Reminds me of how fucking weird some people get about it if an adult reads YA books
Like yeah they’re for teenagers, I don’t read them myself, and I’m going to roll my eyes at anyone who insists they’re every bit as deep and meaningful as books written for adults, and you deserve nothing but mockery if they’re the lens through which you understand real-life politics, but the way some people talk about it, you’d think a YA book murdered their dog
If it’s from glorious Nippon, it isn’t for babies, though fandom and industrial pressures may mandate a fanservice emphasis of creeping on children.
I suppose by the same logic Tolkien can be considered for babies because there’s not enough sex, violence, and/or sexual violence against children compared to Gambo.
Gotta love the edgelord need for hyber violent or hyper sexual shit.
Meanwhile Don Heartfelt has been out here for 20 years doing compelling independent animation that’s constantly pushing the form and storytelling. Still hasn’t won a best animated short Oscar.
Infinity Train was interesting and different and heartfelt enough that hateful edgelord and kiddie creeping sex predator Justin Roiland had to shit on it on an episode of his own edgelord cartoon. Because one was for babies and the other is for mature grown-ass adults.
Oh, right, not from Japan therefore Rick and Morty still for babies.
Something something correlation does not equal causation but even so there sure are a lot of rich and powerful people in the entertainment industry that absolutely hate earnest and sincere all-ages content and see it as weak/childish but also really want to creep on kids.
her very cool dnd games where she played with her dad his 40 year old doctor friends was very mature. fantasy series written by boring white men. also iron maiden and the like were the only real music smart people listened to, unlike my pop garbage. yeah…
I feel that. A lot of my formative years were around assholes obsessed with normalcy and manhood and decades later they’re bitter MAGA alcoholics and here I am doing weird stuff like having friends and found family I actually want to be around.
I think you’re (unintentionally) framing this in a way that centres the adult-oriented books that you value more highly, to the exclusion of the ones that you don’t hold in any esteem and that’s a real trap that people can fall into.
Let me put it in different terms to illustrate the point.
Imagine if I told you that any adult TV show is more deep and meaningful than any children’s/youth TV show. I’m sure that immediately you’re thinking of the most trash-tier reality TV show and comparing it to a celebrated TV show which is aimed at a younger audience and you’re thinking “Hang on a second… that’s a flawed proposition” and you’re right to think that. Not to mention there’s a really good chance that you haven’t even considered that infomercials are undeniably aimed at an adult audience nor considered the implications that this has for the argument.
So, why is it different with books?
There are some really shallow, vapid books aimed at an adult audience and there are books aimed at a younger audience which are deeper and more meaningful than a Harlequin romance novel or a Chuck Tingle novel for example (I’m making an assumption here - I’ve never read any Chuck Tingle before.)
Of course this is all subjective and it’s a matter of taste, but isn’t that kind of the point?
You could give The Yellow Wallpaper to a misogynist and they’d shrug their shoulders and be like “Women… amirite?” or you could give Things Fall Apart to a western chauvinist and they’d see little value in the book or you could give something like Infinite Jest or The Naked Lunch to a lot of people and they’d see no value or meaning in it.
Likewise, books aimed at a younger audience are likely to be more meaningful to a young audience than The Old Man and the Sea is to an adult. And vice versa.
But I’m not telling you off for having your own preference and for finding more meaning in the books you are drawn to. When it comes to how we make meaning and what value we place in art, this is something that is deeply personal and it’s entirely subjective. There’s no right or wrong and there’s no objective better or worse in this experience, it’s all simply a matter of preference and we should embrace this fact.
You don’t have to share in someone else’s love for YA fiction, for example, but there’s no need to try and impose your preferences on them either.
With that being said if you’re an adult and your frame of reference for politics is YA fiction, you’re playing around in the shallow end because this is a matter of facts and not simply taste; if you use the Star Wars movies to inform your understanding of medicine then you should be prepared to have your opinions disregarded by medical professionals, and rightfully so. That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to have Star Wars as your favourite franchise. It just means that it has its place as art and that’s where it belongs. The same can be said for fiction novels and politics (although I’m sure that someone’s going to chime in with a good counterexample now that I’ve gone and made that my position.)
When it comes to how we make meaning and what value we place in art, this is something that is deeply personal and it’s entirely subjective. There’s no right or wrong and there’s no objective better or worse in this experience, it’s all simply a matter of preference and we should embrace this fact.
I’m going to have to disagree to an extent here. It’s actually good to have aesthetic and moral principles by which you assess the value of art, and it’s also good to argue for them with others. Art is subjective, yes, but that doesn’t mean that every thing is equal to everything else and that everything is in the eye of the beholder.
When it comes to how we make meaning and what value we place in art, this is something that is deeply personal and it’s entirely subjective. There’s no right or wrong and there’s no objective better or worse in this experience, it’s all simply a matter of preference and we should embrace this fact.
My disagreement is that Ready Player One is a giant steaming pile of shit that cashed in on credulous aging Xers by pandering to their nostalgia and their gross reactionary politics by providing an extraordinarily empty ego-insert power fantasy based entirely on a narrow less-than-a-decade-wide window of generational childhood experiences that had to be viewed without any literary analysis or political awareness, just REMEMBER THING? THEN YOU WIN THE PRIZE!
Like yeah they’re for teenagers, I don’t read them myself, and I’m going to roll my eyes at anyone who insists they’re every bit as deep and meaningful as books written for adults, and you deserve nothing but mockery if they’re the lens through which you understand real-life politics
Reminds me of how fucking weird some people get about it if an adult reads YA books
Like yeah they’re for teenagers, I don’t read them myself, and I’m going to roll my eyes at anyone who insists they’re every bit as deep and meaningful as books written for adults, and you deserve nothing but mockery if they’re the lens through which you understand real-life politics, but the way some people talk about it, you’d think a YA book murdered their dog
Sometimes there’s an explosion of “(well written cartoon that adults happen to also like) is FOR BABIES”
here.
