Rite Gud's Gentrified Horror episode

[olivermoss]

There is a podcast episode that I've heard people comment on from a lot of different directions. It's the Rite Gud episode on gentrified horror. I was surprised that this was recorded all the way back in March, because I've been seeing talk of it making the rounds again. I haven't really engaged with the discussions, but when it came up in my writing group I decided it was time to listen to it.

The episode is about non-horror writers taking a stab at horror because it's popular right now. A lot of the popularity is due to the rise of horror gaming. Heck, one of the biggest IPs right now is Five Nights at Freddies, which was just an obscure indie game and is now a movie. (Very glad I never got into it, considering the creator is a POS and there is some deeeep irony to where he got the idea to pivot from twee religious kid's games to horror. But THAT would be a massive tangent) Anywoozle, the podcast is about non-horror writers trying to make horror cozy, or clean horror up. Basically, gentrify the genre. (As opposed to writing horror about gentrification, which would be awesome)

Honestly, I like the episode even though it made me question if I am actually a horror fan. Some of what they talked about as 'gentrified horror' or 'cozy horror' is my jam. One example they gave was Bly Manor and that is one of my favorite shows ever. It's easily top 3.



Do I even like horror?

I've never really questioned it since I like some horror films and a lot of the gaming I do is horror games. Also, my barometer for creepy is broken. In verbal conversations and in posting, I tend to very very overly careful with what I say and and LJ-Cut liberally. This is not because I want to be squeaky clean, it's because I don't know where the line is for normal people. I have to over-correct.

But, IDK, maybe while I like media that has lots of horror elements, I am not really a horror fan. The way they talk about horror are things I like as concepts, but do I really enjoy them in novels? Not sure.

It was a bit of an aside, but they also talked about writers who don't read much, who do a lot of blocking in their writing because they mostly consume TV and Movies. And, yeah, that's me. I see that in my writing and I hate it. I am actually struggling with that in some of the editing that I am doing right now! I don't read enough and it holds back my writing, but it's hard for me to find books I want to read. Over the past year I've started having better luck and have read more new stuff than I have in a while. But, it's still not a ton and I have a long drought of not reading anything professional to make up for. Also, what I am reading these days is not the sort of stuff I want to write. Finding books that in the same wheelhouse as what I want to write has just gone terribly.

I'd like to read more fanfic, but finding the good stuff is a slog. I do have Ayes to read at least. And honestly, having Ayes to read has probably helped me more with my writing this past year than I realize.

They also talked about how people from the Sci Fi / Fantasy side of things always want to nail down meaning too much, and have metaphors be one to one correlations with specific things. Nothing messy. Yes, that is a broad topic. The way Sci Fi and Fan side of things tries to nail things down leads to a lot of drama. Leaving things messy and ambiguous leaves more room for meaning. <- I have a lot of thoughts on how trying to make things 1:1 correlations just doesn't freaking work most of the time, but that's a broad topic.

They also talked about a book called Open House On Haunted Hill and wow, that sounds like a terrible mess. I can see why they are disturbed it's so popular. I haven't read it and I kinda wish that I had before the podcast to see if I'd have had the same take. As they describe it, it's basically a pro-gentrification fairy tale.

There was a lot of talk about tropes and how a lot of the people suddenly trying to write horror don't get a lot of the existing media or how it's using tropes. They talked about a essay critiquing Slumber Party Massacre as misogynist, and how the essay missed that it was written by Rita Mae Brown and she knew what she was doing with the tropes.

Overall, I recc the episode. You may or may not agree with it, but it's interesting. I don't think it's a bad thing that it made my question if I am actually into horror. I don't really have an answer either way. I am going to check out more episodes of the podcast.

Comments

[delphi]

Definitely going to listen to that. I have a weird relationship with horror, in that I considered myself a Horror Fan as a kid and teenager, often find myself thinking that I don't read or watch horror much anymore, and then periodically realize that a good chunk of what I read (particularly comics) is labelled horror even if I don't think of it as such.

I think there's this side thing going on where if you read a certain type of queer fiction, it's just so entwined with a certain type of horror that you (by which I mean I) don't even think of it as related to mainstream horror.

[olivermoss]

I categorize a lot of the media I am into as containing horror, but not being horror itself. I think horror is a weird genre where media can contain a lot of horror, tropes and scares and still not be horror.

Also, when I saw that term cozy horror going around at first I was like 'ooooh' and then I realized people said to to mean a bad thing.

