YABookgate

[JJLiautaud]

My favourite youtube autist discusses a guy who tried to sock puppet his way to writer stardom.


Edit: holy shit he has a thread:

Careercow Thread 'Robert Stanek'

Apr 12, 2013

After seeing the name being mentioned in the Gloria Tesch thread, I have decided to make a thread that is similar to Gloria Tesch in terms of being a terrible writer and having an army of sockpuppets who, unlike Gloria, are all from the man himself, Robert Stanek. Known for writing such classics like "Keeper Martin's Tales", "The Kingdom and the Elves of the Reach", and many now deleted sockpuppet reviews that were on Amazon. Fellow forumers, please discuss your thoughts on the man whose sockpuppetry makes Gloria's look rather tame in comparison.

The man himself, in a picture that has...

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• Replies: 41
• Forum: Lolcows

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[KMFDM Sucks]

t's one of this loser's favorite talking points when he's in the part of his monthly cycle in which he praises Japanese media and doesn't try to hide the fact that he's a weeb.

Putting that aside, it's pretty clear how much the size of Japan's comic market works in its favor. It still feels like manga is primarily a medium for publishing stories, meanwhile western comics feel like a dying corpse occupied by the aging human dregs of the industry who were too stubborn to move onto anything else.

 

[Dead Lion]

Putting that aside, it's pretty clear how much the size of Japan's comic market works in its favor. It still feels like manga is primarily a medium for publishing stories, meanwhile western comics feel like a dying corpse occupied by the aging human dregs of the industry who were too stubborn to move onto anything else.

There’s that and also the fact that comic books have been almost completely relegated to either superhero stuff or niche EU content for pre-existing IP’s from other mediums. (I know that there are comic books that break the mold but let’s be honest they’re extremely niche). Compared to the extremely diverse manga market that’s loosely separated into six categories based on the target age and gender.

It goes even outside books and comics but to entertainment as a whole the Japanese entertainment industry is just straight up healthier than the western one. They constantly get new good shit rising to the top while we’re mostly stuck with massive long running franchises.

 

[Henri Barbusse]

There’s also the fact that while LN’s sell decently in Japan among western weebs they aren’t popular at all. I’ve read multiple light novels but never held one physically because they’re niche enough to just not come to Poland, at all. While I can get manga pretty easily mind you.

Most weebs want to look at pictures, not read. Even if there was an audience of literate weebs, LNs are likely to be more expensive to translate, since there's a lot more text in them, even if it's basically babyspeak in Japanese. Then publishers might want to save money by translating from English translation rather than the Japanese original, which limits what could be brought over even more.

It goes even outside books and comics but to entertainment as a whole the Japanese entertainment industry is just straight up healthier than the western one. They constantly get new good shit rising to the top while we’re mostly stuck with massive long running franchises.

Japanese seem to use long-running franchises to finance taking risks on new potential. You buy a manga magazine printed on what's barely sturdier than toilet paper for the latest One Piece or whatever, but it also has a bunch of other stuff. If the other stuff works, good. If not, it's cut to make room for something else to have a chance. And if something is succesful, there's a pipeline to turn it into a cheaply made anime or video games. They still mostly trendchase and throw shit at the wall to see what sticks, but they have lower costs and higher frequency, so it works better.

Meanwhile a US publisher uses its backlog of dead white guys to finance shit by diverse authors that no one reads, but which wins a bunch of circlejerk awards, so they're deemed a success even though those awards were last relevant decades ago.

And now apart from replying to others, the reason I actually checked this thread. Project Gutenberg added automatically generated summaries to their books at some point in the past and they're so utterly worthless and just take page space even non-expanded. With so much completely unknown crap on there, it's not a bad idea to have introduction to it, but isn't there an AI model that makes something better than a cross between high school student summarizing something they skimmed and a 1970s foreword to cheap porn that tries to argue "Babysitter in Chains" is a work of deep social and educational value.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Project Gutenberg added automatically generated summaries to their books at some point in the past and they're so utterly worthless and just take page space even non-expanded.

Don't authors make up their own summaries, or is that all on the publisher to come up with blurbs for the book covers?

 

[Henri Barbusse]

Don't authors make up their own summaries, or is that all on the publisher to come up with blurbs for the book covers?

Project Gutenberg is for public domain works, so usually there's no longer an author to make a summary. Librivox, which is free audiobooks of public domain works, usually has summaries taken from wikipedia or made by the reader and that actually work. Project Gutenberg just has this:

Spoiler: Pointless AI Summary of a well-known work

"Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë is a novel penned in the early 19th century. The story centers around the intense and turbulent relationships among the residents of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, particularly focusing on the enigmatic figure of Heathcliff and his connection to Catherine Earnshaw. It delves into themes of love, revenge, and the haunting consequences of past actions, set against the backdrop of the desolate Yorkshire moors. The beginning of "Wuthering Heights" introduces us to Mr. Lockwood, who has recently taken a rental at Thrushcross Grange and decides to visit his reclusive landlord, Mr. Heathcliff, at Wuthering Heights. Lockwood's encounter with Heathcliff is marked by unease, revealing a hostile atmosphere filled with mistrust and discontent. The narrative then hints at Heathcliff’s complicated past as an orphan taken in by the Earnshaw family, setting up an exploration of social hierarchies and emotional scars that form the crux of the novel. As Lockwood navigates his burgeoning curiosity about these charged family dynamics, he inadvertently becomes entangled in the brooding past that shapes the characters' present lives, notably those of Heathcliff and Catherine. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

 

[Commissar Fuklaw]

I hadn't heard of Conduit until this video popped up. I checked their site and they're accepting submissions.

