#reviewbombgate

[dduane]

Since this article was published, according to tweets from the parties involved, two of Corrain’s publishers have removed their book from their 2024 schedules, and Corrain’s agent has announced that she and her client are parting company. (ETA: It looks like they updated the article around the time I posted this. Life comes at you fast...)

ETA 2, December 12 AM: Corrain responds.

#the “finding out” stage #reviewbombgate #ETA: corrected pronouns

[anoonzee]

So the infamous reviewbomber has made her X account public again and issued a non-apology, basically blaming all her racist bad choices on-- (checks notes)--mental illness and substance abuse.

And then the responses flood in.

The "aged like milk" tweets.

(REALLY????)

I went "OH DAMN" at this one:

Frankly, this post would go on for miles if I went and screencapped all the receipts and call-outs.

The weak-ass excuse of an apology can be found here. Interestingly, Cait disabled replies to it after she got rightfully roasted.

BUT---in case she deletes it (click to embiggen):

And my guess is, Del Rey (the publisher) may be trying to recoup lost money on this, because... (sigh)

Bethany said it better than I could.

#reviewbomb 2023 #reviewbombgate #cait corrain #what a mess #what is this sorry excuse of an apology? #yikes

[someoneintheshadow456]

I said before, now that Cait Corrain’s true self has come out, I can finally elaborate on what happened with her. To put a long story short, I was one of her very first victims - long before she became an original fiction author and back when she was known as Enterprisingly on AO3 - the author of Play to Win.

I know that #reviewbombgate was back in December, but at the time, I did not know about it because I’m not involved in BookTok. However, I WAS involved with the Reylo fandom, albeit indirectly.

The final chapters of Play to Win went on a tangent that seemed bizarre to me at the time. In fact, it seemed so strange that I brushed it off almost completely. It was only when I found Play to Win’s Wayback Machine page after recalling memories of the Reylo fandom last year when I read the chapter properly (instead of skipping ahead to get to the Reylo scenes). And a proper reading made me realize what was so unnerving about it:

Anyone who has engaged with my blog (especially from 2015-2019, when I used to post a lot more content about my personal life) can see the strangely... specific way this character was described. In order to go into this level of depth, one has to have been following me intently and keeping tabs of all the personal things I posted.

And then, she goes from eerily specific descriptions, to straight up maliciously lying about me:

Keep in mind, this screed takes up an ENTIRE chapter in itself. Said character, Ejya Fjord, is a background NPC who is mentioned a total of 121 times in a 161,000 word story. In fact, her name is mentioned so little that you could be forgiven for not remembering her at all:

You'd think, if someone would do something like this, I had to have done something terrible to her, or even just gave her a negative review. But I never did.

As you can see here, I have only engaged positively with her. Since Play to Win was also taken down and you can’t see old comments on Wayback Machine. Unfortunately after this, I can only give my word without receipts.

Play to Win was published first in 2018. I reviewed her story in March of 2018, possibly even earlier. In my review, I praised the writing, worldbuilding, and dialogues, but gave a small constructive criticism in that the politics could be better integrated into the story without feeling disjointed.

In the very early chapters, Ejya was clearly intended to be 100% Swedish - as one can tell from the name. However, at some point in the later half of the story, she retroactively became mixed race and a rival for Ben's affections, while Ben seems to be having none of it. It's clear these choices were made to portray me as some kind of horny fangirl for Kylo Ren who will stomp on other girls for his sake:

When I read the last chapter first, I was horrified. But now I'm just... bemused that someone would ever see me as some kind of calculating vixen who dresses like a Euphoria high school student and only likes masculine hobbies to pick up dudes. When in reality it took me until 2020 to be able to type the word "sex" without having heart attack and have never so much as posted a selfie on here.

It's also funny that Ejya is petite and flat chested while my actual body type is the exact opposite... which she would know since she stalked my blog so thoroughly. Almost as though she's implying something about her own insecurities...

Initially, I was under the impression that Corrain targeted me because of my association with @ainomica - due to her ruffling the Reylo fandom’s feathers (and ending up on Corrain’s hit list) over her opinions on John Boyega. However, that controversy happened in 2020. When Corrain wrote this libel about me, @ainomica wasn’t even on her radar, not to mention it was a year before we had ever even met. This libel was done to target me, and me exclusively.

In essence - Corrain weaved libel about me into her story because my existence pissed her off. We know now that Corrain had a penchant for targeting sapphic authors and WOC almost exclusively. So it's safe to say she was just being a typical white saviour liberal who shows what she actually thinks of minorities when they don't toe the line.

