Nome a definir

One: I love the love scene. I think it was sweet and well-directed. Loved the song with it.

Two: Did anyone notice that Justin didn't listen to a word Dasha said that day? Keep your pants on, and don't put any ideas in her head about regionals.

Lol.

I drew a quick little comics essay today about a topic near and dear to my heart: horror for kids!

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

“I wanted to challenge politically the kissing scene, which traditionally either has the surprise kiss scene thanks to a rain shower for instance, or the obvious kiss scene thanks to mustard on the corner of the lips, for instance, and it is generally carefully scripted as ‘They kiss.’ Or ‘They passionately kiss.’ And then it’s on the actors’ shoulders. It seems to rely a lot on them because it’s their bodies and fluids and interaction, but it shouldn’t be. It’s fake. It’s not about finding the magic. Actors should always be part of the elaboration of an idea, especially with intimate scenes. So I wanted to craft a scene that would embody the sexiness of consent. People who are questioning the idea of asking for consent in France, they do exist. They are brave fighters for the culture of French gallantry who say that asking for consent would not be sexy, it will break the mood. Some of the French critics thought the film lacked flesh, precisely because to them eroticism is about conflict. […] At some point I came up with the idea of them having to unveil their mouths like they would undress themselves. So I put a scarf, justified by a strong wind, pressed on their lips and thinking you would see their heavy breathing through the moving cloth.”