YABookgate

[Alteregousername]

I'm just here to say Audra Winter has one of the most punchable faces I've seen in a long time. Take a creative writing class, listen to the feedback and go to fucking speech therapy you loser

That series also faced a ton of flak on tumblr for being racist- a lily white rich Prince boy and his dark skinned animalistic bound in chains lover with tons of noncon-dubcon elements (and tbh i agree, its definitely a choice. It's sort of a racist fujo take on Wuthering Heights in a way) alongside the fact its just fujo yaoi slop. it's a shame authors nowadays can 'get away with it' by claiming to be trans/'nonbinary'.

Words cannot describe how much i dislike Xiran, R F Kuang, Molly X Chang, Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life), ShenLi, and their ilk. The faux-deep uber pretentious 'dark academia' Hapas and their 'isn't suffering Deep' books have haunted the womens lit section for too long imho.
They are also all women haters- Xiran is the worst offender, being 'nonbinary' and her book is literally just 'I'm not like other women i don't want to be oppressed' with mechas, while Kuangs new book's protag is explicitly anti-women (its her 'flaw' she must get over and central to the plot... yeah right). I have very little patience for modern YA/NA seeped in 'I'm not like other girls'isms. I do wonder if all the halfAsian women have some kind of cultural hatred of women (one child policy and all) beat into them which seeps into their work. X Chang seems to have a fetish for being oppressed by Japanese/Romans who commit war crimes and dedicated her book (A Zutara knockoff) to her grandfather who was a victim of war crimes in Manchuria (Personally I am looking forward to the shit show of her still delayed sequel).

Xiran is incapable of not inserting herself into whatever the lastest drama is so I'm just waiting for her to wade into this and speak with the authority of a *checks notes* mediocre mecha slop book

 

[Agares]

I’ve seen a woman’s car with a bumper sticker that proudly says she reads smut on it. Imagine shamelessly advertising being a gooner on your own damn car that you drive to work. Now any car with bumper stickers about reading “books” is instantly suspect to me.

Why can’t they have the decency to keep this shit on the internet and leave it there?

 

[Alteregousername]

I’ve seen a woman’s car with a bumper sticker that proudly says she reads smut on it. Imagine shamelessly advertising being a gooner on your own damn car that you drive to work. Now any car with bumper stickers about reading “books” is instantly suspect to me.

Why can’t they have the decency to keep this shit on the internet and leave it there?

It was when I saw people recommending books on TikTok based on 'spice level' that I realised things had gone badly wrong. Just admit you're ranking books by how much explicit sex they contain that you can imagine yourself in, because that's what you're doing, and you should be embarrassed about it.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

I’ve seen a woman’s car with a bumper sticker that proudly says she reads smut on it. Imagine shamelessly advertising being a gooner on your own damn car that you drive to work.

Gooners in general will have softcore plastered all over their cars, and women will proudly advertise their OnlyFans as well. It really comes off as EPI at times and that we have failed as a society for tolerating such blatancy.

 

[Fcret]

I do wonder if all the halfAsian women have some kind of cultural hatred of women (one child policy and all) beat into them which seeps into their work

It goes deeper than that. Respect for wahmen is something beaten deeply into the western psyche primarily by Christianity. Even prior to feminism, there was a general understanding in the west that women possessed equal dignity to men and deserved protection (even if they weren't necessarily permitted the same social status and privileges). While it's not perfectly realized, there's extremely strong mores against hurting or taking advantage of women even if they're unrelated.

In East Asia, such a mindset is new and not really fully internalized to the same extent it is among us westoids. Confucian values put women in a position of being considered less human than men. Family rules everything and there's traditionally a certain toleration towards mistreatment of unmarried/unrelated women (assuming you're fine offending the woman's family).

The faux-deep uber pretentious 'dark academia' Hapas and their 'isn't suffering Deep' books have haunted the womens lit section for too long imho.

Dark Academia just strikes me as a generation of overeducated women with poor career prospects (a lot of the dark academia authors seem to have degrees in the humanities/social sciences) longing to go back to college where they could just do schoolwork and feel like they were important.

