This author was caught faking their race with multiple identities: a deep dive into Freydis Moon
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Let's deep dive into Freydis Moon, otherwise known as Taylor Barton, otherwise known as Taylor Brooke, otherwise known as Brooklyn Ray, otherwise known as Jupiter Wyse, otherwise known as Stacey Anthony, otherwise known as Hunter Lewellyn, otherwise known as Hunter Taylor, otherwise known as Cordelia Lynne, otherwise known as Bailey Greene, otherwise known as Saint Harlowe, otherwise known as Daniella...
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TIMESTAMPS
⌛ 0:00 - Intro: Who is Freydis Moon?
⌛ 02:53 - Parade [ad]
⌛ 03:56 - The original tale of Taylor Barton
⌛ 08:27 - The reincarnation of Jupiter Wyse
⌛ 14:00 - The deja vu of Freydis Moon
⌛ 21:46 - The random subplot of Saint Harlowe vs Cardigan
⌛ 26:43 - The ghosts of Hunter Lewellyn and Cordelia Lynne
⌛ 32:43 - The consequences of their actions
⌛ 37:57 - Why this hurts writers with pen names, Latinx/Latine authors, and indie authors
⌛ 43:35 - A lesson in online literacy
⌛ 47:14 - Support (real) trans Latinx/Latine authors
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New phone, who Freydis?
STOPPPPP
YOU WIN
freydis, freydat. freyget about it!
These writers know that R. F. Kuang's YELLOWFACE was a fictional story, not a step-by-step guide, right?
pls 😭💀
maybe it was misplaced in the DIY section at b&n…
I got so confused because I’m not a regular participant in booktok but I am a theater nerd and there is a play by David Henry Hwang of the same name with similar satire and themes. If anyone is interested I highly recommend.
This. Like jfc
@@mariaerdgzn plssss im dying
This person really said "I'm not an ABUSER, I'm a RACIST, get it right" lmao
djlkasldjksa omg
It's giving, "I Can Excuse Racism But I Draw The Line At Animal Cruelty" XD
@@honinakecheta601 "You can excuse rasim?" Always appreciated a Community reference =)
@@per-c8229 the writers of the show really knew what they were doing lol that exchange always makes me laugh for several minutes
@@Shyknit The first time I watched it made me hate Brita, then I got the joke and a laugh, still don't like her but I can laugh about it =)
Donating to the trevor project after accusations of racism is the most white person thing to do, tbh. "I'm sorry I was racist, but I love the gays!"
That whole apology was yt coded lmao 🤣
@@krow5099 "I'm listening and learning" is practically a common trope of bad racism apologies at this point
@@Aurelian369_ "i'm listening and learning, and i am completely ignoring all of it."
which is crazy because you’re literally donating the money anyways, you dont lose anything by donating it to poc focused campaigns. like it literally doesn’t change anything for you personally bc you’re giving the same amount, so why would you pick a gay charity
What boggles my mind is that it's so hard to get an agent, and this person managed to do it three times under different identities???
I guess she actually is good at writing but instead of writing books she keeps getting caught into this.
You can achieve anything if you're a pathological liar
I had the same thoughts. Either the writing is phenomenal or it's playing into some crazy confirmation bias.
Ikr?! They must be good at writing, couldnt they focus their energy on that?!
Lol that doesn't necessarily mean that they are a good writer. They just know how to write what agents are looking for. As someone who has had an agent in the past, they are very much looking for a specific kind of story and writing especially if you are an author of color or masquerading as one.
Seems like this person saw the Cait Corrain situation and was like “lmao I can be messier.” The hell you mean they kept this up for *FIVE YEARS*
cait corrain: who are you freydis moon: im you but stronger
Hahaha I had the same reaction. 5 YEARS?????
I can hardly keep people's Christmas presents a secret for 2 months never mind THIS WHOLE ASS MESS
king shit
Finally, a sequel to Rachel Dolezal
any one of us could be taylor at this point. it could be you, it could be me, it could be cindy
😂😂😂
Oh god, am I Taylor?!
It me
Are there anymore squidwards I should know about 😭
@@j.g.3293PLEASE 😭😭😭
Befriending people as one identity but then beefing with them under a different identity is unhinged 💀 I mean, its all a bit unhinged to be fair, but that's actually unhinged.
I’m the whale author mentioned at the 22 minute mark and hearing it from someone not living on book Twitter just made the whole thing sound so much more ridiculous 😭
HAHAHAHA when I saw the screenshots I was like why are people so pressed about someone writing about whales?!
@@withcindy that group has a weird parasocial beef thing with me but I was shocked to say the least at the absolute vile spewing that was going on and also yeah WHY DO WHALES MAKE YOU ANGRY I CANT😭
They must really hate Herman Melville too.
I need to know what this whale book is called.
@@avsambart it’s called THE DEEDS THAT BIND US!! It’s on sub right now so fingers crossed it actually sells😭😭
The FBI works hard but booktwt works harder
im truly impressed by their detective work
Everyday I remember the Reylos tweets backlog.
Considering 4chan once called an airstrike, this is only a fraction of the Internet’s power.