[delphi]

Yeah, very much so - particularly if we're talking horror as a mood/emotion/experience vs. horror as a shade of speculative fiction. I feel like cozy horror has been around a long time even if the term has not, but that the recent disparaging of the term is coming from a gendered place.

[olivermoss]

What I've seen is horror as the salty to make the sweet pop, the darkness to emphasize the light. The cozy gets intensified by contrast. It's not the point, it's the tool. (As opposed to comfy/cozy spooky where the the point is lack of contrast between things traditionally seen as spooky and cozy)

I really don't know enough about the genre book scene these days. I am so out of the loop.

[mistressofmuses]

I've seen this one mentioned a couple times (I think my sibling shared a quoted bit recently), but I haven't listened to the episode. (Interesting that it's making the rounds now, when it's been out for a while - I'd assumed it was newer.)

It sounds like they've maybe got a somewhat reductive view of what counts as "pure" horror vs. "gentrified" - Bly Manor, really? That feels like... a reach. Particularly if part of their criteria is about non-horror fans making horror... I'm not sure how anyone could seriously say that Mike Flanagan doesn't like/isn't a fan of/doesn't understand/is unfamiliar with horror.

I enjoy quite a few things that might fall into the "cozy horror" genre, but to me that feels like... well, just a particular subgenre. I don't think that those things are automatically "not real horror", so much as just "one particular subgenre of horror." Then again, I'm not sure I've got a *great* idea of how cozy horror is always defined. I would never have called Bly Manor "cozy horror" or "gentrified horror", for instance. But I've also seen people call anything with mildly spooky vibes or that would suit a Halloween themed moodboard "cozy horror", and that seems like too much of a reach to call any kind of horror.

I will say that a lot of my favorite examples of non-horror media often lean into elements of horror at least to a degree, and sometimes those examples hit harder for me than something that's considered more "pure" horror. Though like with any trope or even broader genre convention, those aren't always super separate boxes.

That said, I *do* feel like there's a lot of merit to the idea of people who don't like horror (or know very little about it as a genre) deciding to try and... redefine what horror is to bring it in line with their own preferences. Or redefine what is "acceptable" to explore in horror. I HAVE seen supposed horror fans who then say that watching anything with too much blood in it makes a person a creepy serial killer in waiting. It's a very "anti" type view - "the examples of a genre *I* like are fine for me, but if I don't like it, then you liking it means you're a bad, dangerous person."

And I DO see those attempts to cash in on what seems like an "easy" popular genre... Romance was full of a lot of the same type of "this is easy money" attitude, and weirdly also got a lot of the same attitude from those newcomers about how they were "fixing" the romance genre... when their idea of what the romance genre contained was super skewed, because they considered themselves "above" the genre they were trying to now exploit. And while on that tangent: I've seen people talk about sci-fi going through the same thing, when it gained popularity. Lots of people who didn't read sci-fi decided they'd write some groundbreaking entry into the genre that would suddenly make it Serious Literature... not realizing that their hot new takes were pretty standard exploration within the genre already.

But oh do I feel you on the pain of not reading enough. :/ I've read... what, maybe five books in the entire year? I hate it, and need to find a way to read more, both for my own enjoyment and to help me with my writing, but I just haven't made it happen.

[olivermoss]

With Bly Manor and also his other projects, their critique was on changes made from the source material. I really can't judge that. I have, technically, read Turn of the Screw, but it's been a long time.

I do think of a lot of the media I like as 'containing horror, but isn't horror'. I think we need a word for that. I really don't know enough about horror to really judge. I think they made a lot of good points, whether or not I agree with them. They also talked about people coming in from Sci Fi / Fan pretty much shell shocked from the discourse. The people are welcome, but the discourse damage they are putting into things, the fear of messiness or bad representation, etc, I can see why they are not happy about this. Yeah, the anti stuff or fear of antis, etc.

I think horror has deep roots and it's not going to get overrun as badly as, say, what happened to Urban Fantasy. Gatekeeping is bad, but when you get overrun by people writing something fundamentally different it's like, could maybe we have different words?

And apparently a lot of people are coming into horror all 'final girl trope is sexist actually', acting like they see things clearer than the locals.

I didn't post about it, but I read Lavender House and really liked it. I'm currently reading Dreams and Shadows by Cargill. It's good to have found stuff, but also none of this is in the wheelhouse I want to be writing. Honestly, I am about to go back and re-read the Magpie books yet again. (And not to sound like a terrible person, but a lot of what is written in my wheel house is by people who don't get POV or paragraph breaks, so.... I really don't want to spend a lot of time reading bad grammar)

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, I've also read Turn of the Screw, and it certainly wasn't a 1:1 adaptation, but... eh, I guess I have a different opinion on adaptations than they do.

