YABookgate

SpeedOSanicRee said:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw...ox/article/81635-we-need-diverse-editors.html
Ugh.

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Fantasy and science fiction novels are metaphors for our world.
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Short Answer: Nope. No, they're not. Go kick rocks.

Or as this dead white dude put it:

“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”

J.R.R. Tolkien
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Long answer: Okay, maybe they can be, but only very rarely does it work when tried. Stanislaw Lem wrote science fiction in cold war era Poland at least in part because he could do it without being censored. Arguably at least some of what Ursula K. LeGuin wrote was done deliberately to pick up on political themes. And before Atwood turned all cowardly and Islam became a protected class she specifically said the Haidmaid's Tale was written with Ayatollah era Iran in mind as much as it was anything else.

But, bitch, you ain't Lem, LeGuin or Atwood. And you'd be hard pressed to find much that is Mormon in Sanderson or Trotskyist in Mieville. Why? Because they're telling stories, not shitting out "metaphors."

Also:


After the first Hunger Games movie came out, racist fans were shocked to learn that Rue, a major character and friend of Katniss, is black. “Awkward moment when Rue is some black girl and not the little blonde innocent girl you picture,” one viewer wrote on Twitter.
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LOL, bullshit. Though I admit I have no memory of how Rue was described in the the books. Was she in fact described that way? And blackwashed in the movie?
 
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Elwood P. Dowd said:
LOL, bullshit. Though I admit I have no memory of how Rue was described in the the books. Was she in fact described that way? And blackwashed in the movie?
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Rue's black in the book - both of the kids from her district are. But there were people that glossed over it and thought of her as white.
Technically, Katniss is described as olive-skinned, as well, but the sort of people who delighted in calling out racists over Rue had much less evidence for their claims of large numbers of latino girls complaining about Jennifer Lawrence getting cast.
 
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Elwood P. Dowd said:
Long answer: Okay, maybe they can be, but only very rarely does it work when tried. Stanislaw Lem wrote science fiction in cold war era Poland at least in part because he could do it without being censored. Arguably at least some of what Ursula K. LeGuin wrote was done deliberately to pick up on political themes. And before Atwood turned all cowardly and Islam became a protected class she specifically said the Haidmaid's Tale was written with Ayatollah era Iran in mind as much as it was anything else.
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I honestly wonder how many of these authors even meant to include allegories in their work or if that's something English teachers read way too much into. I have been in the unique position of having this happen to me with me in the room. In college, I had to write a short story for English and everyone in class would discuss each other's. They read so much into mine that wasn't even there. It was just something I came up with to fill a bit of plot that was dragging. And it made me wonder how many of these stories weren't metaphors at all, but just 'I want to write about dragons burning down a village because dragons are awesome' and it was just blown out of proportion.
Elwood P. Dowd said:
LOL, bullshit. Though I admit I have no memory of how Rue was described in the the books. Was she in fact described that way? And blackwashed in the movie?
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Next Task said:
Rue's black in the book - both of the kids from her district are. But there were people that glossed over it and thought of her as white.
Technically, Katniss is described as olive-skinned, as well, but the sort of people who delighted in calling out racists over Rue had much less evidence for their claims of large numbers of latino girls complaining about Jennifer Lawrence getting cast.
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Even if she wasn't black, being surprised by that doesn't make you racist. I was surprised when Grover from Percy Jackson was black in the movie. That didn't mean he wasn't a good character (that whole movie was so bad it doesn't even really matter), but I'd been picturing someone like Mr. Tummus from Narnia so I was taken aback at first. Doesn't make me racist for thinking that.
 
