#all these are for sale on their site currently

[mintmoth]

This is a silly post but I just wanted to share that teepublic is currently having a sale so all of the things in my storefront are discounted! All shirts are $16 usd, which honestly isn't too bad even after shipping imo

Idk I appreciate when they have sales like this but I missed them a lot until I started selling through there, so I wanted to let people know! The sale is site wide so it's worth it to look around for something!

#oops ive only bought things from there when theyve been on sale #but the shirts are nice #mint rambles

[plushieanimals]

douglas dlux dogs 🐾 trooper bernese mountain dog, lettie yellow lab, jake black lab, thor leonberger, maizie australian shepherd, geno husky, konner corgi, & moses terrier mix

#dogs #dog #all these are for sale on their site currently #these are just the Dlux line they don’t have as big of a selection of breeds #aussie #australian shepherd #bernese mountain dog #labrador retriever #labrador #terrier #black lab #yellow lab #leonberger #husky #corgi #plush #plushies #plushie #plushcore #toycore #plushblr

[epsigone]

The Thief // Recovery

I was gonna save these to post when we got an official date for the final RvB season but who knows when that'll be so I'll throw them here now! I've never posted much cosplay on here but seeing as how my peak RvB days were on Tumblr it feels fitting that I post these here first :)

One of the main reasons I even got into RvB in the first place was because of @euniysu's art, and I fell in love with the Guns for Hire AU the second I saw it. These designs became instant dream cosplays of mine (honestly all of them did) and it feels fitting that ten years later just as the series is ending, I finally make them. It's also a way to celebrate 10 years since I found Rooster Teeth and fell in love with RvB (and saw these designs!). I'm so so happy I finally got to do these cosplays and I absolutely can't wait to wear them again (I'm York here but I made both cosplays and I'll be wearing Wash at the ren faire this weekend! It's time traveler's weekend and I think I'm funny lol). I don't know what it is about cosplaying York but i felt so Gender as him and am so glad everything came out well :)

A million thank yous to @magicalvoltage for indulging me with this shoot and @cloudcrouton for taking pictures <3 Can't believe I finally got to do these cosplays with friends, even if y'all aren't into the show :)

Also I saw that Syn is gonna adapt the GFH AU into an original webcomic and I absolutely can't wait to see it!! I still love seeing and supporting Syn's art and y'all should def keep an eye out for it too!

Original AU: @euniysu Cosplays made by me York: me Wash: @magicalvoltage Pics: @cloudcrouton Delta and Epsilon keychains: LadybugGirl7 (etsy)

#rvb #red vs blue #rvb cosplay #red vs blue cosplay #rooster teeth #guns for hire au #york rvb #wash rvb #rooster teeth cosplay #cosplay #my cosplay #rvb york #rvb wash #i forgot how to type tags on this site #i still laugh at how small lauren looks in the cosplay and helmet a;fldkhg #i made wash for me so it is V Big on him lol #i bought some of syn's hades stuff a couple of years ago and i am furiously eyeing her current sale #Syn is genuinely one of my favorite artists of all time i beg u all to support her #i tried to recreate the initial post w wash and york and one of the fake screencaps she made with the first two pics

[steelycunt]

hello good morning beautiful friends!

#another day! what are we all planning on doing with it! what is everyone reading right now! having finished gios room yesterday i #am currently not reading anything except um. hex hall. with ren. because i love ren. but a second hand book site had a sale going #on so i got 4 secondhand books for 13.30 and they're arriving this weekend :-) today i am planning to. carry on looking for jobs which #is miserable especially considering my cv is underwhelming and looks like i dont have much meaningful experience because i was #unable to find a delicate way of mentioning that on top of my old job i also did my managers' job starting from the ripe old age of 16 #because they decided to just stop putting managers on most of the shifts i used to work so all the stuff that the manager was responsible #for was left to me and was not reflected in my pay...not that im bitter about that or anything...ANYWAY. also today i plan to #make some genuine progress with planning [noisy train passes by] and also get my paints down and sort through them to find which #ones havent dried up..maybe paint something..like a pigeon although i dont know how to draw or paint pigeons i just love pigeons and sheep. #(ridi's) bigmouth strikes again

[humming-fly]

Every now and then I'm reminded Real People with Actual Jobs use tumblr and I've always been legitimately curious what all you weird adults are up to when you're not on this site and with tumblr's New Poll Feature I can finally get an answer! (or the closest approximation of an answer possible with only 10 available options h a)