@@Queen_Cnidarian 4chan is the spine of the internet Only fraction of their power is always terrifying when ready
online sleuths will be out there sleuthing lmaooo
as a black brazilian i find it very funny that this person did not fake being a white latine, it would be so easy for them 😭
Cara, eu tava pensando a mesma coisa kkkkkk Nem para fazer uma mentira boa, eu acho que é porque tem muito gringo que acha que tode latine é um pessoa racializada, quando ser latine é uma nacionalidade, não uma etnia.
RIGHT?!?!?
nah they were like i gotta go BROWN
@@lordarthur2165tal vez esqueceu que existem mais países na América Latina do que o México. E também acha que todos os Mexicanos somos cafés (marroes?) -_- Erro típico de gringos racistas. (Me desculpe pelo meu português, ainda estou aprendendo)
@@beksfue5937 sim, é sempre muito engraçado quando eles acham que a gente é tudo a mesma coisa, quando dentro de um mesmo país é cheio de variações regionais. Aliás, você está indo bem no português! Só a palavra marrom que você errou, o plural de marrom é marrons e a o "mexicanos somos cafés", acho que a terceira pessoa ("são" ao invés de "somos") se encaixaria melhor. Mas não se preocupe que dá para entender perfeitamente o que você quiz dizer, meus parabéns, aprender outra língua é difícil.
"wHy aRe yOu mAkiNg tHiS aBoUt qUeEr wHiTe wOmEn" because they're always making it about themselves
YUPPPPP
spilled
Lmao they always feel so attacked everytime even tho its not about themselves
I really thought that the lady who faked her own death was going to be the most wild booktube drama for at LEAST a couple of years but Freydis said, "hold my beer" and went for gold.
and why did she lowkey ate with that..?
@@Daryaa804 genuinely, who among us has not had the urge
@@BelleChanson0717 she‘s iconic for that smh
@@BelleChanson0717 she‘s iconic for that smh
"You fool! I have 70 alt accounts! You'll never find my main!" - Taylor Barden, Taylor Brooks, Brooklyn Ray, Jupiter Wise, Stacey Antony, Hunter Taylor, Hunter Lowellen, Cordellia Lin, Bailey Green, Saint Harlow, and Freydis Moon (probably)
Girl had access to thousands on names on the internet and she landed on Taylor 3 times
Those sound like names of paint colors
@@leonardozhangI want to paint my room Freydis Moon with a Jupiter Wise trim.
and they all sound like white names 😭
these are like the names a quiverfull white mother gives her twenty blue-eyed blond aryan children
Pretending to be another race just so you can roleplay opression.... I'm in an utter state of shock.
it aint new unfortunately... they were just the only few that were caught
I always think about this like why is our suffering so interesting? Why would you want that? I've only had a handful of experiences with racism (really it has to do with my lighter skin tone) but I would never wish I had it worse. Those instances were more than enough.
@@withcindywhite people are SO desperate to be oppressed
I mean you don't even have to pretend to be another race. Tip for future fraud: just say that your family is Ukrainians who fled the Soviets in the 30s to escape the genocide that Stalin committed against the Ukrainian people. We are very white, and Christians at that, which did not stop our neighbors from oppressing, enslaving, repressing, and committing genocide against us for 300 years. But this, I guess, is not a well-known fact, although with how much free time these people have...
@@randompromises1038 it's because privileged people feel uncomfortable being privileged. because they dont want to examine themselves.
It's important to note that not all Latine/Latinx people are people of color. If she was just pretending to be "Latinx" that's one horrible thing, but pretending to be a brown person goes so much further and contributes so much to the racism and colorism that Latine people of color experience.
They were confirmed to be white, not white latine
As one of these people I like to attribute this to what I call the “Schrödinger’s White People” effect. Basically, a latino person can be 100% genetically “white”, i.e. they can have the ability to trace all or most of their entire bloodline back to Europe but because they speak Spanish or Portuguese and/or live in a non-US country, by default, to Anglos they are “POC”. That’s really all it takes. Therefore we may be considered “white” or “non-white” depending entirely upon whatever happens to be the most convenient at the time, and therefore, people have some really weird hangups about “whiteness” in intersection with Latin identities. That is, people who are distinctly “white” WILL perceive you in a racialized way if you are Hispanic, Latino or even Chicano-even if you are visibly white-looking they will IMAGINE color that is not there the moment they learn of your heritage, hear your accent, see the food you make at home, etc. Whether or not we are “white” depends entirely on whether we are being observed and who is observing us. Does this make any amount of logical sense? No. Does this override actual colorism? Also no. But whiteness is a club, not a real actual thing-like, fucking Italians and Irish weren’t considered “white” less than a century ago. And so I can kind of see the path where a weird twisted sort of logic could come in that led a person to pretzel themselves into thinking they could claim this identity.
(This also gets way more complicated when you talk about mestizo people, who by nature occupy a weird nebulous space between “white” and “non-white” that depends mostly on phenotype, but just as an example within my own family there are numerous people who are only 1-2 degrees separated familially but just so happen to Look totally different. My grandmother was visibly POC, and often had slurs intended for black people hurled at her when walking down the street in the US back in the 70s. My mom happens to be the kid with the lightest skin color out of her children, and so I ended up being a light-skinned grandkid. I have uncles and cousins with very dark skintones despite being half white. Both my mom and I get clocked as “racially ambiguous”-personally *I* think I look pretty white, but more than one Even More White person has randomly approached me out of nowhere to ask if I was *Japanese* before! It’s a mess!)
