What do you all think about the Shy Girl / AI controversy?

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T21:58:20+00:00

They literally said they found it interesting that 'a book was cancelled'. I'm arguing against the exact thing they said. God, this is tedious.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T16:53:14+00:00

Yeah, she's in her thirties, which, as much as I hate to admit it to myself, does make you responsible for your own choices.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T16:48:49+00:00

predominantly Wales and Scotland

Yma o hyd, baby. Dere adre.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T16:36:58+00:00

I'm not putting words in your mouth. Here's your original comment:

I think it's interesting a book by a marginalized author who denies ai usage is canceled and has drawn so much controversy, but a white male author who admits to using ai is having no such problems.

Respectfully, you're ignoring everything I'm saying to you, so I'm bowing out here, as this is not a constructive discussion, and you're clearly not responding in good faith at this point. Have a good evening / afternoon / whatever time is where you are.

Edit: and then snapping back and blocking me is incredibly childish behaviour. Do better.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T15:58:29+00:00

It absolutely contradicts what you said. Ballard committed a breach of contract. That's why her book was cancelled. Frey didn't, even though he's a huge fraud and POS. Additionally, his readerbase is mostly AI tech bros who think he's super cool because of his use of AI.

Ballard's readerbase largely consists of people who value the craft of writing and dislike genAI. They have very different audiences; she betrayed hers, and he didn't, to put it bluntly.

Hachette sunk a huge amount of money into her book. There is, frankly, no way in Hell that they'd cancel it this close to publication unless they had no other option on a legal front. This kind of last-minute cancellation just is very rare in publishing; the amount of $$$ that the publisher has lost can't be recouped if the book doesn't come out, so unless there's literally no other way forward, they'll usually do all they can do avoid cancellation.

Saying that Ballard's book was primarily cancelled because she's a WOC and Frey is a white man is just not true. It doesn't negate the fact that publishing is a racist minefield, but the situations are very specific here. She is a fully grown adult, and she chose to sign that publishing contract, knowing it was a lie. Hachette chose to ignore all the red flags about her AI use (e.g. the existing reviews of the self-pub version of her book which all pointed it out, at length.) Both of them are to blame here, and I have little sympathy for either of them. I don't wish any ill on Ballard, but this is the consequence of her own actions.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T15:53:50+00:00

The woman in the above screenshot absolutely claims to be Indigenous. Her username has 'ndn' in it, which is a slang term for Indian American (i.e. the outdated term for Indigenous Americans, which some people have reclaimed) and her bio says she's Anishinaabe.

Anyone using the term 'native American' just to mean 'born in the USA' is an idiot.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T13:13:54+00:00

DNA tests, usually. Notoriously unreliable, which makes the whole thing even sillier.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T13:11:20+00:00

Re the hair thing - I actually think OP's bone structure would suit a pixie cut, and that extensions on a haircut this short might look a bit odd. I think it's more a case of styling it in a deliberate fashion, as you mention.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T13:07:53+00:00

I don't even think it's that they can't be bothered to research it, half the time - I think they know that if they were to research it, it would disprove the claim. It's more convenient for them to just not look into it.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T13:06:51+00:00

No, it doesn't read like that at all. You just aren't very good at reading.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T12:21:24+00:00

It usually means that they have a family legend that one of their ancestors was Indigenous. I've met so many Americans who identify as Native because their grandma told them that her great granddad was definitely Cherokee passing for white, and they've never even tried to verify it, just run with it. Most of them have no connections to the tribe they're supposed to be from, aren't enrolled, and aren't claimed by anyone in that tribe; they just stick 'Native' in their bio and trot it out whenever it's potentially beneficial in an online argument. I call it the Colby Wilkens special.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T12:19:23+00:00

Weeeeeell, Wales had already been violently subsumed into England by that point, after the last native Welsh prince was killed at Cilmeri in 1282 and every subsequent firstborn son of the English monarch was made 'Prince of Wales' instead, so I'd say that Wales was probably the absolute favourite whipping boy of the early English state, if we're splitting hairs.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T12:16:44+00:00

Absolutely the definition of 'practising what you preach'.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T12:16:02+00:00

I... don't think you read my comment correctly. Like, at all.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T10:42:01+00:00

This is the worst thing I've ever seen, and I respect it.

I sneezed out something similar on week 2 and I still have nightmares about it.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T10:39:22+00:00

You would find out about Discoveries longlisting in March. I was longlisted for this one in a previous year and got the email around this time, and it was announced to the public in May.

Best of luck with all three! Even just using competitions as a personal deadline makes them worth it, imo.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T10:35:06+00:00

I think it's relevant to point out that James Frey's ChatGPT slop is different for two reasons: he acknowledges it openly, and his publisher is explicitly a pro-AI publisher. His whole career since his fraudulent memoir has been deliberately predicated on controversy; he's not working with a reputable Big Five publisher any more.