#tumblr /really/ shortened the character limit on these posts huh #could've sworn it was longer when i made the wizard one #anyways no shit i have always been curious #tragically 10 options limits things a lot but I tried to be broad XD #i'll start i'm an academic researcher studying civil engineering :V #humming-rambles #poll

[televinita]

Today I learned about publicsurplus.com, and specifically the fact that this is where K-12 schools tend to offload their library discards in bulk, and also the fact that some of them are from my state and very much within my driving comfort zone, which is EXTREMELY BAD NEWS FOR MY ABILITY TO RESIST CHEAP YA & CHILDREN'S BOOKS!

The good news here is that it's too late for most of the books I once loved, and also anything in today's school libraries probably only holds about a 5-10% rate of personal interest to me, and so is easily matched by library sale stock while not having to buy a massive amount of random books at the same time.

But also.

I will Continue To Look.

#me: mystery boxes are a SCAM and the thrill of random chance is NOT WORTH IT and -- #me seeing a box of mystery BOOKS: ooh! ooh! #even with a ten percent premium these are currently like. two dollars a box. and not an overwhelming amnt. of boxes either. #curious to see their sale price when the currently zero bid auctions end in a week #where was my knowledge of this site 5-6 years ago when the new high school librarian got Ambitious #and told the local paper she weeded out 'hundreds' of 'outdated books' to 'free up space' (because why should libraries have books amiright #and I KNOW those included all my mid to late 20th century beloveds that sparked my love for vintage books in the first place

[fluffs-n-stuffs]

guess what gamers,,,,,,, 👁️👁️🙏

#anyways happy 10.10 sale SKJDFNKSDNFS #my moni is Gone but my tcg collector-self is vibrating at the speed of light rn #I've been waiting So Long to save up enough to get an elite trainer box honestly #so as a treat to myself for surviving some Hellish months- I went ahead and got Two :} #Crown Zenith because it's my top favorite set right now and I really Hope to collect as much of it as I can #there's just Soooo many beautiful rares in it like y'all Seriously need to check out the gallery from the official site- legit Insane /vpos #(The Suicune card is my dream pull rn.......... kinning Eusine so hard but I would Actually Legit Scream if I manage to pull it SKSJDFNSDSS #but lately the 151 set has also been vying for my attention #I think the Dragonair and Poliwhirl cards in particular are Breathtakingly Gorgeous #one of these days I gotta make a dedicated post about my current collection thus far (it's really not big at all!!! I only started-- #--earlier this year and focus more on the full trainer art cards (my All Time Faveeee kind of cards) than anything else....... #but I think it'll be fun to talk about !!! hehee #fluff speaks !!! #pokemon tcg #pokemon trading card game

[cathkaesque]

Relentless direct action has secured another victory in the fight against Israel’s arms trade, as Elbit Systems are forced to sell their ‘Elite KL’ factory in Tamworth.

The company had previously manufactured cooling and power management systems for military vehicles, but was sold on after stating that it faced falling profits and increased security costs resulting from Palestine Action’s efforts. 

After the sale was completed last month, Elite KL’s new owners, listed as Griffin Newco Ltd, confirmed in an email to Palestine Action that they will have nothing to do with the previous owners, Elbit, and have discontinued any arms manufacturing:

“Following the recent acquisition of Elite KL Limited by a UK investment syndicate, the newly appointed board has unanimously agreed to withdraw from all future defence contracts and terminate its association with its former parent company”.

This victory is a direct result of sustained direct action which has sought, throughout Palestine Action’s existence, to make it impossible for Elbit to afford to operate in Britain. Before they sold the enterprise to a private equity syndicate, Elbit had reported that Elite KL operating profits had been slashed by over three-quarters, with Palestine Action responsible: Elbit directly cited the increased expenditure on security they’d been forced to make, and higher supply chain costs they faced.

And these actions did, indeed, cost them. The first action at the site, in November 2020, saw Elite KL’s premises smashed into, the building covered in blood-red paint. Between March and July 2021, the site was put out of action three times by roof-top occupations – drenched red in March 2021, with the factory’s camera systems dismantled, before again being occupied in in May. Another roof-top occupation in July, despite increased security, saw the site forced closed – once again painted blood-red, and with its windows and fixings smashed through.

