something that really grinds my gears as I venture into other writing/bookish spaces is the fact that people have to apologize when stating their opinions/personal preferences when it comes to what they read or consume for fear of offending The Majority. Like there's this sudden hyper-defensive stance that fans or certain groups of people take about what they love and if someone else god forbid states (on their OWN account or a comment thread mind you, with others who agree with them) that they prefer not to consume those things or they don't love it as much as those people do then these people suddenly feel attacked??

Like. Imagine me obsessing over a show that I've binged a million times and then someone across the globe whispers the words "eh I don't really like that show, it feels overhyped and I don't get why people like it. I prefer this other show to that' and I DIVE ACROSS THE OCEAN to be like 'You're entitled to like that other show, but I don't get why you have to put down my show that I love so much in order to say that. Like that's just very rude of you to even verbalize that opinion in your own space of living and existing that's nowhere near my space of living and existing.'

Like??? People?? Do we not see how mad that is?? THAT'S what's happening in the book community rn and we're treating that like it's normal, I don't know. I get that people can cross a line when stating an opinion or make generalizations about people who consume certain things, but...I don't need someone else's validation to love what I love? If they don't like it or think I'm weird or whatever for liking it that's their problem (and their opinion)??? It doesn't say anything about me or change how I feel about the things I like? And if I'm around people who are bashing what I enjoy and I don't want to see that then maybe just...click away? delete their comment? click unfollow? follow more people who like what you love to drown it out? idk. People are entitled to not like what you love, that's what makes us all beautifully diverse. idk.

RP partner search!

Short intro: Hi, I'm Emil! I use he/they pronouns. My sense of humor is stupid. I have adhd. I've been rping and writing short stories for about 4 years. I'm 14 and I really like to write! Boundaries: Please don't be weird. I don't do illegal ships, incest, pedophile, or anything gross like that. Maximum 18 please, rping with adults feels weird. Please don't get mad at me if I don't know about any media you want to roleplay about, I'll check it out if it sounds interesting but there's no guarantee that I know it. (Feel free to ask though! Just don't get mad if I don't.) You don't need to message with a prompt or idea, we can think of it together! (Or maybe my brain will come up with one.)

Writing style: I usually write in third person perspective and novel style. I like darker plots and some good old character angst but I do also do fluff. I mainly like to stick with ocs but I'll write characters from shows, books, anime, and video games if we both know who they are.

genres i like: futuristic society, fantasy, apocalypse, angst, slow-burn, historical fiction, enemies to lovers, slice of life, mystery, dark themes, psychological, horror, kid-fic, paranormal, sci-fi, romance, fluff, etc. (I'll go with any genre if the story behind it is good!)

Hi, would you mind giving some good 90s cyberpunk recommendations? Cyberpunk and sci fi in general are a huge scary ocean, and I'm afraid to enter it without a guide.

Gladly!! There is SO much out there, I don't blame you.

A thing that can be intimidating is that quite a lot of 90s cyberpunk is directly reacting to 80s cyberpunk. A lot of 80s cyberpunk isn't actually all that good, though, so personally I'm of the opinion that you can skip a lot of it without losing the interesting parts of the genre. (Though I still have a deep love for William Gibson's iconic short story "Burning Chrome," which is one of the only Gibson works I'll genuinely recommend, especially if you want to get a sense of what OG cyberpunk is.)

90s cyberpunk is frequently called "post-cyberpunk" because it's when women and queer people started turning cyberpunk ideas on their head and writing their own communities and concepts into the genre, thinking about how the oppressive cyber-corporate-dystopias that the men of the 80s imagined would affect marginalized people and women. And yet for SOME reason the only 90s post-cyberpunk anyone ever recommends is straight white man Neal Stephenson. Funny, that.

