YABookgate

[Bunny Tracks]

https://twitter.com/rainbowrowell/status/1279921656270643200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1279921656270643200%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com%2F118361067.html

Extremely racist book Eleanor & Park is getting a film adaptation.

Some choice lines from it:

She was pretty sure he was Asian. It was hard to tell. He had green eyes. And skin the color of sunshine through honey.

She was apparently never going to stop sounding like she just got here yesterday from Korea. Sometimes Park thought she kept the accent on purpose, because his dad liked it. But his mom tried so hard to fit in every other way… if she could sound like she grew up right around the corner, she would.

Eleanor imagined Park's dad, Tom Selleck, tucking his Dainty China person into his flak jacket and sneaking her out of Korea.

Park's eyes got wide. well, sort of wide. Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes affected how he saw things. That was probably the most racist question of all time.

Holy shit, that is one of the most autistic things I've ever read. Eleanor sounds like a fucking sped.

 

[Crunchy Leaf]

I think if this thread says anything for writer's, it's do whatever the hell you want and NEVER apologize for it. The moment you do, like that whimpering chick did a few pages back, you're ruined. They smelled the blood in the water and will tear you down until you're telling people not to defend you for simply writing. Which is lunacy.

And even if the publisher tells you they won't release your book without changes (add Diversity, LGBTWTF, Wymyn), tell them to go fuck themselves and self-publish. Why should you, the one with creative ideas, compromise so that publishers with no thoughts of their own can point out their inclusiveness and use you as a statistic? They clearly no longer care about quality of writing. All that matters now is Instagrammable Book covers or titles like "Break the Silver Dawn" on sparkly covers to get the shallow 30yr old girls to buy their garbage along with diversity checkboxes. So why should any writer care about their standards? They have none other than appealing to a (fat) mass of women who refuse to grow up and think telling them they're fucking mental is physical violence.

Game of Thrones didn't have mass appeal because of LGBT shit. It had an interesting story.
Lord of the Rings isn't considered a classic because a white man wrote it. It's story connected with people.
To Kill a Mockingbird isn't racist because a black man dies and there's a bad word. It's about the unfairness of life through a child's eyes.

These are all too complex these days for girls who only want to have their hands held (uwu sapphic) and never face strife. They will never understand anything above a grade 3 reading level and shallow ideals about how all girls need to support each other because THEY want to be praised and accepted by their peers, yet never make any changes to their personality. These are not people that should be catered too and anyone with a brain functioning above a toddler's age will connect with protagonists and a good story whether or not they share their skin colour or sex.

Don’t write YA is the only solution. Write books for adults. YA obsessed women refuse to read adult lit for some reason so you’ll be safe.

 

[SnarkySperg]

I read Eleanor and Park way back, like, maybe six+ years ago, and wasn't the racism sort of the point? If I recall correctly, Park is the only Viet Namese(?) kid in his tiny midwest American town in the 80's, which lead to him being an outcast. Was there racism? Sure, but it served a purpose, and wasn't portrayed positively, just as a fact of life based on the era. These people really can't handle anything challenging in work, and want everything to be clean and sanitized so they don't have to think too hard about anything.

Well of course not. Teenagers don't have brains, right? They don't need anything complicated or thought-provoking. Therefore, all YA needs to be clean and simple.

I haven't read it but it makes sense to me. SJWs, especially those on Book Twitter, have a real issue with depiction because they automatically think it's endorsement, and have a lot of difficulty with context.

I think a lot of them are genuinely autistic too. One symptom of autism is black and white thinking patterns and the inability to observe a gray area. People with autism also tend to miss jokes and humor cues, so they might interpret something light-hearted as a direct attack. Obviously not ALL of them are autistic, but in these sub-art communities, it seems to be a thing with a large number of them.

