YABookgate

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Flexo said:
Echo makes a good point...

Midway through he points out that women's erotica used to be clearly marked. The "bodice ripper" cover, remember?

Nowadays, sure women can buy and read their smut with less embarrassment, but it is a little too close to YA designs. What keeps a kid from picking up one of these by accidents? (For a parallel, imagine playboys had a cover that looked like general comic books.)

And yeah, I'm not some prude, but I do believe in keeping some things walled from kids. You don't put the red light districts next door to the schools.
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This is very, very late, but there was actually an incident like this roughly a decade ago out where I used to live; some 15-year-old got a book that looked like this, it was supposed to be a western about werewolves I think? 5 pages in, there was a nice and graphic description of a dude dropping his pants and getting his dick sucked in graphic detail by a chick in her late teens. Whole fucking book was like that, barely anything else, just graphic sex the whole time.
 
I’ve watched the new Vince Gilligan show Pluribus and the main character in there is a Romantasy author that hates her fans and just openly grifts them for the money.

Looks like dunking on romantasy is going mainstream!
 
Dead Lion said:
I’ve watched the new Vince Gilligan show Pluribus and the main character in there is a Romantasy author that hates her fans and just openly grifts them for the money.

Looks like dunking on romantasy is going mainstream!
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They specifically make fun of her books featuring 'ships that sail on sand', 'Purple sand? How imaginative, how about blue?'

Sailing on sand (well, it's actually spores but whatever) , and the different characteristics of differently colored sand is a very major part of Brandon Sanderson's first 'Secret Project' book; Tress of the Emerald Sea (actually a pretty decent book. Better than his other recent stuff. It's lighthearted and with a Princess Bride like vibe)

As I was watching the episode, I asked a friend when the show was written. Apparently throughout the last couple of years. It's probably a coincidence, but there is a chance that someone is taking shots at Sanderson for no fucking reason.
 
Good evening. We live in hell.

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(twitter / archive)

And then the woman who found this and apparently understands enough to know that it's bad still goes into the same "wow yikes chuds, not all" weak hugbox horseshit that one might argue got us to this point in the first place.
weak.png

Also, this is the book.
wow, much romance, such edge.png
I know that bestseller lists are all just a controlled marketing thing now, but still. Dreadful.
 
stupid frog said:
The men in romance books always talk like women.
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Because the authors do not understand how men talk and act, and their editors aren't catching it. Even if they're asking their husbands/boyfriends for advice, chances are their SOs aren't very masculine to begin with.

Most likely, though, they're just not reading books written by men.
 
I like how there's people coming out of the woodwork to tell Second Story that she's misunderstanding romantasy and modern heroes, never mind that there's a second video she did talking about why it is modern writing sucks as a whole which is why we have a problem with smut and boring protagonists.
Cartoon avatar, so probably something retarded, I just don't have the time atm to see if this Tumblrina genderspecial has anything of value to say (I almost couldn't type that with a straight face).
 
Kari Kamiya said:
I like how there's people coming out of the woodwork to tell Second Story that she's misunderstanding romantasy and modern heroes, never mind that there's a second video she did talking about why it is modern writing sucks as a whole which is why we have a problem with smut and boring protagonists.
Cartoon avatar, so probably something retarded, I just don't have the time atm to see if this Tumblrina genderspecial has anything of value to say (I almost couldn't type that with a straight face).
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The mere fact people came out to defend the story and it is a quasi v-tuber says everything I need to know. (I know I know, cartoon avatar; big difference. It's filled to the brim with breadtuber-adjacent types)
Grayback said:
The video is like a caricature.
I really want to say more about it, but I need to organize my thoughts about why and how the dogshit arguments are such dogshit, and I don't have the time to do that tight now. Maybe this weekend.
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Good luck - I don't mean this with sarcasm.
 
I was looking at the Goodreads Choice Awards for this year and the nominees for YA Fiction all just seem terrible. It's either obviously romance, gay/tranny shit or "stronk non-white characters". Just look at how identical some of those covers are.
I have to say I don't really remember anymore what I read at that age but I know these wouldn't have appealed to me back then either. I also have not read one romantasy book in my life. If those are really the "popular" options, I am not surprised the kids (or boys) aren't reading anymore.
Are young people really reading those or is it still the arrested-development adult women? I thought they had "NA" and romantasy now, but who knows.
www.goodreads.com_choiceawards_readers-favorite-ya-fiction-books-2025.png
 
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Der weiße Teufel said:
www.goodreads.com_choiceawards_readers-favorite-ya-fiction-books-2025.png
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the scammer could be cool. The cover at least looks like a bunch of teenage friends trapped in a web of conspiracies and lies.
Dating and dragons could be a book I would pick up if the cover didn't raise red flags. If it showed a guy riding a dragon while a girl clung to his back it could be cool. Now I think it is some stupid romance plot with a D&D subplot. The survivor wants to die at the end could be cool?
Nobody in particular looks like the cover of some porno. The sequel to "catholic schoolgirls gone wild"
 
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Der weiße Teufel said:
I was looking at the Goodreads Choice Awards for this year and the nominees for YA Fiction all just seem terrible. It's either obviously romance, gay/tranny shit or "stronk non-white characters". Just look at how identical some of those covers are.
I have to say I don't really remember anymore what I read at that age but I know these wouldn't have appealed to me back then either. I also have not read one romantasy book in my life. If those are really the "popular" options, I am not surprised the kids (or boys) aren't reading anymore.
Are young people really reading those or is it still the arrested-development adult women? I thought they had "NA" and romantasy now, but who knows.

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I borrowed the first one on the list from Anna's, thinking: I read shitty books all the time, how bad can it be? Yeah I got through like 3%, modern YA "Voice" is just obnoxiously bad. Especially when it's women trying to write teenage boys.

So then I looked up The Scammer which does have a neat cover and noped out at the description of a woman going to a HBCU and something about an excon named Dequon or smth.
 
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