YABookgate

[PuddIeduck]

Came across this on X (Archive) and thought it might apply to here.

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I love how her pronouns are sometimes she, sometimes they. It's like she came out as nonbinary and then she skim-read her post to change the pronouns, but missed some.

Doesn't bear well for her abilities as a proof-reader in the editing stages.

Anyway, she seems like an unbearable cunt, and I want to make some AI pitches which start as she describes, and then descends into splattergore copaganda.

 

[Der weiße Teufel]

I love how her pronouns are sometimes she, sometimes they. It's like she came out as nonbinary and then she skim-read her post to change the pronouns, but missed some.

Doesn't bear well for her abilities as a proof-reader in the editing stages.

Anyway, she seems like an unbearable cunt, and I want to make some AI pitches which start as she describes, and then descends into splattergore copaganda.

I think it's one of those she/theys that expect you to use both, at random. The more confusing, the better.

 

[Flexo]

This is kinda off-topic for the drama thread but I want to know the opinion of the people here specifically.

I publish A LOT of flash fiction, under the title of every entry is a one-sentence blurb, the genre, style, and themes present so that people can quickly scan that and decide if they want to read that specific entry or skip to the next one.

I'm thinking of making an author website where people can 'collect' these stories as little trading cards with that information on them and a cute little graphic that represents the story (AI generated with some touch ups using old reliable image editing software)

In my head I'm thinking of a really gacha-y draw system where every card has stats associated with its genre, style and themes (god knows I could use a slice of that sweet mobile gaming pie). It makes me wonder how hard it would be to learn some bare-minimum javascript to actualize the concept into a shitty little mobile game or just some straight up HTML.

Tell me kiwis, does this idea have legs or is it some autistic daydream?

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So i floated your idea in a writing club I'm a part of and several liked the concept. Then someone pointed us to this:

http://www.aanpress.com/aanorder.html#tlcc

https://twitter.com/MTeasdalewriter/status/1713942151514538252

There's an effort for it to be made! Heck I may have a friend with a flash fiction or two to contribute if you get it going.

 

[Shaneequa]

So i floated your idea in a writing club I'm a part of and several liked the concept. Then someone pointed us to this:

http://www.aanpress.com/aanorder.html#tlcc

https://twitter.com/MTeasdalewriter/status/1713942151514538252

There's an effort for it to be made! Heck I may have a friend with a flash fiction or two to contribute if you get it going.

As much as I'd love to have this be a physical product you can hold in your hands, the logistics of that are very much outside of my capabilities.

So far I've just upgraded my Amazon product page with banner images for a couple chapters;



And got a barebones Hearthstone clone where u just bop each other with whichever card has higher numbers.

 

[Flexo]

As much as I'd love to have this be a physical product you can hold in your hands, the logistics of that are very much outside of my capabilities.

So far I've just upgraded my Amazon product page with banner images for a couple chapters;


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And got a barebones Hearthstone clone where u just bop each other with whichever card has higher numbers.
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nah that's what I'm saying you should see if you could connect to those people. They could help you with the physical product, and would probably love to have someone help them with the digital.

The clone looks fun though.

 

[Big Miss Steak]

For the Kiwis who asked about "squeecore", the words "stabby and cinnamon roll parings" are huge fucking tells. There's this overly cutesy juvenilia in some books written for an adult market toiday, John Scalzi's Kaiju Preservation Society was one of them that still gets quoted regularly for being cutesy garbage.

Damn this is on my To Read List and a copy currently sits on my shelf

I can't entirely blame YA agents for having long, specific lists of things they don't like in manuscripts or things they'd like to see. Even if I discount my creative writing programs/workshops, I know several people who have tried to write a YA novel. YA seems to be the genre that wannabe writers default to. I like to read people's writing and give constructive feedback. The amount of shitty YA manuscripts is really staggering. Can only imagine the utter garbage these agents have to wade through.

That said a lot of these diverse and genderfluid agents have retarded lists of things they like and don't like.

A tip to any kiwis trying to get something published. If you fit a diversity label, or any characters in your story do, or any themes in your story could be construed as "boundary-pushing" or "subversive," you want to mention it. But only mention it. Don't lean on it.