Latine? I've not heard this word before. I had the impression that Latinx was coming into use instead of specifying the gendered terms Latino and Latina. Is latine another similar word? I thought the word for just referring to Latin culture and countries was Latin.
@@coyoteartistlatine is an alternative to latinx that flows more naturally in Spanish and works better with constructed gender neutrality in Spanish. For example, an nb person could say 'estoy cansade y soy latine' (I'm tired and latin). Both work tho lmao. It's a personal preference thing.
Love how Cardigan tried to come back like "a-ha! see?" and everyone just went "no ✨"
That’s the funniest part of this whole thing 😂
Made me laugh a bit
I was waiting for the reveal that Cardigan was also Freydis.
This is what happens when people get tired of writing fanfiction on AO3 and start writing fanfiction IRL.
What in the Yellowface is going the hell on
Pandemic online community made me learned that some people ARE this messy and more. They’re living for the drama even though it never ends well.
Not fan fiction IRL 😂😂😂
Self insert taken too far...
"The Year I Turned Brown, A Memoir"
NOOOOOOO
That sounds like Mindy Kaling's brother's book about him pretending to be black to get into medical school 💀
I CACKLED
😭😭😭😭😭😭
NOOOOOO 😭
I write as a hobby, and sometimes I think that my plot ideas are too outlandish, but then some non-fictional drama happens that makes me realize that absolutely anything I could make up on the spot would probably not be as batshit insane as the lengths some scammers go to when they're desperate
You can be the next kuang lol
For me it's whenever I remember that author who wrote the personification of Covid as a love interest
😮wtf i am curious but at the same time not @@DinoCultist
@WildArtistsl oh it is a TRIP! I looked him up and forgot it was a whole series called "Kissing the Coronavirus" The author is M.J. Edwards and he has other titles as well, including "Mating with the Mantis" and "Penetrated by the President's Twitter Feed" There's another person who does similar stuff called Chuck Tingle and his titles are W I L D ! ! ! The one that always cracks me up is "Bisexual Mothman Mailman Makes A Special Delivery In Our Butts" Oh and who can forget "Pounded In The Butt By The Sentient Physical Manifestation Of My Writer's Block Then Realizing I've Already Found Inspiration By Literally Writing About How I'm Not Inspired" These are all real titles. If even the idea of these exist to the point where there are so many of these and they're all selling on Amazon, you can write anything!
@@DinoCultistwas it Chuck Tingle? That dude's books are entirely unhinged and I can't help but love him for it.
When Dr. Jekyll creates an alternate version of himself to enact his darkest desires he’s “iconic literature” but yet when SOMEONE ELSE tries it they’re “problematic” smh smh 🤦
To be fair, Mr Hyde was still the same race
Would it still be problematic if I sing about it?
As a white queer woman I'm starting to worry that I don't have several identities to grift with. Am I behind? When do people normally start doing that? Oh god I'm 38 and I haven't done a single identity scam!
This comment made me lol, thank u
if you figure it out can you tell me? I really need a manual on this I don't know where to start!
I think whatever grift it is you have to have plausible deniability and minimal proof
Can we get some kind of time management resource? I feel like I don’t have time to have DM convos with my POC alts, but maybe I’ve been mismanaging my time. Maybe there’s some responsibilities I could cut to make room for a network of aliases.
I’m 70. I have no game for this. I’ll watch.
As a white skinned latino, I think it's funny that she felt the need to really convey that she was darker skinned when portraying a latino person 😂 really goes to show just how ignorant she is about latino identities
Yeah genuinely they coulda said they were Argentinian or Uruguayan or even Spanish… but this wasn’t about making sense, it was about seeing what they could get away with.
Is Latino the correct term? I'm Australian so forgive my ignorance. Why is Latinx considered offensive? Foreigners think that "aborigine" isn't a slur, so I appreciate your frustration.
@@angelawossname”Latino” and “Latina” are Spanish words, and to most Spanish-speaking people those are the correct terms to use in reference of someone from Latin America or people of Latin American descent living outside of the region. Spanish is a gendered language, a lot of words are either masculine or feminine. There is a moment within the Latin American community (esp in the USA) to develop gender neutral variants of gendered Spanish words. Latinx and Latine are meant to be used as gender neutral word for Latino/Latina. But there’s debate within the community about the ‘validity’ of these new words.
@@bookish.calirican thankyou.
@@angelawossnameusing x, e, or even @ to represent women and gender fluid people within a group has been a thing in Latin America since the 90's (probably even before that). Queer and punk communities have been using those suffixes for ages but now it's become mainstream thanks to years of work from queer and feminist activists. E, x, and @ are perfectly valid.
Cait Corrain: I have caused the biggest book drama of the year! Taylor B. Barton: *sips drink and takes off sunglasses* hold my purse
And it's only April, we still have so much of the year left
If that's even their real name! No, legitimately, I have no idea what their real name actually is.