It comes off as a little pathetic.

 

[Hirbowedge]

RF Kuang

This bitch pisses me off. Praise Babel got for it's imaginative take on linguistics is absurd. The magic system that's so widely praised doesn't make any sense at all. It's just a 'do what the author' says button and people treat it like this super thought out hard magic system.

I feel like the people praising it are all monolingual people. For the uninitiated, Babel has a magic system based on translation. Quoting the fan wiki: " a trained translator, inscribes a word or phrase in one language on one side of a silver bar and the corresponding word or phrase in a different language on the other side. If the meaning is lost or not properly conveyed, it doesn't make it to the other side, as there is no perfect translation; the missing piece becomes manifested as the magical effect."

If I recall correctly, the first example of this in action is the following. A character is sick and an evil whitey (as all of Kuang's white characters are evil) produces one of these bars. The bar has the word 'treacle' on one side and the latin word 'triacula' on the other, which means 'antidote' or 'medicine'. The bar is waved over some molasses, and the molasses becomes a cure-all.

Cool. Neat system right? Wrong! The problem is, the way she writes these effects have zero actual logic involved. I'm curious if she actually does speak any other languages.

I speak multiple multiple languages, and have cursory knowledge of a number of others. I am generally interested in linguistics and histories of words. Maybe I am overestimating myself, but I feel like if I can't reliably produce these word-pairs, then the system doesn't have any actual consistency or internal logic at all.

Let's try a fun example: The Turkish (vulgar) word for cock is "Yarrak". As it happens –and this is immensely funny for Turkish teenage boys who come across this, "Yarrag" also means weapon in Turkmen. (As in the language of the country of Turkmenistan. This has hilarious consequences for the names of some state organizations.)

So let's try our hand at some silver magic. You write 'Yarrak' on a side of a silver bar, and 'Yarrag' on the other. What's the expected outcome? Well?

If you ask me, there is none, because the system doesn't make any fucking sense. Does the bar make your dick a weapon, the drill that can pierce the heavens? Does it make actual weapons it's exposed to limp and floppy? Is it fantasy viagra? What does actually happen? Does it do just whatever the author wants it to do? Completely arbitrary? Then what's the point of the system? Why is this system one of the main advertising points for this steaming pile of shit?

I know this is not the topic, but I actually get pissed off whenever I get reminded of this dogshit books existence. Last time I went to a bookstore, they had it advertised in the fucking windows.

---

The magic system isn't even the fifth biggest problem with the book. Her hatred of white people but veneration of stuff they have built, her shallow and pointless characters, her braindead politics and a lot more.

But this has been rolling around in my mind for quite a while, and I needed to write it down somewhere.

 

[Fcret]

lmao I thought she's chinese, that's fucking hilarious
She definitely hates her Japanese self

The question - does she hate her white side or her Japanese side more?

 

[Chandelier]

The question - does she hate her white side or her Japanese side more?

White. She openly dislikes white people despite her fic and book featuring only white people. I have no idea why a Jap is using a Chinese name in the first place. She also grew up in the Pacific Northwest so she's whiter then Stephanie Meyer.

Take a creative writing class, listen to the feedback and go to fucking speech therapy you loser

Even if you don't take a creative writing class, listening to feedback is important. You want your work to be SOLID - it will never be universally likes but you want to keep mistakes tons minimum. Sarah J. Maas' assassin books had this issue where the assassin used a sword that people could HEAR her take out and had long, flowing hair. Assassins used whatever weapons the situation called for, but mostly daggers.

While not YA, Phillippa Gregory had this issue with the overuse of "fool" in her Boleyn novels.

Dark Academia just strikes me as a generation of overeducated women with poor career prospects (a lot of the dark academia authors seem to have degrees in the humanities/social sciences) longing to go back to college where they could just do schoolwork and feel like they were important.

What you expect in dark academia: Bloodborne
What you get: Hey dude, where's my car? Legally Blonde Edition

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

I was reading The History of Middle Earth today and got a horrible bout of existential dread.

