Oolrie

"it's concerning if university students are genuinely struggling to read full adult-level books for class" and "don't overstate the reporting of a single news article" and "if this shift is genuinely real, it's reflective of broad curriculum changes in lower education levels, probably at least in part due to remote schooling during COVID, and doesn't mean the new generation is being willfully Stupid and Vapid" and "when reading for personal pleasure people should read whatever they like without shame" and "reading from a broad variety of genres, styles, and authorial backgrounds will improve your understanding of both literature and the real world" and "actively mocking people for their tastes in books does not encourage them to become more adventurous you're just being mean" and also "but seriously adult books are not just boringly pretentious nothingburgers padded with pointless sex scenes, and claiming they are just shows how little you've read" all can and should co-exist.

current fan creation landscape is kinda like if you went to a party with a homemade cake and everyone takes a slice and silently thumbs up at you with no attempt to start a conversation except for occasionally some guy sits in the corner with a tape recorder critiquing the cake as though he was a restaurant critic and another guy is handing the cake to an uber driver like "yeah i need you to find a restaurant that makes cake like this so i can have more of it" and the only person that's talked to you in 30 minutes is a very sweet little guy who was like "hey i liked your cake" and then ran away apologizing for bothering you the moment you said thank you.

someone brought a cake analysis robot to feed the cake into to determine the exact ingredients and supposedly it can spit out the exact same cake. and if you're like dude. what. then they're like well if it bothers you you should have made more cake. i'm hungry and i deserve cake. and you're like dude we're at a party.

Three months later you find out that fifty people locked themselves in a room to discuss how much they loved your cake and how they wished you made more. None of them ever told you.

you guys know that knowing lots about something isn't the only way to have a special interest right. right. you know that for some of us a special interest means starting the same cartoon over as soon as we finish it and not like. doing analysis or whatever just watching it over and over. right. you know that not every autistic person is highly intelligent or even like. smart. right