes. Idk any show could pull off fully exploring a theme so thoroughly today. 🤷🏻‍♀️ .Maybe a book series. Not in the same manner though. They don’t so the fun super thin chapter books by the dozens anymore either. Only thick long fiction. Something about that can make themes preachy if you aren’t really good at what you are doing.

Uncle Rick remains the exception of excellence as usual. The adults are failing, but he calls them on it, and the situation slowly improves as you go.

You know who really got shitty situations kids find themselves in? Roald Dahl. Every single book- “This world is a misery, but there’s always something around to help even the scales if you are clever.” Adults were either outright abusive or called out for being ineffectual. He would have immensely enjoyed the auntie corner of fandom, and cheered it on, even for stories he knew nothing about.

Anyways, welcome to the adult corner. It’s dreadful here, mostly, but we got wine, so that’s something. 🍷

PJO show fucks with my brain because I was Percy’s age when I first read lightning thief and wanted to go on those adventures so bad but now I’m 18 and watching this show while my 13 year old sister is growing up with the PJO books and I can’t imagine sending her to these quests she’s just a child

[bleachbleachbleach]

Soul Society in 64-bit

Earlier, I wrote about the timey-wimeyness of District 80.

In the palace of my mind, this is what that looks like:

This is a screenshot from the very popular and well-known "this came downloaded on my device from factory" game, Nanosaur (1998).

Like many games of the era, there's a mysterious white fog, within which the rest of the environment hides until you move into it and the program has to load it. But if you go to the edge of the game's map, you just continue to walk interminably through the white fog. There's no wall you hit; you just keep walking through white and could keep walking through white forever. Can you be lost forever in the mist? Maybe. But if you turn around, you magically return immediately to the edge of the map. (I'm sure this technical limitation was not at all unique to Nanosaur. Nanosaur just happens to be the only computer game I played that wasn't from the Scholastic Book Fair.)

But anyway, thinking about this today made me think about Rukia firing up the chic, round, 90s gumball iMac in Isshin's office to play Nanosaur, and shouting the entire time, "THIS IS JUST LIKE HOME FR!!!!!!!!!" much to Ichigo's deep disbelief/concern for Soul Society.

(In Nanosaur, you play a dinosaur from the future who's been sent back in time with 20 minutes to steal eggs before the asteroid hits, and for some reason you have a jetpack and are armed with multiple types of projectile weapons. Rukia would absolutely fuck with this game and beat all of Isshin's high scores.)

--

Similarly, my vision of what sewers are is almost 100% based on what sewers look like in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. (Even though I've read the Magic School Bus book about the water cycle, and I've been to a sewerage museum! Both premier avenues for learning about sewers!)

I feel like when (in the anime's universe) Hanatarou and Ganju were working at the combini with the manager who had a crush on Ganju, the manager invited Ganju over to Nintendo and Chill. But Ganju, not understanding the intent of the invitation, assumed it also included Hanatarou and brought him along. Which resulted in Ganju and Hanatarou playing the combini manager's Nintendo and Hanatarou, shouting just as loudly as Rukia, "IT'S JUST LIKE HOME FR!!!!"

Unlike Rukia and Nanosaur, Hanatarou was terrible at OoT. But he got really good at flying around with all the chickens.

IDK, there's just something about Soul Society that makes it feel like it should be perceived in 64-bit.

[catchyhuh]

i bet you were insufferable as a child

and since we know this about lupin and jigen for a fact we’re actually just gonna focus on the other three for now! yippee!! the "tms forgot i exist" special lineup!

fujiko:

i know she was a weird girl. i KNOW this bitch had a gigantic bookshelf filled with all the standard cute, girly beginner chapter books, but also those big fucking scholastic book fair pretend spy kits and shit. i don’t think she was ever the “play in the dirt and come home covered in grass stains and mud” type of kid, mostly because it just felt gross to her, but i DO think she was completely unhinged in an indoors sense. the kind of child who just starts talking your ear off acting like they know everything there is to know about frogs because they read one book so OBVIOUSLY they know ALL about FROGS!! 

absolutely adored those cheap horrible nail polish sets where the brush is the size of a q-tip swab. she also chewed on her nails though, so imagine the standard tiny hand with thin, watery, glittery purple polish on just the roundest, bluntest nails possible. that same hand is also thinking really hard about how to best pocket your coin purse though so like,

i think she had siblings. she was in the perfect spot where she wasn’t in the league with the older, more achieved kids, but wasn’t young enough to be babied and spoiled like the little ones. which takes quite a strange toll on you growing up. it’s why her demeanor now tends to go between taking advantage of the fact a lot of people don’t expect anything from her, to “why are you ignoring me?! what’s that about!!”