 

[Mine is the Fury]

Hilariously contradicting themselves with "no tabletop gaming novelizations" then "dark academia but replace it with tabletop gaming"

I think what she wants here is stories about tabletop gaming, rather than stories that are derived from campaign settings. Looking through her list, I think the kind of book she's looking for would be about a group of multi-ethnic (maybe one token White) teens, some gay, trans, or "queer", coming together in a vaguely magical school where they spend all their time thinking about who they *really* and what they *really* want, and occasionally getting together to play D&D while swapping Marvel-tier quips and being oh-so-much smarter than everyone around them.

Honestly, it wouldn't even be that hard to write. These people want to be pandered to and they make it very easy for you to do so.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

A Treatise on the State of Middle Grade and Young Adult Publishing Today

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/0fmP2

Might be worth a read. Was kind of weird reading about how YA books are too heavy to carry

YA books are often published in long, continuing series (typically fantasy at the moment) and the books are long in length and too heavy for backpacks (and too expensive). Again, not all books need to be shorter, but we need more shorter options. And please more stand alone titles. When I drop my kid off at high school she is just one of the many, many teens I see carrying 2 backpacks throughout school all day and yes, book size is an issue.
The movement away from paperback has made it harder for teens to easily carry and afford books, especially since most schools no longer offer access to lockers so those books have to be carried all day long in backpacks. I feel so strongly about this that I have also mentioned it multiple times.

Is this actually an issue? Who brings hardback novels to school?

MG novels are widely being challenged and that negative press is causing a lot of stigma and backlash. As chat rooms and library board meetings fill up with a small handful of people calling librarians Marxist communist groomers, there is a growing unease among some parts of the public about school and public libraries, publishing, and books in general.

Well, a certain segment of librarians absolutely are, I don't see how anyone can dispute this.

One hobbyhorse I have in this area is that virtually nothing YA is written to appeal to boys in the supposed age demographic, other than books about coming out as gay and learning to suck cock. (But they're totally not groomers, guys.) And of course that issue went unmentioned.

 

[Flexo]

Might be worth a read. Was kind of weird reading about how YA books are too heavy to carry

Funny you post this right as I was in the middle of a video looking back at Goosebumps. I remember that series and other YA books being thin and light. Smaller sometimes than even Light Novels.

 

[Mellorine]

Not that the divisions have ever been hard and fast, but Goosebumps were "Middle Grade", while Fear Street was YA. (And the Fear Street mini-paperback format was superior in most ways than the doorstopper hardcovers Twilight made hip.) I keep seeing Goosebumps referred to as YA in recent years, but both the age of the protagonists and the reading level of the prose skew awfully young for it. The rule of thumb is kids want to read stories about characters a few years older than themselves, so kids in late Elementary want to read about Middle Schoolers, which is what Goosebumps typically offered, Middle Schoolers want to read about High Schoolers (late Middle Grade books), and kids in High School want to read about older teens with cars building lives outside of school, hence 'Young Adult'. But as "Young Adult" became the hot genre, the boundaries got a lot fuzzier. There's also the more recently coined 'New Adult' designation, which are typically stories about college freshman in dramatically toxic relationships ala Colleen Hoover.

 

[Kiwisee]

Came across this on X (Archive) and thought it might apply to here.

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This cunt sounds like another Genderspecial who is a they/them not out of genuine dysphoria, but because she gets off on trying to confuse people and then “correcting” them when they inevitably see her as a she.

AKA, someone no self respecting author should ever work with

 

[Mine is the Fury]

When I drop my kid off at high school she is just one of the many, many teens I see carrying 2 backpacks throughout school all day and yes, book size is an issue.

Two backpacks? Do these retards bring all the books they need for the week with them every single day? When I was in high school I packed the books I needed for that day only and I had plenty of space. Essentials only and you'll have all the space you need for a doorstopper. That said, I do agree that if you're bringing something to read for the day during lunch it's nice to have something small and light. You could easily break a bigger novel down into individual chapters and sell them as a set. Best of both worlds.

 

[neverendingmidi]

Two backpacks? Do these retards bring all the books they need for the week with them every single day? When I was in high school I packed the books I needed for that day only and I had plenty of space. Essentials only and you'll have all the space you need for a doorstopper. That said, I do agree that if you're bringing something to read for the day during lunch it's nice to have something small and light. You could easily break a bigger novel down into individual chapters and sell them as a set. Best of both worlds.