While this does make her less unhinged in my eyes than using me to target someone else, it still means that Corrain was, and always has been capable of aggression towards anyone she’s remotely offended by. Especially if said person happens to be a minority of some kind.

#reviewbombgate #cait corrain #reylo

[swingsetindecember]

going down the rabbit hole of investigating reviewbombgate has me discovering that reylo fanfic writers are being mainstream published

#the more you know #reviewbombgate

[zoanzon]

Reading a review about the disproportionate impact - and toxic culture - of Goodreads set in context of recent Cait Corrain scandal*, and taken out at the knees by the last-sentence insult here

(* scandal = author found out to have had multiple pseudonym accounts review-bombing other authors' works and talking up her own upcoming novel, she got dropped by agent and publisher after this came out)

#MA'AM 🤣 #the monkey speaks #current events #such raw dialogue #cait corrain #reviewbombgate

[solarissantaella]

Cait Corrain is Not the Problem

As a publishing MA student and person of color, I wanted to give my perspective on the Cait Corrain review-bombing controversy and what it reveals about systemic racism within the industry.

I also shine the spotlight on ten books that deserve your attention more than . . . you know.

#cait corrain #goodreads #reviewbombgate #video essay #bookblr

[lemuel-apologist]

In thinking about Cait Corrain (after watching ReadswithRachel's and Don't Fret's videos), I do think there is something to be said about the efficacy of instant feedback on your work. It was something D specifically brought up in the context of standup and open mics, but it reminded me of how Rachel brought up that Cait started off writing fanfiction. When you operate in communities online like this, you tend to expect a certain kind of feedback that you don't necessarily get from traditional publishing.

You also don't really, unless you're in a group that operates in the way of instant feedback, get that instant praise, commentary, or, yes, critique that you're used to. You do end up isolated; you do end up alone; and you don't get a feel for what works and what doesn't. When you put yourself out there, it's terrifying, and it's stupid, and it hurts-- not even to be rejected, but to fear being rejected. We all know it does. It's not exclusive to the neurodivergent. That's an intrinsically human feeling.

In the realm of feedback and stupid, human mentality, I know that I, personally, have a tendency to overreact and do dramatic things. That's true even when I'm medicated, apparently. (I'm saying this because I'm coming off of a week that ended in that. Don't focus too much on this part; it's a connection bit.)

The answer isn't to go out and explode, quit, and ruin my entire life-- or, in the case of authors we've seen, be extraordinarily racist, misogynistic, or otherwise lash out in writing or sideways-review because you think you are entitled to a certain kind of feedback you are not receiving. The answer is to take a step back, figure out why you're reacting like that, and, if you have done something like that (in my case, completely imploded; in the case of the relevant author, ruined so many people's debut reviews with racist screeds), figure out how to make amends for it.

D may not be saying that all writers should be less precious with their work-- but I would say to give it a try. Let a friend read it. Let someone else give it a go. The act of creation isn't something that you should bottle up in your stew of isolation. What you make is just as much a part of you as you are of it. It might help you be less possessive of your ideas when the little cheddar goblin pulls at your meninges.

And for goodness's sake, don't blame your racism on your mental illness.

#cait corrain #reviewbombgate #authors behaving badly #writing #to be clear i am aware that the feedback corrain was/wasn't is not the issue here; there's a lot more to it #but it's another stick in the pile of things and it's the one i picked up #don't look at me im doing my chem homework

[nyxshadowhawk]

So I hope it's okay to bring this up, but did you hear about reviewbombgate, and the author at the center of it? Reads with Rachel on YouTube got a hold of the author's book... It's a sci-fi retelling of Adrienne and Dionysus's story and... It's bad. It's so so bad. I'm glad it'll never be published but also infuriated that it was ever given a chance. Your short story you wrote a while back was excellent and I just kept thinking about how awesome it was as i was watching what little of the video I could manage. If you ever write and publish a book, I'll buy it and tell everyone about it.

I have no idea how much sense this makes you you 😅 but thanks for being awesome and not an asshole

I had no idea that this was a thing. I’m glad it made you remember my work, though, and that you appreciated it! My novels are still in progress, so hopefully they’ll publish someday! I will try to not be an asshole throughout my writing career.

