YABookgate

[Elwood P. Dowd]

This genderblob has xir own website. The art is about what you'd expect:

Spoiler: i don't even think gay wine aunts find this sexy

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The "slumlord" looks vaguely Jewish. Or perhaps like a pajeet?

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

I suspect they wouldn't appreciate if I asked about her(I assume this is a "her"?) receding hairline, despite the "anything" claim, but beyond that I was curious if I would find the books as repellent as my instinctual reaction was to the picture.

This debut contemporary fantasy features a lovable cast of queer, BIPOC characters, witty writing, and a sapphic slow-burn romance, An Unlikely Coven is perfect for fans of A Discovery of Witches, An Unkindness of Magicians, and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches.

Troonslation:

This debut contemporary bullshitery features a deranged cast of queer, BIPOC subhumans, awful writing, and a vomit inducing tranny orgy, A Burnt At The Stake Coven is perfect for mentally ill bastards pretending to be witches.

 

[Goonon]

I had never heard of this author until I saw this tweet by Orbit books:
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I suspect they wouldn't appreciate if I asked about her(I assume this is a "her"?) receding hairline, despite the "anything" claim, but beyond that I was curious if I would find the books as repellent as my instinctual reaction was to the picture.

And after looking it up, yup.


Doubtless Orbit is well on its way to fiscal solvency publishing such towering works of fiction; certain to sweep their way up the bestseller lists.

... AM? Is that they/their birth name or did she choose it? Does it stand for Allied Mastercomputer? Should we be worried?

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

I had never heard of this author until I saw this tweet by Orbit books:
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I suspect they wouldn't appreciate if I asked about her(I assume this is a "her"?) receding hairline, despite the "anything" claim, but beyond that I was curious if I would find the books as repellent as my instinctual reaction was to the picture.

And after looking it up, yup.


Doubtless Orbit is well on its way to fiscal solvency publishing such towering works of fiction; certain to sweep their way up the bestseller lists.

I wonder how would xhe react to the question such as "Have you thought about being different, as in keeping it to yourself?"

 

[Fcret]

Somewhat adjacent to YA fiction in general - I was kinda surprised to discover in one of my wikipedia deep-dives that most of the big literary magazines for genre fiction in Japan have gone under.

The big one I'm aware of is Dengenki Bunko Magazine, which is where stuff like SAO, Shakugan no Shana, and Spice and Wolf were first serialized. Apparently it ended in like 2020 and it went under my radar due to COVID.

No wonder the current landscape is just narou slop.

 

[Rezza]

Somewhat adjacent to YA fiction in general - I was kinda surprised to discover in one of my wikipedia deep-dives that most of the big literary magazines for genre fiction in Japan have gone under.

The big one I'm aware of is Dengenki Bunko Magazine, which is where stuff like SAO, Shakugan no Shana, and Spice and Wolf were first serialized. Apparently it ended in like 2020 and it went under my radar due to COVID.

No wonder the current landscape is just narou slop.

Dude, SAO IS Narou
It's the one that proved the Narou-published pipeline format works, the floodgate opened after that

 

[Fcret]

Dude, SAO IS Narou
It's the one that proved the Narou-published pipeline format works, the floodgate opened after that

The primordial slop ooze runs so deep...

Legit though, I'd thought he predated narou proper. I didn't realize that site spawned all the way back in 2004.

 

[Rezza]

The primordial slop ooze runs so deep...

Legit though, I'd thought he predated narou proper. I didn't realize that site spawned all the way back in 2004.

Narou is the true OG of webnovels, Japan pretty much invented that medium
Hell, they even have webnovels for those dumb flipphones even back then
The entire country just loves to read

 

[Heinrich Maneuver]

Little bit of Alchemised seething on bookstagram....
https://www.instagram.com/p/DPWiRpQE-eI Black Woman complaining this book isn't 'diverse enough' and if you read Alchemised because you want to support POC/Tranny authors you must be reading OTHER approved(TM) poc/tranny authors. Truly Asians are seen as eastern whites and not POC enough lmfao. Also just becoz SenLinYu is nonbinary it doesnt make it 'diverse enough' either!


