Asides

Amazon Disappears Light Novels and Manga

Some time back, I mentioned that Amazon had developed a draconian new policy for its advertisements, forbidding ads for any books that feature firing guns or guns held by children on the cover. At the time, I said this was clearly an attempt to go after indie creators, and that Amazon would never enforce such a policy against, say, Japanese manga.

I was wrong.

In fact, it’s worse than that: Amazon isn’t just removing ads but removing books. Whole light-novel and manga series have been deleted from the platform silently and without explanation.

Several outlets have now reported on this, including Crunchyroll, Anime News Network, AniTAY, and Comicbook.com. Several translator-publishers have likewise announced the removal of their books.

This is apparently not limited to the U.S. Amazon but affects all Amazon portals outside Japan. Some of the publishers affected are fairly big players, too, including Yen Press and Darkhorse.

As Crunchyroll reports, publishers have tried to get in contact with Amazon to get the reasons for delisting, and Amazon has been less than forthcoming:

Pinansky said that despite multiple attempts over the last few months to get in contact with anyone on a review team at Kindle through email, they rang the support phone line and requested support tickets, doing so 10 or 12 times. “Phone support has no power to override or obtain any further information from Kindle Content Review.” Though all J-Novel Club got in response from Amazon after multiple nine-day waits are a generic email …

Because Amazon is not being transparent, we are left to speculate. The most likely reason is that Amazon is going after lolicon, and while such a purge would include a few of the titles that have been removed, some other, considerably tamer books are being removed as well. Someone in my mentions (no doubt with some exaggeration) said they were removing most anything that has a cute girl on the cover.

Most of what’s being purged, being light novels, is isekai, and while I personally dislike isekai, this censorship is still troubling: If they can throw these off the platform, they can start removing content for considerably more tenuous reasons.

“They came for the lolicons, and I did not speak out because I was not a child molestor,” and so forth.

Update on My Projects

I won’t deny that I’ve been struggling with the third volume of Jake and the Dynamo. For this volume, I had a lot of clear vignettes in my mind but no idea how they related to one another. So I’ve been writing disconnected scenes without really knowing what I was doing.

Fortunately, I finally had a breakthrough: I had a single plot point come to me that tied everything together, so I’m working on the book tonight and it’s flowing reasonably well.

On that note, I have no update on publishing. I haven’t heard back from any publishers to which I’ve submitted, so I will probably, in the next few months, give them up and submit to other places.

Return of the Tropical Pedo Beams

In a recent post, I made the argument that artistic works should be judged, either morally or artistically, on their own merits and not on the reputation of the artist. reply to a recent post, a reader has made the following comment:

Y’know it’s also worth mentioning the same arguments people make about buying American apply here. For example, you limit your consumption to domestic goods only, you’ll never get a Lamborghini or a Rolex … or in this case Polanski’s Chinatown. How can you limit yourself like that? But I’m sitting here now and thinking about it, and it occurs to me the same problem sets in with both scenarios.

Choose to sacrifice for quality over principle, fast forward a couple decades and what have we got? No wholesome mainstream entertainment, no US manufactured goods, and yet no Lamborghinis or Chinatowns. All of our consumer goods are crappy and made by communists, and all of our books and movies are crappy and made by creeps and pederasts. Meanwhile both the American workers and Christian authors are on unemployment.

Maybe the real problem here is the Darwinism of the almighty dollar.

My initial reaction is to suggest that this is a false analogy. One question is ethical (how are artistic works to be judged?) and the other is economical. In both cases, the average consumer can’t be expected to vet the issues in question. Most people do not pay attention to where there goods come from, and most do not investigate the personal lives of the writers they read or the directors whose movies they watch. Nor am I convinced they should be expected to; indeed, before they days of the internet, such vetting was in many cases difficult if not impossible.

Traditionally, protecting locally manufactured goods has largely been the domain of governments, which have exacted tariffs or limited trade. Dealing with artists’ criminal behavior, like anyone else’s criminal behavior, has usually fallen to the same authority. I’m not convinced this is the wrong way to do things: In the latter case, the alternative is mob justice. In the former, I’m not sure home-grown efforts to buy local make a significant difference in the long run.

I might add, too, that protecting the populace from smut has also traditionally fallen to the government, but only partly. Only gradually did the United States decide that pornography was protected by the First Amendment (which, as written, was clearly not intended for such a purpose). This has been a disaster.

Working

I’m working over here. But tomorrow evening starts my weekend, so I should have a review up for you then.