In all seriousness, this. It all goes back to this. Either autism or just emotionally stunted (also explains why they only read YA). When I was in the real age demographic for these books (at least on the lower-mid range of it), I saw a lot less gray too. But I grew up.

this ONLY BIPOC CAN WRITE BIPOC shit offends me as a writer. As a hobby I write stories, I don't publish them, nobody ever reads them, and because I'm a massive weeaboo Japanese characters are realistically portrayed. If I ever published any of them, I'd have these harpies out for my head. It's possible to write Black characters without making them into Uncle fucking Remus.

I hate the 'own voices' garbage. Especially since half the shit people praise for it are more fucking racist than a white writer doing it. Angie Thomas, from what I've seen, focuses so much on race and plays just as much into racial stereotypes as the people with the 'token black' character.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

YA obsessed women refuse to read adult lit for some reason so you’ll be safe.

My grandmother doesn't go out of her way to read adult literature because years ago she gave herself moral standards about the entertainment to consume (this included forgoing R-rated movies). Fair enough, but not all adult literature has sex in it, which I know is the biggest concern my grandmother has, so I don't know why she doesn't go out of her way to, I dunno, read up on the older books, the classics. Or turn to fantasy novels (she actually believes in fairies, so you'd think she'd be more than willing to read fantasy more). So she turns to YA because somehow she likes the stories, except YA novels can be extremely sexually-charged without the sex. So I don't get it. Also, she's written adult books herself including sex scenes, and she excused it with "I was telling a STORY!", or was doing it to give the characters more dimensions, something to that effect.

I love my grandma, but even before I learned about the drama in YA I thought her reasons for reading only YA novels made her sound like a pearl-clutcher. Which is funny, I just know she'll scoff and roll her eyes at the cat-fighting going on in the industry should she ever hear of it, but it still won't change her mind about reading those books even though a lot of them she deemed to be wastes of time after going through the entire series.

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

Don’t write YA is the only solution. Write books for adults. YA obsessed women refuse to read adult lit for some reason so you’ll be safe.

Yep, even if I like to write younger characters most of the time, the stories are decidedly not meant for that age group. Although, every so often I have seen some #OwnVoices speds shitting on adult books, too. (I mentioned on a previous page a poster getting angry about John Boyne's book The Absolutist because they assumed he was straight and got angry he wrote a book with gay characters.) I think the reason the YA fanatics won't read adult books is because adult books actually make you think instead of laying out "this good, this evil" like YAs do. That can be okay, a lot of kids haven't developed the ability to see grayer shades of morality yet, it's just disturbing when these adults can't do it either... And then want to be the judge, jury and executioner for what pieces of art should be allowed to exist.

I hate the 'own voices' garbage. Especially since half the shit people praise for it are more fucking racist than a white writer doing it. Angie Thomas, from what I've seen, focuses so much on race and plays just as much into racial stereotypes as the people with the 'token black' character.

I honestly think Angie Thomas has internalized racism (and not in the way the #WOKE use that term, where it basically means "any minority who disagrees with me". It's like she's absorbed all the stereotypes racists have for black people and thought to herself that they must be true.) All her black characters are poor and live in the slums. Many of them are either in a gang or related to someone who is. Most are either using &/or dealing drugs. The black characters speak poorly, and if I'm remembering correctly, they type poorly as well. The white characters, meanwhile, are usually shown to be upper middle class or rich, never doing anything that could get them into real trouble, and speak normally. If I didn't know better I'd think she was a middle aged white woman whose only ever seen black people in gangster movies. A book being muh #OwnVoices doesn't mean it will have fewer stereotypes, it only means people will be less willing to criticize the use of them out of fear of being ree'd at for it.

I have read some truly awful books that these people would refer to as #OwnVoices, and books with much better representation written by people who aren't of the race/orientation/whatever of the main character. The difference was those books kept the minority points as an afterthought and just wrote the character as a human being rather than a buzzword filled essay factory.

 

[SnarkySperg]

I think the reason the YA fanatics won't read adult books is because adult books actually make you think instead of laying out "this good, this evil" like YAs do. That can be okay, a lot of kids haven't developed the ability to see grayer shades of morality yet, it's just disturbing when these adults can't do it either...

