- Joined
- Dec 22, 2021
So if I want my mediocre scifi schlock published I have to change my pen name to Tyrone Jackson and photoshop a fedora onto a free stock image of a black man, is what you're saying
YABookgate
- Thread starter Puddleduck
- Start date
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2018
You gotta tick off as many boxes as possible. Be a stunning and brave trans lesbian demisexual POC, and call yourself something like LaQuisha Ravenne X.
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2020
No.
Get a black/Native woman willing to pretend to be the persona though? SFWA buys that Rebecca Roanhorse is Native American, so I've seen dumber things fly.
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2021
You aren't fucking kidding
"Not aged well" what a fucking hack. The redemption of Thomas and Angus (from The Gap Series) were masterpieces of writing. They are never truly forgiven but they were never truly evil or at least they found a way forward to atone to some degree. "2nd wave perspectives" holy shit these people wear themselves like a hat.
Of course rape is truly worse than death and everything is rape and everything is rape and everything is rape and you have to point it all out.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2021
To my continued irritation my YA writing associates all have to take a position on being "queer" when they are married (to a member of the opposite team, natch) and have kids.
Not to mention the little rainbow flags on their Twitter after a "coming out as bissexual" post.
I literally have never seen these people in a meaningful relationship or even a miserable one night stand with a person from the opposite sex, while the true and honest gay/lesbian writers in my circle will never mention that factor of their life outside of private Facebook posts about an anniversary or some momentous occasion.
I'll always remember my agent asking plaintively for some more "gay rep" in my book series before we went on submission, and I had to turn them down because I honestly couldn't wedge a fake plot in there. How miserable to read a book with gay rep, when its only reason for inclusion was a capitalistic ploy to sell more copies to the straights?
Not to mention the little rainbow flags on their Twitter after a "coming out as bissexual" post.
I literally have never seen these people in a meaningful relationship or even a miserable one night stand with a person from the opposite sex, while the true and honest gay/lesbian writers in my circle will never mention that factor of their life outside of private Facebook posts about an anniversary or some momentous occasion.
I'll always remember my agent asking plaintively for some more "gay rep" in my book series before we went on submission, and I had to turn them down because I honestly couldn't wedge a fake plot in there. How miserable to read a book with gay rep, when its only reason for inclusion was a capitalistic ploy to sell more copies to the straights?
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2018
There were a couple of Harry Harrison paperbacks I had from the 80s where the covers were literally just publicity stills of Luke from Empire Strikes Back with a different face. He still has the fucking lightsaber!
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
Damn. They must not have sold enough to get Lucas' attention. lol
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2017
I like how on the left he's about to get run over by a combine.
For some reason, it's hilarious to me.
"Harry Harrison: To The Stars: Escape from Chud-Verse"
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2021
Time for another episode of WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND
Why yes - OWN VOICES is now being pre-empted as a business decision when selecting properties. Good Work Guys.
Also that "author's sexuality is no-one's business" really works out when Sauron's Eye Of Cancellation is upon you for writing all those books about gays.
Bi-erasure is another word for not believing married ladies larping as lesbians when they've never dived a muff in their life.
Ah yes, now that the cashflow looks to be interrupted we are *bi*. Ah yes.
The EASY WAY TO BE GAY is just to be straight, never suffer any of the crisis points of coming out to parents, schools and friends, and then one day when you are much older say you are bisexual and reap the ill-gained rewards.
Why yes - OWN VOICES is now being pre-empted as a business decision when selecting properties. Good Work Guys.
Also that "author's sexuality is no-one's business" really works out when Sauron's Eye Of Cancellation is upon you for writing all those books about gays.
Bi-erasure is another word for not believing married ladies larping as lesbians when they've never dived a muff in their life.
Ah yes, now that the cashflow looks to be interrupted we are *bi*. Ah yes.
The EASY WAY TO BE GAY is just to be straight, never suffer any of the crisis points of coming out to parents, schools and friends, and then one day when you are much older say you are bisexual and reap the ill-gained rewards.