In February 2022, activists decommissioned the site for weeks – closed off after an occupation that saw over £250,000 of damages caused, the roof tiles removed one-by-one. After this, Elbit erected a security perimeter around the site – but to no avail. One month later, six were arrested after Palestine Action returned to Tamworth – again taking the roof and smashing through, preventing the production of parts for Israel’s military machine.

Elite KL is a ‘specialist thermal management business’. Since the sale, the company focuses on cooling systems for buses and trains, but it had, under Elbit, manufactured these systems for military vehicles. Until December of last year, Elite KL’s website was advertising its military and defence products, and it was known to provide parts for Israel’s deadly Merkava tanks, with export license records demonstrating its provision of ‘ML6a’ components for military ground vehicles to Israel. The company was also known to manufacture crew cooling systems, for the military vests of tank operators.

Elbit Systems itself provides 85% of the drones and land-based military equipment for the Israeli military, along with a wide range of the munitions and armaments currently being used against Gaza’s beseiged population. Its CEO, Bazhalel Machlis, has claimed that the Israeli military has offered the company its thanks for their “crucial” services during the ongoing genocide in Gaza

A Palestine Action spokesperson has stated:

“Each activist who occupied and dismantled Tamworth’s Israeli weapons factory did so in order to bring an end to Israel’s weapons trade, and to end the profiteering from Palestinian repression. Every defeat Elbit faces is a victory for the Palestinian people.

Kicking Elbit out of Tamworth shows once again that direct action is a necessary tactic. It is one which must be utilised and amplified in the face of the Gaza genocide.”

#socialism #palestine #palestine action #elbit systems

[dragongirlsnout]

Go Badge-Free: Tumblr is a multimillion dollar company that doesn't need your loyalty!

Some users ("many" by Tumblr's own unsourced metrics) might want to support Tumblr with something similar to regular donations. Great news! You don't need to, it's a multimillion dollar company, and its parent company, Automattic, was valued at around 7.5 billion dollars in 2021 as stated by none other than Tumblr's Elon-Musk-wannabe CEO himself! Tumblr isn't going to go broke any time soon, and any money you waste on it will just convince staff that the garbage fire they're currently tossing the site into is profitable!

Enter the power of not giving a fuck about useless badges and shitty merch of stolen memes. Everyone with a brain knows auto-renewable subscriptions aren't the way to a "user-led business model", and again, you don't need to show your support for a massive multimedia platform despite whatever their embarrassing ad campaigns that just want money may tell you!

How it works—or doesn't:

Tumblr doesn't care about the users, whether you're giving them money for nothing or not! So take the initiative yourself. Send them negative feedback about the pointless UI updates. Give Tumblr a 1-star rating on the app store or play store. Disable your badges. Block intrusive ads (and potentially dangerous flashing ones). Style the dashboard to look less like a 1 : 1 clone of Twitter. Install additions to fix basic site functionality.

Seriously, who is buying subscriptions besides staff:

The subscription badges do nothing. Nada. Zero. That is, unless staff decides to lock basic functionality behind a subscription in the future, so make so to make it flop before then.

Pricing:

A year's subscription for a useless cosmetic badge costs you $30 USD. Cheaper than Twitter Blue, sure, but it sure does a whole lot less! Meanwhile, fixing your own user experience and complaining to staff is permanently on sale for the low, low price of free. Spend your money on a nice treat instead!

More details:

I don't know how else to put it. This subscription service sucks ass.

That's all for now. No idea who exactly would buy a badge subscription of all things in the first place that staff probably designed in 5 minutes. Maybe someday Tumblr's will figure out how to interpret actual human behavior and user desires, but that day has yet to come. Stay weird, and Tumblr is not your quirky friendly hellsite company <3

[sanctus-ingenium]

we need to talk about Inprnt.com

Following a really good post with more screenshots and evidence by @dynasoar5 i'm going to talk about my own experiences with @inprnt and why I am about to put my shop on indefinite hiatus from Monday the 14th of August.

First of all I'll say that since starting my print shop last year it has been a significant help to me financially - I was able to not worry about affording car insurance or motor tax (together commonly over a thousand euro) when I bought my first car, for example. I am immeasurably grateful to anyone who chose to buy one and I treasure all the pictures I've been sent of my prints hanging up on people's walls. Right now they are displayed in a real (if small) art exhibition in my home town.

(top right print is not from inprnt though)

They're great prints. Never had any complaints about them. But here's what's going on behind the scenes.