Submissions of fiction (novels and short story collections) & memoirs are open from Thursday 1st May to Friday 31st May 2025.

Please send the full manuscript (and/or a proposal for a memoir), a short synopsis and a covering letter. We are not currently considering YA, Middle Grade or SFF (or anything with a previous publication record), but speculative or dystopian fiction with a literary slant welcome.

 

[Three Gorillion Dollars]

Not considering YA or SFF? DOA.

 

[Dead Lion]

I hadn't heard of Conduit until this video popped up and I checked their site and they're accepting submissions.

>Yookay based
>Says out loud that they only accept submission from men
>also limit age


Poor sods will get sued under the equality act immediately and loose.

 

[homophobic fujoshi]

Worldcon has some drama again, with people stepping down because some controversy over using AI to choose panelists. I'm sure nobody is surprised that the woketard crowd that the Hugos cater to are also hysterical about AI. Good thing absolutely zero normal people care about the con or the awards so none of this matters.

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

So I rewatched Battle Royale the other day and wondered if Suzanne Collins ever talked about being inspired by it and holy shit, does she really try to claim she had never heard of it?

Come the fuck on, Lady. I would say they're different enough that it's unfair to call it a ripoff but not even acknowledging the inspiration is low. It's almost as bad as Mass Effect lifting from Revelation Space.

The editor of F&SF reitred. They gave it to a diversity hire black woman who does like afro-future-queen anthologies as a grift. She immediately stopped publishing it and only has come out with one issue in a year and a half and it's full of they/them shit now. Another staple destroyed.

This kind of shit is incredibly demoralizing

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

So I rewatched Battle Royale the other day and wondered if Suzanne Collins ever talked about being inspired by it and holy shit, does she really try to claim she had never heard of it?

Come the fuck on, Lady. I would say they're different enough that it's unfair to call it a ripoff but not even acknowledging the inspiration is low. It's almost as bad as Mass Effect lifting from Revelation Space.



View attachment 7426608

This kind of shit is incredibly demoralizing

Well, who else were they going to give it to? An actual competent person?

It sucks but ah well. Good thing a ton of the old issues are archived.

I hate the enshittification of reading as a hobby nowadays.



Thriftbooks now has this thing and it's 100% aimed at women. A lot of the damned QoL/feature things on the site are aimed at women or kids. Limited edition tote bags, deals on kiddie books or romantasy slop. I pretty much use Thriftbooks solely to abuse their free book vouchers whenever they have a really good deal going on (i.e. when they have an "earn 2x or 3x or 4x the points per purchase thing).

They're a fine enough outfit. I give em credit for quick customer service and free replacements/quick refunds.

I have a feeling that too many late millennials and gen Z people were never read to as little kids and that's affected a lot of stuff.

 

[Powerhouse of the Cell]

Well, who else were they going to give it to? An actual competent person?

It sucks but ah well. Good thing a ton of the old issues are archived.

I hate the enshittification of reading as a hobby nowadays.

View attachment 7428244

Thriftbooks now has this thing and it's 100% aimed at women. A lot of the damned QoL/feature things on the site are aimed at women or kids. Limited edition tote bags, deals on kiddie books or romantasy slop. I pretty much use Thriftbooks solely to abuse their free book vouchers whenever they have a really good deal going on (i.e. when they have an "earn 2x or 3x or 4x the points per purchase thing).

They're a fine enough outfit. I give em credit for quick customer service and free replacements/quick refunds.

I have a feeling that too many late millennials and gen Z people were never read to as little kids and that's affected a lot of stuff.

I unironically think that literature is one of the few industries that have become too female dominated.

The type of stories most female authors write are are the reason why YA novels are the way they are.
You are hard pressed to find a modern Tolkien, or Frank Herbert.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Are these the only fucking tropes women will actually read? Stop blaming clichés, blame Tumblr for putting these on a pedestal as "peak writing" for their smut.

 

[neverendingmidi]

I'm reading "Fourth Wing" right now (it's so I can get a sticker in my Kindle App, and it was part of Unlimited so at least I won't be permanently stuck with it), and WOW IT'S BAD.

Holy shit, this person has no concept of why a military works the way it does. It's trying to do Dark Academia, Dystopia, Fantasy, and of course pointless smuttiness... and for me all I see is a completely dysfunction group of sociopaths. Dark Academia (where everybody is competing and scheming and murdering each other) works if all are planning on going their separate ways after the schooling- but these characters are allegedly going to be in the military after their three years of training. Esprit de Corps? Fuck that, everybody gonna try and murder everybody then they'll be a totally functional military unit after school. Imagine how psychotic West Point grads would be if 3/4 of each class were killed off, not just through training accidents, but active murder by their classmates.