YA is typically supposed to be aimed at 12-18. That's an age where you SHOULD be learning shades of gray. Personally, I think YA is the perfect time to stop with 'good vs evil' and start including morally gray characters.

There's this (adult) book called Necessary People, that's about two people who used to be friends but went their own way, then reunited later in life and butt heads at this time. People were rating the book poorly because 'nobody in this book is LIKEABLE!' OK, that's the point of an unlikable narrator, which was the point of the book (more specifically, how friendships can sometimes be faulty and toxic). Sometimes the good guys aren't all good and the bad guys aren't all bad. See also, complaints about Seinfeld.

This is like Christianity in reverse. Christians, at least many of the ones I know, see the world as very black and white. Christians and Christian beliefs are to protect you from some unseen evil. Non-Christian beliefs are evil and horrible and will drag you to hell due to Original Sin.

I have read some truly awful books that these people would refer to as #OwnVoices, and books with much better representation written by people who aren't of the race/orientation/whatever of the main character. The difference was those books kept the minority points as an afterthought and just wrote the character as a human being rather than a buzzword filled essay factory.

IMO, focusing so much on race and less on personality is worse than writing about a race you aren't. I'd rather a white person write a black character who is such a rich character you don't even care that they're a different race and just focus on them as a person than a black author writing a black character who's whole personality is 'I'm black and so are my friends and also wypipo bad and ACAB' or whatever TF YA characters are at that age.

Spoiler: Possible Powerlevel

I'm writing a book currently, a supernatural thriller. The main characters are white, as I didn't have it in me to do a lot of research into how black people in the south are treated and I truly do care about doing the culture of the area I'm writing about justice where possible. However, I have one black character. He is the best friend of the male lead, and while race wasn't super important, his character is supposed to be this popular, hot, ladykiller type who also buys into conspiracy theories and doesn't trust the government at all. I thought it'd be interesting to have a black character that subverted tropes. His race is barely mentioned (I give physical descriptions of the characters and that's it), and I think he's a solid character. I'm sure I'll get accused of tokenism or some shit, but this thread has actually inspired me to give less of a fuck because anyone who cares that much is probably fucking batshit anyway.

 

[Slowboat to China]

Searching for a literary agent and/or publisher is a bit of a shitshow right now. (Moreso than usual, I mean.) Everyone is posting SJW bona fides, and manuscript wishlists all seem to be stuff about marginalized voices. The ones who are loudest about soliciting manuscripts also tend to be the Twitterverse types rather than established trustworthy agencies; on the other hand, you often can't get your foot in the door of an established agency.

 

[SnarkySperg]

Searching for a literary agent and/or publisher is a bit of a shitshow right now. (Moreso than usual, I mean.) Everyone is posting SJW bona fides, and manuscript wishlists all seem to be stuff about marginalized voices. The ones who are loudest about soliciting manuscripts also tend to be the Twitterverse types rather than established trustworthy agencies; on the other hand, you often can't get your foot in the door of an established agency.

Pro-tip: don't do traditional publishing. Self publishing is just as respectable, doesn't involve having to sign morality clauses, and you have full creative control and keep most of your royalties. Also you don't have to worry about your book getting pulled from publication because you said nigger on the internet.

 

[DungeonMaster]

My grandmother doesn't go out of her way to read adult literature because years ago she gave herself moral standards about the entertainment to consume (this included forgoing R-rated movies). Fair enough, but not all adult literature has sex in it, which I know is the biggest concern my grandmother has, so I don't know why she doesn't go out of her way to, I dunno, read up on the older books, the classics. Or turn to fantasy novels (she actually believes in fairies, so you'd think she'd be more than willing to read fantasy more). So she turns to YA because somehow she likes the stories, except YA novels can be extremely sexually-charged without the sex. So I don't get it. Also, she's written adult books herself including sex scenes, and she excused it with "I was telling a STORY!", or was doing it to give the characters more dimensions, something to that effect.