If you wanted a new identity, then write under a different pen name, and locate yourself in a different state or something…Changing your race is INSANEEEE
Pretend to be some sort of flavor of European maybe lol. I can’t with these people
@@absurdum-the-artist "As an Italianx person, I cooka da pasta" do you really think this is any better
@@finboror NO LOL. However I think most would agree that Italians are less oppressed
@@absurdum-the-artist Indeed they are...nowadays, at least. But the point still stands: regardless on how much or how little Americans bully some culture, you maybe shouldn't genuinely try to impersonate it lol
@@finboror I agree with that
Colonizing isn’t good enough, now their cosplaying as us 😭
😭😭😭 not cosplaying
Not all colonizator but always one, gosh....
I'm joking. It is always a colonizator, lol
Colonizing was always about stealing the ideas of minorities and using them to make money. Honestly you can blame capitalism it leads people to say "fuck em I got mine" which is why employee protections are so weak in the United States.
like the Spanish weren't colonizers lol
Going to therapy-❌ Creating multiple fake identities and keeping twitter acounts to publish a bunch of books instead of doing any self reflection-✅
one cost money while the other is free with lots of undeserved validation.
Honestly? Out of this context, larping on the internet can be considered harmless fun. Disassociation from your own identity in order to try and get into the mindset of a character you made up can be rad. Just not like that.
This feels like what happens when you listen to the thoughts of “what if I did a crime? I bet I could pull it off” or “What if I just…started lying on the internet? Who could stop me?”
@@tamarbeker1701 reminds me of that Republican straight white man who cosplayed as a Republican black gay man to try and “validate” republicans online.
Ah yes, the pipeline of downloading a car to identity theft 😂😂@@Professor_Brie
I'm watching this from mexico city, baffled. This gringa really logged into twitter for years and went 'mi gente latinooo'
Stooop not the JLo reference 😂
Watching from Chiapas and baffled 😂 I screamed at the mazapán
STOOOOP IT!!!
as one of the queer indie authors in Freydis’ immediate circle (the “small discord of 30 or so” mentioned in the video), thank you for emphasizing how annoying it is going to be to erase their presence from all of our books. I have three books out and to revise all of the files is around $75, which is the kind of money I do not make off of my writing yet! And I have friends (ex. DC Guevara, an extremely talented latine author who was taken advantage of by Freylor) who have to remove entire epigraphs and cover blurbs from their books. It’s nightmarish both emotionally and logistically rn
these book dramas be getting more and more outrageous smh 😭
and thats only the stuff we know about
IDK if this is typical 1820’s craziness and just no one knew or this is a wholly modern madness.
True, it’s almost like a tv series. Oh, you thought Joffrey Baratheon was bad? Well, here comes Ramsay Bolton!
I feel like I'm on a Glee episode holy shit
With all this drama we’ll never even get to to read their books😂
As an afro-latina I appreciate when you said "this is not my discourse to be a part of". A lot of ethnic people feel entitled to discuss any racial issue even if it doesn't relate to them specifically. Your nuanced approach is refreshing and very welcome.
I feel like I need multiple bulletin boards with pictures, charts, diagrams, labels, pins, and multicolored string to keep up with this - and I’m just barely peeking in here. How could anyone keep up with this for 5 years???
SAME LOOOL. Actually side note I actually have done the whole cork board with red string thing once as a mind map and it actually was really fun lol
I kept having to go back to re-listen to parts of this video because the story is so convoluted. Cindy did a great job but wow what a complex story.
oh my god the picture of them with the sugar skull bandana is in black and white so you can't tell they're white, i am HOWLING
EXACTLYYYYY
This entire fiasco sounds like a pitch for an American Dad episode where the family argues over whose favorite author is superior for them to all end up being Roger.
God I can just imagine them asking “okay Roger, since we all disagree who’s your favorite?” As he’s walking into the kitchen and him just responding “none of them they were all me” then walking back out.😂
😂😂😂
I’m dead
@@kikoonthemoveAnd then they get mad and try to kill him
It's crazy how her personality never changed no matter what race she was😂
Because to her, race is all that matters.
She’s so bad at making fake identities, I’m sobbing 😭 like Ma’am! If you want to fake your identity don’t put the same zodiac signs at the very least!
At least give one of your alts an actual Latine surname?? Like Martinez or Rodriguez like jfc
This is your reminder that if this person can get four agents, you can get one.
LMAO! Watching this video actually encouraged me to write today. I was on the ‘I’m tired, I have work, I have chores’ train but watching this made me determined to write no matter what😂
I once got catfished on Goblindr, I expected to get a one night stand in a goblin cave and turns out it was a whole alpha werewolf. I was like no sir, I have standards, and walked out.
This comment might have inspired my next 5e campaign…
i would've been happy that it's an alpha werewolf. trade?
The way I fully expected goblindr to be an actual neurodivergent dating site 💀
Not the goblin cave 💀
Not me seeing goblindr and thinking it's a play on blind dates...😂
RF Kuang can now have ‘Now an actual event’ in the next reprint of ‘Yellowface’. The Daniels have found the sequel to EEAAO.