We will never have a writer anything like him again. Nobody so dedicated to their craft like that. We're all completely tamed by technology and that ara is dead and will never be brought back. We will only have garbage to consume from now on. It;s so fucking over.

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

I was reading The History of Middle Earth today and got a horrible bout of existential dread.

We will never have a writer anything like him again. Nobody so dedicated to their craft like that. We're all completely tamed by technology and that ara is dead and will never be brought back. We will only have garbage to consume from now on. It;s so fucking over.

For fantasy? There's only people chasing that. I don't think we'll ever get another Tolkein. Hell, we'll never get another Robert E. Howard.

But, I think the 20th century was just the peak of entertaining genre fiction across the board. Mysteries, adventure, science fiction, fantasy, and so on.

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

I was reading The History of Middle Earth today and got a horrible bout of existential dread.

We will never have a writer anything like him again. Nobody so dedicated to their craft like that. We're all completely tamed by technology and that ara is dead and will never be brought back. We will only have garbage to consume from now on. It;s so fucking over.

I like the imaginarium Tolkien has established over his lore. It's a shame I grew up with Harry Potter as opposed to the LOTR series (Books & Films) - I think I would be much happier instead.
Of course, I'm catching up as of late, but it feels different compared to those who grew up with it. Alas, there is great things to take it away from it, even from the perspective of a VERY amateur writer.

A toast to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien!

 

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

I like the imaginarium Tolkien has established over his lore. It's a shame I grew up with Harry Potter as opposed to the LOTR series (Books & Films) - I think I would be much happier instead.
Of course, I'm catching up as of late, but it feels different compared to those who grew up with it. Alas, there is great things to take it away from it, even from the perspective of a VERY amateur writer.

A toast to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien!

It makes me feel like we're the Elves of our age right now. We're fading out and watching the world move on. Except there's no hope in this new Age of Men because in our Arda the orcs and the forces of darkness have won and the West is crumbling.

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

I like the imaginarium Tolkien has established over his lore. It's a shame I grew up with Harry Potter as opposed to the LOTR series (Books & Films) - I think I would be much happier instead.
Of course, I'm catching up as of late, but it feels different compared to those who grew up with it. Alas, there is great things to take it away from it, even from the perspective of a VERY amateur writer.

A toast to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien!

Tolkein, Howard, Dunsany, Lovecraft, Lewis, and the rest of those early fantasy writers did good work that's still the driving force. I fully recommend everyone interested in classic fantasy to take a peek at the pre-Lord of the Rings stuff.

 

[Flexo]

Tolkein, Howard, Dunsany, Lovecraft, Lewis, and the rest of those early fantasy writers did good work that's still the driving force. I fully recommend everyone interested in classic fantasy to take a peek at the pre-Lord of the Rings stuff.

Oh dudes! Go read The Night Lands. William Hope Hodgson wrote Lovecraftian fiction before Lovecraft.

No really, the book was reviewed by Lovecraft and CS Lewis both. It's a trip.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10662

 

[Elite Kipchak]

I'm just here to say Audra Winter has one of the most punchable faces I've seen in a long time. Take a creative writing class, listen to the feedback and go to fucking speech therapy you loser

I love audra winter. she's the natural result of telling children (esp girls) that they're perfect, valid, etc and never criticizing anything ever. If anyone ever actually gave a shit they would have told her to seek out some sort of editor/mentor to temper her passion into something that actually has value. instead they just say "oh that's great sweetie, you're such a great writer!" and her retard autism brain interprets that into her being the next great author.

 

[gmax alcremie]

Oh dudes! Go read The Night Lands. William Hope Hodgson wrote Lovecraftian fiction before Lovecraft.