I love my grandma, but even before I learned about the drama in YA I thought her reasons for reading only YA novels made her sound like a pearl-clutcher. Which is funny, I just know she'll scoff and roll her eyes at the cat-fighting going on in the industry should she ever hear of it, but it still won't change her mind about reading those books even though a lot of them she deemed to be wastes of time after going through the entire series.

Didacticism should have died out with Greek civilization, along with pedophilia and olives.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Pro-tip: don't do traditional publishing. Self publishing is just as respectable, doesn't involve having to sign morality clauses, and you have full creative control and keep most of your royalties.

This works in some genres, but not in others. If you're writing adult Romance or Science Fiction and Fantasy, yes. If you're writing Lit-er-a-choor (a/k/a what Brandon Sanderson calls "boring people doing boring things") or, yes, Young Adult, no. Those last two haven't really been able to find an audience, or much of one, via self-publishing.

Also you don't have to worry about your book getting pulled from publication because you said nigger on the internet.

Actually, you kind of do.

Book Store - The Unz Review

archived 18 Aug 2019 22:09:15 UTC

archive.is

Not that I personally believe anything written in any of the books at the link, but Amazon has in fact banned them for being, well, what they are. They've also banned autism "cures" and I believe works skeptical of the WuFlu lockdown.

How much longer until they start coming after LitRPG cum (in more ways than one) Harem FapFics or whatever? This might be a misreading on my part, and I hope it is, but Amazon is not quite the wild west of self-publishing it was, even a few years ago. And given current trends on every Big Tech platform, do we expect more or or fewer restrictions over time? I honestly don't see how you can survive self-publishing without being on Amazon. They're at least 80% of the ebook market at this point, probably more when it comes to self-published stuff.

 

[SnarkySperg]

This works in some genres, but not in others. If you're writing adult Romance or Science Fiction and Fantasy, yes. If you're writing Lit-er-a-choor (a/k/a what Brandon Sanderson calls "boring people doing boring things") or, yes, Young Adult, no. Those last two haven't really been able to find an audience, or much of one, via self-publishing.

Well, the YA authors typically seem all too happy to abide by all that shit anyway.

Publishing with Amazon and the like is gaining more traction. Not to mention there are other options, it just depends on how much you have to put down for marketing.

You could also wait indefinitely for all the woke shit to hopefully die down to publish, but good luck with that.

Actually, you kind of do.

http://archive.md/zb986
Not that I personally believe anything written in any of the books at the link, but Amazon has in fact banned them for being, well, what they are. They've also banned autism "cures" and I believe works skeptical of the WuFlu lockdown.

That's in the books themselves. I'm talking social media. I know people in the tech industry who are afraid of losing their jobs because if they did, they'd probably never be able to work in tech again because they have said things online that the woke crowd doesn't like too much. Similar with publishing. It seems like most if not all of the people who pulled or delayed their books were being published traditionally and weren't self-publishing.

Not to mention you also lose most creative control anyway. To me, that's more important than getting an advance and being more likely to see my book in Barnes & Noble.

 

[Slowboat to China]

Pro-tip: don't do traditional publishing. Self publishing is just as respectable, doesn't involve having to sign morality clauses, and you have full creative control and keep most of your royalties. Also you don't have to worry about your book getting pulled from publication because you said nigger on the internet.

From my POV (traditionally published for all of my career thus far), self-publishing has its pros and cons. Many of the self-published authors I know hustle like mofos to get their stuff out, and often enjoy better rankings and sales in addition to more creative freedom ... But they also don't get any of the good stuff that comes with a trad publisher, like advances or professional edits.

And to be honest, I don't have the game to self-publish. I loathe talking to people about my work and I'm shitty at promoting myself. Now that I'm a few books in and have a track record, I want an agent to handle that shit so I can go back in my writer cave and not have to deal with it.