Depends. I could easily go through something like any of the Belgariad books in a day when I was in high school. I usually had at least 4 books, from the adult section of the library at the time though usually trade paperbacks, in my bag at any given time because I read so fast. Granted this was in the 90's, so no e-readers or smart phone to lighten the load.

YA has this habit of sticking to thick, heavy hardbacks, and at best going to thick, heavy paperbacks, it's like trade paperbacks don't exist for the genre.

 

[Commissar Fuklaw]

One hobbyhorse I have in this area is that virtually nothing YA is written to appeal to boys in the supposed age demographic, other than books about coming out as gay and learning to suck cock. (But they're totally not groomers, guys.) And of course that issue went unmentioned.

Agreed. She doesn't understand at all and her being a librarian for so long and being upset with 'book banning' shows her ignorance. She's just another woman stuck in the arrested development mindset of being main character in 'Young Adult.'

In the mean time, readers ages 13 through 15 are left in a book wasteland wondering where and what they should be reading.

How about instead of pushing them to read gay shit, they do what the rest of us did and read the ubiquitous 'adult' books on our parents bookshelves. I know I didn't want to read "age appropriate books that speak to their current lives and issues." I wanted books that contained manly men, womenly women, villains, heroes, adventure, blood, romance, and sometimes even a little sex if I was lucky. Stories that showed when shit is rough, things will work out if you keep at it. That's what teens need, not stories about how they're special and misunderstood. I wasn't special and neither was anyone else.

Readers often can not tell by the cover who the target audience is.

This I agree with. Covers are so abstract and stupid and gay now. Do I have to bring out The Colour of Magic's comparison of when it was first published to the travesty of the modern cover? That's a hill I will die on: awesome covers.

 

[Kiwisee]

A Treatise on the State of Middle Grade and Young Adult Publishing Today

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/0fmP2

It might be worth a read. It was kind of weird reading about how YA books are too heavy to carry



Is this actually an issue? Who brings hardback novels to school?


Well, a certain segment of librarians absolutely are, I don't see how anyone can dispute this.

One hobbyhorse I have in this area is that virtually nothing YA is written to appeal to boys in the supposed age demographic, other than books about coming out as gay and learning to suck cock. (But they're totally not groomers, guys.) And of course that issue went unmentioned.

I noticed that the article brought up mega sellers like Harry Potter without an ounce of self awareness as to what made that series a best seller even years after it concluded.

(Rhetorically speaking), You know what Harry Potter doesn’t do that modern YA does?

Harry Potter never preached anything to the audience; whatever political issues showed up in the series were relevant to the wizarding world rather than our world. There was still the distinction between fantasy and reality. Regardless of what Twitter retards say, Harry Potter wasn't a preachy series because Rowling had no intention of interjecting her own beliefs into the books; she just wrote it out of passion.

I can no longer count the number of modern books I've dropped 10% in for being preachy drivel. If I am reading a fantasy series, I want a fun story with grand adventures and cool world building. I don't want to have yet another book preach “hate bad” to me for the umpteenth time.

I've also noticed the lack of heroic characters as of late in books, comics, and movies in the last few or so years. Most protagonists are self-serving narcissists who can't stand to be told “no”.

The “villains” are often based characters that are correct for not falling in line with the delusions of the protagonists.

Don't even get me started on the lack of stakes in these books; I am so fucking tired of “intergenerational trauma” writing trope that makes it clear the author needs therapy to deal with their (usually) daddy issues.

 

[Wodanaz]

I've also noticed the lack of heroic characters as of late in books, comics, and movies in the last few or so years. Most protagonists are self-serving narcissists who can't stand to be told “no”.

prime example of this is korra. while aang was a heroic example for young children to follow, korra is just a cunt in every sense of the word.

 

[Gnillik Yot]

Harry Potter does have political anti-racist metaphor (the villains are obsessed with being "pure-blood" and are opposed to intermarriage with Muggles) but it's done much better than many current YA authors. Rowling manages to get us on the same page regarding the themes of her books, and I think a big part of it is she doesn't have contempt for a large segment of her audience, so it doesn't feel like an angry lecture. A lot of current authors seem to have contempt for the segment of their audience that is white, and it shows.