fujiko def developed her evil selfgaining tendencies before she even left the fifth grade. if you think she’s difficult to bargain with NOW, imagine what she was like in middle school when [pogs/pokemon cards/silly bandz/insert era appropriate cafeteria currency here] was big. she went through the school system curating personal black markets. it would be impressive if she wasn’t so terrifyingly cutthroat about it

in the nicest way possible, if the stars had aligned, and by some miracle all five of them were the same exact age and met in kindergarten, she… would not have been friends with any of them. well, partially. there’s a very sharp gender divide when you’re first starting school, so i think she kind of “made friends” with nice enough girls, but she absolutely thought lupin was obnoxious, she thought goemon didn’t like her because he rarely spoke to her, jigen thought it was hilarious to antagonize her, and zenigata was just kind of whatever, like he wasn’t a jerk, but he wasn’t exceedingly nice. like he gave her a colored pencil to borrow and that was the extent of that. at best, if goemon was forced to really socialize, she and goemon would get along well enough, but that’s also because she’s bossy as HELL and goemon just goes along with whatever, even now, so ESPECIALLY back when he was an impressionable child!

goemon:

god. you know the kid that sits on the edge of the playground that the teachers all go “aw, bless his heart. just a little old soul.” poor baby goemon

i don’t really think there was as much pressure on goemon to live up to his legacy the way there was for lupin. i’ve mentioned it before, but goemon’s relationship with the original goemon is very different from lup’s relationship with his grandpa, or even dad, and it’s not just because of the time gap. goemon CHOSE to emulate his nakesake’s abilities and talents, where lupin kind of had no choice. and because of this, goemon’s transition into his current lifestyle was much more gradual. i’d say he probably only started making an effort to BE “goemonlike” when he reached his mid-to-late teens. i know hes like 17 in the og manga so if any of this contradicts that Shh no it doesn’t

his quietness wasn’t entirely the result of being shy either. he just didn’t really know what to say at most points? he was (and still is) pretty blunt, and realized pretty quickly and very naturally that people outside of his immediate family didn’t know what to make of him when he answered rhetorical questions completely honestly and sincerely. so he kinda just. retreated inward a bit. he started to get a bit more talkative as he grew, but then he committed to his training and learned the importance of “meaning every word you say” so then he started getting quiet AGAIN

you would think he would be the easiest kid to look after. uh no. even in a pre-slashy slashy era he’s very naturally destructive, which is insane given how tenderly he treats certain stuff within the house. you go “ok goemon this is my dog’s favorite food bowl. it belonged to HER mom so that’s very old for dogs.” and he gives you this exceedingly serious nod and uses both hands to slowly set it down on the ground for the dog to eat out of. but then you go “goemon is that your great great great grandfather’s handmade teapot?” and he goes “is it?” and just in the process of him setting it on the counter it has shattered in two. little man is devastated but hey nobody was drinking out of that thing anyway so just krazy glue that fucker and the tears will subside

zenigata:

is there anything at all funnier than an angry 6yo. yeah. an angry 2yo. and even funnier than that, an angry infant. he didn’t even have anything to actually be pissed about, that’s just naturally how his eyebrows sit and HAVE been his entire life. i would give up my pinky just to see even a glimpse of the absolute comedy jackpot known as his baby pictures

not a revolutionary take by any means but he was definitely the “YOU CAN’T DO THAT WE’RE GONNA GET IN TROUBLE!!” kid. however he was absolutely not even REMOTELY the “didn’t we have homework?” kid because you know damn well he never remembered to do that shit. unless he knew a kid he didn’t like ALSO didn’t do the homework, then yeah, he’d absolutely go down with the ship just to get back at the little bastard. 

in that same vein he would absolutely be the easiest to babysit. “but his demeanor--” shh you are thinking too far ahead. this guy has no obligations. this guy has personal beef with like two random kids in his neighborhood. he has yet to grow a taste for calling superiors idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about. so as long as you actually tell him in plain terms “please do x” or “don’t do y because z” he’ll be fine. you tell this kid to set the table and he’s tripping over his feet putting the spoons and forks in the wrong places. also you’re just having chicken nuggets so i don’t even know why he did that. he didn’t grab plates.

do not mistake the above for him being a “good” kid because this just means he was unfortunately one of those horrible kids who are very polite in front of certain people and absolute monsters in front of those he doesn’t like. does that sound contradictory to the above bullet points? that’s just how children are. he was not a bully at any point in his life but he was so extreme with his ANTI bullying shit that he ended up in the principal’s office just as much, covered in bruises and star wars bandaids. all throughout his school years. he was still doing this shit in high school he’d overhear somebody being a douchebag and just push them off the bleachers. let ‘em fall 10 feet it builds character.

[stripedtabbycat]

today i'm finally going to tackle the real important topics: the diary of a wimpy kid timeline.

as someone who was born in 2000 i grew up with these books and read them avidly, along with my brothers and many classmates, when i was in middle school myself, although the first book was published in 2007. (i wasn't an avid poptropica user but i did find the original webcomic version on there and read through it before the fifth book came out, which meant i recognized certain jokes and plot points that got spread throughout the later books in the series.) naturally i stopped keeping up with these as i grew out of middle school and past the scholastic book fair era but working at the public library meant i still see the new ones coming in to the children's section.