That's in the books themselves. I'm talking social media. I know people in the tech industry who are afraid of losing their jobs because if they did, they'd probably never be able to work in tech again because they have said things online that the woke crowd doesn't like too much. Similar with publishing. It seems like most if not all of the people who pulled or delayed their books were being published traditionally and weren't self-publishing.

Oh, the self-publishers will absolutely eat you up. I've seen a few eruptions of stupid over the last couple of years, especially in the romance industry. Don't doubt there will be more now that everything is problematic. But "big publisher cancels book" is more of a headline than "one person withdraws own book," especially since the industry still isn't doing a great job tracking and reckoning with self-pub sales and metrics.

This works in some genres, but not in others. If you're writing adult Romance or Science Fiction and Fantasy, yes. If you're writing Lit-er-a-choor (a/k/a what Brandon Sanderson calls "boring people doing boring things") or, yes, Young Adult, no. Those last two haven't really been able to find an audience, or much of one, via self-publishing.

There's also the fact that self-pub has created a glut on the market in certain genres. It started in Romance, IIRC, and moved into SF/F. The lower barrier to entry means a lot more dreck for readers to sift through, and it can be harder to grab market share.

That's not to say trad publishing is a cakewalk either. I hate, hate, hate the endless submission process and the staid language of queries, "what are your needs," browsing #MSWL and its associated Nurgle's garden of stupid pitches. It's just even more fun now with the SJW stuff to navigate.

Sorry about the rant. Definitely looking to replace my Santa cap with a top hat.

 

[PurpleEater]

Harper's magazine posted an open letter against SJW sperging (people who signed it include Bill T. Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Noam Chomsky, J.K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie "expressing concern over the illiberal trend intensified by our national reckoning") and everyone on Book Twitter is currently chimping out to the nth degree:

http://archive.vn/MIH7J

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

There's also the fact that self-pub has created a glut on the market in certain genres.

Ever run across Michael Anderle before? He has "co-authored" something like 30 books a month (not a typo) for the past two years, and Amazon is apparently Zen with the whole thing. No, I'm not exaggerating, go to the linked author page and sort by publication date. Then count the titles for a given month. He has already "written" four or five books for July 2020, as of July 8. Makes James Patterson look lazy.

Obviously he's simply sticking his name on the books as co-author, and I guess his name has such brand appeal to whatever his audience is they buy his books and everybody theoretically goes away happy. Even the "co-author" (really the only author, I'm guessing), since getting a percentage of an Anderle book must be better than getting 100% of a no-name author book.

An Anderle book must make the algorithms in certain subgenres go orgasmic and winds up sticking the books on everybody's recommended list. And presumably sink the one book a year self-published author trying to swim in the Anderle ocean. So I guess not EVERYBODY goes away happy. Oh, well.

Something about this whole business rubs me the wrong way, but like I said Amazon seems fine with it. And when I sperged about Anderle elsewhere I had to kind of concede the long history of "authors" like Carol Keene, Franklin W. Dixon, Don Pendleton, Victor Appleton, doubtless others, etc., cranking out endless titles of potboiler genre fiction for as long as modern publishing has existed.

Still gets my back up. Just doesn't seem right.

Edit:

Harper's magazine posted an open letter against SJW sperging (people who signed it include Bill T. Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Noam Chomsky, J.K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie "expressing concern over the illiberal trend intensified by our national reckoning") and everyone on Book Twitter is currently chimping out to the nth degree:

http://archive.vn/MIH7J

Even the very liberal people at /r/books (Archive) were making fun of how ridiculous the SJWs are acting. Some were even noting that to Gen Z, liberals are now the party of censorship; they've literally never seen conservatives censoring anything.

2nd edit: The archive version of that Reddit thread is sorted differently or something. Quite a few SJWs screeching about how it is okay to be intolerant to intolerance and Rowling is literally endangering troons, etc.

