All posts tagged lol pro authors

Patrick Ness, Save the Whiteys, Weird Tales and fandom

Patrick Ness has a problem.

What’s his problem, you ask? Why, being a white man who must shut the fuck up occasionally. We can all appreciate and sympathize with that, can’t we?

No? Didn’t think so.

Lest you claim I’m making shit up or taking shit out of context, here is Ness’ risible first paragraph.

I had intended to open this polemic with some version of this true story: earlier this summer, I was having dinner with friends and our conversation turned to the role of the veil in Islam, starting with how to explain a burkha to a son raised to believe that men and women are equal, before leading into the veil’s potential as a form of oppression against women.

Imagine this man’s skull. Imagine how very, very thick it must be to make him this terrible, this oblivious, this self-absorbed. Or maybe it’s just a lifetime of insulation, of being mollycoddled, through no merit, charm or intelligence of his own–but through the simple fact that he’s white, male, and a westerner. He’s never been said no to all his life. He’s lived however many years of it a spoiled little shit. His opinions are welcomed, valued, validated in all venues (such as, aha, The Guardian–which I incidentally find difficult to distinguish from The Daily Mail).

Then suddenly he’s told (or imagines that he might be told) that no, his opinions aren’t welcome all the time–that he might consider shutting the fuck up once in a while on issues of which he knows fuck-all about (and there are a great many of those. Like the hijab/burka, for example). That must be so tough. Oh, poor baby. Let me just hug him better with a machine gun.

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29 Comments
by acrackedmoon on August 23, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Other, Racefail
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Posted by acrackedmoon on August 23, 2012

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/patrick-ness-save-the-whiteys-weird-tales-and-fandom/

lulz of interest

Moritheil has a cousin, one Bobby Banagher, except instead of dicking around with co-opting LGBT discourse this dude co-opts anti-racist discourse instead. No, it’s not just that weeaboos suffer from oppression just like people of color–it’s that white people in general are targets of hurtful comments.

There are sometimes flippant remarks made towards whites on twitter that I find very hurtful. Like whites are privileged or hold down other races, which isn’t true nowadays at all with such things as Affirmative Action, having special scholarships for minorities, welcoming lots of different races into white countries, offering free welfare to poor minorities, donating to other non-White countries like Africa and Brazil, etc. Also there is especially a type of superiority that some American whites feel over Southerners who may don’t have their exact same values. Overall I’d say words that insult whites are words like cracker, hick, etc. Sometimes words like “fundie” also.

[...]

So basically, being called white can’t really be an insult in an English speaking, white dominated society with a successful white history. It’s like insulting a jock because he’s strong, fast, always wins and dates the prom queen. So you can try to find a way to undermine his moral character like calling him bigoted, racist or sexist. And those three things are the main attacks used to insult whites nowadays.

A follow-up occurred on twitter; the dude has since been suspended. Beware, it’s long and chock-full of racism.

Fantasy Faction is a kind of neckbeard den with some of the worst font/color scheme known to man, but they attracted a hilarious self-published dude who flipped his shit after his topic was moved to the “self-published” forum section.

I am not a small press or even self published. M. R. Mathias’ books are PUBLISHED by Michael Robb Mathias Jr. and should be treated no differently that any big named publishers title. WHY? Because I do my job as a publisher too. Please quit sending my posts into the self published/small press thread. My titles are neither. I have 92k twitter followers @DahgMahn and 10 titles in their genre bestselling list. There is nothing self pubbed, or small, about books written by M. R. Mathias.

Twitter follow-up.

It looks like Laurell K. Hamilton is blowing up–again–in true Anne Rice style.

Why will they hate you? So many reasons, here are just a few.

They may hate you for the color of your skin, your sexual orientation, that you’re prettier than they are, that you’re uglier than they are… that you write better than they ever will, that you have a happy family & they don’t, that your married & they want to be, that you’re single & they want to be, you have kids, you don’t have kids, you have a bigger house than they do, better job, no job, a lot of money… getting more sex than they are . . . The list goes on forever.