NOT “now an actual event” 😭😭😭
RF Kuang the real winner of all this drama lol
Noooo because when I was thinking about that book I was like "I bet someone's done this already" and I only thought that because I had this friend who kept getting mad at Hollywood because he said he couldn't get role because he's white and I was like "babe maybe you just aren't that good because they're deff hiring white guys" and it made me think then about how some people lie about their age and ethnic backgrounds to land roles...it happens it really happens so her book just seemed real to me.
😂😂💀
My thoughts exactly 😂
this was like watching 50 people do a really bad costume change in theatre
this is like Scooby Doo, but the unmasked villain of a whole season its just the same guy on slightly different costumes every time! “And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!”
I thought about it 😂😂😂
Bro what even is the internet anymore 💀
a mess is what it is
Dead internet theory. Except it's all bots *and* sock puppet accounts.
@@RuSosan it's true. i'm a robot. bleep blorp.
How do these people even keep track of all the different people they’re pretending to be???
Imagine if they have DnD character sheets so they know how each fake account is meant to act 😂
I suspect corkboards criss-crossed with lots of strings might be involved.
not well enough to update the metadata 🥴
Multiple personality disorder maybe?
@@rikimaru700No, this really isn’t how DID works. I bet there’s some crazy spreadsheets involved.
Imagine how good their writing could be if they put all that energy into their fiction instead of, well, their fiction
Cant believe they didn't use the "I have self-diagnosed DID and you are all being ableist" defense
And here I am with barely any energy to do laundry while this author is doing a one-person theatre group
I literally slept on the couch for 3 days bc I had no energy to put on new bedsheets
@@withcindy my people😭 I moved to the couch because there was a tower of mess between the bed and me I couldn't muster enough energy to get through.
The internet has truly allowed grown adults to extend their middle school girl bully tendencies far beyond what is socially acceptable. All of the duplicity of pretending to be someone's friend on one account while trashing them on another gives me horrible flashbacks to childhood when girls did something fairly similar but without the benefit of anonymity that the internet provides. People like that are precisely why I've essentially opted out from engagement with the world outside my home.
im sorry u had such a bad experience :( i hope u know that there will be good people who will care about and respect u too
I have a small but really close and loving friend circle. I hope you find something similar. There are good people out there. Don't give up
im crying at them continuing to post their SAME cat under each fake name like bro 😭
Right like huh
when cindy said people found out they were the same person through ASTROLOGICAL CHARTS... my jaw was on the floor
so this is my personal account, but i am a fantasy author who shared an agent with “freydís” and considered them a friend for over a year. they introduced me to my agent (who was also their agent at the time) they blurbed my book, i blurbed theirs, we chatted frequently, the works. i can tell you from personal experience that the depths of their depravity and deceit are shocking and go deeper than just their posts. i genuinely believe there is something deeply, intrinsically wrong with them that cannot be fixed. they create these false identities and slip between them with ease that i can only describe as sinister, and they seek out up and coming authors and industry professionals-generally queer and bipoc-and attach to them like a leech. i have rarely felt more violated. anyway, in the end i was the one to being the thread of proof to our then shared agent and within a couple hours they were dropped so…poetic justice i guess.
i'm so sorry you experienced the misfortune of crossing paths with them :( your good faith and willingness to support your peers shouldn't have been taken advantage of like that
@@withcindy thank you! that is so kind! one positive is since i pulled my blurb from the gideon testaments i was able to open up my requests to actual queer latine authors and have already read some really wonderful books because of it. other authors have been doing that as well which is fantastic imo. anyway, really great video! i won’t comment much in the future as i don’t wanna be in reader spaces too much even on my priv, but you def got a subscriber! 🫶🏻
@@babyhippo3000 ur always welcome to comment whenever u wanna share something or chat! Glad some good things came out of the situation, and wishing u all the best with ur writing ❤️
@@withcindy thank you, same to you! i’m sophia slade on my public socials! ☺️
As someone who was married to someone with DID, my primary reaction to this story was "This person is ill."
The way they sabotaged themself multiple times because they kept on taking the same photos 😭
No fr!! Imagine if they didn’t take the same photos, no one would have ever found out
For someone who made such devious and complex plans they really forgot the small details 💀
imagine being both a writer and *THAT* creatively bankrupt 💀
@@Romanticoutlaw all the creativity points went towards creating those identities.
And manuscripts!!! 😭
As a white person, I really hate when this stuff happens and people feel the need to say, “Not all white people!” Yes, not all white people, but definitely *some* white people. Which is altogether too many! We consistently expect people of colour to be held accountable for the actions of other people of colour, but want to disassociate ourselves from people like this or (ugh!) Trump and Pals. It’s hard to accept, but we benefit from a racist society. We can never do a racist thing in our lives and people out there will still be actively working to make our lives better at the expense of people of colour. If we don’t work to make things better, then we’re a part of the problem. It sucks that the result of these bad actors is that it makes people less trusting online, putting further emotional labour on people of colour. 😔
literally they sound like "not all men",, babes you can't just say "not me specifically though" and pretend like there isn't a problem
Yeah it’s like “not all white people but all the people doing this have been whiiiiiite”
"Uphold yourself with the same confidence as a white writer trying to catfish as you" motivational. Needed this today Cindy ❤
Yes!!
