YABookgate

[BlankSpaceBaby]

I like Larry, but his main urban fantasy series has a hero that is such a Marty Sue self-insert that I can't take the series seriously.

Late to the whole thing, but the whole ladies gone wild on Goodreads drama is not new. I was more heavily involved in the romance online community during the days before social media exploded, and it was the same. Every week, someone would say someone else was being racist, whatever, and the whole community would explode - typically at the instigation of a few queen bees that rally their minions for the attack.

It was self-serving as hell, too. For example, a queen bee constantly screeching about kink-shaming eventually got herself hired as a "consultant" to ensure that BDSM scenes were "authentic" in erotic romance, while other queen bees got book deals, etc. Whatever grift happening today on social media was already happening 10 plus years ago - social media only made the screeching and canceling more obvious and widespread.

Also the quality of these books seems abysmal. It’s almost as if when you can’t hack it as a general fiction author you turn to YA. Remember when YA was written by talented authors who wanted to tell kids good stories? I miss those days.

The target market for these books isn't kids - it's librarians. Kids barely read these days.

 

[LetterlandMafia]

I’ve noticed that the people who screech about Harry Potter seem to take a liking to Percy Jackson. Not familiar with the series beyond the film and a couple of social media posts but I assume Rick Riordan has thrown them some political bones?

 

[Trianon]

What horrible things did the author of The Ones We Burn do? The usual suspects have been screeching about this for a few weeks now, but whatever the offenses are, they're too terrible to put into words, apparently. Possibly the bad guys are melanin blessed, but I'm honestly not sure.

Looks like the same sort of YA generic Fantasy squirted out of a tube the Big 5 grinds out like McDonald's does hamburgers. The author is apparently both "queer" (whatever the fuck that is nowadays) and brain damaged. Or something.

Twitter apology that I see going nowhere. (Issued yesterday.)
View attachment 3485044
Deleted review on Goodreads, that is somehow courageous for going along with what everyone else on Twitter is saying.
View attachment 3485057

etc., etc., etc. I could screenshot basically the same tweet a hundred times.

Might be of interest, might not be.

edit: This Twitter thread cracked me up. Its all about the Jews, all the time, always. Get with it, goy. This poor Rebecca Mix gal is somehow involved.

View attachment 3485087

https://twitter.com/mynasaurus/status/1545939843460595713

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1545939801731391488.html

https://archive.ph/WSlXt

God, what the fuck is with people and thinking blood magic is antisemitic? they canceled Emily Duncan for this too and it still blows my fucking mind.

That one group of hill tribes (can't recall their name) who are at Helms Deep/raid Rohan a lot seem based on the Scottish Highlanders and are such hardcore fans of Saruman they give him their kids to make half-orc abominations, so there's technically evil "white" people in Middle Earth.

They still write Nancy Drew books, but they're woke now, just like the Hardy Boys where one of them is gay now.

Source? I usually pick up some examples of the newest iteration of ND/HB, and I haven't noticed anything like this.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Though if one wanted to, they could try the line that he was like Lovecraft; anyone not of the author's social caste/class are automatically degenerate and down the evolutionary slope (since Lovecraft was not just afraid of non whites, but even whites who weren't New England upper class).

Again, I don't buy it anymore, but one COULD try...

That wouldn't work when the Fellowship of the Ring includes Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, Gondorians, and Gondorian exiles (Aragorn), all of which Tolkien based on different groups of people to some degree or another. Tolkien gives reasons why pretty much every person or race is equally vulnerable to being corrupted (in the case of the evil races of Men, it's pretty much because they're historic enemies of Gondor/Rohan).

I’ve noticed that the people who screech about Harry Potter seem to take a liking to Percy Jackson. Not familiar with the series beyond the film and a couple of social media posts but I assume Rick Riordan has thrown them some political bones?