Yes, a straight white woman born and bred in the United States of White Supremacists can certainly teach us a lot about how being hated for any of these things is precisely like being hated for the color of one’s skin or one’s sexual orientation. I imagine her Amazon average for her latest plotless sex scene must’ve gotten to her. Anyway, some other writer or whoever chimed in.

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15 Comments
by acrackedmoon on May 25, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by acrackedmoon on May 25, 2012

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/lulz-of-interest/

intermission! white men’s tears and the insecurity of the privileged

The subject refers to the idea of white woman’s tears, which sometimes comes into contention due to its gendered nature. But that’s not what I’m here for today, oh no. I’m here to point out that white men too will cry, and cry and cry, and flood the Internet with their tears. Or their jizz, or both, since I’ve come to suspect that many of them jerk each other off as they write the things I will soon link.

You will have heard of the Bakker brouhaha, if you are here. Let’s have a chronology:

You may be thinking I’ve willfully obscured something. Surely, surely no grown adult man could go on about that one post from August 2011… six months later? Surely not? I must have consistently attacked him! Blogged about him! Many times! Perhaps I may even have personally harassed him! Such is the way of bitchy, angry feminists: we hound offensive men to the end of the earth. So much so that their sales figures suffer and their family goes poor. (For your perusal and pleasure, try this bit of flash fiction by Elodie.)

Alas, no. I made but that one post. Ever after any mention of Bakker on this blog has been peripheral, because I didn’t care about him all that much, and wouldn’t especially want to read his books. But there it is: Bakker stewed over this, apparently, for six entire months. Peter Watts, who is a magical friend of Bakker’s, proceeded to call me “a rabid animal.” Something which even a person who finds me “toxic” recognizes as a loaded term. Not that Peter Watts would admit there’s any problem with him saying that because even if I’d been a fellow nerdy white boy he’d have called me the same, though even after having been told I’m a woman of color it did not stop him from graduating to “foul, rabid animal” which tells you all you need to know. You can go through the rest of that exchange, but I’m more interested in the larger picture of this. Which is: why is it that these people are so deathly afraid of being called sexist, racist, or any such thing… to that froth-at-the-mouth point where they go on to compound the offense by actively being sexist or racist?

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67 Comments
by acrackedmoon on February 19, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Genderfail, Intermissions, Racefail
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Posted by acrackedmoon on February 19, 2012

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/intermission-white-mens-tears-and-the-insecurity-of-the-privileged/

search queries, links of interest, more author meltdowns

I still haven’t read Sarah Diemer’s lesbian retelling of the Persephone/Hades story, The Dark Wife, but from the passing glance I gave it, I’d say that despite being self-published it’s of the same standard as any professionally published YA. Diemer’s writing is even fairly readable, which is more than can be said of the vast majority of YA, so take that as you will.

Anyway, she wrote These Are Not Your Stories: Reclaiming Archetypes in the GLBT Community, which is an interesting read. Also, she and Jenn, now her wife, are adorable! They look so happy. Diemer herself seems like a really sweet person and I rather hope I won’t end up saying “wow, The Dark Wife is tripe.” I also liked this post.

Most gay YA with gay main characters ends with the main character not getting the boy or girl s/he has been thinking about/wanting/in a relationship with. The relationship ends badly. The boy/girl turns out to be straight or “just experimenting” or falls in love with someone else. Things don’t work out.

Let me say that again. Because it needs to be emphasized: Most gay YA with gay main characters ends with the relationship not working out.

These books are lauded, over and over repeated forever, as “realistic.” “The relationship was so realistic!” “The ending was perfectly realistic.” Realistic is used so often in reviews of gay YA that I notice when it’s NOT used.

On which note, I must say I’ve never read a book with a queer/female/chromatic protagonist (or all three) and thought “my god, it’s so unrealistic! It needs more homophobia/misogyny/racism. Bury the gays! Bury ALL the gays!” In fact, in my experience the people who insist loudest on the -isms and -phobia for the sake of “realism” tend to be the neckbeards. You know, the ones who are least affected by any -ism or -phobia? Mm-hmm.