And the mentions of sex are just so pointless... yeah so and so are sleeping together, whoops, one got stabbed to death in sparring, oh well.

 

[TheMonkeyMan]

Kat Rosenfield retweeted Jesse Singal complaining about Alejandra Caraballo and dropped some lore:

"flashback to the time a certain outlet took me off the young adult publishing beat because of "concerns" about my "access""access" was of course code for "the goober Queen Bee of YA Twitter has threatened us with ruin if we continue to publish you and we're peeing our pants"

editor gave me this news by phone; I said, "this person has spent 2 years trying to blacklist and intimidate me away from doing accurate journalism about the YA world, and your editorial strategy is to... give her what she wants?"a very long uncomfortable silence ensued

in fairness this editor was just the messenger and clearly uncomfortable with what was happening; it's not his fault someone higher on the food chain decided to go Team Gooberbut they definitely went Team Goober"

https://nitter.poast.org/katrosenfield/status/1929922156009255386#m

Jesse followed up with this:

"Kat's too nice to say but this was Vulture. I had access to the stats and Kat's exceptionally good initial piece on this did EXCELLENT numbers. But the site just folded to a bunch of screeching idiots"

https://nitter.poast.org/jessesingal/status/1930063445304717761#m

Dollars to donuts that this Queen Bee was Justina Ireland.

(also, I would've used archive.is but there was a big backlog)

 

[nigel p poppycock]

Kat Rosenfield retweeted Jesse Singal complaining about Alejandra Caraballo and dropped some lore:

"flashback to the time a certain outlet took me off the young adult publishing beat because of "concerns" about my "access""access" was of course code for "the goober Queen Bee of YA Twitter has threatened us with ruin if we continue to publish you and we're peeing our pants"

editor gave me this news by phone; I said, "this person has spent 2 years trying to blacklist and intimidate me away from doing accurate journalism about the YA world, and your editorial strategy is to... give her what she wants?"a very long uncomfortable silence ensued

in fairness this editor was just the messenger and clearly uncomfortable with what was happening; it's not his fault someone higher on the food chain decided to go Team Gooberbut they definitely went Team Goober"

https://nitter.poast.org/katrosenfield/status/1929922156009255386#m

Jesse followed up with this:

"Kat's too nice to say but this was Vulture. I had access to the stats and Kat's exceptionally good initial piece on this did EXCELLENT numbers. But the site just folded to a bunch of screeching idiots"

https://nitter.poast.org/jessesingal/status/1930063445304717761#m

Dollars to donuts that this Queen Bee was Justina Ireland.

(also, I would've used archive.is but there was a big backlog)

It sounds like either Carabello or Sinyard. Sinyard was the one painted in a bad light in that article (rightfully so) and she has/had a blog and definitely Queen Bee vibes.

The article in question is 8 years old but a good read. Wasn't sure if it was archived. Here are the Nitters: (edited to fix link)

Nitter Archive 1
Nitter Archive 2

Wondering why Kat's bringing this up now? I don't know her or the other players in this saga but it's curious why she's mentioning it.

 

[TaimuRadiu]

So I rewatched Battle Royale the other day and wondered if Suzanne Collins ever talked about being inspired by it and holy shit, does she really try to claim she had never heard of it?

Come the fuck on, Lady. I would say they're different enough that it's unfair to call it a ripoff but not even acknowledging the inspiration is low. It's almost as bad as Mass Effect lifting from Revelation Space.

I never thought Hunger Games was really anything like Battle Royale as it wasn't like it thematically. It seemed like it lifted its premise off reality TV shows which are all over the TV dial. YA dystopia novels were around before then too.

 

[Flexo]

What is profitable is what some people have mentioned, which is the unique pipeline that the manga industry has in how these stories go from online light novel to cheap manga to cheap anime to cheap merch, and which the Western world is not remotely set up to replicate.

This literally baffles me.

Regardless of anything else or your feelings on anime, you have to admit that right now you can get a manga about anything you want. Boys or girls? Straight or gay? Kid or adult? Wholesome or degenerate? Fantastical or banal? Right now you can go read a manga about a rooster who fights demons or read one about a shy girl trying to make 100 friends. If there's almost anything you want to read, there's a pretty good chance you can find a manga or light novel about it.

So like.... in this age how are western publishers not jumping on this? Literally make everything. (well... we all have a pretty good idea...)

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

This literally baffles me.

Regardless of anything else or your feelings on anime, you have to admit that right now you can get a manga about anything you want. Boys or girls? Straight or gay? Kid or adult? Wholesome or degenerate? Fantastical or banal? Right now you can go read a manga about a rooster who fights demons or read one about a shy girl trying to make 100 friends. If there's almost anything you want to read, there's a pretty good chance you can find a manga or light novel about it.

So like.... in this age how are western publishers not jumping on this? Literally make everything. (well... we all have a pretty good idea...)

I'd love to see pulps come back in old school scale but it won't happen.