Project Update

I’m currently collaborating on a project I’m rather excited about. I think it would be imprudent to give specific details as it may still turn out that my work isn’t a good fit, but I’ll let you know about it when the time comes if everything moves forward. Probably for the next few days, I’ll still be concentrating on that before I can get to other things.

Working Away

I’m over here working on the third volume of Jake and the Dynamo, which is going all right, though I’m a tad frustrated that I still haven’t heard anything from potential publishers. Anyway, while I’m writing a rough draft, I often listen to music, and I have recently found some dude on YouTube who does “ambient metal,” which is kind of nice because it’s a style I like and doesn’t have any words to distract me.

Working Away

I’ve been out of communication partly because our internet has been wonky, but everything seems to be working again, at least for the time being.

I am admittedly having trouble with Son of Hel, my novel about Krampus and Santa Claus, so for the time being I’m working on the third volume of Jake and the Dynamo, which is under the working title of The Shadow of His Shadow.

I still have manuscripts out but haven’t heard back from publishers. I’m also working on an essay I’m going to submit to an upcoming collection; I’ll tell you more about that when the time comes.

Negative

The magical girl got the results of her test for the Chinese coronavirus back. The results were negative. So there is one case in our town, but so far zero confirmed cases in our house.

Currently working on Son of Hel, and I want to keep plugging away, so I’m not sure I’ll get a post up today. At the moment, I’m working on a sequence in which St. Nicholas entertains Queen Titania of Fairyland, so I’m researching full-course meals to make sure everything is proper and dignified. It’s making me hungry.

Updates in the Time of Quarantine

I’m a few days late on the next in my series of essays partly because I was watching both the theatrical and directors’-cut versions of both Alien and Aliens to refresh my memory. I am of the heretical opinion that the theatrical version of both movies is the superior one, an opinion I may discuss at greater length later.

For now, I wish to give a more personal update. The magical girl and I got married three weeks ahead of our original schedule because she’s a nurse, and I wanted to limit her contact with her elderly parents, with whom she was living. That’s why we got married in a private ceremony with the permission of our bishop, and we were just in time, as all public ceremonies of any sort were suspended just a week later.

Anyway, as I assumed would eventually happen, she’s now definitely been exposed to the virus at the hospital where she works, though her own test results aren’t back yet. In any case, if she has it, I definitely have it. We’re quarantining ourselves in our apartment right now while we wait. Nobody in our immediate vicinity, including the patient who tested positive at the hospital, is exhibiting symptoms.

It just so happens that we got this news right as we were beginning our break from work that was originally supposed to be the start of our marriage and honeymoon. That works out well for us: I’m off work anyway, but I’ll be put on administrative leave later if it looks like I need to stay away from my job for longer than our planned vacation.

Admittedly, the two of us are having a much better time than a great many people. While others are getting seriously ill or going stir-crazy, we’re on a little newlywed honeymoon staycation, which both of us are mostly enjoying, even without the slightly larger wedding and honeymoon we originally planned. In any case, the way events have played out have convinced me that I did the right thing to ask the bishop to let us marry early, a request he graciously granted even though it was Lent. I had some doubts at the time, naturally, but now I’m further convinced that was the right move.

Happy Easter

I’m not posting as much as I should because I’m still kind of in honeymoon mode. But it’s been a productive day for me, and I have to admit, in spite of this whole business, I’ve kind of enjoyed being quarantined with my new wife. Originally, before everything went down, we were supposed to have our marriage and honeymoon this next week, so we still have a block of time off coming up, which we’ll now have as a staycation (both of us, fortunately, are still able to work during all of this). Today, I made her brunch while we streamed an Easter Mass from her home country—the Philippines—over her phone.

I also finished a writing project I’ve been working on and a book I’ve been reading, and yesterday I finished something else I want to talk about—so I should have some posts of substance in the next couple of days.

Unfortunately, I still don’t have a publisher at the moment. I have manuscripts out, but what with everything going on, I don’t respect quick responses right now, so I’ll wait a few months before I begin shopping the manuscripts to other places. Anyone reading this blog will of course be first to know if something breaks. I’m contemplating self-publishing Jake and the Dynamo and its sequels.

For now, though, I think it’s time to get to the writing project I intended to start after the one I just finished.

Also, I’ve been really dissatisfied with my physical state since they closed the gym I go to, but my magical girl just introduced me to a great app for home workouts. I did a good one today that left me panting and will continue tomorrow, so I think I can get back in shape. I’m all around in a good mood right now.

I realize not everyone is doing so well, but I hope for good things for all my readers. Stay safe, and happy Easter. He is risen.