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9 Comments
by acrackedmoon on January 15, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by acrackedmoon on January 15, 2012

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/search-queries-links-of-interest-more-author-meltdowns/

in which YA writers behave like their target age-group, Eoin Macken is a homophobic fucknut, and other links of interest

Teacup Tempest: Kira at goodreads wrote a review of Julie Cross’ Tempest, pointing out several damning passages reveling in its condemnation of a “man-hating feminazi” straw character (while complaining that misandrists are scum, that “man-bashing” is sexist and makes her want to scream, and that she’s had “young men look at [her] with genuine fear” because she’s a feminist, which… uh?). Dan Krokos, represented by the same agent as Cross, enters the field and uses [Club of Mansplaining]. It is ineffective! He and a bunch of other YA authors flipped their shit on twitter (many of whom having since deleted their tweets; Krokos’ and Cross’ agent Suzie Whatsherface speed-deleted her goodreads account). My favorite of the lot is Lauren de Stefano trotting out this little tidbit:

STEFANO. I’d even venture to say GR makes 4chan look like a hallmark card from my own loving granny.

It’s funny how pretty much everybody who uses 4chan as a hyperbolic analogy knows nothing about 4chan. I’ve never seen Nazi symbols and porn posted on goodreads. Have you?
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15 Comments
by acrackedmoon on January 5, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Other
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Posted by acrackedmoon on January 5, 2012

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/in-which-ya-writers-behave-like-their-marketed-target-audience-and-other-links-of-interest/

STAR WARS: where feminism goes to die, racism goes to thrive, and Drew Karpyshyn continues to prove that tie-in writers are worthless

I wasn’t going to do anything with Karpyshyn’s Revan except treat it as another bit of evidence that tie-ins can’t be taken seriously and that Star Wars is, overall, kind of shit and utterly lacking in anything of merit. Two things made me review this, at least partially, because you can’t pay me to read every word of this juvenile tripe.

The first is that it is another bit of evidence that tie-ins can’t be taken seriously and its worth is somewhere in the region of subzero. Not a single word in this text hints at an imagination, originality, or that the writer is capable of writing at any level above “lowest common denominator Star Wars fanboy who only reads other Star Wars fanfiction and nothing but.” You could dig and dig, and not a single sentence would present itself as evidence that Karpyshyn has ever read anything more advanced than movie novelizations, D&D fiction, and possibly Eragon.

The other is that this book is what you’d get if Jim Butcher contributed to the turdpile of Star Wars tie-ins instead of his very own Anita Blake-derived turdpile.

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8 Comments
by acrackedmoon on November 22, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Genderfail
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Posted by acrackedmoon on November 22, 2011

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/star-wars-where-feminism-goes-to-die-racism-goes-to-thrive-and-drew-karpyshyn-continues-to-prove-that-tie-in-writers-are-worthless/

on ebook piracy and why throwing a shitfit about it makes you look fucking stupid

There are few things more entertaining than pro authors flipping their shit over ebook piracy.

We could be nice and sweet and let our work get taken for free, a chunk at a time. And starve to death. Then, no more quality fiction.
Don’t tell me that the wave of the future is all free stuff. (To begin with, the Internet is not ubiquitous yet. It just feels that way to anyone in it.) Look, I can produce a better product when I take more care with it. That’s just the way it is. When I am properly paid for the care I take–when it’s possible (even if hard work) for me to feed my kids on what I make from writing–I don’t have to spend eight to ten hours at the office then come home and scrape up energy to write. I can spend those eight hours writing. (And then usually another three or four writing too, but that’s another blog post.)

[...]

Do you really want to wake up one day and have nothing but shoddy fanfic[1] for free on the internet in the place of books, quality ebooks, and quality fiction? Yes, you and I know it’s not going to happen. People love their books and music too much.