Book drama is like a multi season tv show where they have to constantly one up the last season until its delved into this atrocity
Its a telenova worth coming back to everytime
'the real authors of new Jersey'
omg so truuuue 😭
we’re the Riverdale of Twitter
This is the Supernatural of booktwitter
five YEARS??? The dedication and energy required to pull that off for that long. I can't even be bothered to pretend that i like someone's company for a week
Same I don't even stay in school or in a job for that long
They couldve spent those five years actually learning spanish and latin culture or even travel to latin countries to create latin characters in her novels instead of this roleplay that amounted to nothing lmao
it's so unbelievably insane that this person could just like. quietly write good books and garner a pretty decent following, but instead did this. THE SCAM IS MORE EFFORT THAN JUST BECOMING A GENUINELY GOOD AUTHOR
This whole situation is insane but "The ghosts of Hunter Lewellyn and Cordelia Lynne" goes hard as a title
Someone should do a book like it lmao 😂😂😂😂
*Reads title *Lounges back with a cup of tea "Alright, so who's pulling inspiration from R.F. Kuang this week?"
i just know rf kuang giggles with joy every time something like this happens
The funny part is Kuang could have actually taken inspo from them 💀 like when I read Yellowface I was like oh this is entertaining if unrealistic and then 2023-2024 book twitter happened and I was so very wrong
i’m glad you mentioned that a number of white queer people co-opt issues and concepts which are associated with poc, it’s like a gross attempt to get sympathy points. The apology was so icky because the language seemed lifted straight from poc discourse. You are right, those individuals don’t see the full spectrum of being a poc, they only see the support and opportunities created in a small subset of the internet, yet they still want to encroach on that space. Thanks for putting my discomfort into words.
Thank u for validating my words!! I got so many argumentative ppl the last time I brought that up 🙄
@@withcindy aww you’re welcome! i can’t believe people celebrate diversity in lit, then in the same breath argue with a poc bringing up issues of race
what confuses me is... they're queer. They're already marginalized. They at least know what discrimination is like, even if not racism. why do they want another layer of systemic discrimination against them?
Yeah people like that piss me off.
I’ve heard nothing about this (I deleted Twitter a few months back), but I find it WILD that I had the Taylor’s blocked but followed Freydis. The level of effort to maintain such different identities boggles my mind.
I LOVE how all of these toxic people can get legitimate representation and a foothold in the industry, sometimes MULTIPLE times, and yet legitimate authors like me struggle for years or even decades and are met with nothing, but silence. It's so infuriating sometimes.
It is 😩😩😩
So basically we just have to be toxic to get published
@@randompromises1038 Yeah that or either lie about what race you are to sell books, and it sucks cause I know a lot of up coming POC authors that are considering that cause the publishing world is so racist. At this point in Amazon Self Publishing I trust cause this is a mess.
I truly believe In like a year or two we're gna find out that all of book twitter is actually just 5 people getting into arguments with themselves using different accounts
And Colleen Hoover is somehow all 5 of them
5 racists in a trenchcoat
authors stop getting into controversies challenge 🙄 (impossible)
what would they do instead? write a book?
that would require remaining in the realm of fiction and not playing with real people's lives
The rock stars of our generation 🙄🙄🤣
@@withcindy "I've given up trying to write a novel!" "I'm not going to do it!" "I've given up!" "Do you know how hard it is to sit down and write?" -calvin and habs
as a white passing queer latine, i was getting major imposter syndrome, and then you hit me with 46:44 😭😭 you really hit me with what i needed to hear, thank you ❤
I can't get over the deviousness of making angry tweets calling out the people who criticise any incorrect Spanish or get suspicious about lack of genuine-feeling cultural details in their stories, using legit social justice topics about PoC's relationship with language and the burden to only tell stories with an "ethnic" element. There's a really horrible cleverness to it. These are things my British Pakistani partner (who loves to write Fantasy) brings up often, and seeing a white person observing these real things PoC talk about and deliberately using them to imitate PoC for personal gain, and scare away anyone suspicious of that fake identity, is so shockingly brazen.... and yet unsurprising. As I often tell my partner: Take every opportunity you're offered, because as a middle class white person, I can tell you, we middle-class white people are raised to take every opportunity, poke holes in every contract, and to complain to the management if they deny us, or play to emotion or use rhetoric... *anything* to get our way. We're just also taught from an early age that being upfront and honest about being ruthless or competitive is terribly gauche, and it must all be hidden under a facade of niceness and civility. You are *not* taking more than your fair share by doing what we do.
5 years? The dedication I don't even stay at jobs for 5 years. 3 years tops.
Literally same I didn't even stay in school for that long
I signed up for a doctors surgery recently, and then when it was time to go in for them to check my ID I realised I’d forgotten what doctors surgery id signed up for. This was in the space of a week. If she doesn’t have multiple google docs tracking all this information then she is truly built different and built wrong.
i know logically that people are willing to fake anything, yet im still surprised every time something this outrageous happens
caucasity knows no bounds
@@withcindyEvery time I see shit like this I say a little thank you to my social anxiety lmao
I like how the first comment I saw when the news broke was "SAVE ME READSWITHCINDY! I NEED A RECAP! SAVE ME!" ✨your impact✨
Hahaha prayers answered
6:02 "Listen to _my_ community" I think "internalized racism" isn't the only weird statement in that apology.