currently the series is on its 19th installment (feel old yet?) the long-running nature of the series has raised many questions as to how the characters still seem to be the same age as they were at the beginning, with main character greg heffley still being a middle school student after 17 years (again: feel old yet?) author jeff kinney has provided some amusing answers to questions like these on twitter, but the simplest doylist explanation is that the series runs on what tv tropes (and probably other sources) call comic book time: characters in long-running franchises like comics will stay the same age in-universe while the exact setting of their world, unless specified otherwise, is always assumed to be the current real-world present, creating a strange floating timeline situation in which it is always perpetually "now" but nothing in-universe is acknowledged to change. (the simpsons is a good example of a non-comic book situation like this.)

however, looking at the contents of the books themselves, i think we can work out exactly what the timeline situation is within the universe of diary of a wimpy kid. remember that, while the first book covers the events of one school year, none of the other books do, and in fact seem to cover progressively shorter periods of time as they go on. there are currently 5 books in the series that begin with the start of a new school year. to make this work we must presume that greg's middle school, like mine, starts in the 5th grade and not the 6th as many assume. (there are some references in the earlier books to the fifth grade as the year before the first book started, but we'll have to ignore that.) presuming that the first book covers greg's fifth-grade school year, this means that he should have just finished the ninth grade by the most recent book (which takes place over the summer.) so it's not impossible that he could still be in middle school up to a point, but most likely he should have started high school in book 16. however, he would still not be as old as you might think for a series that's gone on this long.

also, if you presume the first book takes place in the year it was published (2007), then the series should be up to 2012 by now in its internal timeline. from what i can tell there are references in the most recent book to modern social media and the concept of "influencers", which were not really a thing yet by then, but again it's not impossible; i feel like 2012 was around the time the possibility of being a social media celebrity was starting to really take off. (but what do i know, i was 12. again: the actual explanation is the comic book time thing.)

based on my math, in the real world greg heffley would have been born in 1997 and would be 27 years old by now. feel old yet?

[bish-plz-haha]

Let's talk about books!

So I started reading a series I spent a lot of time avoiding because I tried reading it in the past and I just... couldn't. Finally, after something like 7 to 10 years I've come back to it.

That series is called:

⭐⭐The Maze Runner⭐⭐

Now now, say what you want but everyone reads differently. Back when the book first came out (I'm literally talkin like 2011-2013 era because I got it at the scholastic book fair at school and I cant remember the year I got it), I tried reading it. I got MAYBE like 5 chapters in to the first book and put it down.

Recently, I've picked it back up as I previously said and let me just say:

I

Am

Loving

It

My style of reading has changed to "eh, I'll try it" and I'm glad I picked it back up because its phenomenal.

BUT onto what this post is really about.

I have never in my life read a book series that the movies are SO FAR OFF FROM.

First book was like, "eh, there's some big differences but not enough for me to be like, "I don't recognise this from the movies" (besides the Grievers rolling - which had me rolling honestly). (Yes, I watched the movies first. I didnt really think I was gonna pick the books back up so I gave into the temptation of watching.)

But I've found that each book has had drastically more differences to the movies. Like in The Scorch Trials. They are forced to go into the scorch in the book. While in the movie, it's just them trying to get away from WICKED (which is understandable). But I'm just reading the death cure now—I started the series on the 10th of May. Sue me.—and my God, I dont recognise the movie AT ALL. Which, I'll admit, is nice because the things I remember from the movie I think about and the book takes a completely different direction and throws me for a loop.

ALSO!!!!!!

You're trying to tell me that Thomas doesn't have a thing with Newt? Like, you're seriously trying to sell me on the point that Teresa is the ONLY love interest Thomas has? Really? A few examples:

"He found himself thinking of Newt, maybe the one he liked most of all of them."

"Newt gave him a suspicious look. 'Best of the best, those guys. Have to be. Everything depends on them.' Newt picked up a loose rock and tossed it, watching it absently as it bounced to a stop. 'Why arent you one?'"

"Thomas turned to see Newt there, smiling. That grin sent a wave of reassurance through Thomas, as if he were finding out the world was okay again."

"Most people call me Thomas; well, except for Newt. He calls me Tommy."

"Imagining one of the guards hurting Newt made Thomas tremble with rage."

"He was surprised at his reaction. He hadn't realised how much Newt meant to him until the declaration."

"Glad you're not bloody dead, Tommy. I'm really, really glad."

"He was genuinely concerned—Newt was one of the few people in the glade he actually liked."

"Thomas couldnt stifle his worry about what Newt was thinking. He'd opened himself up and he really liked Newt. If Newt turned on him now, Thomas didn't know if he could handle it."

[viewfromthelake]

Comics Reading Update: December 18, 2024

I think I'm caught up on the new rebooted Ultimate Universe stuff in Marvel Unlimited. Unless there's titles I don't know about. (Ah, modern superhero books, keeping themselves in a ghetto by being really hard to follow, while meanwhile Scholastic has popular books just marked like "1, 2, 3, etc...") Ultimate X-Men has a great aesthetic, though a very decompressed storytelling style. I can't imagine shelling out whatever single issues cost for single issues of it. (To be fair, I generally can't imagine that regarding single issues these days.) Looks beautiful, though.

Ultimate Spider-man is a neat re-jiggering of the Spider-man format. As always, he only gets to be happily married with kids in non-mainline universes. Uncle Ben and Jonah being buddies is lovely.