Edit: Ohh god, I looked into the book and its author, and it sounded familiar. I actually reblogged art commissioned for that book, years ago! I credited the artist, rather than the author of the book. I still really like the art. But if the book is bad and there’s this big scandal around it, maybe I’ll skip it.

#novels #publishing #book reviews #reviewbombgate #dionysus and ariadne

[no-where-new-hero]

omg I need your thoughts on the terminally o line author culture bc ngl it makes my eye TWITCH, there are authors I deliberately avoid even tho I've heard their stuff is good bc they're like that 🙈

HHHHH oh good lord, okay, from how I see it, there are two angles on this, both aggravating and sad: the official decree one and the spontaneous ecosystem one.

The officious one is that the nature of publishing nowadays demands an author have an online presence. You need Twitter/X. You need to let every potential reader know your book is coming out. You need engagement through reviews and pre-orders incentives (if you buy now you’ll get a special keychain!!) and word of mouth assurances from your peers that yes your book is as cool as you say it is. You need a newsletter with links (more buying! more voting on lists that are simply popularity contests!) and promises you’re still working on the next thing, don’t forget about me in the morass of everyone else doing the same thing. You need an Instagram and TikTok now to post pretty pictures and videos because one or two authors made it big off this kind of promotion and now everyone thinks it’s the ticket to the bestseller list (sadly, it seems to be working). You need an OnlyFans (a joke but I do recall a twt spat that was a joke/not joke about how rupi kaur will always be more beautiful than her critics and people who took issue with the conflation of beauty with talent). At the end of all this, you’re basically an influencer, a content creator creating content for the content you should be focusing on creating, the finished novel. And the novel itself seems to be disappearing behind the masks used to promote it (fanfic-style tropes, moodboards, playlists, memes) until I now no longer trust the book that I’ll pick up to have any resemblance to the enticements that brought me here. I’ve seen an author or two complain about the stress all this self-promotion generates, but it’s become such an entrenched part of the industry, I think people just accept it. And thus spend too much time online hoping that if they tweet just a little more, produce just one more reel, maybe that’ll be the difference between a sale and no sale.

The other side of this, distinct but obviously connected, is the ecosystem created by this panic of being perpetually visible coupled with the fact that so many of the new authors came of age during the rise of internet fandom culture. That opinionated community mindset that blurs the line between anonymity and friendship is the lens they bring to their own work. I mean, it makes sense I suppose—if you love yelling about characters and words, why wouldn’t you do that once you start to produce your own? This really came home to me hearing about that reviewbombgate “scandal” and how people involved were in reylo circles and that was used to provide receipts. You’re interacting with your readers and peers about your intimate work but they are also all strangers. They will not always give you the benefit of the doubt, and now—as opposed to the past when maybe the worst that could happen was a handful of bad reviews in newspapers—you will either be tagged in hate reviews, sub-tweeted, explicitly called out, demanded to atone for your sins. It’s no longer the morality of consumption but the morality of production. Of course, the easy answer is just log-off, touch some grass. But that can work only when you and everyone else are separated by anonymous accounts or when you have no platform to maintain. As an author trying to make your livelihood from this, suddenly it’s do or die. We’re in a strange moment of authorship bringing the Internet’s echo-chamber and claustrophobic into the real world (this is a lie: publishing now is no longer the real world. But it looks like it) and thus you can kind of no longer escape things.

Will the average reader who isn’t aware of all these machinations care about reviewbombgate? Would a reader browsing at Target think about the controversies around Lightlark? Very likely not. But the impression I’m getting more and more is that the average reader isn’t the one buying all the books. Or shall we say—a bestseller’s status relies on bookstore stock. Bookstore stock is only huge when they know a book will be a good investment. They’ll only know a book is a good investment if it and its author has street cred based on booktokkers, bookstagram, bloggers and reviewers (have you noticed how many books out these last maybe 1-3 years have these kinds of accounts thanked in the acknowledgments? Yeah), and THESE are also chronically online people who will Know. And decide the cast of fate.

Honestly, @batrachised, I see why you avoid these kinds of writers, though I wonder how long it’ll be before the disease becomes epidemic.

#i’m very doom and gloom about this if you couldn’t tell from my tone lmao #and of course it’s not a perfect formula; i read a decent debut this year by a writer trying to be very active on socials and idk how much #of a splash her book made because literary sff is a dying genre even with an ecological bent compared to the glut of romantasy #also this feels very timely because the goodreads choice awards were just announced and i am seething at seeing d*vine r*vals #get another accolade to its name #blake’s last braincell #blake talks shit #writing life

[power-chords]

Just about herniated a disc rubbernecking this reviewbombgate mishegas. Good god.