But if you want to read some of my gay/feminist 90s cyberpunk favorites:

Trouble And Her Friends by Melissa Scott (1994). This is the most classically "cyberpunk" novel you will ever read. If you want cowboy coders riding the 'net in glittering crystalline cyberspace, this is your book. It's structured, in a lot of ways, like a Western, but set in the near-future cyberspace imaginings of the '90s. It's about a master hacker, India Carless, online alias Trouble, who swore off hacking - until someone showed up on the 'nets using her alias and causing, well, trouble. She reunites with the girlfriend she left, and together they track down who's the outlaw using Trouble's name. It sounds kinda silly, and in some ways, it is - and in others, it hits really close to home. Trouble didn't give up hacking because she wanted to - she gave up hacking because Congress passed a set of laws that were intended to instill internet safety, but instead just criminalized the actions of people like... Trouble and her friends. And Trouble's friends were a multiracial friend group of queer hackers. The passage of the law fractured the group, and only years later, as the novel progresses, do these people start to reconnect in a world proven hostile to them. Reading the scenes where the queer hacker friend group watch the news feeling sick to their stomachs knowing that the law was going to get passed hit far too close to home. It's intentionally similar to cyberpunk founder William Gibson, except Trouble and her friends are fighting against the straight white male hackers Gibson and his ilk so often represented.

Synners by Pat Cadigan (1991). Whoa. This book. This book. Synners is wild and baroque and energetic and organic, full of lurid imagery and emotional depth.  It follows a large cast of loosely-connected Los Angeles techno-losers - grungy teen hackers, hard corporate executives, burned-out rock musicians, dreamy-eyed druggies, failed-artist salarymen - as they navigate their relationships with each other, with technology, and with their world.  Most of the story revolves around the invention of brain sockets, the first days of the ability to interface your brain input/output directly with the internet, and what that means.  It’s slow and exploratory at first, but about halfway in all the details that Cadigan has been meticulously laying suddenly snap to life, and everyone and everything comes together in a breathtaking brutal poetic machine of a plot you didn’t even realize she's been building. This is another book where the perspectives of women, people of color, queer people, and other marginalized people (hippies, drug-users, and artists are among this group) are centered, specifically how they get used, ignored, or abandoned in the corporate drive to capitalize on new technology, and how their communities are what hold them together and save them. No solitary lone wolf hackers here.

The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter (1996). Proof that Tor has been ahead of the queer sci-fi curve for as long as it's been around. This one is, somewhat, the opposite of the above - it's heavily about the isolation of being queer in an oppressive techno-surveillance state. It's dense, beautiful, literary, and emotionally riveting. I love the main character, Maya, a lesbian journalist in future Russia, who is frustrated with her life of doing immersive VR puff pieces about nothing real or useful - until in her research she stumbles on suppressed information about a recent genocide that the government does not want anyone to talk about. The Fortunate Fall takes a lot of the trappings of cyberpunk - the oppressive system, the global Net that allows everyone to touch mind-to-mind, the total lack of digital privacy, the lone intrepid truth-telling hacker up against the unstoppable machine - and does things with them that makes them feel both real and transcendent, lived-in and mythical and genuinely emotionally harrowing. Also, it's about whales. It's not a happy book, and feels very much in the vein of depressing 19th century Russian literary classics, and damn, is it beautiful.

Those are my favorites, but there are others I've read (Slow River by well-established lesbian sci-fi/fantasy author Nicola Griffith is a strange, semi-literary, interestingly experimental cyberpunkish book full of dubiously consensual lesbian sex, class struggle, and lots of detailed descriptions of how the main character's tech superpower is being the best wastewater treatment plant manager ever, and also every significant character is gay; The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata had mediocre character work but absolutely fascinating use of programmable nanomachines and the way rich men vs. poor women interacted with them) and ones I haven't read yet but want to (Nearly Roadkill by Caitlin Sullivan and Kate Bornstein is generally regarded as the fist trans sci-fi book by a trans author, all about gender and sex exploration in the disembodied but highly political world of 90s-style chatroom-based internet; China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh is a coming-of-age novel about a mixed-race gay man in a highly corporatized China-dominant geopolitical world, which, like Gibson, is written by a white American expat who lived for years in China, but unlike Gibson, she wasn't as discomfited and dehumanizingly Orientalizing about it as he was when he lived in Japan).