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2021
More "biphobia" bitching! If only the industry really was.
This last one is funny to me. Dear Emily, the only person who is stopping you from finishing your two garbage novels is you. Not some editor or agent or whatever looking to make a buck.
"How dare you try to find out about my personal life after I and everyone else I support screamed for just that for everyone else!"
What a fucking coward.
"Safe"
"How dare you give us what we screamed for!"
This last one is funny to me. Dear Emily, the only person who is stopping you from finishing your two garbage novels is you. Not some editor or agent or whatever looking to make a buck.
"How dare you try to find out about my personal life after I and everyone else I support screamed for just that for everyone else!"
What a fucking coward.
"Safe"
"How dare you give us what we screamed for!"
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2016
Who the fuck is reading all this dreck is what I want to know. Middle aged cat ladies or something? Still find it hard to believe these books are profitable given the massive overhead all the NYC publishers have.
Then again, go to the page on GoodReads for just about any YA book out there and there's almost certainly going to be at least one question about "gay representation."
- Joined
- May 19, 2018
They aren't. The Lindsay Ellis thread covers this in detail, but the bottom line is that the publishing houses live off the residuals of the greats- Herbert, Jordan, Card, et al- and use that revenue stream to virtue signal. Google uses basically the same model, having one cash cow business that they use to subsidize monopolistic squatting in other sectors. If the US had antitrust laws we'd have a lot fewer problems like this.
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2018
Well, we supposedly have an anti-trust law made back in 1890 with the Sherman act. Problem is, that there's no real pressure to enforce it.
- Joined
- May 25, 2013
These people are fucking dumb and I seriously doubt the quality of not only what they write, but also what they read, which is probably just a bunch of incomprehensible dribble that lets them know they have the right opinions
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2021
And this is why all my YA author friends have no Twitter. Why agree to have your personal life and thoughts dissected by everyone from rival authors, pissy readers, meddling agents, and stasi sensitivity readers, when you could just write a nice pitch letter and work the system against itself?
OwnVoices is the biggest scam and has silenced a ton of great authors who only feel like they can write who they are. And they're mad it's penetrated the publishing houses like they wanted it to.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2021
Also it’s well known there’s only a special kind of Own Voices allowed - so you have people like Angie Thomas writing about gangs etc (she drove past a gang shooting once) purely because that is the Own Voices expected of black people. Even in her Hate You Give book the main character was a privileged private school girl.
And others have mentioned that the “gang” stuff was very much “how do you do fellow kids”.
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2016
Not at all YA , but kind of revealing of the current situation in the publishing world, assuming Correia is being honest here. Saga of the Forgotten Warrior is neck in neck with whatever it is you call the world Joe Abercrombie sets his novels in, in terms of Fantasy series written this century that I've enjoyed. Highly recommended. And I can take or leave most of Correia's usual gunporn.
Pity most of the writers who line up on Correia's side candidly aren't very good, either. Vox Day is awful, Sarah Hoyt, John Ringo, etc., forgettable is the kindest term I can use to describe them all. John C. Wright reads like he read a Thesaurus for breakfast and spent the rest of the day vomiting words from it onto the page.
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
It's not really a condemnation of him that he uses more precise terms you're unfamiliar with. Besides there's plenty of stuff he's written that are for simpler readers.
(I never understood why authors had to be condemned for the reader's lack of vocabulary. Try reading to expand your world for once.)
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2016
That's fair. And if I'm a philistine, I'm a philistine. (I probably am, come to think of it.)
But in my defense if I'm reading Pew! Pew! Pew! Space Operas I don't really want to feel like I'm reading one of those 19th century British authors allergic to paragraph breaks and addicted to smothering descriptions, either. And that's kind of how Wright has always come across to me.
- Joined
- Jan 3, 2017
Man, I'm glad someone else said it. Whenever she takes the night shift at Instapundit I feel like my IQ drops a good 20 points.