A Mystery Awaits

Now I just need to figure out what it is. Fandom thoughts, shitposting, and cute animals, maybe? She/Her, Aro-Ace

[mysteryteacup]

Hi, I'm Teacup!

Here's the post where I keep my massive list of fanfic ideas and thoughts for:

Humans Are Space Orcs

SVSSS

Dimension 20: Cloudward, Ho!

Here's my AO3 if you want to read any of the fics I've written because of all those ideas.

[dinovelvet]

[shitkicker-deluxe]

...Join star fleet they said...It'll be an adventure they said...

[asparklethatisblue]

children of any species are very good at being annoying and very cute while doing that

a sphinx child based on this post

[theprofessional-amateur]

Using Marie Skłodowska-Curie to shill your AI garbage is, uh, certainly a choice.

On one hand, keep her name out of your mouth

On the other, this shit is kinda the “ let’s put radium in everything!” Of the moment

[yawpyawp]

YES! I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT THE AI TREND IS THE RADIUM CRAZE ALL OVER AGAIN! similar to then, we probably won’t see meaningful regulation/limitations on it until it kills a high-profile rich guy

[ubuyo]

liking a character from a thing you don’t like

[cutecipher]

it really is annoying as hell how someone will talk about how poor people can't avoid ethically dubious products because of how being poor works and then someone with a two story house in the suburbs will take that to mean they can order harry potter books through a drone delivery from amazon and if you criticize that you're a bigot

[tamamita]

wooow, labour MP btw

[rui-cifer]

not just any MP, but an undersecretary for migration and citizenship. this guy is one of the MPs that has a direct hand on the genuinely horrific treatment of migrants and refugees in the UK, including shipping them off to the UK's former colony after unilaterally declaring the colony to be safe, as well as stripping the migrant and refugees of their heirlooms in the name of "paying for their migration in the UK with their own assets." Starmer's cabinet is filled with people whose bloodsoaked hands will never wash out like these.

[coolcurrybooks-deactivated20230]

Fantasy books written by women are often assumed to be young adult, even when those books are written for adults, marketed to adults, and published by adult SFF imprints. And this happens even more frequently to women of color.

This topic’s an ongoing conversation on book Twitter, and I thought it might be worth sharing with Tumblr. And by “ongoing,” I mean that people have been talking about this for years. Last year, there was a big blow up when the author R.F. Kuang said publicly that her book The Poppy War isn’t young adult and that she wished people would stop calling it such. If you’ve read The Poppy War, then you’ll know it’s grimdark fantasy along lines of Game of Thrones… and yet people constantly refer to The Poppy War as young adult – which is one of its popular shelves on Goodreads. To be fair, more people have shelved it as “adult,” but why is anyone shelving it as “young adult” in the first place? Game of Thrones is not at all treated this way…

Rebecca Roanhorse’s book Trail of  Lightning, an urban fantasy with a Dinétah (Navajo) protagonist has “young adult” as its fifth most popular Goodreads shelf. The novel is adult and published by Saga, an adult SFF imprint. 

S.A. Chakraborty’s adult fantasy novel City of Brass has “young adult” as its fourth most popular Goodreads shelf. 

Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, an adult fantasy in a world based on Mughal India, has about equal numbers of people shelving it as “adult” or “young adult.” 

Book Riot wrote an article on this, although they didn’t address how the problem intersects with race. I also did a Twitter thread a while back where I cited these examples and some more as well. 

The topic of diversity in adult SFF is important to me, partly because we need to stop mislabeling the women of color who write it, and also because there’s a lot there that isn’t acknowledged! Besides, sometimes it’s good to see that your stories don’t just end the moment you leave high school and that adults can still have vibrant and interesting futures worth reading about. I feel like this is especially important with queer rep, for a number of reasons. 

Other books and authors in the tweets I screenshot include:

Witchmark by C.L. Polk

A Ruin of Shadows by L.D. Lewis

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

The Day Before by Liana Brooks

A Phoenix First Must Burn edited by Patrice Caldwell

Shri, a book blogger at Sun and Chai

Vanessa, a writer and blogger at The Wolf and Books

TLDR: Women who write adult fantasy, especially women of color, are presumed to be writing young adult, which is problematic in that it internalizes diversity, dismisses the need and presence of diversity in adult fantasy, and plays into sexist assumptions of women writers. 