I’m here. Lunch is almost done heating up. I’m ready.
whatcha eating for lunch
Left over beef
@@BrianaMichelleMeyer omg I'm gonna eat the same for dinner
Sometimes I’m glad my ethnic background isn’t trendy (Filipino) so I don’t have to see corny ass authors talking about how much they miss the halo halo man or whatever
LOLLLL PLS
Same like at least shes not trying to pretend to be Uruguayan lol
Beware of Apollo's dodgeball (I used to think nobody would fake being Chinese because it wasn't as cool to be Chinese when I was younger, but I was proven wrong).
Dont give them ideas haha
yeah exactly like there’s no clout whatsoever in being arab/muslim, so on the laundry list of issues i gotta deal with at least that’s not one of them lol
The crazy part is that with the similar manuscripts, they were either guilty of plagiarism or race-faking like they were screwed regardless
A lose lose situation of their own making!
@@withcindy truly
I like that you also touched on the importance of pen names for queer authors and authors of color and the way shit like this happening robs other people in small ways. The internet is so unreal
They love writing so much that they wrote themselves 80 different identities.
Quitting my audiobook of yellowface for real book drama ✨😂❤️
who needs to read that book when u got the real deal here
Why do this? This writer spent five years pretending to be somebody they weren't when they should have spent all of that effort rebuilding their reputation, acknowledging their past wrongs, and I don't know... maybe writing their books. Instead, they spent five years hurting an entire community of people, and continues to hurt the very people and community by doubling down and refusing to acknowledge what they've done.
i think they get more of a thrill pretending to be this persona than writing their books
It might be motivated as revenge against POC and allies on Twitter because Taylor felt like they were being bullied/cancelled unfairly. Manipulating the same community that cancelled them for being racist by pretending to be "LaTiNx"- I imagine Taylor to be devilishly twirling their moustache. Some people enjoy manipulating others and pat themselves on the back for 'cleverly' hurting others. Taylor was outed for being an unapologetic racist bully initially.
Every time I even think about working on my own work instead of fanfiction, Cindy comes out with another of these videos.
Shout out to Cindy for actually DESCRIBING WHAT HAPPENED! I just left a video where the creator clearly wanted to talk about the drama but didn't want to be seen as talking about drama. 😑So the entire video is just "can you believe that happened??" NO! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!? There are 15 different book communities on 15 different platforms. Provide context or shut up! If it's minor, just say what happened. If it's truly bad behavior, just say what happened so I can make more informed purchasing/reading decisions. Again, THANK YOU, CINDY!
i gotchu!!
Person: so do you have any hobbies? Taylor/Jupiter/Freydis/Hunter: it's complicated
!!Not discourse!! For those who genuinely want to know or who don’t know, there are two forms of gender neutral terms for “Latino/a”. Latino is gender neutral and is used as a general term. Latine also fits this bill as the letter “e” after a Spanish word is usually gender neutral. If you know someone who is Latino and gender nonconforming, ask them which label they prefer or if they prefer a different version of the term. Just be mindful ^__^
Twist: Jupiter is actually Ebony Darkness Dementia Raven Way
Ngl, I got whiplash reading the video title and war flashbacks to the last time something like this happened 💀💀💀. Edit: As someone who is Hispanic but often worries that I’m not Hispanic enough, fuck it I’m gonna take Cindy’s advice. If this person could claim being Hispanic than my half Puerto Rican descendant ass certainly can lol.
and it wasnt that long ago either
@@withcindy Maybe the eclipse is bringing out the crazy in everyone because what is going on fr fr.
This has happened before!? Bro I gotta stop taking breaks from book news 💀
@@Rikku147 For some reason it won’t stop happening 💀💀💀
I feel this! I’m half hispanic too. It’s true that just saying this fact about yourself can bring judgment. And then some people will think I’m using my identity as an accessory, like I’m only mentioning it to make myself more interesting.🥲
How do you keep it up for FIVE YEARS?? I have to be honest that's impressive. Like at no point in those five years did you have a guilty conscience? How do you not ask yourself what the hell you're doing for YEARS?
maybe theyre in it too deep now and thats why they keep insisting theyre real lol
I think they still had a guilty conscience but still decide to go along with the lie anyway
When she was asked to make a statement, she literally said those who believe the lies may leave her page and those who don't believe it are welcomed to stay. No remorse and if she did feel sorry, she's only sorry she got caught.
12:00 Holy fuck the absolute tone deaf rant of "characters of color don't have to be tied to a culture, let them be NORMAL" as if African and South American stories aren't... normal? Then complaining that the paranormal genre has been whitewashed??
