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[ SECRET POST #6205 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6205 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Xenoblade 3]

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[YA Book fandom/Cait Corrain scandal]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 31 secrets from Secret Submission Post #887.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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04. https://i.ibb.co/HrV95Dd/6543210.jpg
[YA Book fandom/Cait Corrain scandal]

I'd never heard of this author until her review scandal broke, so if anyone's got other juicy details about bad behavior, I'm over here with my popcorn and lawn chair!

All right, quick rundown: so this chick Cait started out writing Reylo longfic. Like, 150,000+ words longfic. As happens with many fic authors, she took the skills she gained while doing this and put them to use writing a piece of original fiction. Managed to get a deal. Book was all written and set to be published, and advance buzz for it was decent: apparently, the book was good! It probably would've been a hit!

Unfortunately, she completely torpedoed the book and her career by doing the dumbest, pettiest, trolliest, most unhinged possible thing she could have done: she made a bunch of sock puppets and review-bombed several well-known published authors while padding her own Good Reads account with fake glowing reviews. Making things worse, most of those authors were women of color, and she herself is white. Making things even more worse, when she got caught, she tried to put the blame on a friend of hers, and made up a whole fake series of text conversations in which she fights with the friend over this, with stuff like (heavily paraphrased) "HOW THE FUCK COULD YOU DO THIS IT WILL RUIN MY CAREER" and "I DID IT TO HELP YOU YOU BITCH I AM NOT SORRY."

So anyway, she's toast.

DA
Not to mention that the choice to weaponize race was a conscious decision on her part. It wasn’t just that she was coincidentally going after POC writers, it was deliberate. She also pretended to be other races on some of these sock puppet accounts. Wild stuff.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-01-01 23:48 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 06:40 (UTC) - Expand

I guess she could change the names and details in the book and use a different pen name or something, but how stupid to you have to be to be fortunate enough to get a book deal and torpedo your career like this?

Like, what are you jealous of? People who read books read more than one book! It's not zero sum game competition time, for pete's sake. Such a dummy. And racist.

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(Anonymous) - 2024-01-01 23:49 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 01:07 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 02:19 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 03:13 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-01-01 23:46 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 00:16 (UTC) - Expand

The modern book world is so fucking catty, and I hate it. There are so many authors where I'm like, "...fuck, how did you never progress beyond middle school?"

Biggest disappointment for me was N.K. Jemisin, because I enjoyed many of her early works. After seeing her behavior on Twitter, however, I have no desire to read anything else she writes.

I think people like Theodore Beale broke Jemisin’s brain, or at least her patience. She took so much racist shit from so many idiots that she saw racist shit in places where there was simply disagreement.

Wait, what happened with N.K. Jemisin?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 03:51 (UTC) - Expand

Also:

(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 04:09 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 12:31 (UTC) - Expand

Fuckin' A, this so much. I've gotten a few things published here and there, my foot is in the door, but I know I'm never going to be that successful as a writer because I suck at networking with these people. I just do not have the patience for, as you rightly called it, middle school drama. I'm keeping to myself and staying out of it.

I don’t know this one, but “person who keeps calling everyone else out as problematic eventually gets called out as problematic” has been a thing at least since Winterfox.

The thing that really gets me about Winterfox is that she still has defenders. Just goes to show that some people don't really have the principles they claim to have; for them, it's all about status, power, and in-group/out-group.

^This. Sometimes an accusation is a confession.

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feotakahari - 2024-01-02 03:36 (UTC) - Expand

Winterfox as in the bnf in the DC/Batfamily fandom? The name seems very familiar to me. What did they do?

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(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 09:40 (UTC) - Expand

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feotakahari - 2024-01-02 09:49 (UTC) - Expand

This isn't quite the same, as Cait Corrain wasn't calling people out.

I’m fascinated by the sheer levels of insecurity and stupidity this woman has to do all of that. She’s completely tanked her whole career. It’s the purest form of a train wreck.

The fact that this scandal was topped less than a month later by the author trying to copyright sun powers was like the gift that kept on giving.

Wait what? I hadn't heard that part of the saga!

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 01:12 (UTC) - Expand

The Cait Corrain scandal is actually really complex and disappointing for my household bc my wife actually was friends with Cait before Cait was a BNF, although they'd sorta drifted apart over the years. It sucks to see the way that BNF-dom and living in LA fuck with a person's head, bc Cait was the friend who would help buy my wife food and stuff in college when my wife couldn't afford to eat, and BACK THEN at least Cait was someone who was really aware of their privilege and tried to advocate for folks around them who were getting passed over and dismissed.

I also know that for as like drama llama as the mental health claims seem, Cait is actually someone who is legitimately really troubled and has been their whole life, like "made it through college bc they could do outpatient mental health institutionalization and had their first suicide attempt in elementary school" level troubled. It doesn't excuse ANY of this bullshit, mind you, but I don't think Cait's lying about their terrible brain health making them paranoid or whatever.

I dunno. It's disappointing and sucks.

Makes me think of Tatsuhiko Takimoto. He pushed through enough of his issues to write a beloved novel about being too scared to leave your room, and it made him enough money that he could buy what he needed without leaving his room. As of three years later, he still felt like a “parasite” and wanted to change, but willpower alone doesn’t cure mental illness.

Well, I hope she gets the help she needs and understands how wrong and hurtful her actions were.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 02:24 (UTC) - Expand

I mean. I wouldn't go so far as to say she's faking the mental health issues, but it's disingenuous of her to try and blame those mental health issues for her actions, especially the racist aspect of all this.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 03:40 (UTC) - Expand

NAYRT

(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 06:44 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2024-01-02 14:53 (UTC) - Expand

I got too much secondhand embarrassment from this to enjoy it.

The whole thing's so crazy to me. She was in a position that most authors can only dream of and she destroyed it. But at least she suffered some consequences, unlike certain other authors that went on unhinged rants on Twitter.

I found out about this whole thing through Swell Entertainment's video brief cover of the whole thing and its utterly NUTS. She had everything on a silver platter in terms of debut book releases (including an Illumicrate deal), and throw it all away on Goodreads of all things.
I didn't think anyone took Goodreads that seriously - I literally only ever go on there to skim through listings for potential recs and maybe look at a collection of reviews after reading a book. Do people really take it that seriously??

I feel like this situation is a result of fandom culture.

Fandomers, especially ones really into BNF status and being seen in fandom, are caught up in Main Character Syndrome, so even when things happen beyond most people's wildest dreams (such as finding a way to become a publisted author) they are still operating at "I need to be Top BNF Bitch" mentality.
And well...you see how some fandomers take things way too far.
I think they have lost a bit of touch with reality.
In that not everything needs to be great only for You, the individual. You are still a functioning member in society, there are other people who exist and their experiences matter too.
Like...not even joking, I think some people in fandom spaces have this disconnect with reality and take their POV as the only thing that matters.

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