#please let me know what you thought

[hanafubukki]

Malleus: -trying to flirt-

YN/MC/Yuu: -clearly confused-

Lilia, the wingman:

YN/MC/Yuu: Oh, why don’t we date first?

Malleus: -happy dragon noises-

[itslilacokay]

nahhh bro 💀💀💀💀

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Wei Wuxian eats a watermelon. Yep!

[hammerings]

tfw you’re each others (literal) ride-or-dies ✊

turning these into charms/stickers soon for a limited preorder 💚

[hothammies]

the usage of the lyrics “i don't know what you mean to me, but i wanna turn you on, turn you up, figure it out - i wanna take you on” right after carmy's apology to sydney is so serious to me and i wish we talked about it more. i think it's one of the only times where we get an explicit idea of what carmy thinks of syd in a romantic context and i fucking LIVE for it the lighting, the acting, the attempted phone call, the ambiguity of that entire scene to confuse us on whether or not he's thinking about sydney or if he's thinking about claire in the lyrics - all of it is so so so fucking scrumptious AHHH i love that shit i love this show so much

[fungus-no69]

Pc/you and gn school LIs + Great Hawk doing a three legged race

Whitney is tripping you the fuck up I'm so sorry. They are going to make fun of you regardless of if you were outspeeding them or not.

Kylar is tripping you guys because they got too excited that you're that close and their legs were too weak. Carry them. Please. (--- Status btw)

Depending on your physique and athleticism, you are either keeping pace with Sydney or they run too fast and you fall or something. It's funny and they fuss over you after the fact because you could have gotten hurt. The more corrupt they are, the more likely they are to laugh at you before helping.

Robin will try to keep pace with you no matter how fast or slow you are. Please don't outrun them they will make the saddest most sopping wet cat face at you.

Great Hawk is confused, they simply Pick You Up. Goodbye <33

[love-3-crimes]

miku miku BEEEEAAAMMMMMM!!!!!

(slight flash warning near the end!!)

[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.

[thefrogdalorian]

I think on this fine Saturday afternoon it's a good opportunity to take a breather and remember that there are really no ethical paparazzi pictures. Every single one is inherently exploitative.

Just because photos were taken on a movie set, when someone is 'working,' does not make the practice any less invasive and creepy. Imagine just going about your day, doing your job and having some weirdo snapping pictures of you to sell without your consent for others to endlessly repost online.

There are thousands of pictures of your favourite actor online already. Plenty taken with his knowledge and consent. I'd really like to see more of them on my dash, rather than the creeper shots.

And don't get me started how disseminating these pictures directly leads to people going to said sets. What starts off as admiring how good someone looks has real world implications.

No, hanging around a movie set and disrupting people doing their jobs is not harmless fun or a way to show your appreciation.

If you hang around a movie set, you are a stalker.

Don't tell me that it's okay to take your online admiration for someone offline. You may admire him but he does not, and will never, personally know you. He will never be your friend/boyfriend/daddy. He is a stranger.

The only way meeting your favourite actor is going to happen is at a convention or maaaaaybe a movie premiere if you're incredibly fortunate. You know, places they appear specifically to meet fans (or not in the case of premieres, where the purpose is to promote a movie. Which is also completely understandable if actors don't stop. You are not owed an interaction).

Of course, you cannot help it if you randomly run into someone you admire in the wild. Even then, consider that they probably won't be all too thrilled to be approached in public by a complete stranger. It's up to you to gauge the situation, but remember there is a person at the heart of all of this.

Boundaries and respect are a kindness which deserves to be extended to each and every human being regardless of their looks/talent/fame/wealth.

Fandoms blur those lines a little too often for my liking and I think just scrutinising what you're interacting with, or what behaviour you could be possibly falling down that slippery slope towards is nice to do every once in a while.

I mean no malice with this post and it is not directed at anyone in particular. It's something I cannot help but feel strongly about because I've seen this destructive cycle time and again in fandoms over the years. It's not healthy and it makes us all a little bit more disconnected from our humanity for it...

[somedayslater]

i didnt read the last chapters since i discovered it was the end (but i was spoiled by tumblr lol)... i didnt want to believe it... i want to still look forward to new chapters of No Home :(

For the last few years eunyung and haejoon have been my companions. I healed a little while following the story of eunyung, feeling like its ok to be angry and wanting revenge on your family and the society that continues to want to keep you in a "house" where you are mistreated. How the world isnt made for children at all, the absolute unfairness of it all. That you can choose to keep going, and if you do so its ok to keep your distance with what hurts you.