He's like 99% of YA authors these days and throws in troons and queers and Muslims, like having characters in a trilogy about the Norse gods praise Allah. He started off pretty normal but I guess the pressure of being a cishet white man got to him.

Source? I usually pick up some examples of the newest iteration of ND/HB, and I haven't noticed anything like this.

I could've sworn there was an article posted here a while back about someone praising the diversity in newest Hardy Boys, but maybe it was just a shitpost. I looked it up and apparently the only complaints are the new Hardy Boys TV show isn't diverse enough since there's only like one black person and any gays/troons are background (if present at all) which is pretty unusual for something that came out in 2020.

 

[Trianon]

I could've sworn there was an article posted here a while back about someone praising the diversity in newest Hardy Boys, but maybe it was just a shitpost. I looked it up and apparently the only complaints are the new Hardy Boys TV show isn't diverse enough since there's only like one black person and any gays/troons are background (if present at all) which is pretty unusual for something that came out in 2020.

Ah, I thought it might be from the Hulu show (which I haven't seen). The new Nancy Drew show is a lil woke, but at a tolerable level and it's really good to be a teen romance type of show. They clearly have fun with it.

It also may have been talking about the one-off comics, which tend to be grittier and don't have to stick to canon. I believe George from ND was a definite lesbian in one of those, but she's always been at least coded as a tomboy.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

He's like 99% of YA authors these days and throws in troons and queers and Muslims, like having characters in a trilogy about the Norse gods praise Allah. He started off pretty normal but I guess the pressure of being a cishet white man got to him.

The rule of the thumb these days is that if it's YA and it's from a big publisher, it's woke. Many qualified people working for publishers were sacked/ran off to greener pastures when self-publishing took off and took a huge chunk of these publishers' income (as well as obliterating quite a bit the author agent industry). The rest are overworked/can't-care-less types forced to do 3 people's work or cheap diversity hires that only care about the en woke.

 

[Rezza]

I’ve noticed that the people who screech about Harry Potter seem to take a liking to Percy Jackson. Not familiar with the series beyond the film and a couple of social media posts but I assume Rick Riordan has thrown them some political bones?

From what I'm seeing, those kind of people are trying to make Percy Jackson and other Riordan books as the "anti-Harry Potter" and "the better kids book series". But just as I said once, Harry Potter not only has a better and bigger recognition power, it's much much more appealing and easier to understand/related to for people worldwide. So I have a massive doubt whatever they're trying to do will be successful

 

[Cryptojew]

I’ve noticed that the people who screech about Harry Potter seem to take a liking to Percy Jackson. Not familiar with the series beyond the film and a couple of social media posts but I assume Rick Riordan has thrown them some political bones?

Rick Riordan wrote what is essentially a Harry Potter clone but with gods instead of wizards. He's become woke to the point of parody, especially recently. We have a thread about him and his books here.

 

[Cobalt-60]

I like Larry, but his main urban fantasy series has a hero that is such a Marty Sue self-insert that I can't take the series seriously.

Some of the books can be bad, yeah. Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge is a collab with John Ringo so I have no idea whose fault it is for the writing but it's like a 14 year old anime nerd wrote it. The character was a brilliant teen genius but for fun kept his grades at a perfect C average to spite his liberal mother, he joined the military as a "fuck you" to said liberal mother who wails about how he's a baby killer, wields a katana and learned Japanese in the 1980's before it was cool to do so (but strangely had never heard of sushi before), sucks Ronald Reagan's dick, will tell anyone he meets the story about the time he clapped back when his mother called him a baby killer ("That's Sergeant Baby Killer, ma!"), gets connections with the Japanese Yakuza, and did I mention his weebstick is better than any other sword? Self-indulgent novels can work if they are entertaining enough but this one has such a fanfic air to it that it's borderline parody.