I feel like a lot of people refer to something having "horror elements", but even that is a bit vague. I enjoy my fantasy and sci-fi the most when they have a pretty hefty brush up against horror. I also *do* enjoy some of the staples of "pure" horror (Stephen King, Bentley Little, etc. as obvious novel examples) but I don't find them "scary," per se. Stuff that's more of a genre crossover tends to leave a stronger "horror" impression on me, and I'm not sure why that is, ha.

But oh, the discourse damage. That is *very* much a real problem. The idea of flat readings of something, having to examine it through a lens of good vs. bad representation, or whether it seems "problematic"... eesh. Add in that horror often DOES have elements of sexuality to it, whether that's the classic "slasher kills all the camp counselors that had sex" or the sexploitation horror of the 60s/70s and beyond or horror that works as metaphor for sex and on and on and on... it's not shocking that people prone to those "anti" mindsets could easily have a meltdown about any of it.

I agree that gatekeeping sucks, and I'm happy for people to keep enjoying their "cozy horror" type content... but yeah, when people fundamentally don't like or understand or enjoy the genre they're trying to take over, that really is a point where they need a new space and new terminology. Coming into an existing space and trying to redefine it to your own specifications is just a dick move. (And deciding that you're going to "educate" all the poor ignorant fans of something when you don't even have a 101 understanding of the thing in question is an extra super dick move.)

I'm glad that you've found some stuff you're enjoying! It's rough when you can't find things that you enjoy that *also* suit the genre you want to work with.
I can't blame you there, either: I can give a *little* leeway about things that come down to stylistic choice, but broken POV or issues that make things unreadable really don't work for me. Plus yes, I want to read things that mostly *help* me identify what I want to do. A certain amount of "what not to do" can be helpful, but yeah, I don't need or want to spend a lot of time on things that make the types of error I want to avoid.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, that's exactly it. Some of the people moving in don't like the genre and in some ways dislike the fundamentals of it. Horror has deep roots, though.

But also being classed as horror is good for marketing. If you have horror elements and would be a bad fit for a fantasy label or article or reviewer, it's getting classed as horror that can get you seen. I do think some of the cozy horror people are respectful, but it's do or die for their projects to get seen as horror by Amazon, Steam, certain publications, etc.

It would be good to just separate it out into it's own category, but I mean you can probably see the storm that would cause. The exact sort of discourse people would rather just not have.

Yeah, grammar doesn't need to be perfect in fan fic, etc. But a lot of it is just not great. There is good stuff out there but I don't have the patience to go through the tags and give fic after fic a fair shake. I have tried!

[mistressofmuses]

Horror does have deep roots, and a lot of academic study and such about it as a genre and its history... I don't think there's too much danger of it getting overrun, but the attempts to do so aren't made less frustrating and obnoxious.

Marketing categories and trends, my beloathed, yet again! You're right. Horror is a popular genre, and making sure that's the section you're getting shelved in (digitally speaking, for the most part) *matters.* If that's where people are looking, then that's where people want to be to be seen... even if it's not *actually* the best fit.

I don't think that "cozy horror" is necessarily in opposition to more classic horror - I feel like it's a particular subgenre, and that plenty of the creators within that subgenre do so with a wider appreciation and respect for horror as a broader category... but there are enough people who push their "cozy horror" as "fixing" the genre, or as the only morally correct horror to consume, and it starts to sound like "horror would be a great genre if it weren't for the blood and violence and sex and taboo subject matter and if nothing bad happened to people and if it wasn't scary..." So... you want horror without the horror?

I feel bad for it, but I mostly just wind up rereading the fics I already know I like. I have hundreds marked for later, and instead I just reread the same handful I have bookmarked, because I know that they're within my tolerance for grammatical accuracy/writing style. I'm fairly forgiving for errors that are clearly just typos. But when it's clear the author doesn't get basic sentence structure, or is incapable of punctuating and denoting dialogue, or head-hops POV every paragraph... nope.

[olivermoss]

The more I think about it, the more I think marketing categories are a big driver of this problem, people want in on the category they think sells. Also, some people who just like this this specific flavor need in on that category. It's tricky, though, because consumers don't like being told 'hey it's that thing you like' and then it's fundamentally different. When I did reviews I got all kinds of stuff sent to me completely miscategorized by the publishers / PR people.