I'm interested to see where The Ultimates goes, and I'm looking forward to some progress on how they're going to create a viable plan to deal with The Maker.

As my comment above by Scholastic maybe indicates, I watched a recent YouTube essay by Matttt about Jeff Smith and how Bone helped change comics publishing. It's a great watch.

My Captain America reading has taken a leap back to the 70s to read the Steve Englehart run. It's been entertaining and I'm looking forward to continuing, though it is really different reading Marvel from the 70s. The dialogue in Marvel stuff of this era is so weird. Everyone is cracking jokes at each other in the most awkward ways. And whenever a character is from the "inner city" Engelhart just boldly says "I'll handle this: I speak Jive." XD

[spectres-fulcrum]

We've been cleaning out our basement and reorganizing it and came across some old books of mine and my dad just stacked them on the shelves which bugged my organization cause there's series and series orders so I just put laundry in the washer for 56 minutes and organized them. Crazy what memories I unlocked.

I have partial or full:

City of Ember(I Loved this one in late elementary school)

Maximum Ride

Maze Runner(A summer vacation read, bought books 2 and 3 in TX after visiting my cousin for an afternoon on my way back to our aunt's)

Divergent (I was huge into ya dystopian fiction as a teen. Huge)

Lorien Legacies(This was one I wish I had finished)

The Missing by Margret Peterson Haddix(Scholastic book fair era)

The Vampire Diaries(I noped out of the series after the LJ Smith getting fired for wanting a Delena endgame drama. Did not want to support publishers who fired authors telling their stories)

Delirium

And a lot of random books

Honestly a few of these I wouldn't be opposed to re-reading and finishing as an adult on my Kindle.

[catgirlneomatrix]

8 and 15 from ur ask thing

8 - what musical artists have you most felt connected to over your lifetime?

I don’t really know. I feel like I’m still figuring out my taste in music tbh. My family was really late to getting music streaming, and I didn’t have many friends as a kid, so my music was pretty much limited to whatever my mom happened to download until like my sophomore year of high school. For years I had like 3 now that’s what I call musics (47,48, and 52), a handful of musical soundtracks, the 500 days of summer soundtrack (I have never seen that movie), and the occasional Taylor Swift or Katy Perry CD to listen to, and that’s it. Let me tell you the Hamilton soundtrack is what got me through middle school. In late high school, I got deep into TikTok and ended up fixated on Lemon Demon and Will Wood during my incredibly cringe, but incredibly free era. More recently Mitski and The Front Bottoms got me through The Horrors™. 

15 - five most influential books over your lifetime.

I’ve got a bad memory when it comes to books i’ve read, but I’m looking at my bookshelf rn, which is mostly stuff from my childhood, and that is definitely influencing this list.

1- Zita the Space Girl

It was my favorite graphic novel as a kid, and graphic novels are what got me into reading. I would read everything and anything my library had in the graphic novel section

2- The Lost Track of Time

I probably got this at a scholastic book fair in mid to late elementary school, but I was absolutely obsessed with it for years. It changed my brain chemistry i think.

3- I am Princess x

Another scholastic book fair banger that I reread for years. This one is about a girl who made comics with her best friend as a kid. Years after her best friend supposedly died in a car crash, she realizes that there is a popular web comic about the character they made together, and she has to solve clues in the comic to find her friend. 

4- Damsel

Traumatizing. I got this book from a raffle when I was 12 or 13, and it should have some trigger warnings cause dam. It looks like a standard y/a fantasy romance from the outside, but the male lead is incredibly abusive (the point of the book, but again, not mentioned on the blurb on the back). Let’s just say the words “king’s yard” were used multiple times. It is a genuinely good book, but I wish it was labeled better.

5-Wings of Fire

On a lighter note, me and my highschool best friend bonded over this series. I was  definitely out of the target demographic when I read it, but me and my friend used to talk about it on the way to class every day.

Honorable mention for Dreadnaught (one of the first queer books I read as a kid, about a trans woman superhero)

[returntosendernz]

Mr. Silverstein, a Scholastic Book Fair blast-from-the-past. A minimal think piece in an era of maximalism.

Found between the pages is a note between Chuckles and Bootles noting, "I hope you enjoy & treasure this book as much as I do you. May you never find your 'missing' piece." Totes cute.

#RTS #returntosender

---------

Book: The Missing Piece Author: Shel Silverstein Published: 1976

Found: Loving note between Chuckles & Bootles Date: December 2004 Owner: "Chuckles"

[luvdivy]

Nostalgia

Lately i've been experiencing so much nostalgia almost in a painful way. Videos have been popping up on my Instagram and Tiktok of my childhood, the late 2000's and 2010's and I've been looking back at old pictures and videos, cartoons, remembering old memories and toys. Elementary school projects, cooking creations, old music, and just remembering what my childhood was like. Vivid memories.