No really, the book was reviewed by Lovecraft and CS Lewis both. It's a trip.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10662

I looked up reviews and I think this one sold it:

I love this. The setting and monsters are metal af. Plus it’s unintentionally hilarious. The writing is supposed to sound like someone from the 1600s but sounds more like a parody of pirate speak. The story is kind of like watching someone play an RPG. The narrator’s HP is depleted by journeying and fighting, he rests and consumes potions (or tablets in this case) to restore HP, he manages his inventory, he heals and commands (or more like abuses and bickers with) members of his party. Entirely and incredibly repetitive but amusing. The romance is very bad, unless you have a foot fetish. But lo (as the book would say) I became invested in this strange world and kept reading on. Even through the second half which is incredibly tedious, but I definitely recommend reading parts of it aloud to your friends and enemies for a laugh. A strange and fascinating experience best enjoyed while high. I wonder if it influenced classic RPGs like Dragon Quest.

 

[Welf Welf]

and commands (or more like abuses and bickers with) members of his party.

I'm calling it: a woman wrote this. That is such a modern woman way to interpret the narrator's relationship with the only possible other character this bit could be implicating. Sperging out about the second half of the story ahead:

Spoiler: rageposting

Naani is the daughter of a high-ranking official in the Lesser Pyramid, when it falls to the forces of the night she's outside for the first time in her entire life. She has no idea what she's doing. Conversely, the narrator has been trained for this, he's trained for combat and survival, and he knows how dangerous this world is. So when Naani starts acting silly he shuts her down immediately because there could be a monster anywhere, even (literally) under their feet, at any moment. He even goes so far as to pick her up and throw her over her shoulder to stop her from wandering off at times. There's no time for games in the night lands, and there's certainly no time for womyn stronk bullshit when humans are not the apex predators any longer. The narrator's stern paternalism born of genuine concern and danger is of course interpreted as abuse by 2020s idiots. Naani redeems herself of her prior foolishness when the humped men injure the narrator and she goes hard as a motherfucker with the diskos and drags the unconscious narrator to safety, something modern reviewers always fail to mention when whining about how abusive and mysoginsitic the narrator is.

 

[Fcret]

I love audra winter. she's the natural result of telling children (esp girls) that they're perfect, valid, etc and never criticizing anything ever. If anyone ever actually gave a shit they would have told her to seek out some sort of editor/mentor to temper her passion into something that actually has value. instead they just say "oh that's great sweetie, you're such a great writer!" and her retard autism brain interprets that into her being the next great author.

One of the major "mask-off" moments for Audra from my PoV was when she hyped up her book by saying that she got "the editor for the hunger games."

What? I'm sure the editor for the Hunger Games has edited hundreds of manuscripts at this point. How does that tell us anything about yours?

From that point onward, I couldn't help but keep noticing all the shit she did that was supposed to subtly imply to the audience that her book was great without actually showing anything from it.

Someone on Youtube or Twitter or some other godforsaken social media site put it best - she doesn't want to be a writer, she wants to be the creator of a cultural phenomenon.

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

Oh dudes! Go read The Night Lands. William Hope Hodgson wrote Lovecraftian fiction before Lovecraft.

No really, the book was reviewed by Lovecraft and CS Lewis both. It's a trip.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10662

Hodgson was part of that pre-Lovecraft/post-Poe stage of horror where things got weird. Machen, Blackwood, Hodgson, and Chambers were all pretty good.

I'll also mention A. Merritt. He was another big influence on Lovecraft and was the big fantasy guy before Tolkein. He was big enough to have gotten his own pulp magazine too! Guy was also a legitimate literary figure of his time. Merritt influenced and inspired tons of stuff, from Lovecraft and many Weird Tales writers, to the creation of DC's Dr. Fate (read Ship of Ishtar), and even got to meet Lovecraft. (It didn't go well)

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

It makes me feel like we're the Elves of our age right now. We're fading out and watching the world move on. Except there's no hope in this new Age of Men because in our Arda the orcs and the forces of darkness have won and the West is crumbling.

View attachment 8027548

Have faith. Our Eru Ilúvitar will do wonders still, but our road will be hellish, for sure.

Tolkein, Howard, Dunsany, Lovecraft, Lewis, and the rest of those early fantasy writers did good work that's still the driving force. I fully recommend everyone interested in classic fantasy to take a peek at the pre-Lord of the Rings stuff.

Cheers!