–Lilith Saintcrow

Even if that study says what you thought it did, you would still be asking me to believe that potential sales (which I can’t see and nobody has any way of proving) are somehow equivalent to the thousands of downloaded copies I can see people STEALING. If you even try to pull out the “well, maybe those people stealing it wouldn’t have bought it in the first place, so you should be grateful”, I will only repeat, fuck you very much. This is like saying car theft increases brand visibility, so nobody should be worried or upset about it. It’s just plain ridiculous.

— Lilith Saintcrow

Unless with many other m/m writers, I can actually eat (or get my teeth fixed or buy a couple nice steaks) even if I sell no book at all. (For the record, my sales appear to be steadily growing, but at a fairly slow pace. I’m curious if “Scorpion” and “Dark Edge of Honor” will have an impact, one because it’s universally well-received, and the other because it’s from Carina Press, which has an enormous reach that not many publishers can offer).

I have friends who need the royalty payments to eat. To buy a new (or a better used) computer. Where selling books means the difference between having a roof over their heads and not.

–a worthless hack

Piracy comes with costs… to the publisher, to the author, and yes, to the reader. it costs you books. Want to know how? Read on.

–some nobody I’ve never heard of

Show me someone who’s homeless and starving due to piracy and I’ll show you a liar. Or at least someone who has no grasp of economics, statistics, and consumer habits.

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17 Comments
by acrackedmoon on October 30, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Other
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Posted by acrackedmoon on October 30, 2011

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/on-ebook-piracy-and-how-many-pro-authors-are-fucking-stupid/

R. Scott Bakker: Prince of Misogyny

I admit that I’ve never read beyond five pages of Bakker’s debut novel The Darkness that Comes Before. It may have something to do with the fact that the thing opens with a little boy being repeatedly raped, though really the writing is leaden as fuck too.

What you need to know about Bakker’s books, though, is that in his setting women are–objectively–spiritually inferior to men. And that, throughout his books, people are raped a lot: not just women, mind, but even so. It’s a lot of rape to go around, a lot of juvenile grimdark. A lot of people complained about this. Bakker fired back with this:

In a Q&A you did five years ago, you brought up the issue of exploring sexism in the guise of what if religious tracts were correct about the “inferiority” of women. Despite this, you’ve received some flak for the lack of female characters that aren’t variations of the “crone, whore, or saint.” Has this affected your portrayals of some of the female characters?

When it comes to the misogyny charge my answer has been fairly consistent, I think. First, that I am a sexist, insofar as I think men are generally less competent than women across the majority of modern social contexts.

Awwww isn’t he adorable. He thinks this will let him off the hook! Isn’t it just the cutest? Maybe it’d have been if Bakker was ten.
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179 Comments
by acrackedmoon on August 16, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Fantasy, Genderfail, Other
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Posted by acrackedmoon on August 16, 2011

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/r-scott-bakker-prince-of-misogyny/

DECEIVED: how Paul Kemp deceived someone into paying him to write

The second novel set in the Old Republic era and based on the massively multiplayer online game Star Wars®: The Old Republic™ ramps up the action and brings readers face-to-face for the first time with a Sith warrior to rival the most sinister of the Order’s Dark Lords—Darth Malgus, the mysterious, masked Sith of the wildly popular “Deceived” and “Hope” game trailers.

Malgus brought down the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in a brutal assault that shocked the galaxy. But if war crowned him the darkest of Sith heroes, peace would transform him into something far more heinous—something Malgus would never want to be, but cannot stop, any more than he can stop the rogue Jedi fast approaching.

Her name is Aryn Leneer—and the lone Knight that Malgus cut down in the fierce battle for the Jedi Temple was her Master. And now she’s going to find out what happened to him, even if it means breaking every rule in the book.

I like that even in product descriptions you still get the copyright sign by “Star Wars” and the trademark sign by “The Old Republic.” I’m tempted to say that this is, really, all you need to know about this book.

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5 Comments
by acrackedmoon on August 8, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Books, Fantasy
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Posted by acrackedmoon on August 8, 2011

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/deceived-how-paul-kemp-deceived-someone-into-paying-him-to-write/

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