Earlier this year, around March or April, Inprnt sales started increasing in regularity. I'd made as much as $600 a week during previous sales when I made proper promo posts here, but with this increase in regularity, I felt that I couldn't make promo posts every single week. And then one day, I'm not sure when tbh, the sale just never ended. It just didn't stop having that "Ending soon! 15% off your order" banner at the top of the site. Right now it says "Final Hours: $5 Worldwide shipping and save up to 35% off your order!" and not even for a second do I believe in this final hours bullshit. It's been 'final hours' for weeks now. Months, even.

Why is this a problem? Well, how tf am I meant to make a promo post for a sale that is always "ending soon!!" and then never ends. One week it'll say "this weekend only!!" and then when the weekend is over, the sale banner just changes its wording and the sale doesn't end. I can't promo this, it makes me look like a liar and a skeevy salesman by association! It makes the site look like it's 1 week from crashing and burning, and the site owners are just scrabbling to suck as much money from artists as possible before they drown.

And they are sucking money from us. To peel back the curtain, Inprnt money can only be transferred to my paypal account 30 days after the sale is made, just in case the order is cancelled and refunded. This means I used to make one withdrawal every couple of months, when there was enough build-up of money to make it worthwhile. It also forbids withdrawing any sum under $50 btw. I would make a withdrawal request and then, after a 10 business day wait, it would reach my Paypal account.

Not anymore! The past few withdrawals have taken over a month to complete. They are straight up keeping my earnings from me for longer the agreed period. This was my last fulfilled withdrawal:

Note the date.

Almost two months.

And here is the latest withdrawal request that still has not been fulfilled.

It's coming up on 1 month and if the pattern continues, it could literally be November or December by the time I fully clear all sales.

So what's going to happen to my print shop? Because my art is currently being exhibited with a QR code linking to the shop, I can't close the shop this week. Instead I will close it on Monday the 14th of August, next week. That means that on the 14th of September, I can withdraw all of the remaining money without having any left over. My account balance will go to 0 and stay there. Although I'll de-list my prints I will leave my account there, because at the end of the day I don't want to leave Inprnt. It still offers the best artist margins and as I'm now unemployed after graduating, the additional support is such a load off my mind. So this is a chance to wait and see - if they improve their services, I'll happily re-open.

It's a big deal to me because selling prints is sort of my ideal life as an artist. I never had the attention span or self-discipline for commission work and I found that it left me creatively stagnant. I always want to try new things, new concepts and ideas, and being able to think "yeah, people will like this as a print" while I experiment is honestly very reassuring. And I know that in going on hiatus, it'll break a lot of "buy a print" links in my circulating posts. Oh well lmao. If you want to buy a print right now - go ahead, it might be your last opportunity. Another way to support me would be to check out my ko-fi for once-off donations or some nice sketchbooks/comics/book samples you can buy, or subscribing to my Patreon.

As of right now, Inprnt owes me $381 (the unfulfilled request submitted above for $186.60 and my current standing balance of $194.80 which takes 30 days from each transaction to clear).

#it's so god damn insulting u know. even redbubble threw its shitty payouts directly into my paypal asap #inprnt

[thyfleshc0nsumed]

These internally spiked straps leave the prettiest marks and get subs to make the cutest little noises. All three sizes are currently on sale for $35 on my site

IG @pansy.leatherwork | pansy-leatherwork.com

#leather #dyke #bd/sm kink #leatherdyke #leatherqueer #leatherworker #butch #t4t #bd/sm community #leatherfag #butch4femme

[themathomhouse]

I've been every bit as entertained by Musk running twitter into the ground as the rest of us (because hubris hasn't gotten less funny in the last few thousand years), but my boyfriend is getting more anxious about it by the day.

He works in indie games, and they had a meeting today at his studio about how much they rely on word-of-mouth for sales. Most of that has been people being directed to their game via reviews on twitter, posts on twitter, or summaries by game websites on twitter. Their new game comes out later this year, and watching twitter collapse in real time means they have no idea whether they'll still exist by next January.

In terms of getting new jobs for the staff, that also used to be done via twitter. He got invited to give a talk at a conference after a twitter thread, found his previous and current jobs there, made most of his professional connections there.

It's not great that much of the gaming infrastructure was on twitter, but it was. There's not time to build a new one quickly enough for them, and they can't compete with the marketing for triple-A games.

I don't really know what the solution is. All kinds of journalism are nearly dead too, but maybe if people go back to browsing video game review sites they might get lucky idk.