I healed too with haejoon, who came to terms with the fact that he will always be overcome with sadness and grief from time to time, and when that happens he can only let himself feel and wait for it to pass, and try to look forward to the next day.

Honestly this manwha was the best ever. I couldnt read this manhwa as a form of escapism because it was too real. It pulled strings in my heart i didnt know i had, made me question a lot of things about myself, about others, about my relationship with others. It made me have painful discussion with a few people. Following this manhwa, most of the time, was really unpleasant lol. I hated then loved eunyoung, I liked and then disliked haejoon (yeah sorry haejoon, i think you can be really cruel and stupid and i wanted to strangle you a few times in the last arcs (i would NOT be friend with that guy lol) -thats why this character is so amazing). But i felt so much while reading it i wouldnt trade it for anything. It was funny, it was dumb, it was deep, it was enraging and healing, but most of all it was sincere. The most sincere depiction of what being a person in a deeply flawed society is, and how there's happiness even while surviving.

It was so frustrating to see the manhwa go in a direction i didnt want it to go ! I wanted it to become my cozy refuge, where every problems are magically solved, where haejoon and eunyung ends up understanding and loving each other in a cliché way, where theres a new home with my *fave charas* and its a series of feel-good interactions. Instead the problems kept pilling up, most of them didnt have a satisfactory conclusion, eunyung and haejoon kept hurting each other and distancing themselves. Haejoon just cut contact with his father without knowing what were his nefarious motives or without this guy facing any consequences, we dont know if eunyung's parents will keep bothering eunyung unchecked, we dont know if they're going to be happy and rich, or if, realistically, as orphans without generational wealth and deep traumas, they're going to end up in a shitty life situation.

And i couldnt thank wanan enough for this. They didnt take the easy way, the feel-good way, the way that would have given them a probably bigger fandom so a bigger source of money. I'm amazed by how they managed to hold this whole story so perfectly. Not a single misstep. Everything they draw was where it should have been, every action from the characters were understandable (and frustrating lol), the fucking subtlety of the developing relationships, no deus ex machina and no miserabilism. I didnt always agree with wanan's ethic or what i perceived of it (i think stealing or being violent is ok depending on the context, i dont think working hard to earn money is a virtue) but i respect how they choose to present it. I didnt talk about the other characters because honestly they didnt move me as much (except marie), but i love them so much too. I felt sad that eunyung and haejoon didnt become best friend 5ever (or even lovers hehe) but honestly, understandable lol. If i was one of them i WOULDNT become close with the other at all, so its kinda amazing they could still find this level of mutual understanding.

In short, wanan is an amazing story teller.

And an amazing image-composist (have no idea how to say this in english). The artstyle doesnt look like much, but this gave wanan a wide graphic range to convey emotions that wouldnt have been possible with a more sophisticated style i think -how will i forget the red swirlings mixing with eunyung skin ? The expressions, the choice of colors, the choice in showing something in particular without giving a clear explanation on why (often haejoon's surprised or contemplative face, which made me re-read chapters a few times to try to understand what was happening in his big head). It didnt feel like wanan thought their readers were stupid, nor did they play the fake-deep style. It was perfectly balanced.

And so even if i didnt read it, i have no doubt the end will be the same. Im so sad they decided to end this manhwa, but i know prolonging it would have been greedy and that ultimately, the manhwa would have suffer for it. Some authors do that : they have a popular series going on, and for whatever reason they keep writing new chapters without a clear goal and so the story becomes diluted, messy, useless. I love when they do this, because i can say goodbye to a story progressively as my interest in it wans, without feeling sadness or loss. But it makes me not think of the story at all in the future, since everything that was good about it became buried in new shitty chapters. Because wanan didnt do that, i know that i would think of no home for a long while, maybe forever,

,like i really lost companions when no home ended actually. Because it really, really hurts, knowing i wont be seeing new faces of the no home characters anymore. I know it sounds probably stupid ; i feel genuine grief here lol. I want to know what will happen to them, if they are alright, if they found a place in the world... if there is something to look forward after all, and i really dread not having answers every monday anymore. and the fandom is so small i cant comfort myself by re-entering the no home world every week or whatever... does anyone else feel this way ToT ? maybe i should participate myself but well,, i wouldnt know where to begin...