[howlsmovinglibrary]

Never forget the amount of hate R.F. Kuang got for explicitly stating that The Poppy War, one of the most triggering books I’ve ever read, should never be shelved as YA. She did so out of extreme concern of the content getting into the wrong hands without warning.

And then two days later Jay Kristoff said the same thing about Nevernight…and nothing happened.

[porch-gremlin]

can someone explain what YA Does include, rather than books it Isnt? what makes something YA? books being miscategorized is a problem, but how might we help fix it if we dont know the actual criteria?

[coolcurrybooks-deactivated20230]

YA = young adult literature. In traditional publishing (which is largely the focus of this post), YA books are generally published under separate divisions of the publishing houses, and they are targeted towards a teenage audience. It’s largely a marketing category. The best way to tell if something is being intentionally marketed as YA is to check the publishing division!

[minyicho]

starting a collection of my favourite AO3 author’s notes

honourable mentions

[writingdose]

insane to me how, to some people, this is not a common sense

[joannalannister]

Women in medieval guilds:

All sorts of tools have been found in pre-Christian women’s graves. The only major craft which seems to have been restricted to men only was Blacksmithing. […]

Here are a few examples of jobs done by women in the medieval period: brewer, laundress, barrel and crate maker, soap boiler, candle maker, book binder, doll painter, butcher, keeper of town keys, tax collector, shepherd, musician, rope maker, banker, money lender, inn keeper, spice seller, pie seller, woad trader, wine merchant, steel merchant, copper importer, currency exchanger, pawn shop owner, lake and river fisherwoman, baker, oil presser, builder, mason, plasterer, cartwright, wood turner, clay and lime worker, glazier, ore miner, silver miner, book illuminator, scribe, teacher, office manager, clerk, court assessor, customs officer, porter, tower guard, prison caretaker, surgeon and midwife. […]

There are records of women traders in 1205 in Genoa, Italy. In fact, 21% of people involved in trade contracts there in the 13th Century were women. Women also provided 14% of capital in seafaring ventures at the time. Even earlier, in the 12th Century, there are records of women traders in Georgia, Eastern Europe. Paris tax registers for 1292, 1300, 1313 list lots of craftswomen, many of whom were in different trades to their husbands. […]

Girls might be educated at home, with private tutor, or at a Convent. There were also schools within towns. In some cases girls were excluded from these, or only allowed to enter elementary schools. In other cases they were allowed to enter secondary schools and obtain a much broader education, including Latin and other languages. Some schools were mixed, others were single sex. Town Councils and the Church had some control over schools and over the appointment of teachers. In 1388, a Jewish woman, Sarah of Gorlitz, donated a property to be used as a school for Jewish children. 

Outside of the Guilds, women might be employed as unskilled labourers in vineyards, on building sites and so on. Many more women than men were employed because they could be paid less for doing the same work. In Wurzburg, 1428-1449, for example, there are records of 323 female building site workers, paid 7.7 pfennings a day, and 13 male building site workers, paid 11.6 pfennings a day. In general, it seems that a wide range of professions were open to medieval women, although they were also subject to a variety of restrictions.

Women artists in the medieval period

Women poets throughout history

Women writers by historical period

Medieval women physicians 

Women in medieval warfare

Women travelers / pilgrims / explorers in the medieval period - “Stronger than men and braver than knights”

[medievalpoc]

If anyone’s curious, uncovering the 19th and 20th century erasure of women’s contributions to the creation of medieval European illuminated manuscripts is what started me down my current slippery research slope sometime in 2009-2010. There was a school in Paris with a majority of women illuminators and scribes c. 1300.

P.S. Herrad Von Landsburg is my eternal fave:

[neil-gaiman]

A really important reminder for those of us who write fantasy or historical fiction…

[kitschke]

i kinda love this response. just try reading my comment in a nicer voice and you'll feel better

[flikkerij]

i will do ANYTHING but work on my essay apparently

[semutamusic]

[tiktoks-for-dead-pope]

[bogleech]

When I ordered some new push pins I didnt realize they were heavy duty extra long and 'slanted for stability' which means if they drop on the floor they land like this

I'm just gonna throw them out. They're too frightening.

