Literary Clusterfucks 2013

teenagers should read fewer YA novels and more elisa gabbert tweets

Are sensitivity readers a thing outside of YA?

i was curious about this too so poked around a bit but didn't land on a clear answer because i got distracted by the apparent fact that tons of first time YA authors seem to have withdrawn books after sensitivity reader feedback. which i'm entirely in favor of, anything to cull the herd.

id be ok with that only if the last sensitivity reader on duty each time had to also commit harikiri so that we were assured theyd taken the whole thing srsly enough

In his statement, Jackson invoked his young readership by mentioning the “responsibility that comes with introducing readers to certain topics.”

these people are wildly self-important

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, March 5, 2019 7:16 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wonder how much of the YA boom is down to the U.S.'s extreme devaluation of teaching as a profession

¿?

has ilx had a good literary rockism clusterfuck

xp to silby: I know, it's pretty farfetched; but I just feel like, if you are someone who feels deeply invested in the personal moral & psychological development of young people*, even to the point of "wild self-importance"—that is a fine, very good thing! There are socially acceptable outlets for that: become a teacher, a mentor, a youth sports coach. But in the 21st century United States, for anyone raised in a middle-class-or-above household, choosing to become a teacher basically means consigning yourself to a lower standard of living than your parents enjoyed in order to do something you love. If precarious existence as a teacher is the "safe", responsible career choice, why *not* go balls to the wall and chase those dreams of self-publishing your way to Hollywood adaptation megabucks?

* Admittedly this is complicated by the fact that most YA readers are adults; still, the ideal of the "young person reader" is always in the background, and seems to drive (some) authors' aspiration to create works which serve a pedagogical purpose, albeit not in a standard classroom setting.

Can’t we all agree that fewer YA novels is a good thing, regardless of how it is achieved?

YA as a concept is infuriatingly patronizing and aggressively commercial. There's less handholding outside of the English-speaking world when it comes to literature, thank fuck.

tbh I was reading Michael Crichton books in middle school and uh some material in there could have used some policing

YA as a concept is infuriatingly patronizing and aggressively commercial.

Only when its adults who are herding the young, like sheep who must be kept inside the YA sheep pen. If young people find YA novels attractive, then their reading them is no more harmful than their reading what used to be called "comic books" when I was young.

The key thing is not interfering in the reader forming a relationship with reading and authors being allowed to tell the stories they want to write. When that process is aggressively channeled by adults, its just driven by greed and fear. Luckily, the young will eventually find their way into the channels that address their interests, not those of the adults around them. It's something teens are pretty good at.

regardless of how it is achieved?

― Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Wednesday, March 6, 2019 8:34 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh the means justify the ends do they

I say more YA books, a more diverse array of characters and authors, and fewer circular firing squads.

adults who exclusively read and think about YA novels should try doing other things with their time for a while

What's weird is that YA is missing the zero-sum element that, say, Hollywood has. Like, for instance, if there's a black filmmaker with a script about the Green Book, that movie is likely not going get made now. However if your Kosovo War novel is successful there will probably be 10 other YA Baltic war books published in the next two years.

srebrenica the teenage witch

ok no

Lol

IRL lol.

cancel cancel cancel

most disgusting ilx post i ever read 2/5

You mean you've never been so disgusted in your life.

Unë kurrë nuk kam qenë kaq i neveritur në jetën time

i would like to apologise to everyone affected by this. my forthcoming book of YA atrocity-related puns is off to pulp city, my loves!

The harm, imago—think of the harm!

also we're overlooking Keyes writing 'Baltic War', maybe a YA novel set amidst the Finnish guerrilla struggle against the Red Army is next

a YA novel set amidst the Balearic War of mid-noughties ILM

oh sorry, I'm cancelling my post

I feel like i’d be good at writing YA historical fiction tbh

Whoever dares riff on the Ceaușescu years will be cancelled by my FPs.

Treesh you should write YA set in Renaissance Italy obv

Angsty teen michelangelo and his faithful neapolitan mastiff Dante solve a series of mysteries in 15th century Florence, finding themselves more often than not on the wrong side of the Medicis

“Looks like I’m not going to make it to the studio today!”

I’m already counting my money.

Round it off with a Chuck Tingle-style erotic interlude.

These would be good books honestly

Angsty teen michelangelo and his faithful neapolitan mastiff Dante solve a series of mysteries in 15th century Florence, finding themselves more often than not on the wrong side of the Medicis

― Trϵϵship, Wednesday, March 6, 2019 11:13 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao

I'm so on board already

tick.jpg

See you’re all joking about this & I’m thinking about this infamous supernatural fanfic that was set during the Haiti Earthquake aftermath and was about the two lead actors being white saviours. It was a MESS. Just this utter intersection of the grotesque and hilarious.

Did someone drop the “rockist” bomb up thread? If so, yeah—there’s some valuable discussion here, but whenever the conversation veers away from awful YA fans into critiques of the thing itself I’m just reminded of Bill Maher’s rants, post-Stan Lee’s death, about how comic books and everyone who reads them are all stupid. The thing that bums me out about this whole trend is basically some stupid adults threatening to ruin the very good thing that is the current onslaught of diverse representations in stories for younger readers.

Angsty teen michelangelo and his faithful neapolitan mastiff Dante solve a series of mysteries in 15th century Florence, finding themselves more often than not on the wrong side of the Medicis

― Trϵϵship, Wednesday, March 6, 2019 11:13 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

didnt matthew pearl write this already

See you’re all joking about this & I’m thinking about this infamous supernatural fanfic that was set during the Haiti Earthquake aftermath and was about the two lead actors being white saviours. It was a MESS. Just this utter intersection of the grotesque and hilarious.

― gyac, Wednesday, 6 March 2019 18:42 (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know youre just going to shout at me for saying this but...why are you thinking about this!

i mean you could think about *anything* why this

regardless of how it is achieved?

― Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Wednesday, March 6, 2019 8:34 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh the means justify the ends do they

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Wednesday, March 6, 2019 12:06 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I just mean the fewer Harry Potters and descendants, the better.

xp because it was so incredibly weird as a concept and because there was so much discourse around it, just the “why????” sense of the setting

see

thats what caught the publishers eye you just know it

the "publisher" of fanfic is the fan tho -- and i think by definition fanfic is looking to get a bit out of order, so limits are bound to be crossed somewhere

Angsty teen michelangelo and his faithful neapolitan mastiff Dante solve a series of mysteries in 15th century Florence, finding themselves more often than not on the wrong side of the Medicis

― Trϵϵship, Wednesday, March 6, 2019 6:13 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

WOULD READ THO

i did not know we were discussing fanfic obv all involved should be braised

I can't get too worked up about any layer of this "scandal" I guess. I know there are good books in YA literary history that are set in another time or country or culture written by people who shared NONE of that history or country or culture--some of them are books I think of fondly and often. But it's not a good state of affairs. That should stop being encouraged in the industry, possibly even stop being allowed. More YA should come from people with personal experience in the topics & identities they weave into their books.

On the whole Jackson probably is probably getting unfortunately harsh treatment considering that he has several other complicated marginalized identities and deserves support and chances to succeed! Still, you'd think it might be possible not to A. set your work in the middle of a real historical genocide and B. not make the bad guy one of the persecuted minorities? I mean it's kind of a mess.

That should stop being encouraged in the industry,

hmmmm

possibly even stop being allowed

ah ffs madness. madness!