I know im really young still, but i remember my childhood so vividly. Everything felt so bright. When did it stop feeling that way? There is so much about life to love, but why can't things feel the same lighthearted-ness as it used to? Summer days and rain feel different now. Everything feels different. I can look at the same blue sky and still feel as though that blue sky from 2012 was bluer. Idk if anything im saying makes sense, but everything feels so isolated now. Idk, everything seemed so peaceful back then. Smiley, free, lighthearted, endless. Bright. Im a teenager, I have so much to enjoy and love about life. But I can't help but think about how things will never be what they used to be. I know that everything changes with time. But i miss it. and I wonder if we'll ever be able to recreate childhood again.

Elementary school, box tv's, cereal commercials, cartoons, music with lyrics we were too young to understand. Conversations that made zero sense, endless excitement, no pressure. Chapter books, disney movies, dvd's, recess, playing every single sport and having a blast, becoming friends with people just because they like the same color as you. Colorful cups and plates and bagged lunches, the excitement of your mom making your favorite food, wii video games with siblings and playing with chalk. Public pools and dairy queen in the summer, making up random games to play with the neighborhood kids, scholastic book fairs and dollar store bubbles. Summer sunshine and breeze, playdates, playgrounds, bike rides, gym class, school buses, sprinklers and weekday morning cartoons. Even watching the snow fall was different. This was my carefree childhood.

I love life, but it feels so isolated now. Im endlessly grateful for the amazing and bright childhood I had, but life doesn't feel the same anymore. And I really want to feel that feeling again. We all wanted to grow up so fast, but nobody ever talked about what being a teenager in an era of phones would do to the simple life we lived when we were younger.

Kids born today won't have the same childhood I had. That's not necessarily a bad thing, every generation is unique, but its just sad that something that isolates the world now may isolate children today.

Maybe one day i'll look back and cherish my teenage years, but nothing will be like my childhood. Recreating it is so difficult. I just can't believe how fast time is moving, I want it to slow down but it won't. That's something that's hard to accept. I guess all there really is to make the most out of the time we have. One thing they never tell you about growing up is the pressure and worries you put on yourself. It doesn't have to be that way, but for almost everyone it is. But I guess we have to look at the positives.

This rant probably made zero sense, and I hope someone can relate to me. There is so much to love about life, but sometimes it doesn't sit right with me that things won't be the same as they used to be. Hopefully, I can find peace with that in the future. Thanks for reading this long and messy rant <3

[more-than-a-princess]

🐣What were you like as a kid? Allegedly? Has anything changed, and have people noticed?

In Depth and Personal Munday Meme - Accepting!

My favorite places as a child were quiet, full of books and/or dolls, and somewhere I could wear a pretty dress, eat sweets, and read to my dolls or stuffed animals. I'm an only child and have parents with busy careers, so I was left on my own (middle school and up) or with a sitter or nanny quite often. I had trouble making friends and relating to other kids as I was constantly surrounded by adults whom I could reason with: I'm pretty sure part of the reason why I was bullied so much was that I attempted to reason with other kids the way I did with adults (or tried to) and couldn't understand why they just teased me instead. I begged to be homeschooled but my parents said no and sent me to private school hell instead. I think the only time I really liked going to school for something more than my favorite classes was university.

That said, my favorite things in life were the bookstore and/or library, Scholastic Book Fair (I was that kid who ordered whatever I wanted off the book list and needed help carrying the bags to my parents' cars), the Disney Store (beeline for the stuffed animal tower and the TV playing film/song clips usually, if I wasn't distracted by dolls), and whenever I got new Barbies or American Girl dolls. I actually preferred AG more: the fact they came with books and girls from historical eras was the coolest thing to me! Those dolls and my cats at the time got to hear a lot of me trying to read aloud as much as I could.

I wasn't very athletic so sports teams were out of the question most of the time (I lifted weights instead starting in middle school in lieu of a school team due to how badly I was bullied. It just wasn't a great idea for my mental health to keep me around those kids longer than I needed to be), and I wasn't allowed video games until high school (right around when I'd sent my college applications) because my parents were convinced that if I played video games, I'd never get into a good university. This is a big reason why I never became much of a gamer! I didn't grow up with the hand-eye coordination practice with consoles and controllers many kids did. I also didn't get cable TV until the end of middle school: things like Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel were luxuries for me, ones I only got to indulge in at other family members' houses.

I think the funniest bit of it all is how I went from very much a dress-loving, pink-adorning, dress-wearing child to a teenager, constantly sullen, dressed in black/Hot Topic/early Torrid attire with the goth-iest high school senior photoshoot...and right back to a woman who adores dresses, classic colors, neutrals, and pastels, and just feels better about her day when pulling a dress and favorite pair of shoes/bag out of her closet, just to go to a cafe and shopping/a bookstore. My parents have definitely noticed this and are having the last laugh at middle/high school-era Rae, who would only wear wide leg JNCO style trousers with so many ripped holes at the bottom, bondage pants/skirts, anime/geek t-shirts, fancy dresses from The Pyramid Collection (I had a wicca phase) and the darkest red lipstick that wasn't black but still broke the school dress code so the administration made me wash it off each morning (despite me swatching it on my hand and showing them no, it wasn't black: black lipstick was banned, like jeans, miniskirts, tanktops, and anything featuring 'gang' logos or relating to Eminem or Nelly. Honestly, besides the jeans, good move school!)...is now a far more cheerful and content person, who has embraced color, dresses, bows, etc. once again.

tl;dr - my teenage years were awful, do not want to revisit no matter how much my high school keeps insisting I should show up for my 20-year reunion.

