YABookgate

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how? I ask because I'm curious but never going to watch it so feel free to include spoilers, I avoid CW shows like the black plague.
They have a couple of episodes where the black character (Ned Nickerson from the books, he goes by Nick in this version) talks about microaggressions and police brutality and such. My least favorite moment is when he and his Asian girlfriend (George) talk about how they need to defend each other against microaggressions and be more attuned to every slight. But in general, these moments don't overshadow anything and are well done and actually go along with the storylines. They also diversified the lineup by racebending Ned and George and making Bess a lesbian. But I think they still get the core group dynamics right and it's much better than the average CW show, though it does look cheap at times. I think it's produced by CBS, so it's not as mired in the CW fog.

And yeah, the Tom Swift spinoff is probably a lot worse and woke. I haven't gotten around to watching it, the backdoor pilot was eh. He showed up in a Nancy Drew episode because they have rights to the Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift but not the Hardy Boys, so the characters who are the Hardy Boys are obviously the Hardys but they're not allowed to have last names, lmao.
 
Not sure about Nancy Drew but I know they made a spinoff based on the Tom Swift book series. Which people might not be familiar with but it's very old sci-fi series that began in the 1930's or so? I think the latest series is actually still going.

First order was of course to make the main character black. And it's a show about a billionaire genius hero prodigy hacker playboy inventor engineer agent hero gay African-American dude (no I am not exaggering for comedic effect). For *some* reason nobody wanted to watch that shit and the CW cancelled it after just 5 episodes.

There's updating an old IP for a modern audience, and then there's whatever the fuck this shit is.
LMAO I should tell my boomer dad about that since he had a bunch of Tom Swift books growing up. I can't imagine how surreal watching something like that would be for the average boomer who remembers Tom Swift. Probably like a bad acid trip.
 
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It's also true sometimes with long-term partnerships, such as Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickmann - Hickmann is the "idea" guy, Weis does the bulk of the writing. This is especially evident in how terrible Hickman's solo books were written, while Weis's showed a style consistent with their collaborative efforts.
I think my favorite Margaret Weis trivia is that she literally NEVER reads Fantasy. Hasn't for decades by now.
 
I think my favorite Margaret Weis trivia is that she literally NEVER reads Fantasy. Hasn't for decades by now.
Makes sense, if you want to be creative you read non-fiction and then regurgitate it into more original, fantastic output. If you're going to read fantasy, you're just going to regurgitate cliches.

Kind reminds me of how Bill Finger used to fill up his brain will all kinds of random real-life facts which came in handy when coming up with plots for Batman stories.
 
I think my favorite Margaret Weis trivia is that she literally NEVER reads Fantasy. Hasn't for decades by now.
That’s the same with alot of science fiction and fantasy writers that are actually good. They tend to either not read it or don’t have an established background in writing it before they start.
 
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It's been years since I read Mistborn, but I remember thinking it read like a YA. I thought it was a good read, but I'm not a fantasy reader.

This is what the representation fetish is doing to fiction of all media.

We're going to put someone who looks like YOU! in the story! Someone marginalized, someone who's POC, someone who does weird stuff with their genitals, someone who's much too precious and darling and special to be a boring ol' boy or girl! (Ew!) And when we do, we don't DARE suggest you might have flaws, or things to learn, or challenges to overcome that might be too much for you, or any problems of your own making! No, no, you are perfect just the way you are!

Is it any wonder most of our cultural landscape looks like a colonoscopy?
The other thing is cancel culture is making it impossible to write flawed characters. Avoiding all the flaws that could get an author cancelled is creatively stifling.
 
"My shitty racepain YA only sold 800 copies (most of them in Portland, Seattle, and San Fransisco). Why can't we fire everyone in the publishing industry and run it ourselves? Then when the shelves are filled with nothing but shitty racepain YA novels, readers will have no choice but to buy my books!"

No wonder kids these days are fucking off to go read manga/webtoons.
 
"My shitty racepain YA only sold 800 copies (most of them in Portland, Seattle, and San Fransisco). Why can't we fire everyone in the publishing industry and run it ourselves? Then when the shelves are filled with nothing but shitty racepain YA novels, readers will have no choice but to buy my books!"

No wonder kids these days are fucking off to go read manga/webtoons.

Any member of an ethnic group who adopts white lefty terminology for their own identity is instantly suspect. "Filipinx"!? GTFO.
 
Like many other Filipinx people of a similarly working-class, middle-class aspirational background, I grew up surrounded by a wide and diverse (it should not be a revelation that a minority community can itself be diverse) Filipinx community.
How do you even pronounce "Filipinx?" At first blush it sounds like nonsense rhyme out of Doctor Seuss or an embarrassing genital condition, perhaps? Regular Filipinos loathe the term, of course. viz:
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Also, is the author of this also claiming a racially homogenous community can be diverse? I thought that was the SJW version of Original Sin?
 