90s queer/feminist cyberpunk was very much a movement, or maybe counter-movement, in the flow of sff's history! I'm not sure if it set the stage for the queer sff boom we're having today, but I think it was part of it.

Also, for great, accessible, extremely fun, REALLY good, queer-normative, and cyberpunk-y modern books that's a great entry point into the modern sci-fi scene, I highly HIGHLY recommend The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells (2017-present). Starting with the novella All Systems Red, it's a far-future galaxy-spanning story about a security cyborg that named itself Murderbot, who's supposed to be a big scary Murder Robot With Gun Arms but instead is a confused, anxious, nerdy, agender/aro/ace person trying to slack off work, watch tv, and figure out what it wants and what personhood and friendship means to it within the capitalist hell world it was made for.

I hope some of these strike your interest! They're great examples and great points of contact with this specific movement within sci-fi literature, one of my absolute favorites.

Happy reading!

so what are y’all’s favorite tropes and character archetypes and also pet peeves and most hated clichés when it comes to arranged marriage stories?

favourite tropes

when the person that the mc is married to is rumoured to be this tyrant esque shit, but ends up being as the mc gets to know them come to find out that they're partner is an absolute sweetheart.

when both are little shits to each other, but as they end up spending time together and slowly learn to love each other slow burn style.

childhood rivals put in an arranged marriage end up slowly falling in love with each other during it and seeing as well as acknowledging each others flaws. most of the time it's done like shit though, so i only like it when done right.

favourite character tropes

cold and ruthless mc who slowly gets their walls broken down by the love interest.

obnoxious little shit mc that has a personality and is not a mary/gary stue.

smart, cunning mc x himbo li.

hated clichés

any persephone and hades retellings. idk i just really don't like them, specially when they don't address the incest issue or change the myth in a way that addresses the incest issue within the story because aren't they cousins or hades is Persephone uncle? idk maybe im wrong but yeah i still don't like them, I just find that most authors don't do anything new with the myth, they just keep retelling the same story over and over and add smut to make up for the lack of actual depth of their story.

when the mc is a useless little bitch with no depth to them and who are not like other girls. And I don't mean learning how to fight because fighting doesn't give depth to a character, I mean them being resourceful in some way, whether it's intelligence, stealth, street smarts, sharp wit or maybe they're just a himbo with brute force who destroys everything in their path idk, but I hate it when the protagonist is just reactive for the majority of the story and doesn't do anything apart from reacting to what is happening, and we get told how great they are, but they actually never show it in the book. like just no. like pack it besties there's alrady a thousand carbon copies of these we don't need anymore. *not pointing fingers* *proceeds to look at sjm and most female mc's in ya/na*

any ml that has the same personality of any of sjm's mls. i just cannot. when the book with arranged marriage trope gets reccomdended as perfect for fans of acotar i will not read it, idc how interesting it sounds.

well this turned out longer than expected, pardon my long rant, but i hope some of it helps. 💗

i am attempting to write (emphasis on the word attempt lol) an urban Sci-Fi fantasy IF about people with psychic abilities and this is just a fun project for me, so i was wondering if you had any favourite tropes/character archetypes/hated clichés in general when it comes to interactive fiction games. i'm kind of new to the whole thing so i would love to hear your thoughts.

Reasonable takes and tastes all around!

Will have to disagree with you on the H/P retellings though, I do agree that there aren't a lot of good ones, but I'd be a hypocrite to disparage the entire idea of a retelling of that myth because I'm writing one :') I do think that people tend to fetishize the kidnapping/authority figure part and the goth daddy/flower little girl shit, which I absolutely despise and don't plan to include in my retelling for obvious reasons. I'm more about them being a goth power couple, about the actual seasons and the main point of the myth (explaining how the seasons came to be), making Persephone into a terrifying and morally ambiguous protag, and also making Demeter into a badass Mama Bear.