In a more nerdy sense, I'm realizing that in my late thirties with more disposable income, I can finally wear all the costumes I wanted to do as a teenage cosplayer but didn't have the funds to do so. I am doing or rewearing so many old school costumes in 2024, and upgrading some outfits I already love with higher-quality pieces.

[inklingofadream]

I just finished my latest nonfiction bedtime book, which was Paperback Crush

It's a very fun tour through the themes and esoterica of 80s and 90s scholastic book fair fare, the things "we all" remember (more or less; many of the same series were still going strong in the 00s)

And I cannot emphasize enough. How little I am included in "we all"

Not a single book until the chapters on "Danger" and "Terror" when we get to books about ghosts, kidnappings, etc

The stuff she talks about at the beginning of every chapter/section? Establishing the candidates for first YA novel or the beginnings of children's books about the genre to hand?

Like 70% hit rate. The long list of Stratemeyer Syndicate detective stories? Not only was I into Nancy Drew, with her tens of thousands of reviews per book on Goodreads, and Trixie Belden, with her thousands, I read (thrift store find) The Dana Girls, who are lucky to have a book break 100 ratings or reviews, and who have shot up fabulously in popularity because when I was a little kid I could not, for any price, find additional books on ebay

Haven't read a single book in the "Romance" section... except of course for the supporting point for romance being a big driving force in all eras of the history of English-language publishing, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. For a class, sure, but I do regret renting that one instead of buying my own, and will probably end up doing so eventually (Its first half-ish could go up against any "Dark Romance" pull of today, except for how the author absolutely does not know that). It's literally the only one I read as an adult, though.

Sicklit YA, especially then, has a lot of vibes of Victorian etc era stories about angelic, virginal heroines driving others to self improvement with their illness, it's true! What's that? Your example? What Katy Did! Not merely a moderately-obscure pull in which the heroine suffers a debilitating spinal injury and eventually is cured when she cheers up a little (lol. lmao. yes really, with a side of "not being a tomboy" to bolster that), it is of course. Unironically. Second grade Ink's actual answer to "what's your favorite book?"

Not even in a hipster way. I didn't even realize it was that old until, in something of a pattern, I was old enough to find out from Wikipedia that it had sequels. Which, in something of a pattern, I could not lay hands on- but more because the original was an audiobook in our local library than difficulty of acquisition, they're public domain now. By the time I was up to the physical book version I had been gifted a vintage copy of What Katy Did At School :)

So Like. If anyone finds a book covering through a nostalgic lens the literature from the childhood of those growing up any time between 1850 and 1970 let me know, I guess!

[roserefrain]

alright slightly long story under the cut but ! it is fun

so. context bits beforehand. if u do not know. a scholastic book fair was an afterschool thing that happened sometimes in elementary school where you could buy kid's books! it was lots of fun.

other bit of context is i was completely obsessed with the disney fairies books (specifically the ones pre tinkerbell movie. the 2005-2007 era) and owned like. all of them.

imagine my shock when i see a disney fairies book at the scholastic book fair that's cover is. facing the wrong way? and the art isn't like any of the other disney fairies books, but it's a title i recognize!

it was a manga version of vidia and the fairy crown, a story id read already! i had. never seen a manga before. i Had to get it. now. i did already know the story, since it's pretty much the same between the two, but the difference was that the original only had a few illustrations, while the manga was. ya know. a manga. fully illustrated. and this. gives the story an entirely different vibe.

SO. basic plot. vidia (the one who is on both of the covers) is a bit of an asshole. she likes to be mean for fun, she condescendingly calls everyone pet names, she's great. she is falsely accused of stealing the fairy queen's crown, and is going to be banished from pixie hollow unless she can find it and clear her name.

no one believes that she didn't steal it, because she is mean and jokingly threatened to steal it earlier that day. EXCEPT. my girl. my favorite fairy. prilla. prilla is a bit of a gullible sweetie. she is just kind of an endless ball of sunshine who believes in everyone all the time. she decides she's going to help vidia clear her name.

"okay so they're just like. sunshine/grumpy trope friends" YES BUT. PLEASE. PLEASE LOOK AT HOW THE MANGA DOES IT.

IM NOT CRAZY. YOU SEE IT. THE SHOUJO SPARKLES AROUND PRILLA. "OH SAVE YOUR PITY ... SWEETHEART". HER OH WELL OF FOND EXASPERATION. COME ONNNNNNN....

and when they finally find the crown, vidia thinks for a moment that she could just steal it. if everyone thinks she's a thief anyways, why shouldn't she just be one? and then. prilla just. looks at her.

and she doesn't steal it! because she's like. damn it. okay. one person believes in me and i don't want to let her down. (ONCE AGAIN... THE SHOUJO SPARKLE BY PRILLA. THEY DO THIS FOR THE WHOLE MANGA. ITS NOT PIXIE DUST, ONLY PRILLA HAS THE SPARKLES)

and then. at the end when vidia gives the crown back and proves her innocence in front of everyone. this happens.

