And no, I no longer engage with people like this as they turn every "I disagree with what you say" from a person defending YA into "these people are harassing me online"

like there's discussion to be had about adults reading YA, who the age level is marketed to, and about adult publishing leaning into more commercial genre fiction, but just being like "everything that is shallow or commercial we are going to call YA" is ill-informed and lazy

For real. I don't understand why people can't just be like "YA is not what I like to read but I acknowledge it has a place and is not, in fact, 'ruining' 'real' books."

There are real conversations to be had about thematic issues with romantasy, what publishers are buying vs what they're rejecting, YA being colonized by NA, etc. But what ends up getting the most marketing, into celebrity book clubs, and on bestsellers lists isn't representative of the whole genre.

They say they want new things in fantasy, then authors from marginalized groups do new things, but they don't like that, they want the new thing to be like the old thing except new.

What they really want is a book to rewind time and make them young again, something no book or anything else can do.