Categories and labels are a mess and cause drama, but also consumers need those labels and have a right to upset when they are sold mis-labeled goods.

Typoes are fine. Loose grammar when the writer knows what they are doing is fine. There is a lot out there to wade through, though.

In both cases, if we had better / different ways to find content and could cut out some of the noise, things would be a lot better!

[mistressofmuses]

I think marketing really IS kind of a killer when it comes to this kind of thing.

Genre *should* be an accurate assessment of the content of the book. It *should* give the potential audience/customer an idea of what to expect (even if there is plenty of room within the genre for variety.) This should be beneficial both ways, because the authors and publishers connect with the audience that's most interested in what they have to provide, and the audience knows where to look for the things that are most likely to interest them.

But now genre seems to be used more as a marketing tool than a neutral descriptor, so there *is* that motive to try and make something seem like a genre that it doesn't actually fit, because that genre gets more eyes on it, so you think it's a wider audience...

But that really does wind up causing compounding issues when that audience gets burned because it wasn't actually what it said on the tin.

There's always some fuzziness with genre as it is. Sci-fi could be cyberpunk, or space opera, or near-future cautionary tale. Horror might be a slasher, or a haunted house story, or about possession, or some sort of monster. Subgenres and summaries and descriptions *should* go a long way to make it clear which flavor someone is getting... but that can't always be counted on, especially if there's something shady going on with trying to market the story as something it isn't.

It doesn't feel entirely dissimilar to what we were talking about when it comes to online advertising... how it's portrayed as consumer-driven, when it really isn't. Genre SHOULD be consumer-driven (though it's also publisher- and author-driven); it should function as a neutral descriptor that tells you which section to shop in for what you want. As it's turned into yet another marketing tool, it's used dishonestly to try and get you to look at things that aren't of interest.
[Or REALLY dishonestly, by gaming obscure amazon categories, so your bog-standard American country romance somehow was a "top seller" in "French travel guides" or whatever.]

I wish that there was a better rec culture when it came to fandom (or original work, frankly.) Then again, I know what a minefield recs have been as well, and that you certainly haven't had a great track record with them! But *good* recommendations are one of the best ways to help filter out some of that noise, and find the stuff that's actually what you're looking for.
Buuuut, the people making those recs have to have a good idea of what appeals about something and why, and conversely why something might NOT appeal. That's its own skillset that a lot of people don't really have.

There definitely is *a* rec culture currently... that's a lot of what "booktok" is, as far as I can tell... but I've had a pretty awful track record with the kind of things that gain popularity that way. It's a bit too skewed toward YA, and seems to very heavily lean toward reading "the right kind of thing" rather than "the things one enjoys." Very moralizing.
And I've multiple times been VERY frustrated by supposed rec-lists for queer stuff on tumblr, which include a bunch of things the reccer admits that they haven't actually read, but they *heard* it's xyz type of queer. That's not a rec! Don't tell me it's a rec if you haven't even read it!

[olivermoss]

Genre should be value neutral, but it never is. I am mostly familiar with the drama around Urban Fantasy and BL / Yaoi, and of course the whole 'is it okay to say yaoi?' debates that were just an exercise in 'more in the loop than you'.

Urban Fantasy is a genre that barely exists anymore because people decided that excluding anything, including Song of Ice and Fire, was gatekeeping. So, every list or tag or whatever just because useless. It was a fuzzy category with a name some people took too literally, but the fact that people wanted more of it lead to lists / tags / etc being stuffed with random stuff until people stopped looking.

And a LOT of companies tried to cash in on the explosion of yaoi back in the day by labeling all sorts of stuff yaoi, which lead to a lot of fans being called toxic purists but companies were actually pulling a lot of BS.

Yeah, I'd love to be able to find better reccs. I have looked and I have tried with goodreads and some YT channels, but it's mostly a mess and becomes, well, very 'eat your vegetables'. It's like the popular reccs are moralizers. And I like good rep and books that are unproblematic but not... not like that, not in this weird way. In general I only hear about booktok when it's having drama or making really bad books viral because an influencer wrote it.

I'd be tempted to do some reccs of my own, but still honestly the best stuff I've read is KJ Charles and I am probably going to reread her again soon.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, in an ideal world it would be value-neutral, but it's true that it isn't. Both due to genre snobbery of the "ugh, I would never read genre" kind from litsnobs, and genre rivalry, and again, marketing by way of shoving things into a more "desirable" genre. Happens with marketing categories like YA, too. Things that were never meant to be YA get treated like YA because it sells better... even though the books don't fit the category.

