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(Mature language and theme involved in the post – 18+ audiences only)
I don’t know if you are massively part of the Book Twittersphere, but in the last few days, we’re had a massive explosion in #soapgate. If you don’t know exactly what it is, I’m going to summarize it for you, but if you want pictures, you’ll need to look to Twitter (it’s all there!).
So essentially, a book subscription box decided to do a book boyfriend box themed around ACOTAR. Now, in the original listing of this product of Instagram, it did not say 18+ anywhere. It didn’t say this until 3 posts later and orders had been made. On the online listing, the word ‘mature’ is only at the very bottom, and I don’t know many who read the entire listing.
Cutting a long story short, when people got the box, they were shocked to find two things unexpected inside (besides the other stuff). We had a bound fanfiction (which is a BIG NO-NO) and a soap in the shape of a phallic body part….with a suction cup on the end. Now, when I saw the pictures, I thought that it was some kind of adult toy and nearly had a heart attack (I didn’t buy the box but I saw my friends opening it on Instagram).
So there’s two problems with the box. I’ll start with the legal one.
Selling FanFiction for money is illegal!
You are allowed to write FanFiction until you’re blue in the face, and you can share it all over and give it as gifts to friends. But the moment you make any money from that writing, you are breaking the law. People say, ‘Well 50 Shades of Grey was a FanFiction of Twilight’, and while that is true, the premise of the story, like deep down, is similar, but the story itself has no clear connections such as character names, et ceterea.
FanFiction generally keeps the same world, same characters, same personalities – it’s the same thing as the story except they change what the characters do or who they pair with.
If you sell FanFiction, true FanFiction, you are stealing an authors writing. In this case, that was Sarah J. Maas’ writing. So that was the first big no-no.
Next, why are you putting dick soap into a box for kids?
I first do need to mention that this book, while it is YA, I don’t classify it as that – it’s more NA and even borderlines on adult. When I initially got the book a year ago to start the series, I thought it was Fantasy with romance. But once I got to the first sex scene I thought I was reading an adult erotic romance novel. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. For an adult, it’s fine. But for a YA reader (who could be 13), it was unacceptable.
Now, I don’t mind romance in books. Romance is healthy. Kids need to read about romance. But sex? I don’t think that a 13 year old should be reading it to completely normalize sex for them. We have kids who believe that condoms aren’t needed because of pornographic videos and stories they read online, they think that relationships aren’t messy because of the beautiful romance stories that they read..the last thing you need is your young kid reading a hot and steamy sex scene before they even truly know what sex is. It is going to alter their perceptions on things.
Some parents don’t mind what their kids read, or don’t have the time to be involved, and if they aren’t…then they could be reading some really questionable things. Hands on parents, or parents that give any attention, whatsoever, to the kids, will not want their young ones reading something this graphic. We got some questionable themes going on here people! Wake up!
It can be hard being a YA author to write romance scenes for older YA because if you’re 17 or 18, reading that kind of scene may be less shocking and more what you’re looking for. So that’s why I think NA (new adult) is perfect. It’s in between YA and adult…as we have no distinction between younger YA and older YA. So I’m not really blaming the author here. Maybe a potential warning system in books would be better (kind of like trigger warnings) that authors can put to warn parents what the book could contain to stop people from being so shocked. But, that is besides the point and a whole other blog post.
I want to know why the person who made the box thought it was okay to put a male genitalia object in a book designed for kids without the proper warning until they had sold copies. It’s funny, they claim they put the warning on the first post and all the screen shots clearly show that there was absolutely no warning. To me, that’s kind of lying and if I paid $50 for a box like this, I’d be furious…especially if I had purchased it for my kid. Even adult videos have to put clear warnings on their videos by law.
What has the world come to that book boxes include smutty fanfiction and genitalia shaped soaps?!
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE BOOK COMMUNITY?
I watched this trend on the twitter and all this scenario is just unacceptable.
Everything was just so wrong. I don’t even know how this happened.
I’m LIVING for this!! I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of #soapgate before and while I do think what happened is a serious no-no it’s also f*cking hilarious, like who authorized this?!
I agree 100% that the ACOTAR series should absolutely not be YA. I was reading it with my jaw on the floor like I could’ve read something this graphic at 12/13 years old? That’s insane and irresponsible.
Also who TF thought making money off of fanfic was okay? Don’t you think we’d all be rich if that were allowed? Lol who are these people. Like I honestly think E.L. James should not have been allowed to capitalize on Fifty Shades but that’s not up to me.
Thank you so much for making me laugh super hard with this post. The internet never ceases to surprise and confuse me.
