I think the category of New Adult is an attempt to limit readers (and women specifically) to a less formally ambitious, subject-limited literature for longer and longer into adulthood and I can’t really see that project as divorced from the goals of corporate rule/ fascism - ThreadSky

halschrieve.bsky.social • 3 days ago

I think the category of New Adult is an attempt to limit readers (and women specifically) to a less formally ambitious, subject-limited literature for longer and longer into adulthood and I can’t really see that project as divorced from the goals of corporate rule/ fascism

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rbilling.bsky.social•1 day ago

Sounds like you're complicating a conspiracy theory with simple market sementation...it's just fiction similar to young adult fiction (YA) that can be published and marketed as adult—a sort of an 'older YA' or 'new adult'

halschrieve.bsky.social•1 day ago

I think publishing industries being entirely about markets rather than circulation of ideas ends with the lowest common denominator literature being promoted the most and an overall reduction in literacy and engagement with books

rbilling.bsky.social•1 day ago

WORD!

gibbsmoryss.bsky.social•1 day ago

I'm in favor of letting people read whatever they want within reason (age-appropriateness, personal preference, trauma triggers, etc.). I was getting into stuff above my "reading level" pretty early.

cover2cover.bsky.social•3 days ago

I can see this in how a lot of the bigger titles and authors have this near uniformity of character, world, and story design in massive tomes that feel like they were designed that way purposely. Like the publishers are building something that consumes the entire reading diet.

halschrieve.bsky.social•3 days ago

Like, by saying this I mean that marketing books in this way is to insist that adolescence and implicitly a lack of responsibility to read widely or think about anything except individual development in lexile 580 prose, should last until one is 30. a terrifying proposition

halschrieve.bsky.social•3 days ago

And it’s like, there are an awful lot of formally ambitious or at least interesting books about people in early adulthood that can be read by both people experiencing that and older people— from elena ferrante to susan choi to andrea lawlor to RF Kuang. But those aren’t New Adult lol

shellythecollector.bsky.social•2 days ago

Jumping from YA straight to fantasy is great, but there weren’t any books that I could find with protagonists my age at 20. They were either caricatures, the fridged girlfriend, or way older a la the midlife crisis books by Kristen Hannah.

garloid64.com•2 days ago

They would not be doing this if not for so many adult women's bizarre obsession with YA slop. It is far and away the most popular genre of fandom on Tumblr, for any and all ages.

halschrieve.bsky.social•2 days ago

I think that it’s something about the publishing focus turn to YA as a source of money post HG, twilight etc+ fandom trained authors trying to make the category work for the stories they want to write, which does result in a lot of books “for” teens being actually for adults

halschrieve.bsky.social•2 days ago

and like , it’s not always clear to me who is mostly acquiring mid list YA and actually reading it. There was a trans boy gatsby retelling YA and I was like this was for my generation of tumblr but are they finding it and do current teens like this or think it’s cringe

collectivided.bsky.social•1 day ago

we should inject Neuromancer directly into their eyeballs after airborne LSD dispersal, we've run out of time

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