She ends the video seething that because YOU read a book by a POC nonbinary you must ALSO follow her because she is black and nonbinary. So an Asian nonbinary woman can ONLY write about asians/pocs and trannies in order for her book to count as diverse enough? IK at the end of the day everyone is just big mad this HP fanfic got picked up instead of their super special OC world but its very funny when they mask off and admit east asians arent exotic enough to be POC

 

[Briananderson1138]

Ma'am, society has gotten tired of racial activism at this point. We are desensitized to your condemnations.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

Little bit of Alchemised seething on bookstagram....
https://www.instagram.com/p/DPWiRpQE-eI Black Woman complaining this book isn't 'diverse enough' and if you read Alchemised because you want to support POC/Tranny authors you must be reading OTHER approved(TM) poc/tranny authors. Truly Asians are seen as eastern whites and not POC enough lmfao. Also just becoz SenLinYu is nonbinary it doesnt make it 'diverse enough' either!
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She ends the video seething that because YOU read a book by a POC nonbinary you must ALSO follow her because she is black and nonbinary. So an Asian nonbinary woman can ONLY write about asians/pocs and trannies in order for her book to count as diverse enough? IK at the end of the day everyone is just big mad this HP fanfic got picked up instead of their super special OC world but its very funny when they mask off and admit east asians arent exotic enough to be POC

The worst garbage of the video for me is that the fat "enby" pig is angry that the author didn't critque oppressive systems. No fun (even if it's stupid) allowed. You can only write books with a woke agenda.

 

[Chandelier]

Little bit of Alchemised seething on bookstagram....
https://www.instagram.com/p/DPWiRpQE-eI Black Woman complaining this book isn't 'diverse enough' and if you read Alchemised because you want to support POC/Tranny authors you must be reading OTHER approved(TM) poc/tranny authors. Truly Asians are seen as eastern whites and not POC enough lmfao. Also just becoz SenLinYu is nonbinary it doesnt make it 'diverse enough' either!
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She ends the video seething that because YOU read a book by a POC nonbinary you must ALSO follow her because she is black and nonbinary. So an Asian nonbinary woman can ONLY write about asians/pocs and trannies in order for her book to count as diverse enough? IK at the end of the day everyone is just big mad this HP fanfic got picked up instead of their super special OC world but its very funny when they mask off and admit east asians arent exotic enough to be POC

I wonder how many of those books on her shelf have black people in them. That one book looks like Rebecca Yaros' series.

 

[Heinrich Maneuver]

I wonder how many of those books on her shelf have black people in them. That one book looks like Rebecca Yaros' series.

I hate the current trend of garish sprayed edges and everyone displaying them that way so you can't read the spines- however there are several authors like Tracey Deonn on her shelves alongside the usual YA slop like VESchwab so she has at least purchased poc books. I'll note that after going through her page a lot of her Black/POC authors are modern YA tiktok/social media darlings/contemporary, and I don't want to call that a white woman social media genre, however no Tony Morrison or Colson Whitehead or James Baldwin? And no African authors like Tansi or Mabankcou while she's reading the 'classics' (I would call those 'real' Black authors rather than socialmedia bookslop which is so trite and recycled. It's like Bridgerton imho, why bother learning about real black people history or struggles when you can just put them in a white environment and claim thats Representation) There's a couple pictures of her reading and highlighting books like Afropessism, but all her videos/reviews are on white books.
She is constantly seething about popular booktok books- calling the girlies 'booktok bimbos' for reading Sally Rooney and regularly crashing out about (white) books getting popular while being 'problematic'. She also dedicates a lot of posts to anti-ICE rallies or Drumpf. I also wonder if her intense hatred for SenLin the chinese Alchemised author has anything to do with her being a fat black woman living in Korea lmao.

(I also think a lot of her snarking on books is performative; I defo think a lot of the hidden book spines are authors/books she's declared as problematic but still wants to keep. She has massive fujo vibes as well. idk if she's got Fourth Wing but a few of the sprayed edges are familiar to me for trashy white author bookbox stuff lol. I'll keep an eye on her for the next booktok Drama. she's still going on about Alchemised and 'not speaking over marginalised communities)

 

[Fcret]

I will grant a concession to the black booktok KWEENZ by not reading Alchemised.

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

(I also think a lot of her snarking on books is performative; I defo think a lot of the hidden book spines are authors/books she's declared as problematic but still wants to keep. She has massive fujo vibes as well. idk if she's got Fourth Wing but a few of the sprayed edges are familiar to me for trashy white author bookbox stuff lol. I'll keep an eye on her for the next booktok Drama. she's still going on about Alchemised and 'not speaking over marginalised communities)

Fujos becoming political by talking about racisms and homoscare (other than tranny shit)? Yep, they are now 100x more annoying.