Oh god, I remember the first rush of yaoi/BL stuff that was getting translated and marketed in the mid-00s. (There were a couple specific imprints for just that... Pretty sure they were the ones also selling the seme and uke yaoi paddles, which is a con memory never to be excised.) So much stuff that was being marketed that way when it wasn't *really* the right genre, but was being pushed to sell. And then so many people using it as a chance to try and be smug assholes about it as a whole.

Urban Fantasy got a raw fucking deal. The idea that people are arguing for fucking Song of Ice and Fire to be considered fucking *urban fantasy* just sends my brain to blue screen. Fucking bonkers. I'm very opposed to gatekeeping, but wanting something to be classified correctly isn't gatekeeping! Urban fantasy has a few fuzzy edges (like, is it urban fantasy or supernatural romance?) but it didn't *lack* genre criteria, and people just pretending that it could mean anything was and remains fucking stupid.

The current rec and review scene feels extremely "eat your vegetables." I do want rep! But I want the books to be *good*, too. When it comes to clout-chasing, just about anything can be declared irredeemably problematic based on a big enough reach, and way too much of what people will proudly call "unproblematic" means it lacks any sense of conflict, because "conflict" is now a dirty word that means "secretly abusive" or whatever. Which ALSO dilutes the ability to criticize books that really DO portray some sketchy shit that people may want a heads up about.

It's a shame that it sounds like KJ Charles' stuff went downhill badly after a while, but her early stuff is some of the most frequent favorites I hear about. I should read at least that early stuff.

I guess I should more formally talk about the kind of stuff I've enjoyed reading as well. Though sometimes it feels weird to be like "hey, book two and three of this series were excellent... but you do have to read book one, and it was only okay."

[olivermoss]

Yeah, and weirdly Urban Fantasy died from it's own popularity. Tons of things wouldn't have been vying for the label if it wasn't a useful label. Everyone was rushing in to be 'this is that thing you like, and if you disagree you are a gatekeeper'.

I remember all sorts of stuff when yaoi blew up big. People howled over readers not wanting to read American-made stuff and it's like... there is nothing wrong with wanting to read things from another culture. Some of the stuff I got sent to review was almost upsetting, the PR people were setting up some authors and projects for massive backlash by trying to shoehorn this stuff in. And I got static for writing an article stating why I wouldn't review some projects as yaoi, and that the publish was fucking over authors by using this sales tactic. But some people didn't read past 'I refuse to review these titles' and were super upsetting spaghetti at me even though I said I thought they were great works being marketed to the wrong audience.

Pretending that KJ only wrote the Magpie books is a good way to approach her work.

I am going to post about what I've been reading at a point, but I feel dumb being all I read a whole one (1) book! I'm waiting until I've got a few read, which at this rate wont be this year.

[mistressofmuses]

I hate gatekeeping, yet at the same time, you do run into the "if everything is x, then nothing is x." Urban fantasy became a very "it" subgenre when it took off, and so suddenly everything that someone liked *must* count as urban fantasy, because everyone likes urban fantasy! I remember watching that happen with stuff that absolutely didn't suit the genre (though I don't think I ever saw anyone arguing first-hand for things like Song of Ice and Fire, I did see it with things like A Darker Shade of Magic, which... also isn't.)
It's so frustrating to watch people take a useful label and then just dilute it to the point that it becomes useless, only to utterly jump ship as soon as it's no longer valuable for them to try and shoehorn into.

Ugh, there was sooooo much xenophobia in the whole "yaoi debate", and frankly there still is. Lots of people who want the BL genre to fundamentally be something different than what it is, and because it isn't that thing they want instead, they try to make it a moral issue about Japan or about women or about whatever else. I remember hand-wringing in general about how anime and manga were Poisoning The Youth because they were supporting That Foreign Media, and how terrible that was for American media... Make it more adult and make it gay and people lost their fucking minds about it.

I'm glad that you put your foot down about how you'd review things (as in... you've got to be honest about the genre you're talking about here.) It really IS a huge disservice for publishing houses to do this to their authors, whether they're lying about something being yaoi, or urban fantasy, or horror, or whatever the trendy genre of tomorrow will be. The minor bump in sales you might get from people buying it based on the miscategorization is NOT going to make up for a backlash when people are upset that it's not what was advertised, and that disappointment or even hostility is likely to follow that author and hamstring any of their future projects.