[anoonzee]

Finally, a good use of this meme.

#reviewbombgate #cait corrain #lol #AND HER IMAGINARY FRENEMY LILLY

[otterandterrier]

my fav bit about #reviewbombgate is that people are like "ofc it's r*ylos", because yeah, ofc it's r*ylos

#let me guess: they'll say it's 'just a few bad apples' #except how is it just a few bad apples when your fandom is consistently a shitshow of racism and lies lol #fandom ramblings

[throughtosunrise]

Been following the Reviewbombgate thing with morbid fascination, but every time someone says they've "never seen this level of drama before," I discover that I can, in fact, feel even more unfathomably old.

[mesperyiandevotee]

Meh maybe I'm just wishy-washy but despite being a lover of retellings, especially fairytale retellings, but I see where both sides is coming from. I love LO mainly for the aesthetics. I like the art, and while there are definitely dark moments, I mostly keep reading for the parts that make me squee. A Persephone retelling that got mentioned in that whole #reviewbombgate thing sounds interesting, taking place in the 1920s I think. But there are also plenty of Cinderella retellings that are my beloathed. Usually the ones that try to girlboss-ify Ella. Lots of retellings want to keep only enough of the story to make it recognizable and use it as a selling point, not really caring as much as working out how to use the original themes and symbols to tell a new story. Lots of retellings are fun but empty, ig. So I can see then why that "modern retelling? Oh you mean make it worse" post has so many notes (parly due to a fight in the notes idk I didn't look)

I'm just rambling to myself now lmao when I saw the first post celebrating people dunking on Hades and Persephone retellings, I felt defensive (I've been sitting on a fic idea that retells the myth but focusing on Gil as Demeter) but I can also see their point . Sometimes retellings end up reading like the author wanted to use the myth or fairytale as a shortcut, not actually out of any love or thoughtfulness towards it

[anoonzee]

While scrolling in the bird app, I find out from Bethany Baptiste's twitter account (not giving Melon Husk the satisfaction) that notorious reviewbomber and well-known two-faced person Cait Corrain has been interviewed by The Daily Beast.

For some reason, The Daily Beast thought giving her a platform to give out her (unbelievable) excuses for reviewbombing is a good idea. What many are seeing and reading: they're giving her leeway to broadcast her gaslighting and lies and excuses to everyone else.

There are receipts.

And more receipts:

I'm taking screenshots from this travesty of an article so you don't have to...

Oooh, what a coincidence that her victims were all authors of color. Shocking, absolutely shocking. The one person who became racist because the medicines made her do it.

Puh-lease. Roseanne Barr tried that and nobody bought it.

They (the agent, publisher and book distributors) were right in dropping her like a hot potato. I would venture a guess that they've seen some glimpses of her narcissistic behavior. The reveal of her ridiculous actions sealed it for them.

LOL, really? There have been a LOT of people dropping receipts of your behavior long before you were approached to publish your book.

Bethany mentioned on the bird app that it seemed like Cait visited a professional to gather some mental-health buzzwords. The article IS full of those words. This part, in particular:

And this part made me go WTF?!

Did the same medication also make her write favorable reviews for her own book? Strange that she didn't mention that.

Yeah--not a racist rampage, but you somehow managed to target POC authors. Mmmhmmm... and then when you were getting the heat, you invented Lilly, the supposed Reylo who created those accounts on Goodreads. Effectively throwing a fandom under the bus, rather stupidly considering how close-knit Reylos are.

Also, did Cait deliberately choose this as the userpic for "Lilly"?

Oh look, Lilly is clearly the bad guy!

Yeah, so she's trying to spin herself as an ambassador for disabled people and mental health. Keep in mind that Bethany Baptiste--the person I mentioned at the beginning of this post--is one of Cait's Goodreads victims, is POC, and also disabled.

However--autism and mental health do not result in people doing what she has done. And she has said hardly anything in this article about being sorry for what she has done. All she did was to blame it on her autism, mental health and the medications she was prescribed, when there are dozens of people who have interacted with her who say otherwise: that if you are not worth anything to her, she will not treat you well.

Hell, there were folks who took screenshots from her own Twitter feed that did not age well.

Yeah, I don't think she did anything about that.

Also...

#the lion the witch the audacity of this beech #reviewbombgate #cait corrain #what in the gaslighting hell #long post