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

Harper's magazine posted an open letter against SJW sperging (people who signed it include Bill T. Jones, Wynton Marsalis, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Noam Chomsky, J.K. Rowling, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie "expressing concern over the illiberal trend intensified by our national reckoning") and everyone on Book Twitter is currently chimping out to the nth degree:

http://archive.vn/MIH7J

Well, since "Cancel Culture" usually involves ruining people with false allegations that are either never investigated or proven false (Like what happened with Johnny Depp), I see no issue here, even if I think Rowling's TERF sperging is dumb. People have a right to disagree with one another about politics, but not to dox and threaten each other over those disagreements. Someone could say something I find completely disgusting and reprehensible, and I'd still defend their right to say it and be annoyed if the mob tries to ruin their life and career over it. (Granted, Rowling doesn't have to worry about that anymore, but others do.)

 

[AnOminous]

Well, since "Cancel Culture" usually involves ruining people with false allegations that are either never investigated or proven false (Like what happened with Johnny Depp), I see no issue here, even if I think Rowling's TERF sperging is dumb.

Cancel culture also involves destroying people over trivial disagreements or opinions that are not only not extreme, but entirely within the mainstream. It's a mob of crazed lunatics on a lynching spree.

 

[SnarkySperg]

Even the very liberal people at /r/books (Archive) were making fun of how ridiculous the SJWs are acting. Some were even noting that to Gen Z, liberals are now the party of censorship; they've literally never seen conservatives censoring anything.

That removed comments ratio is quite high. Usually the number for an average post is typically lower than 10%.

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

The most infuriating thing about Twitter right now regarding this is a bunch of them trying to say canceling doesn't even exist. They claim this because rich people aren't effected by it enough. Bruh, just because super wealthy people are already too rich to be affected by your bullshit doesn't make it magically okay to dox randos and get them fired because they made a joke you didn't like. Look at that kid Skai Jackson doxed, he got expelled from school and both his parents lost their jobs because he made a stupid joke she got upset over. Count Dankula can't get a job anywhere because whenever a place hires him, they get flooded with calls from Twitter users harassing them, all because he made a dumb joke. That's what cancel culture does, you guys are just pointing to rich celebrities that haven't gone broke yet from your screeching because it makes you look like you're doing less harm than you actually are.

I like this one tho:

 

[SnarkySperg]

The most infuriating thing about Twitter right now regarding this is a bunch of them trying to say canceling doesn't even exist. They claim this because rich people aren't effected by it enough. Bruh, just because super wealthy people are already too rich to be affected by your bullshit doesn't make it magically okay to dox randos and get them fired because they made a joke you didn't like. Look at that kid Skai Jackson doxed, he got expelled from school and both his parents lost their jobs because he made a stupid joke she got upset over. Count Dankula can't get a job anywhere because whenever a place hires him, they get flooded with calls from Twitter users harassing them, all because he made a dumb joke. That's what cancel culture does, you guys are just pointing to rich celebrities that haven't gone broke yet from your screeching because it makes you look like you're doing less harm than you actually are.

View attachment 1438591

I like this one tho:

View attachment 1438599

I'd argue that they're doing far more damage because of who is being affected. JK Rowling could retire today and live very comfortably for the rest of her life. Same for Mel Gibson. But the people they do successfully 'cancel' can't typically come back from it. Hell, there's a body count now from cancel culture. They wanna talk about these rich AF people who they didn't bring down, I can talk about the multiple people that cancel culture has pushed to suicide.

It's never ever enough. Might as well not bother caving to them.

 

[Mola Ram]

I'd argue that they're doing far more damage because of who is being affected. JK Rowling could retire today and live very comfortably for the rest of her life. Same for Mel Gibson. But the people they do successfully 'cancel' can't typically come back from it. Hell, there's a body count now from cancel culture. They wanna talk about these rich AF people who they didn't bring down, I can talk about the multiple people that cancel culture has pushed to suicide.

It's never ever enough. Might as well not bother caving to them.

"Cancel culture isn't real, and if you get cancelled you probably deserved it."