I think you've told me that before - that pretend it's just the Magpie books, it's fine! Don't be lured by other titles, just gee, it's a shame she didn't write anything else! I will keep that in mind, because it sounds like those would be very up my alley.

Yeah, I feel you on that. I read... very little this year. Five books, maybe? Three of which were a trilogy, one of those being a set of novellas rather than a true novel. I keep meaning to post more about the media stuff I take in, but it feels weirder to do it inconsistently than to not do it, heh.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, in the yaoi debates there was a lot of calling yaoi fans racists... but the basis the accuser's logic was what was racist. Like, if you mapped the argument to European countries it would have seemed ridiculous. Though, of course there was orientalism and other weirdness among yaoi fans as well. There is a reason I Cannot with a lot of modern BL fandom.

My favorite is when I am called out of the loop for calling it yaoi, or for calling it BL. Some people just argue from pure authority and refused to ever have logic or cite anything. I've been to Otome Doori. The doujin stores said yaoi on them. It's just... some people try to win arguments by yelling 'you know nothing' the loudest. I can actually cite my reasons for why I use terms like yaoi and bara, and some of them involve talking to mangaka directly in person.

Yeah, the backlash from miscategorization is not worth it. It also puts the authors in the cross hairs. People like what they like.

I've also only read 5 books. My 'books read' and 'audiobooks finished' sections of my bujo are very lean. But hey I read some longfic?

[mistressofmuses]

Oh yes. So much "you're racist for liking it because it's obviously fetishizing" vs "no one should like anything from another country because that foreign stuff is weird and gross". There certainly HAS been plenty of cringey shit from fans - the orientalism, the frankly bizarre attitudes about "cultural purity" and acting like an American teen/20-something can somehow be the arbiter of what would be "authentically" Japanese vs. what's been "sullied" by Western influence - but a lot of the issues were also super overstated, I think. Even so... I remain not terribly sad that I haven't tried to engage very seriously with much fandom recently, ha.

Right? A lot of these terms have slightly different yet overlapping definitions. Some people used them incorrectly, but the right response is not to decide that EVER using them is incorrect!

It very much puts authors in the crosshairs, even though it's often not a decision that they were actually in charge of. Unfortunately, even if the decision was made by the publisher, it's usually the authors that are going to get the backlash, and may never have a chance to connect with their audience, because they get the reputation for misleading their audience or not delivering on what they promised.

Cheers for the five-book club! I started a "books read" page, and then didn't use it the way I was supposed to, ha. Next year! I did also read (or reread) some longfic, so at least that is something!

[olivermoss]

Yeah, racism when it comes to Japanese media is such a clusterfuck. With Japan in particular it gets so intense because some people just love the idea that Japan is a certain way when it's not.

And at the end of the day, not getting that Japan had had heavy American influence drives me nuts. That said, I am only extremely rarely interested in 'American BL'. Actually, have I ever liked any of it? I did read a lot of it for review purposes, mostly trying to find things worth reviewing.

A lot of people don't get the creators have little to no input on PR and the PR team often aren't answerable to anyone but their own sales figures.

[mistressofmuses]

Oh yeah. There's both a lot of straight-up xenophobia *and* a lot of putting the culture on some sort of pedestal, and both are weird.

It drives me nuts when people like to act like ANY country has somehow developed in a cultural vacuum, with zero impact from any other part of the world. I mean, colonialism pretty much made that impossible for most of the world, and while places like Japan had periods of strong isolationism, they snapped back *hard* the other direction when that ended.
I think a lot of modern m/m romance has some cross-pollination from BL, though I don't know that I've ever been very into anything that marketed itself AS "American BL." I seem to recall some American yaoi manga anthology that had one story in it I liked, but fuck if I could tell you anything about it now, lol.

A lot of people just don't seem to have a lot of idea about how publishing as a whole works, and how little control authors have over almost everything after they hand in their story. I don't want to seem like I'm saying that publishing houses are the devil or anything, but they *are* trying to make money first and foremost, and that means that sometimes they make some shitty decisions that put short-term profits over long-term customer satisfaction or author success.

[evilinsanemonkey]

(As opposed to writing horror about gentrification, which would be awesome)
I haven't read it yet but I'm pretty sure this is the idea behind Alyssa Cole's While No One is Watching

I'm going to have to check this podcast out... I'm not sure if I'll agree with them re: Bly Manor but it sounds super interesting!

[olivermoss]

Ooh, I might check that out!

Yeah, I am not sure I agree with them on everything but I found their points very interesting.