He left triple-A games for this studio. Hopefully indie studios can weather the storm.

#twitter #indie games #gaming

[rohirric-hunter]

The online portal that I use to pay rent won't take direct deposits from my bank, but nowhere is there a list of what banks they do accept direct deposits from. I'm forced to use my debit card, which incurs a $4 processing fee every month.

The algorithms on basically every social media site in the world are mysterious entities that promote or suppress various keywords based on seemingly arbitrary criteria that no one understands.

My old thermometer could be used to measure any temperature up to about 150F; when it finally broke I bought a new, more expensive one and if you give it a temperature of 104F or higher it just beeps loudly and says, "Hi!" 94F or lower and it beeps and says, "Lo!"

The bus system in the city I currently live in doesn't have posted schedules; in order to find out when the bus is coming you have to use the, "Plan a Ride" feature on their website.

My local grocery store takes down the regular price of items when they're on sale. You only get to see the sale price. (This is regularly used to promote "sales" that are like. 10 cents.)

Cars with computers in them collect all sorts of data about your driving but this data is proprietary to the company that sold you the car. You don't get to see any of it.

My MMO that I play overhauled the legendary item system a few years ago and in the new one experience gain related to your legendary item doesn't have numbers associated with it. You don't get to know how much you need to advance and you don't get to know how much you earned from certain tasks. (I am seriously concerned that they might expand this to regular experience gain in the future.)

Computers don't give you searchable error codes. I had to make a phone call to find out when my internet bill was due. I have to go up to employees in stores to ask how much things cost. My phone won't tell me how much data I used last month. The list goes on.

When I was a kid they told me I was growing up in the Age of Information but quite frankly all I see is the Age of Withholding Information for No Goddamn Reason

[flowerprose]

Are you currently published or publishing a novel in 2023? Are you a writeblr or active writer on tumblr?

Hey everyone! I want to dedicate two months in 2023 to reviewing the published works of indie and self-published authors of tumblr. The current state of the publishing industry frustrates me as both a consumer and future author, but I see the imaginative works of so many fellow writers through this app and hope that we can collectively shine a spotlight on the talent showcased here. My reviews will be posted across social media platforms and shared on all major book review sites (like Goodreads, Amazon, B&N, Indigo).

I do not want free ARCs or copies of your work. I personally believe it’s important for us to increase the book sales of smaller, debut authors so they can find a larger audience. I will pay for all of my copies, as I have the means to do so.

I do want you to please reblog this post and share the title, link, genre, and description of the book you have published or will be publishing in 2023.

Feel free to use or adjust the below sample template, or respond with your own.

Please reblog and boost!

Author name:

Relevant social media: (any social media you would want potential readers to seek out)

Book title:

Genre:

Word count:

Summary:

Trigger warnings:

Publication date: (if known)

#published writeblrs #writing community #authors of tumblr #writers of tumblr #writeblr #she speaks

[hometoursandotherstuff]

This is "Chant du Cygne," a unique home built in 1970 and currently someone's primary residence in Painesville, Ohio. It has 5bds & 3ba, (which they don't show, and that makes me wonder why), and for sale for $400K.

As you can see, it looks like a cave house, and probably needs to be repainted, but it's a pretty big home with 5bds and 3ba. What they show is the only the main living area.

Prospective buyers are invited to make an appointment to see it. The counters look like they have a rusty patina. The kitchen is large, but the appliances are all lined up behind the counter.

There aren't many cabinets and I'm wondering if the wine rack is actually propping up that floating sideboard.

A small sunken built-in seating area around the fireplace looks like it's just used to hold firewood, at the moment.

This is the living room and where the tour ends. There's an interesting built-in shelf unit. On Zillow's site there's a link to a virtual tour, but it won't allow me to click on it. It would probably cost a fortune to have this repainted.

Here's a cool feature.

The house basically looks like a rock formation, doesn't it?

Can imagine pulling up to this to go home? Awesome. 1.02 acres of land.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7245-Cascade-Rd-Painesville-OH-44077/34462342_zpid/?

#unique homes #unusual homes #houses #house tours #home tour

[emotionsandphenomena]

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.

#okay.... been working on this on and off for months but im finally fucking finishing and posting an essaY!!!! #2k words on genre classification lfggggg #please let me know what you think.... very open to thoughts esp from people who read these areas !!!! #ok to reblog btw :> #frames