And saying that ! I'm almost never on this blog, i dont really have socmed accounts, i dont participate in fandoms at all. But I spent a looot of time reading and watching people who does -without being connected or interacting with posts or fanfics at all. AND i really want to thank you all for giving me so much material to chew, posts that made me think, fics that made me smile, drawings that inspired me, witnessing interactions that made me laugh. I was and i probably will continue to be a ghost on socmed, but i really want you to know that you had an impact on me and i was looking forward to your new posts (and will continue to!).

the "every no home chapter is a test of my willingness to Not blow my own brains out" and explosion eunhae monday of @skiptoyuri

the regular nohome posters which makes me happy to check tumblr regularly @shimamitsulover @lesbianpegbar @luckyswamps @tomoyoo @cloudbends @t0a2ter @solcarow @dragon-of-timeless-blue

the awesome artists who keep producing bangers nohome art @gohaejoon @maxsolosur @jjd5426 @bnnuycafe @ct-bunny @lentl-soup @fartaycat @jjd5426 @prokkoli @moxymaxing @ginangtan

the nohome posters that i enjoyed running into @pleuvoire @homolobotomized @podoro-vines @fmet @welpuu @revertrate @obstinaterixatrix @kulluto

the artists that made me interested in checking no home @cienfll @craysmo @ant-eaters @idledee @fruiitlins @froqpi-art @201918b @tinfishmeal @ohrsoh @30mingirlfriend

thanks @ditherslam for the awesome fanfics, obviously i read them all and they're some of my favourites. youre an amazing writer and i cant wait for the next chap of "your atoms"!!

thanks @homeless202 for being an insatiable nohome poster for a while (and @grannykombucha !)

im forgetting a lot of others but i really wanted to thank you all for your time, energy, work. i never interacted with your posts or with you but i really want to convey how cool it is that you all contribute to make no home a more well-known manhwa and the fandom alive

thank youuuu (hope the @ are ok tell me if its bothersome ill delete it)

and really, really, thank you wanan ! waaaa i want to cry

[arcanefox207]

[wilberwrites]

I am making myself digestible, I am removing myself piece by piece,

I start with my eyes, i remove the spark, the fire and passion,

Then i move to the hair, i take away my expression, my creativity

Next to go is my smile, my teeth and my tounge, along with them goes my cheek and my wit,

I am trying to make myself easy to like, to be around,

I take away my heart, my soul and my sadness,

Those get escorted out by my withering happiness,

I am making myself digestible,

I am making myself a good person.

[tornado1992]

News! I got an Ao3 account! Yaaaay!

Hopefully this will motivate me to actually work on my drafts as to make them complete enough to be considered fanfics, cause at this point most of them can’t even pass as rambles about the bros in situations and I need to work on that!

Here it is if you’d like to check it out!

As for now, I’ve only got one “fic” posted at the moment, if you’ve been around my blog for long enough you’ve probably already read it before, nothing fancy, just a small shot about Sonic suffering from a cold, plus angst.

Its selection as my first ever fanfic uploaded on Ao3 is due to its vagueness in terms of continuity and universe placement, as I got other works which have specifics places on specifics points in the franchise, so this was my opportunity to test the waters as to how the archive works.

I have a few fics planned since a few months ago, and a really long term fic since more than a year ago, but I’ll need time to learn how to properly use the archive, so in the meantime I’ll be posting the few one shots that I already have on my blog.

If you are one of the few who showed interest on me getting an Ao3 and updating some months old stories I ask for your patience! And if you didn’t but still want to read what I’ll be posting, I ask for patience and faith! I’ll need it!

[momomallowart]

Imagine if you will... Ray with a tongue piercing ʕ ꈍᴥꈍʔ 💭

A more "messy" version under the cut bc I wanted to practice tears and stuff.. 👀

[cutter-kirby]

one of my favorite things to come out of the book of bill is all of the bill possessing ford content. like both in canon and in fanworks. bipper did something irrevocable to me back in 2014 but ciphord/bord is such a unique clusterfuck of possession horror and it haunts me.

[rain-on-wax-feathers]

nonhuman burr, washington, and eliza!!!