COME ONNNNNNNNNNNNNN..... GESTURING AT IT WILDLY. COME ON. LOOK AT IT

keep in mind. i was a little tiny baby when i read this. (like. 7 max?) and even then i was like. wow they're in love with each other. can girls be in love with each other. if one of them was a boy i would instantly say theyre in love.

anyways this and the sims taught me what gay people were. vidia/prilla forever and ever. baby's first otp. (fun fact. this manga literally taught me what shipping was im pretty sure??? like, after reading it was the first time i encountered the word shipping.)

(coughs as i realize the fact that i made linnet and kestrel be a bit. curly haired sweet one who believes in the goodness of black haired high ponytail mean and sarcastic one. this was not intentional I PROMMY,,,, but they are in my brain forever i read this manga cover to cover like a hundred times)

I need to sleep tonight but tomorrow. tomorrow I need to tell you all about the yuri manga I bought at the scholastic book fair that changed my life forever

[deadletterpoets]

Saw your post about how Cass is written as having the mind of a child in "Batgirls." I'm not reading that series, so can I ask, how do they do that? And what should they have done instead? I'm curious to know!

*I'm currently at work with no access to any comics but I'd probably be too lazy to put any in here honestly so I'll just answer this now under the cut*

Alright, let me start out by saying not everyone is going to agree with my assessment that they are writing her like she has the mind of a child, but that's how it feels to me. I'm not saying they think she's a child (even though questionable choices have been made and said in interviews and in the writing that makes me wonder) but ever since Tynion initially wrote Tim saying something like "she has the mind of a child" there's been a naivety and "innocence" in the way writers tend to write her that comes off childlike ignorance and the way other characters tend to talk down to her like she's kid.

(it's actually why her friendships with Clayface and Duke are top tier cause neither of them do that and they're like the only ones it's weird but that's a different conversation)

So with Batgirls, for me, the entire thing feels like Cass (and Steph but I don't want to say things out of turn for Steph fans since they know more than me. Hell Cass fans know more than me too so they're welcome to tell me I'm wrong) is having her handheld the entire time. I get some of the panels ppl see are cute or funny or whatever, but since the entire book has such a scholastic book fair readership vibe as it is (which isn't a bad thing to have I just think their execution needs work) having Cass be scared to get her ears pierced, her saying "I'm a baby?" in response to Steph saying she's a "Babe" after her ears got pierced (which was set up as some big thing and meant absolutely nothing), having her not know what "bestie" means, the whole bag on her head and "reading is fundamental" just gives off "child vibes" to me idk. Probably not the intention, but it's how it feels to me. Compared to Hill's Outsiders where Cass is standing up next to characters like Ra's and Katana and Shiva and Black Lightning and showcasing her worth. Babs constantly feels like she's talking down to Cass and Steph and it pisses me off.

In terms of what I'd do, that's frankly too long of an answer. I can't blame the writers 100% when this book is clearly an editorial mandate of "I want Burnside vibes cause it my fav era." I think Cass and Steph shouldn't be in the same Batgirls book. I think Cass should be a global Batgirl while Steph is the Gotham Batgirl. I think Babs shouldn't be Batgirl at all and only be Oracle. I would just write Cass and Steph like actual adults with agency in the narrative not kids that have to be saved or be given pep talks every other page. I'd make their standing as heroes actually matter.

[shit-my-music-professors-say]

Hatchetfield characters as things my brother has said

Professor Hidgens: Can I buy a civil war era canon? I'm gonna turn this house into Fort Knox

Emma: Did I ever tell you I drank an entire bottle of Smirnoff in 2 hours? I should have died

Paul: This makes me want to purchase a pair of bowling shoes so I can use them incorrectly

Ted: How much money do you think it would take to have Alex Trebek fuck my wife?

Charlotte: Have you ever noticed feet are just failed leg hands?

Bill: It's no longer Dr. Phil, it's Dr. No Chill

General McNamara: Richard "Cornbread" Nixon. That's his nickname from the war

Alice: Knock knock. Who's there you might ask? Still not dad

Deb: Sometimes I wonder what tumblr is but then I remember I put Donkey Kong as my gender on the PSAT

Lex: I just realized I haven't been to a scholastic book fair in, like, 10 years. I think I understand why I'm depressed

Hannah: *flashes Vape Nation sign* Zoo Pals

Ethan: I hope the owner of cuck@cuck.com doesn't care that I'm using his email

Linda Monroe: Revenge is a dish best served at room temperature and slightly soggy

Becky Barnes: I like my justice the way I like my steak. Raw

Tom: I'm like Forrest Gump. You cannot stop me, you can only wish to contain me

Jane: Snap my neck like a Slim Jim, oh great Macho Man Randy Savage

[bae-science]

now newt you may be thinking you’ve decided to double major and have a minor in your greatest act of nomative determinism yet how could you POSSIBLY have time to keep your mind sharp and sexy with real books and still read fanfic? well i’m going to college in a pandemic, that’s why. hardest battles sexiest soldiers and all that. here’s some white boy tuesday.