For example, I know it's a movie and not a book, but I saw a movie on the airplane called The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster. In one scene early on, the main black girl is disrespectful to her white teacher. She calls her "Ms. Bitch" and refuses to go to the principal when ordered to. The teacher has to call an officer to haul her out of the room. So the black girl's father comes in and yells at the teacher for being racist. We are supposed to cheer in this scene, we are supposed to AGREE the teacher is racist and bad. But it doesn't make sense - I assume this white teacher wouldn't tolerate a white girl calling her "Ms. Bitch" either. Objectively, the teacher's actions seem color-blind. The people who made the movie are so incompetent that they couldn't even depict the teacher actually being racist - simply having her be critical of the black MC was enough!

That's the core difference imo between the anti-racist messaging of Harry Potter and the anti-racist messaging of Angry Black Girl and stories like it. It's funny that so many of the latter group hate Rowling and want to cancel her. She has more storytelling skill in her little finger than most of them put together.

 

[Boston Brand]

The issue with YA is they made the same mistake the comic book industry did.

Letting childless middle aged women and the fags take over, but also forgetting thier core market (kids) in favor of a lucrative but short lived older one.

For comics it was older nerds and divorced dentists. So we got reboot after reboot, grimdark "mature" stories and endless gimmicks like variant covers.

Issue is... there's would always be another generation of kids to pick up comics off spinner racks. There was only ever a smaller, shrinking group of nerds willing to pay $10 for a varient cover where Power Girl shows more cleavage. Even fewer who will pay $10 to have some mentally ill damger hair have Superboy get fucked by a Kpop star.

For YA? Harry Potter and Twilight. Chasing that one two punch killed so much of publishing, for reasons outlined here - swapping cheap affordable paperbacks for $30 hardcover doorstoppers - and not - swapping the massive market of young boys and men for a dwindling number of genderqueer cat ladies who flick thier beans to Edward Cullen and think every Republican is Voldemort was a disaster.

It's too late for the comic book industry to recover. Jury is out on publishing.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

prime example of this is korra. while aang was a heroic example for young children to follow, korra is just a cunt in every sense of the word.

Will be interesting to see how the NetFlix adaptation plays out. Had One Piece not happened I'd be assuming woke trainwreck. Now, well, we shall see, I guess. Never watched Korra, and only watched A;TLA once.

swapping cheap affordable paperbacks for $30 hardcover doorstoppers

Yet Brando Sando does kickstarter after Kickstarter, raking in the bucks with leather bound, illustrated chonkers. Though I suppose his audience is largely adult at this point, it is an interesting case study. The exception that proves the rule? I'm assuming Tor hates what he's doing, but are powerless to stop him; oh, look here's another Trump screed from John Scalzi. That'll sell books.

 

[Wodanaz]

Will be interesting to see how the NetFlix adaptation plays out. Had One Piece not happened I'd be assuming woke trainwreck. Now, well, we shall see, I guess. Never watched Korra, and only watched A;TLA once.

Spoilers for whorra. There's two episodes in season 2 called beginnings 1 and 2, korra gets amnesia for no reason (I'm not joking) and goes into a trance to see the story of Wan, who was the first avatar (allegedly, according to bryan and mike). He is a not so subtle reboot of Aang's character, with the trickster trope taken to a retard degree. Anyway the plot of the episodes end by retconning the ENTIRE avatar as a concept of basically being a deity who embodies the planet that acts as its defense mechanism to ensure balance between the four elements is kept. Now it is a human-spirit hybrid with this random light spirit called rava and for some reason this dark spirit called vatu will reincarnate every 1000 years and they have to fight him. Along with bending simply being given to humans by the lion turtles instead of being a discipline that humans have to master, this basically destroys the avatar. Also there is a scene where all the previous avatars including Aang are destroyed from existence by vatu when he rips rava out of korra. So now korra is the start of a new avatar line.
It's complete shit writing that totally retcons everything that happened in the last airbender. The reason E;R (look him up on youtube) gives for this is that the head writer of the last airbender was a man named Aaron Ehasz. He is absent from whorra and so bryan and mike (the creators) basically rebooted the avatar because they felt like it wasn't really their creation since Ehasz was the real genius behind avatar's plot and they resented that for some reason. I'm curious to see if any of this makes it into the netflix show.