 

[Heinrich Maneuver]

Yep, they are now 100x more annoying.

Fujos have always been annoying. Anytime someone under the age of 30 tells me they are ''queer'' or ''sapphic'' amongst the lit types, i roll my eyes, unless you're a muff diving lesbo or some worn out twink sucking cock in clubs anyone using those terms is 9/10 times hetereosexual.

A bit of 'drama' that I don't think was reported here was the decision by Illumicrate (IL) to only allow 6 skips per year for the bookbox subscription has surprisingly divided the subscribers. It seems that IL had a big problem with people reading the previews/hints for that months book and then deciding to skip, so they decided to ban skipping altogether.
The comments are divided, the immediate reaction was from subscribers who weren't happy about the limit on skips- many subscribed due to the unlimited skips so they could definitely get the exclusive copies of books they wanted without having to go through resellers (another kettle of fish); while the later reaction was from bookinfluencers and other accounts defending the 'diverse' representation and asserting if you didn't want titty-on-titty action in your books you were a homophone. Some IL customers are cancelling because of too many M/F romances, some are cancelling because of too many F/F romances (the books this year seem to be about 50/50 split) and now neither will have the ability to skip that box while still retaining their space on the subscription list so they are just cancelling overall (- the obvious decision is to split the genres FF and MF but whatever, romantasy is definitely more of a 'self insert' genre, so it makes sense that fags will want fag shit, and housewives will want some buff shadow daddy to read about.)
Subscribers are also unhappy with the general quality of books, repetitive plots, debut novels they don't want to fork out a ton of money for, too much romantasy and not enough fantasy (i don't know if IL offers multiple genres like other book crates) etc etc...
Please see these poorly put together collages of comments:
Side one: Get better books and we won't skip so many!

Side two: nooo muh diverse books...

however one brave commenter wanted more M/M romance and this reply from IL made me lol.

men not pitching gay lit to illumicrate, a female dominated bookbox designed for social media? say it AINT so...
They also seem to have an issue with being able to now sell out of something you have already subscribed to, rather than ensuring there is enough supply for all subscribers or capping the number of subscribers to fit with the supply, so I assume supply chain issues also influenced this decision. Either way, an interesting business choice and a fair bit of seethe. The obvious solution imho is to keep the unlimited skips and when books are skipped allow those on the waiting list to get that box in a randomly-selected-raffle type of deal, but like the comments suggest, some books IL just can't seem to give away!

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

Fujos have always been annoying. Anytime someone under the age of 30 tells me they are ''queer'' or ''sapphic'' amongst the lit types, i roll my eyes, unless you're a muff diving lesbo or some worn out twink sucking cock in clubs anyone using those terms is 9/10 times hetereosexual.

Right, no different from "Male feminists" who are usually fatsos who only want to get laid.

They also seem to have an issue with being able to now sell out of something you have already subscribed to, rather than ensuring there is enough supply for all subscribers or capping the number of subscribers to fit with the supply, so I assume supply chain issues also influenced this decision. Either way, an interesting business choice and a fair bit of seethe. The obvious solution imho is to keep the unlimited skips and when books are skipped allow those on the waiting list to get that box in a randomly-selected-raffle type of deal, but like the comments suggest, some books IL just can't seem to give away!

Weird way to sell books, honestly, perhaps the romance market is a bit different?
Yet this is not too different from fanfiction flame wars.

 

[Super Mario Brothers]

Anecdotally, I can tell you that the news headlines about plummeting literacy in the US have convinced many of my friends with kids to all do the same thing - put aside time each night to read to their children. I should add this is applies primarily to my white friends (hispanics are also included in this).

My East Asian, SEA, or South Asian acquaintances have reacted very differently - they're going all in on weird programs and tricks to get their children to be able to 'read' by age 5 or so. A few of the very Americanized ones are reading to their kids, but the majority of the "recent immigrant from non-western country"-types are going all in on this weird "teach to the test" idea of literacy.

Fun aside - I worked under a Chinese guy (from China, he was in the PLA and everything back in da day) for a biomed research gig at a university. His wife (also Chinese) was a lawyer. I came around to their house one time for a party they were throwing and got to meet their son who was around 13 at the time. The son was absolutely obsessed with historical fiction and would not stop wanting to talk to me about the Byzantine Empire. I thought this was pretty amusing and chatted with him a bunch but his parents seemed oddly disappointed that their son was so interested in fiction and history and Romans instead of caring about robots or science olympiads or what have you. It's just such a weird situation because your typical white family would be overjoyed that their son is not only actively reading for pleasure but reading about things that are so fundamental to a higher understanding of our civilization and where it comes from.

