[ SECRET POST #6205 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6205 ⌋

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


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[Xenoblade 3]



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04.
[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.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

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!

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

Another DA

She also blamed everything but herself: Her illness, her stress, her pressure, etc... The apology she wrote was a kind of "I'm sorry, but-".

[(Anonymous)]

Didn't she also try to blame her sister for being the real culprit in the beginning? Lol

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

This. Authors need to learn that other authors are NOT their competition. If I like something and I see it in a 'different flavour', I'm probably going to read that too! I'm not going to read only one fantasy/crime/magic/whatever book.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

The other thing that kills me, alongside the sheer WTF-ery of someone doing something that insane in and of itself, is the idea that she thought she'd somehow get away with this or wouldn't be caught. With social media being what it is in this day and age, and with the way people are able to spot these kinds of manipulations and sock accounts and so forth, yeah, not a chance you won't be found out eventually.

Just...imagine the amount of time and energy one has to put into doing something that stupid. The very thought exhausts me.

[(Anonymous)]

Literally one of the stupider parts of her review bombing, her book was a Greek myth retelling so she also review bombed some small indie author whose books were *also* a Greek myth retelling. As if this tiny author was somehow her competition, and as if people who like one kind of book won't seek out books with similar themes to read.

[(Anonymous)]

Right? If I like a genre, I'm going to read more books in that genre and look for more authors who write similar books. It makes NO sense to tear other authors down in order to prop up your own book, that just feels spiteful. And racist, as it turns out.

[(Anonymous)]

OMG OMG that is so unhinged and way crazier than just fake reviews. Because initially I thought well, posting fake reviews is pretty bad, but she could probably come back from that with a sincere apology and time, but... yeah, no. I can't imagine her career's going to recover from THAT.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, what a turd.