For some, adults are not allowed to like things without sufficient violence and/or sexual violence or IT’S FOR BABIES.
Ah, yes, the hill on which FuckYourselfEndless spectacularly self-destructed
I didn’t want to name names, but yes. And the icing on the cake was that user had an anime waifu avatar.
I always thought the anti-natalism was going to be the thing that got them
What is Animation?
Yeah the complete sidelining of a medium as “for babies” doesn’t make me mad at all…
If it’s from glorious Nippon, it isn’t for babies, though fandom and industrial pressures may mandate a fanservice emphasis of creeping on children.
I suppose by the same logic Tolkien can be considered for babies because there’s not enough sex, violence, and/or sexual violence against children compared to Gambo.
Gotta love the edgelord need for hyber violent or hyper sexual shit.
Meanwhile Don Heartfelt has been out here for 20 years doing compelling independent animation that’s constantly pushing the form and storytelling. Still hasn’t won a best animated short Oscar.
Infinity Train was interesting and different and heartfelt enough that hateful edgelord and kiddie creeping sex predator Justin Roiland had to shit on it on an episode of his own edgelord cartoon. Because one was for babies and the other is for mature grown-ass adults.
Oh, right, not from Japan therefore Rick and Morty still for babies.
Over the Garden Wall is some of the best Halloween time storytelling. Amazing writing, amazing acting.
But it’s not edgy adult humor so no one appreciates it.
Funny, Infinity Train was also the target of vitriol from cartoon Youtuber Lily Orchard, who
CW: Pedo
made sexual advances toward a 16 year old among several other awful things
Something something correlation does not equal causation but even so there sure are a lot of rich and powerful people in the entertainment industry that absolutely hate earnest and sincere all-ages content and see it as weak/childish but also really want to creep on kids.
my high school gf told me tolkien was for babies, also jane eyre, and pride and prejudiced were also for babies.
What the fuck was not for babies according to that very adult authority on adulting?
her very cool dnd games where she played with her dad his 40 year old doctor friends was very mature. fantasy series written by boring white men. also iron maiden and the like were the only real music smart people listened to, unlike my pop garbage. yeah…
I feel that. A lot of my formative years were around assholes obsessed with normalcy and manhood and decades later they’re bitter MAGA alcoholics and here I am doing weird stuff like having friends and found family I actually want to be around.
good for you!!! and yeah shes was a miserable person.
I think you’re (unintentionally) framing this in a way that centres the adult-oriented books that you value more highly, to the exclusion of the ones that you don’t hold in any esteem and that’s a real trap that people can fall into.
Let me put it in different terms to illustrate the point.
Imagine if I told you that any adult TV show is more deep and meaningful than any children’s/youth TV show. I’m sure that immediately you’re thinking of the most trash-tier reality TV show and comparing it to a celebrated TV show which is aimed at a younger audience and you’re thinking “Hang on a second… that’s a flawed proposition” and you’re right to think that. Not to mention there’s a really good chance that you haven’t even considered that infomercials are undeniably aimed at an adult audience nor considered the implications that this has for the argument.
So, why is it different with books?
There are some really shallow, vapid books aimed at an adult audience and there are books aimed at a younger audience which are deeper and more meaningful than a Harlequin romance novel or a Chuck Tingle novel for example (I’m making an assumption here - I’ve never read any Chuck Tingle before.)
Of course this is all subjective and it’s a matter of taste, but isn’t that kind of the point?
You could give The Yellow Wallpaper to a misogynist and they’d shrug their shoulders and be like “Women… amirite?” or you could give Things Fall Apart to a western chauvinist and they’d see little value in the book or you could give something like Infinite Jest or The Naked Lunch to a lot of people and they’d see no value or meaning in it.
Likewise, books aimed at a younger audience are likely to be more meaningful to a young audience than The Old Man and the Sea is to an adult. And vice versa.
But I’m not telling you off for having your own preference and for finding more meaning in the books you are drawn to. When it comes to how we make meaning and what value we place in art, this is something that is deeply personal and it’s entirely subjective. There’s no right or wrong and there’s no objective better or worse in this experience, it’s all simply a matter of preference and we should embrace this fact.
You don’t have to share in someone else’s love for YA fiction, for example, but there’s no need to try and impose your preferences on them either.
With that being said if you’re an adult and your frame of reference for politics is YA fiction, you’re playing around in the shallow end because this is a matter of facts and not simply taste; if you use the Star Wars movies to inform your understanding of medicine then you should be prepared to have your opinions disregarded by medical professionals, and rightfully so. That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to have Star Wars as your favourite franchise. It just means that it has its place as art and that’s where it belongs. The same can be said for fiction novels and politics (although I’m sure that someone’s going to chime in with a good counterexample now that I’ve gone and made that my position.)
I’m going to have to disagree to an extent here. It’s actually good to have aesthetic and moral principles by which you assess the value of art, and it’s also good to argue for them with others. Art is subjective, yes, but that doesn’t mean that every thing is equal to everything else and that everything is in the eye of the beholder.
Read Barthes
My disagreement is that Ready Player One is a giant steaming pile of shit that cashed in on credulous aging Xers by pandering to their nostalgia and their gross reactionary politics by providing an extraordinarily empty ego-insert power fantasy based entirely on a narrow less-than-a-decade-wide window of generational childhood experiences that had to be viewed without any literary analysis or political awareness, just REMEMBER THING? THEN YOU WIN THE PRIZE!
the first hunger games book for example was actually pretty good. (although the series didn’t really know where it was going from there)