Anyway, this is all anecdotes. I do think there's probably a deep hunger among the Asian immigrant kids to engage with literature and culture that just isn't being properly cultivated at home.

Don't Chinese people tend to be very enthusiastic when it comes to their own culture though? Especially when it comes to ancient China. I see the labels wuxia and xianxia in a lot of online spaces now and even though I only have a surface level knowledge of it, from what I can tell it seems to be spreading a lot.

Black Woman complaining this book isn't 'diverse enough' and if you read Alchemised because you want to support POC/Tranny authors you must be reading OTHER approved(TM) poc/tranny authors. Truly Asians are seen as eastern whites and not POC enough lmfao. Also just becoz SenLinYu is nonbinary it doesnt make it 'diverse enough' either!

This felt surprisingly racist, I wonder what she would have said without the politically correct veneer.

---

This whole video is good but the timestamp around 16:13 is what stood out to me. The depression reaction despite never reading smut actually freaked me out. I know almost nothing about any of the books listed but I'm a bit scared to. What are they actually putting in it? Hardcore BDSM?

(I started writing this post yesterday so sorry if it seems late, I'm very sleepy.)

 

[Fcret]

men not pitching gay lit to illumicrate, a female dominated bookbox designed for social media? say it AINT so...

Women don't want real gay romances. They want fluffy feel good wholesome chungus gay stories with men who might as well be women for how they act.

Subscribers are also unhappy with the general quality of books, repetitive plots, debut novels they don't want to fork out a ton of money for, too much romantasy and not enough fantasy (i don't know if IL offers multiple genres like other book crates) etc etc...

The booktok masses yearn for the return of fiction magazines. They just don't realize it.

Don't Chinese people tend to be very enthusiastic when it comes to their own culture though? Especially when it comes to ancient China. I see the labels wuxia and xianxia in a lot of online spaces now and even though I only have a surface level knowledge of it, from what I can tell it seems to be spreading a lot.

I'm incapable of answering this sincerely without being slightly racist so I'll just go for it.

Wuxia and Xianxia are both genres with long and esteemed histories that have, in the present year, devolved into the worst sort of web novel trash.

The sense I get being around Chinese recently extracted from the mainland (not heritage Chinese-Americans, they're culturally just white people at this point tbh) is that they don't really regard fiction as being all that useful or important. It's entertainment on the same level as jerking off or doomscrolling twitter - none of these are really 'bad' things but they're a waste of time compared to grinding for the bug exam.

@Rezza is a little closer to the sinosphere in his neck of the woods so he might have a more even keeled answer than I do.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ffvRhsViyIQThis whole video is good but the timestamp around 16:13 is what stood out to me. The depression reaction despite never reading smut actually freaked me out. I know almost nothing about any of the books listed but I'm a bit scared to. What are they actually putting in it? Hardcore BDSM?

Women are extremely empathetic and these kinds of femlit smut books use various narrative gambits to make it easy for female readers to insert themselves in the story. Even someone trying to be detached about it like Second Story can easily find herself wrapped up in imagining the scenario in her head and becoming emotionally overwhelmed.

Having skimmed some of this stuff, I wouldn't say it's all that outrageous content-wise (light BDSM and consensual noncon at worst in most of them). It's just that, for a lot of women who read it, they can't really help but unconsciously simulate their own emotional response to the scenario of "fucking some evil dude who is hot but she hates" that has been engineered into the story and it's overwhelming for someone who doesn't regularly consume romance.

tl;dr it's just women shit

 

[Old King Koaleamos]

Wuxia and Xianxia are both genres with long and esteemed histories that have, in the present year, devolved into the worst sort of web novel trash.

The genres have at least been around in modern form since the 1920s, which coincides (roughly) with the rise of Sword & Sorcery (Robert E. Howard) and the beginnings of modern western fantasy (Merritt and Dunsany)

The sense I get being around Chinese recently extracted from the mainland (not heritage Chinese-Americans, they're culturally just white people at this point tbh) is that they don't really regard fiction as being all that useful or important. It's entertainment on the same level as jerking off or doomscrolling twitter - none of these are really 'bad' things but they're a waste of time compared to grinding for the bug exam.

Oh yeah Chinks view it as superfluous entertainment.