But at least they don't pretend that their books are like some Bible and meant to be life lessons for people to follow. That's why people hate Harry Potter so much, because they were the idiots who read Harry Potter and nothing else and so they could only view the world through the lens of Harry Potter. Then they got a bit older and realized that (surprise) Harry Potter doesn't have good worldbuilding, they've had collective melties along with Rowling's TERFdom and so you get bullshit like "Harry Potter gives children the wrong idea of how the economy works, and that's dangerous!" articles, or condemning Harry for growing up and becoming an Auror because "ACAB" and not realizing this makes them Death Eater apologists.

This is also why they're propping up Percy Jackson. They want to knock Harry Potter off its throne but they also need that Lifeguide Bible crammed in their YA, which also means cramming it with woke shit to wag its finger at the audience over.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Some of the books can be bad, yeah. Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge is a collab with John Ringo so I have no idea whose fault it is for the writing but it's like a 14 year old anime nerd wrote it. The character was a brilliant teen genius but for fun kept his grades at a perfect C average to spite his liberal mother, he joined the military as a "fuck you" to said liberal mother who wails about how he's a baby killer, wields a katana and learned Japanese in the 1980's before it was cool to do so (but strangely had never heard of sushi before), sucks Ronald Reagan's dick, will tell anyone he meets the story about the time he clapped back when his mother called him a baby killer ("That's Sergeant Baby Killer, ma!"), gets connections with the Japanese Yakuza, and did I mention his weebstick is better than any other sword? Self-indulgent novels can work if they are entertaining enough but this one has such a fanfic air to it that it's borderline parody.

But at least they don't pretend that their books are like some Bible and meant to be life lessons for people to follow. That's why people hate Harry Potter so much, because they were the idiots who read Harry Potter and nothing else and so they could only view the world through the lens of Harry Potter. Then they got a bit older and realized that (surprise) Harry Potter doesn't have good worldbuilding, they've had collective melties along with Rowling's TERFdom and so you get bullshit like "Harry Potter gives children the wrong idea of how the economy works, and that's dangerous!" articles, or condemning Harry for growing up and becoming an Auror because "ACAB" and not realizing this makes them Death Eater apologists.

This is also why they're propping up Percy Jackson. They want to knock Harry Potter off its throne but they also need that Lifeguide Bible crammed in their YA, which also means cramming it with woke shit to wag its finger at the audience over.

Fun fact about Grunge it likely 100% bullshit hes just really really good at killing things its wonderful

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Some of the books can be bad, yeah. Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge is a collab with John Ringo so I have no idea whose fault it is for the writing but it's like a 14 year old anime nerd wrote it.

I usually never criticize authors for writing too fast, especially in this era of navel gazing by Martin, Rothfuss and Lynch. But John Ringo and Kevin J. Anderson are two authors where I break that rule. I'll probably never touch anything by either of them again. Everything they both publish seems to me to be a first draft, though I might make an exeption for the Dan Shamble books by Anderson; they were pretty funny, TBF.

Then again, the opening to Correia's latest book, written in collaboration with Steve Diamond, was so painful I put it aside without finishing the first chapter. Maybe it just caught me at a bad moment, dunno, but it literally struck me as Wattpad tier. I'll probably give it another shot, given how much I like the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, and that this is also epic Fantasy.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

Maybe I should give Mistborn a try though.

You should is a fun trilogy.

 

[BoomerSperg1922]

Ah, I thought it might be from the Hulu show (which I haven't seen). The new Nancy Drew show is a lil woke, but at a tolerable level and it's really good to be a teen romance type of show. They clearly have fun with it.

It also may have been talking about the one-off comics, which tend to be grittier and don't have to stick to canon. I believe George from ND was a definite lesbian in one of those, but she's always been at least coded as a tomboy.

how? I ask because I'm curious but never going to watch it so feel free to include spoilers, I avoid CW shows like the black plague.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

Then again, the opening to Correia's latest book, written in collaboration with Steve Diamond, was so painful I put it aside without finishing the first chapter.