50 of them is 50 chances to have to go to the hospital

[theprimememeister]

The sound you make when you step on them

[cipheramnesia]

Ain't that the evil opposite guy of Super Mario??

[grison-in-space]

you know what? I want dragons with ontogenetic niche partitioning.

niche partioning is a concept from ecology wherein groups within a species expand into different ecological niches so they're not competing with one another, right? so for example, sexual niche partitioning happens when sexual dimorphism means that one sex eats different things / occupies different spaces / etc. as another within the same species. you have one species that occupies multiple niches within the ecosystem.

ontogenetic niche partitioning is when this happens as a result of developmental changes. paternal care tends to obliterate this partitioning--hard to have your juveniles eating something different from your adults if the adults are feeding them!--so we just don't see it very often in mammals or birds, but it's quite common in other species, especially invertebrates. for example, a caterpillar and a butterfly are examples of classic niche partitioning, even though every butterfly will occupy both niches over the course of its life. you don't have to have a big fancy chrysalis transformation to engage in ontogenetic niche partitioning, but those transformations are a pretty big sign that it's happening in a given species.

anyway, it's most common in vertebrates among fish, lizards and snakes these days, especially monitor lizards, where juveniles will occupy a different (often arboreal or otherwise sheltered) niche from adults and hunt different prey until they get big enough that the juvenile niche. there are some good reasons to think that some dinosaurs might have engaged in ontogenetic niche partitioning, especially the bigger species, too. we think sea turtles might do it, although that's hard to say because we don't know very much about sea turtle development once the hatchlings go back to the sea.

the neat thing about ontogenetic niche partitioning is that it allows a given ecology to host a much larger population size for a given species than would otherwise be the case, because the total space occupied by that species is spread across a lot wider niche space. this is especially relevant for, say, a large carnivore that eats livestock.

basically, what if dragons are just the very oldest, reproductively mature members of their species, and the common wall lizard or whatever is just a juvenile that might or might not survive long enough to reproduce? imagine if dragon eggs are very small with big clutches of little insectivorous hatchlings that are eaten by anything that comes by, any of which might have the potential to become a great fire-breathing monster if it lives long enough.

imagine that dragon society. do people know that the hatchlings and the dragons are the same species? (they might not: there are real examples of people mistaking ontogenetically niche separated groups for independent species in their own right.) if dragons are sapient but the sapience takes time to develop, what does that say about the nature of sapience itself? how does a society work and transfer wealth if you remove parental care?

so many possibilities.

[pawthorn]

Really hate that most people don’t understand the difference between “self-expression” and “artistic-expression.”

I say this as someone who sells pottery, and many people who see my art assume I am using art as an outlet to “express myself.”

I am not.

I use art to challenge myself. A lot of what I do is the equivalent of doing a hard sudoko or a half marathon, answering the question of “can I do this?”

I use art to question things and explore ideas. Finding physical synthesis between concepts and working out a design to its end state.

I use art to make money. I make some things just because I suspect they’ll sell well, and I keep making them when they do.

This idea that an artist is “putting themselves out there” every time they create is not only stupid, but harmful, and it kills critique and analysis.

Yes every creative work is influenced by its creator, but the most preliminary step of analysis is to define the purpose of a work of art (functional, narrative, entertainment, persuasive, decorative, ceremonial, etc.) and a vanishingly small percentage of that is self-expression. Even then, it’s generally tied to the self’s relationship with something else—perception, society, etc.

It’s very tiresome to have people assume they know you because they like (or dislike) your art, to make assumptions about who you are and how you approach the world. It’s nothing new— people called the Impressionists insane and the Fauvists degenerate. And now people are expected to hand out their identities and traumas to prove they have the right to explore certain subjects.

But to actually understand art, you have to contextualize it beyond assuming it’s just what the artist felt like making at the moment and it’s somehow coming from their deepest soul, or you’ll badly misinterpret most art you come across.