Literary Clusterfucks 2013

so why did it take root in THIS community

it took root in that community because it's a venn diagram of
- adults who think they're aspiring writers and want to create work in a book type that's optioned for a lot of whiz-bang film franchises (Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight, whatever) and are busy policing what the *wrong* approaches are so that people accept them as authorities
- adults who do spend much more time on social media and review sites than actually reading, and their time constraints/attention spans/actual interests are such that they are incapable of reading or relating to anything other than YA literature

or at least, this is what I gather from having read a few articles on the clusterfucks and personalities involved

call all destroyer's quote is also key: YA lit by design has a lot less moral ambiguity than adult lit, or makes a point of explaining why it is ambiguous, leading people to become completely pedantic about approach and structure

as readers, some of these people want clean resolutions and their preconceptions enforced -- it just happens that their new set of preconceptions are lined up with a social justice-oriented modern morality

the content of their arguments are nearly 180 degrees from the science fiction award douchebags who insist their genre is being ruined by social justice, but the tone and structure of their arguments are very, very similar

i agree w/ rob.

one argument that came to mind was "so, like, shakespeare shouldn't have written about othello?" but i assume the YA twitter/goodreads response would be "NO HE SHOULD NOT HAVE I CAN'T EVEN"

xp man that's a great point

ppl love to be inflexible :\

I agree with all your points except the last one. The reactionary sci-fi and video game fans are protective of their niche culture and hostile to outsiders. They don’t demand that much from people in their own community. The YA morality policd are on a crusade and the people they go against most fiercely are those who are already part of their community—like this author—but who were perceived to have slipped up. The idea is to enforce orthodoxy among their own ranks.

xp mh

It’s the difference between a pub (slovently right wing video game fans) and a church (YA identity politics people)

From the outside, this is starting to look like a conversation focused less on literature than obedience.

I’m kind of ?!? at premise of the book but having not read it, that’s it. I seriously doubt any of the GR reviewers were Kosovans or connected to the conflict in any way. GR has been a cesspool for bullying for ages as well.

the choice of the kosovo setting does seem a little arbitrary but idk

Actually the more I think of it, the more obviously it seems to be targeting the author for not “staying in his lane” - aka knowing his place & the things he should be allowed to write about. Ugh.

i just don't understand why there is so much drama in this community of people who write books for teenagers

Are sensitivity readers a thing outside of YA?

Is this where I once more try and proselytise tt's greatest invention - the 'noun'*? I think so. YA people are ultranouns. The nouniest. They absolutely depend on the ability to vainglorify the smallest differences and assert their cultural supremacy in an already-saturated marketplace of alt-mainstream orthodoxy and third-hand ideas. Gaiman and Palmer are their king and queen.

*derogatory term for quirky normies, name derived from their predilection to go by common nouns like 'spoon' or 'biscuit' on webforums circa 2008

It also reminds me of old LJ drama and this particular books community that was dedicated to reviewing & discussing the works of woc, and how that low-key space went to shit due to bullying. It doesn’t matter that the books themselves are for children, online it can be anything and there doesn’t even have to be money involved.

imago is the rarest noun obv

i just don't understand why there is so much drama in this community of people who write books for teenagers

― the scientology of mountains (rushomancy), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 9:35 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the answer is in your sentence: teenagers.

think that was the point tbh

sry

it was a subtle wording. in a YA novel, it would need to be followed by "he said, sarcastically"

does anyone here know much about what the cultural revolution was like in china? was the vibe similar? obviously the stakes were extremely different

― Trϵϵship, Tuesday, March 5, 2019 12:31 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would like this treesh quote bronzed and mounted on a plaque

not really relevant to the discussion, but I keep wanting to point out that Goodreads is owned by Amazon

Good reads is useless to me and I didn't even know that

I like getting goodreads connection requests as a kind of low level stream of validation but never look at the site anymore

are we not enough low level validation for you, treesh!?

lol if neglected my Goodreads account for a few years and when I checked back in there were a thousand connection requests

must have been a great feeling

I'm writing a YA novel about a guy who got a thousand Goodreads connection requests because that's the only experience I can authentically imagine.

:D

that grin was intended for a soccer thread lol. inadvertent ascii emojis are the only form of valid expression

I want to make a graphic novel of bitmojis

I only look at the goodreads reviews from a friend who is a librarian. I think he reviews books of all types and, thankfully, is not part of the YA review mob

I knew I'd appreciate his reviews when we agreed on The Martian, which I'd classify as YA based on the fact it's an easy read and nothing too adult happens. Neither of us would recommend it, though, because the writing is pretty bad

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