Oh my gosh! I’m so glad that you enjoyed this post. Your comment had me almost crying with laughter.
The entire situation was just ridiculous and hilarious. I spent ages scrolling through twitter reading it all because I just couldn’t believe it.
I do agree with you about the Fifty Shades thing – as a story it’s fine (well as fine as it can be) but when I found out it was a fanfiction I was really put off that someone wouldn’t even bother to use their own brain. It made it worse for me sadly.
I laughed sooo hard – I may have wet myself… 😉
The entire situation is juts hilarious 😀
It does seem like they seriously overstepped the mark with the fan fiction. I guess that if they knew the content of the book then they could have lost sight of the fact that it is a YA book however that doesn’t justify it. I have some crates and I did read all of the details before I purchased each of them. They are not a cheap buy so I wanted to be sure what I was buying and I think that as long as the mature content warning was on there then I think that legally, on that part they may be safe. I have got a bath bomb in a book box before and it was a nice touch however phallic soap would surprise even me.
That’s the problem. If they had clearly listed it most people would have been fine with it. But since the clear listing of 18+ wasn’t until later, I believe there were some young ‘uns who got it that really shouldn’t have. It’s all such a mess. The ‘drama’ in the book community is quite hilarious.
I hadn’t seen this and I know I really shouldn’t have but this made me laugh – soap penis with suction cup in a book box? I just can’t even – I reiterate your closing comment ‘WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE BOOK COMMUNITY?’.
I was discussing trigger warnings and so on with my boyfriend on the way to work the pother day actually and it’s funny, he isn’t a reader but when I explained there wasn’t really a united rating system for genre ages and appropriate content for books, only reading level ages (which are really only for school books and deal with complexity, not content) and that authors have no obligation to state whether their book contains sensitive scenes and content he was actually really surprised he said (quote) “but if they put ages on movies why don’t they do it for books? What’s the big deal, 15 year olds sneak into 18 films all the time, but the warning is still there”. I just told him I wished everyone saw it that way. Not really about the box, but I’ve heard much about ACOTAR and the word ‘sheathed’ and I find it funny when compared to the comparatively tame content of the first 2 ToG books.
This was really interesting! Initially, I thought you couldn’t sell fan fiction, but when 50 Shades of Grey came out, that threw off my perspective (I never read that or the Twilight series). This makes sense, though; you shouldn’t be able to capitalize on somebody else’s work unless they’re getting a cut.
Great info!!!
It’s all so confusing and there’s just all this stuff and so many people don’t know about. I used to write fanfiction and it never even crossed my mind to seel it because it wasn’t my work. But I guess poeple want to make a little extra money any way they can.
bwahahahaha! I haven’t heard of this at all. You’re totally right! who came up with the soap
Oh it’s such a mess 😀
Wow, I’ve been living under a rock on my vacation and can’t believe I missed this. 🙈
It’s like this whole thing. I’m amazed at how many missed this 😀
Okay so I didn’t know that they didn’t actually put the warnings?? I thought they had! And I was a teeny bit more concerned with the fanfiction (whuch I heard was PERSONALIZED) than the soap. What a disaster of a box oof.
Based on what I know, they eventually did place warnings but on the initial post there was nothing. And yea, I heard there were letters in there that were personalized and stuff. So messy D:
Very messy oof.
Agreed!
I’m not into the who ‘fan fiction’ but I can understand people being annoyed at paying for something that isn’t the authors original work. However, regarding the male body part in the box. I’m not really that shocked, nor would I have been that bothered. I’m a mother of three kids, youngest two are 12 and 15. They know what the body part looks like and wouldn’t of been bothered, they most likely would of cried with laughter. I’d be more concerned about them reading the book.
I do agree with that. I would have probably had a good laugh about it and such. The book though…yeah, I do agree.
I have been seeing this all over the place lately. I heard about the soap but didn’t know there was fanfiction in the box, as well. What were they thinking? Running a book subscription box, they have to know what is legal and what isn’t.
Honestly I’m not sure. They posted an apology about it recently and it seems that a lot of people don’t know that selling fanfiction is illegal. People in the comments seemed so naieve, like ‘it’s just fanfiction’ not realizing the legal implications.
Wow! An apology doesn’t change the fact that they already charged people for all those copies of the fanfic. I guess the soap doesn’t bother or surprise me but, as an aspiring author, the fanfic bothers me. Great post! Thanks for making us aware 🙂
It really bothers me about the fanfiction because it’s supposed to be fun and people are getting ripped off. People need to be informed and I’m glad so many read this post to learn about it. It’s definitely raised this to the front of many groups I’ve been noticing!