Overworked by Ferrety

WHAT a good good depiction of a meltdown and an even better autistic hermann. great fresh voice that feels true to character, the buildup is well paced so that when the h/c does hit it’s well-earned and cathartic, and all in all some really good classic lab era whump

double back by @ghostpressure

ghost drift translated to prose is really hard to pull off, so big kudos for keeping things poetic and mind-fucky, but still coherent and easy to understand. i love the little crystalized moments we get that tell us how clearly hermann is cataloguing them, which is a great detail to show inner thoughts rather than telling. i love love love the dialogue; it bounces the line between proper banter and the more serious, introspective tone the fic takes very well

All Clear by @trifoliate-undergrowth (NSFW)

this bitch has the TROPES. hate makeouts? arguments turn to more? trapped somewhere together and tension rises as they’re forced to wait it out? WALL SLAM HELLO. never before have i actually seen so many classic newmann faves for nsfw in one place and it’s like the scholastic book fair for adults. very cute voice for hermann as well, because oh yeah, he really is a dude in his late 20s and not actually an 80 year old turtle in a sweater

heat of the moment by @kingeiszler (NSFW)

if any of you so much as LOOK at me i will stomp you to death with my hooves. trans horny newt rights also i was NOT expecting that angst with a happy ending moment at the end but like fuck. this fic is packing about as much good stuff as the front of newt’s hot topic jeans. hermann gottlieb god of WAP

Dress Code by @arcanemoody

there are not enough fics centered around newt and his self-image post-pru and ESPECIALLY not enough dealing with him finding his style again. i think this concept is such a good one to explore nonbinary newt through (if i get a single “kinnie” in my askbox i’m writing a fic where stan twitter outs the precursors as possessing newt because they made an account and popped off. do not test me you all know i’m fucking crazy but i’m free) since so much of gender presentation is in clothes, along with the other stuff the precursors clearly took over in uprising. and then i know we all love to interpret the “whoever will take him” as newt being bi but i’m always glad when it’s noted in fic, and the way it’s used to develop his character works very well

The Geiszler-Gottlieb Wedding by Goldmoth

if for nothing else please go to the second chapter of this fic and read the playlist because i literally fell out of my bed laughing and had a bump on the back of my head the size of a cherry. worth it.

Baby, I’m a fool for you by @that-one-fandom-chick

wingman vanessa supremacy. twilight soundtrack supremacy. hermann meeting newt while he’s in a band SUPREMACY also with a lot of these fics combining it with “first meeting” everything usually goes wrong, but it was so refreshing to have that extremely cute diner scene at the end.... the old friend mitski vibes of it all........ gay hands hermann rights

Now We Have the Salad by MnemonicMadness

i wanna say right off the bat this concept tickles me so deeply because if a non diabetic person switched bodies with a t1d (moi) i would have to helicopter parent 90% of everything they did if i didn’t want to, like. die. or at least have a fucked a1c. anyway this is a really great twist on the body swap trope that takes full advantage of hermann’s disability as a plot point, and with the added variety of being post-uprising. that last bit is what makes the story work, actually, because if it were simply pr1 era, you wouldn’t really have an excuse for newt so desperately wanting to give hermann time in a pain-free body without it coming off as pitying and insensitive. but tack on the guilt of the precursors, and what they did to hermann, and you have the perfect justification for newt’s actions. smart writing! and some good old mortifying ordeal of being known that stays tasteful in context

i’m drawn to you, honey, like the sea to the fisherman’s daughter by @campgender  

i love a good post pr1 beach house fic i cannot lie! “newt and hermann don’t have ppdc jobs anymore but they sure do have trauma!” fics have sort have gone out of fashion post-events that occurred in 2018, but this one is a very good blast from the past. i love the beginning, which is such a fucking accurate depiction of how people used to having to be hyper competent in traumatic situations react to it being all over abruptly. i LOVE LOVE the ending, it’s so true to character and what i hope a good pr2 would have done for newt. this thing is chock-full of so many good lines, like “Maybe I don’t know how to live with nice things.” fucking MOOD and “’If you’re good enough at what you do,’ Hermann says firmly, ‘which you are, people tend to pretend as if the rest of it doesn’t exist.’” is so so accurate to the academia climb when you’re disabled, let me fucking tell you. great moment after great moment.

I’ve Got Your Letter by @coloredpencilroses

A if i rec this then ten things i hate about you au in my mouth please. please. please. anyway this fic is SO fun and good i love the writing style and how the humor is fun and consistent throughout both povs, the slowburn keeps things agonizing but has enough fun characters and plot to keep you invested and not just begging for an end so you can skip to it, TENDO KING OF BRAIN CELLS, and i haven’t seen you’ve got mail so i’m literally saving it until this thing finishes to keep the suspense. excellent fic for autumn

now usually this is where i plug my most recent work but since #theprecursorsareoverparty has spawned a more vitriol and hateful reaction than i ever could have dreamed, read i never liked that ending either and get yourself some culture. and stan tom stoppard