Anecdotal, perhaps, as it's just my personal observation, but collaborations are rarely on equal footing - often, one author is helping the other author by exposing the latter to a wider or new audience (the first author's), and because of this, the author supposedly getting more out of this will do more of the work.

It's also true sometimes with long-term partnerships, such as Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickmann - Hickmann is the "idea" guy, Weis does the bulk of the writing. This is especially evident in how terrible Hickman's solo books were written, while Weis's showed a style consistent with their collaborative efforts.

This is why collaborations can be tricky. When there is a nice chemistry going, like Weis and Hickmann, it's fine. When it's a quid pro quo between two mismatched authors in terms of style and ideas, then things can get ugly and even ruin the bigger author's reputation with their fans. See: Janet Evanovich.

 

[Wampak]

Maybe I should give Mistborn a try though.

If you thought Stormlight was too bland then you REALLY shouldn't

 

[Cobalt-60]

how? I ask because I'm curious but never going to watch it so feel free to include spoilers, I avoid CW shows like the black plague.

Not sure about Nancy Drew but I know they made a spinoff based on the Tom Swift book series. Which people might not be familiar with but it's very old sci-fi series that began in the 1930's or so? I think the latest series is actually still going.

First order was of course to make the main character black. And it's a show about a billionaire genius hero prodigy hacker playboy inventor engineer agent hero gay African-American dude (no I am not exaggering for comedic effect). For *some* reason nobody wanted to watch that shit and the CW cancelled it after just 5 episodes.

There's updating an old IP for a modern audience, and then there's whatever the fuck this shit is.

 

[BoomerSperg1922]

Not sure about Nancy Drew but I know they made a spinoff based on the Tom Swift book series. Which people might not be familiar with but it's very old sci-fi series that began in the 1930's or so? I think the latest series is actually still going.

First order was of course to make the main character black. And it's a show about a billionaire genius hero prodigy hacker playboy inventor engineer agent hero gay African-American dude (no I am not exaggering for comedic effect). For *some* reason nobody wanted to watch that shit and the CW cancelled it after just 5 episodes.

There's updating an old IP for a modern audience, and then there's whatever the fuck this shit is.

Sounds like the average CW show. They haven't pulled numbers on anything since they stopped letting julie plec refuse to cast blacks in her shows.

 

[Wampak]

Not sure about Nancy Drew but I know they made a spinoff based on the Tom Swift book series. Which people might not be familiar with but it's very old sci-fi series that began in the 1930's or so?

1910, but similar characters like Frank Reade go back to the 1860s.

Not surprised the new show bombed, no one knows what the hell Tom Swift is anymore.

 

[BlankSpaceBaby]

That show may still work, though, if more thought had gone into it instead of just making the lead character a melting pot of SJW buzzwords and calling it a day.

I really don't understand this need to have main characters, in books or in shows, start out perfect. Character development and protagonist journey seem to be taboo these days. To make things worse, these Mr and Miss Perfect all tend to be insufferable, sarcastic, self absorbed, whiny, and all around terrible.

 

[Mola Ram]

That show may still work, though, if more thought had gone into it instead of just making the lead character a melting pot of SJW buzzwords and calling it a day.

I really don't understand this need to have main characters, in books or in shows, start out perfect. Character development and protagonist journey seem to be taboo these days. To make things worse, these Mr and Miss Perfect all tend to be insufferable, sarcastic, self absorbed, whiny, and all around terrible.

This is what the representation fetish is doing to fiction of all media.

We're going to put someone who looks like YOU! in the story! Someone marginalized, someone who's POC, someone who does weird stuff with their genitals, someone who's much too precious and darling and special to be a boring ol' boy or girl! (Ew!) And when we do, we don't DARE suggest you might have flaws, or things to learn, or challenges to overcome that might be too much for you, or any problems of your own making! No, no, you are perfect just the way you are!

Is it any wonder most of our cultural landscape looks like a colonoscopy?