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SpeedOSanicRee said:
I honestly wonder how many of these authors even meant to include allegories in their work or if that's something English teachers read way too much into.
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I want to believe it's to help encourage free-thinking or an attempt to get into the author's head to know their thought process for coming up with such "allegory", but it could also just be a result of "open interpretation" English teachers like to promote. It probably makes them feel smart wanting to carry on a discussion on something that's more-or-less super insignificant, but unless the author comes out and says everything's bullshit or reveals what it was they were going for in telling such a story, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

But a lot of "allegories" that people come up with are retarded or just an extension of what they already believe, so it's possible there's a lot of ass-pulling/self-projecting going on.
 
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Reminds me of this old meme:

J5ZjHOb.jpg
zX41LPF.jpg
 
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SpeedOSanicRee said:
This time people are SHOCKED that a bunch of famous authors could cause this. What's next, the poor girl gets her diploma taken away?
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I've looked at the article and literally who? I don't recognize any of those names.

Also this quote is just hilarious.

“Authors are real people,” Dessen wrote in a Tuesday tweet. “We put our heart and soul into the stories we write often because it is literally how we survive in this world. I’m having a really hard time right now and this is just mean and cruel. I hope it made you feel good.”
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Fucking hell, woman, act your age.
 
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Kari Kamiya said:
I've looked at the article and literally who? I don't recognize any of those names.

Also this quote is just hilarious.


View attachment 1011853
Fucking hell, woman, act your age.
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If authors want to feel good about themselves, they should stay off social media
 
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Kari Kamiya said:
I've looked at the article and literally who? I don't recognize any of those names.

Also this quote is just hilarious.


View attachment 1011853
Fucking hell, woman, act your age.
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She's almost 50???? This is behavior I'd expect from a new author, not an experienced one.
This was my favorite:
'To Dessen’s defenders, including literary big names like Jodi Picoult and Roxane Gay, Nelson’s quote showed how teen girls’ experiences are marginalized and YA fiction is not given the respect it deserves.'
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Oh yes it fucking is. And yes, teen girls' experiences ARE marginalized because most other demographics don't go through what they do. Even teen boys go through their own shit. But nobody is talking about that.
Someone in a Tree said:
If authors want to feel good about themselves, they should stay off social media
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I never understood why people don't get that. What, does being famous mean you're supposed to be immune from criticism? I see entirely too many celebrities old enough to know better (Tess Holliday, Sarah Dessen, fucking Taylor Swift) who think everyone needs to like them or else.
 
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This book exists. Published by Simon & Schuster, by their Pulse imprint. Can't find it to pirate, but it was available on my library's website. Kinda blows, b/c without a PDF I can't easily copy/paste chunks of text I know I'm gonna wanna preserve for another day.

The reviews are peak GoodReads, too. This one is almost as long as the damn book. This one is woke white girl who doesn't dare say she hated it...even though she points out a bunch of contradictions and confusions. And that all the characters are, well, pretty racist. But plz don't hate on her!

The game appears to be basically a racist Hearthstone, limited to the Melanin enhanced. Whitey need not apply.

Slay

by
Brittney Morris (Goodreads Author)
4.27 · Rating details · 1,195 ratings · 460 reviews
By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the "downfall of the Black man."

But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for "anti-white discrimination."

Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?
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Pray for me. I'm going in. Will I learn "what it means to be unapologetically Black " with a capital B? Stay tuned! I cannot mentally not call it "Slay Queen," but that's me.
 
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I wish we were still in that golden age where authors didn't give a fuck, smoked and drank cheap liquor equivalent to gasoline and then shot themselves in the head before reaching 50.

I miss those days.
 
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Sometimes I wonder who’s more execptional YA authors or readers.
SpeedOSanicRee said:

And yet another pile on over somebody (who is not in the age demographic) not liking a YA book. This time people are SHOCKED that a bunch of famous authors could cause this. What's next, the poor girl gets her diploma taken away?
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This is not surprising especially coming from YA authors. Mostly middle aged women who mentally left their teen years and act worse than the characters they create with their mean girl mentalities. You would think they would have learned something from the Zhao debacle, but no, the vicious cycle continues.

edit: forgot to finish a sentence.
 
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