Fun fact about Grunge it likely 100% bullshit hes just really really good at killing things its wonderful
Don’t quote me but I think I remember Larry mentioning that the whole set written by Ringo were supposed to be the main characters journal and he is considered an unreliable narrator.
Some of the books can be bad, yeah. Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge is a collab with John Ringo so I have no idea whose fault it is for the writing but it's like a 14 year old anime nerd wrote it. The character was a brilliant teen genius but for fun kept his grades at a perfect C average to spite his liberal mother, he joined the military as a "fuck you" to said liberal mother who wails about how he's a baby killer, wields a katana and learned Japanese in the 1980's before it was cool to do so (but strangely had never heard of sushi before), sucks Ronald Reagan's dick, will tell anyone he meets the story about the time he clapped back when his mother called him a baby killer ("That's Sergeant Baby Killer, ma!"), gets connections with the Japanese Yakuza, and did I mention his weebstick is better than any other sword? Self-indulgent novels can work if they are entertaining enough but this one has such a fanfic air to it that it's borderline parody.
Apparently there was A LOT of editing that went into the grunge series as Larry keeps it PG with regards to sex and Ringo…doesn’t.
 
How do you even pronounce "Filipinx?" At first blush it sounds like nonsense rhyme out of Doctor Seuss or an embarrassing genital condition, perhaps? Regular Filipinos loathe the term, of course. viz:

Also, is the author of this also claiming a racially homogenous community can be diverse? I thought that was the SJW version of Original Sin?
Not quite correct, Filipino is specifically for men, Filipina is for women. That being said, making up BS terms because using the correct, sex-specific terms is to danger-hair nutjobs like garlic is to vampires, is moronic. You don't save vampires from garlic, you let them choke to death on it.
 
Jesus, you can just tell this is some hapa insecure about her identity. Calling herself Filipinx is the first clue.

Logged in just to vent
My mother came from abject rural poverty of the kind that has made her literacy shaky, not just in English but in Tagalog, the controversial lingua franca of the Philippines (her first language—and mine, now lost—being Pangasinan).
Filipino is the official name of the lingua franca. Poser namedrops Rizal but couldn't even get the name of the official language right. Besides, Pangasinan is a province, Pangasinense is the dialect.

Bolded part is just wtf. If you want to play at being a Filipino, then at least keep speaking any of the fucking dialects. This idiot also thinks not being able to speak straight Tagalog is "shaky" literacy. Jesus fuck. Large swaths of the country don't even use Filipino to communicate with people in the same city/province; it should never have come off as a surprise that some Pangasinense isn't exactly fluent in Tagalog. Most people only use Filipino/Tagalog when communicating with someone who doesn't know the local language, and due to the similarities in the many dialects, you get things like Visayan-flavored Tagalog. I've spoken to many Pinoys who cannot speak Filipino correctly, because there's really no need to and English can also just be used if they couldn't translate a term.

My father, on the other hand, born in 1930 (and so twenty-two years older than my mother), came from a comfortable upper-middle-class Ilocano background—a dark-skinned boy descended from a mix of the indigenous northerners of Luzon and the merchant Chinese class
right on cue, she's really insecure about her identity. If you look closer that most likely means her dad emigrated THEN looked for work, meaning they had the money to get in.

Not going to continue reading this tripe since you can tell she only read Rizal's books in English and her opinion as a """"Filipino"""" can be safely discarded. She's the quintessential Fil-Am who pretends to be true authentic Pinoy. Lots of fliplanders hate her kind.

Not quite correct, Filipino is specifically for men, Filipina is for women.
Yes, it can be used that way, but the gender-neutral form is still "Filipino."
 
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From Castillo's fart piece:

They don’t know how to read us, I’ve heard fellow writer friends of color complain, usually after a particularly frustrating Q&A in which a white person has either taken offense to something in our books or in the discussion (usually the mention of whiteness at all will be enough to offend these particularly thin-skinned readers), or said something well-meaning but ultimately self-serving, usually about how their story made them feel terrible about your country.

Ironic, considering that she also revealed in that piece that she has no clue about the Philippines and its cultures. How can she claim to be writing about her "color" when she seems to distill everything she knows about Filipinos from what her mother told her and what she read on Wikipedia, and probably made the rest of it up?

From her book America Is Not the Heart:

Growing up, everyone says you’re stupid, you’re clumsy, you get into at least one fight a week, and even your light skin, while universally covetable, is suspicious; your father often accuses your mother of having taken up with a Chinese merchant or Japanese soldier or tisoy businessman while he was away. Did that happen? You don’t know. Is that unknown man your father? You don’t know. If it happened, was it your mother’s choice; was it an affair, or was it a case of—a word you won’t say, can’t think, a word that drifts like smog, through your life and the lives of all the women around you. You don’t know. Looking at your own face doesn’t tell you. There isn’t anyone you can ask.

Sis, this is why no one buys your book. Your "book" is your therapy couch, and no one wants to listen to a pretty lady whine about how oppressed she is unless they get paid to do so.
 
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