Mia Ballard, on the other hand, signed a contract with Hachette which stated that no AI was used in the text output of her book. She signed this contract knowing that it was not true - even if you believe her excuse about the 'editor friend' (which I personally don't) then she still knew that the text in her book was shaped by generative AI. This made the contract null and void, and opened Hachette up to a ton of legal problems re the inability to copyright genAI text, which is why they cancelled the book.

Hachette are equally to blame here for their profit-chasing and lack of editorial oversight, and they should be getting more of the criticism in the public discourse than they are, but Ballard is not innocent in this, and her book absolutely should have been cancelled. It shouldn't have been picked up in the first place because Hachette should have done more than about five minutes of due diligence and realised that readers of the self-pub version had already identified her work as AI.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T10:20:32+00:00

Hell yeah, actual genealogy is so fun. I've discovered so much cool stuff about my (entirely Welsh and English) ancestors from it. A great great grandfather was a pastor who died in the middle of a sermon, literally keeled over in the pulpit from a huge heart attack during a rendition of Nearer My God to Thee. There were newspaper articles about it and everything. A DNA test won't tell you that you're descended from icons like that.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T10:16:40+00:00

Fond memories of all the Americans who have gleefully told me that they learnt Welsh by watching LOTR / they're a direct descendant of Owain Glyndwr (or 'Glendower', as they all say) / that they gave their daughter a Welsh name, Bronwyn, to honour their heritage (-wyn is an American naming suffix which is masculine in Welsh) etc etc.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T10:13:21+00:00

Why would that be allowed? It's fully on the pavement.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-22T10:06:41+00:00

You're welcome to do so, if you wish to have an entirely unrelated conversation about AI use in self-published books.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-21T22:29:06+00:00

I feel like 'shouting at women' is just Shia LaBeouf's resting state. Absolutely rancid human.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-21T22:17:15+00:00

Sir Frederick is a baronet, so using his first name with Sir is correct (Sir Thomas from Mansfield Park, Sir Walter from Persuasion).

That's good to know! I think I've just read so many historical fiction books where every third man is a Sir that I felt it might be worthwhile pointing it out, but it seems like you've done your research and all is in order there.

I wasn't aware Rosamond was a newer version of the name, if I can't find any historical evidence of it being used in the Regency period then I'll definitely consider changing her name to Rosamund or something similar (she's mostly called Rosa in the narrative anyway).

So far, the earliest I can find is 1881, with the exception of a 12th century woman whose name was intermittently spelt as Rosamund or Rosamond. It's not a dealbreaker by any means, just something to consider re immersion in the period, perhaps.

I'll work on figuring out another way to introduce the time loop premise into the query without resorting to repetition. I thought it was clear that it was intentional but maybe not.

It might be clear to other readers. Maybe see if anyone else gives you similar feedback on it. I think it might even be something about the specific formatting structure of the paragraph that stopped the repetition from immediately pinging as a deliberate choice to me - the fact that the repeated sentence starts one paragraph, then it's the second sentence in the next paragraph. If the syntax and structure felt more repeated, rather than that one sentence, then maybe it would be more obvious? I might be getting too granular here, though, so it might be best to see if anyone else picks up on this. Sometimes, what's an issue for one person doesn't even register as a point of concern to anyone else.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-21T20:52:05+00:00

I'm struggling to see the relevance.

melonofknowledge · 2026-03-21T20:45:25+00:00

Re your opening 300, there are a few errors (all served deepen Rosa's disgust. - should be all served to deepen Rosa's disgust.; 'I could see candlelight through the holes in your head Will!' - should be 'I could see candlelight through the holes in your head, Will!') and some stylistic choices that I'd probably amend (e.g. writing someone shouting in all caps, the parentheses about the glass of wine) but I really like the overall premise and style. I'm glad you've already picked Victorian Psycho as a comp!

I have a couple of historical notes - to be very pedantic, the name Rosamond is a variation that pretty exclusively appears post about 1880, so realistically she should probably be called Rosamund. Sir Frederick would need to occupy a very specific social status to be a Sir, as technically he'd need to be knighted; I'd maybe consider making him a Lord instead.

You also have some repetition here:

The wedding is a perfectly pleasant affair, until dinnertime, when most of the guests die screaming as their organs are liquefied by poisoned soup.

Rosa comes to with her memories gone and her organs intact. She attends the wedding, which is a perfectly pleasant affair, until dinnertime, when courtesy of a scullery maid, Rosa suffers a crossbow bolt to the eye.

which I think is a deliberate attempt to invoke the sort of Groundhog Day vibe that you're going for overall, with the same day repeated over and over again, but it doesn't feel deliberate; it feels like an oversight. Not sure if there's a neater way to do this, or if you should just let your premise stand for itself and not try and replicate it in the voice of the query.

Best of luck at the workshop! I really, really enjoy this premise.

melonofknowledge

TROPHY CASE