There's a whole extra layer of depravity to this. When Freydis still had a lot of credibility to their name, they had (and might still have) a WHOLE lot of fans and followers who would blindly believe everything they said about other indie authors, and would witch hunt and harass them into silence as a result. Cardigan WAS an asshole, but publicly pummeling smaller authors is something of a routine pattern of behavior for whoever-the-fuck-this-person-is. I happen to be close friends with an author who was once targeted by this due a VERY public misunderstanding, and while they tried to politely clarify and resolve the issue in private with Freydis, they went on fanning the flames of controversy in public, spreading information that they knew damn well at that point wasn't true. The verbal harassment went on for like 2-4 weeks and left that author completely isolated from the community in a way that still hurts them to this day. Even if it wasn't just a misunderstanding, the level of abuse Freydis had a tendency to incite onto others was so far past the boundary of acceptable that it's kind of insane. They're far from the only one, too. Freydis practically specialized in using their platform to alienate other authors in the community over very flimsy slights, perceived wrongdoings, outright made-up wrongdoings, or even something as simple as speaking poorly of Freydis -- particularly other queer and neurodivergent indie authors. One of the more notable moments of this was when Freydis and another author/several other authors got into an argument over the expectation of sexuality in indie romance/fiction. When they disagreed with Freydis, they baselessly accused the other authors of being racist. Which their followers believed 100%, and harassed the authors as a result while Freydis went on a blocking spree. This is far from the only time that exact accusation has played out with them. I absolutely cannot fathom why they did this, since, as you said, they clearly had no problem with getting places in publishing. It was exclusively bullying for the sake of it, and a lot of authors were traumatized and forced into silence because of it. So if racefaking and mass deceit and manipulation on a level that would make the CIA uncomfortable wasn't enough, they used that same platform that they built off of completely fabricated identities to attack other authors basically just because they could. They'd make a spectacular supervillain, ngl.
I am so tired of people faking their ethnicity. A tale as old as time but no one enjoys the story.”
I was a critique partner of this person in the ancient year of 2014 (they then went by Taylor Brooke and as far as I know, I provided critique for their first novel but honestly what is the truth) The amount of racist shit I tried and failed to get them to cut out of their work earned them the nickname The Racist Wiccan amoung my friends. Shouldn’t be surprised AND YET here we are
NOOOOOO the way they only experienced character development in the worst way
Holy shit, like what? (No pressure to say, I’m just nosy sasdfghjdll)
@@birb5306 A lot of it was kind of classic stereotyping: a Black woman described as “sassy”, a Japanese character with a Chinese surname and a family that ran a sushi restaurant to prove he was Japanese. At the time I figured we were both just young and white and still unlearning stuff at our own paces and they’d grow out of it (wrong, obviously). But they did once go on a rant regarding something in my work about a character of color making a comment about white people that I remember vividly because they were upset that as a white person, they “weren’t allowed to talk about certain issues” and “couldn’t go to the wrong neighborhoods” and also that reverse racism was real. They generally seemed really pissed that there were spaces in this world that just weren’t for them. Guess they decided they were gonna get in there no matter what
I don't have the spoons to be this devious. Imagine if Freydis just directed their energy to writing good fiction
welcome back hivliving
This is honestly beyond aggravating. I'm bi-racial, and mixed with Peruvian and I'm also half Irish/Eastern European. I take after my dad more in terms of my coloration, and I've literally had people tell me my whole life that I'm not peruvian. That I'm lying about it. People like this just make things more difficult for people like me who are actually mixed, and because of how genetics work we don't always look mixed.... like me, even though my features on my face are typically peruvian, because my skin is so pale people automatically assume I'm white. This really is so f**ked. I hate when people try to as others have said cosplay as a minority. It is so sickening. 😡 Edit: no way did she actually try to claim that she had the same name as I do 😡 absolutely ridiculous.
u might as well claim ur culture cuz a fully white person will do it with no fear!!
@@withcindy oh I do claim that I am 😜💓 I wouldn't consider myself to be a poc, just because I have white privilege ,because I pass as white. But I do consider myself to be biracial. I would never forget that I'm peruvian❤ People like her, just make me realize how important it is to be proud of that part of my heritage.... because f*ck them lol Also , I just got to the part where she actually said she had the same name as me at one point, which is just bizarre to think about. 😅
I'm indigenous, but also THE WHITEST looking person alive. I understand you fully. It's infuriating.
Felt this as a Metis and Ukrainian girlie. I look. So white. I feel bad claiming indigenous, even though I didn’t understand most French accents cuz I was used to what michif french sounds like
Oh, I'm the same. I look 100% like my dad, but I have his features as well as his skin tone. I look very, very stereotypically Ashkenazi. My mum is Indigenous Australian. Growing up I wasn't accepted as either, since Jews are traditionally matrilineal.
How do authors even have the time/energy to pull this off i cant barely get out of bed everyday
This 100%, everytime sometime like this happens I'm just like how do you even have the time to do this?
And where tf even happen to shame like how can you even lie like this, let alone 5 years?
In middle school, I read a book where the main character went by Red. I decided I wanted to be "edgy" and told my friends to start calling me Green. That cringy phase lasted for all of a week. Turns out, rather than picking colors, you can pick races now. And one alter ego is not enough. Hearing Cindy read out the quotes Taylor says online are very ick.
I love how you really break these things down. I get real bad impostor syndrome a lot, but then I learn authors like this exist and it makes me feel a bit better.
This sounds like those CW soap plots where you have the same actor playing 3 different characters.
It’s giving Riverdale vibes
this author would've thrived during the eras of ms. scribe sockpuppeting and that person who faked being hiv positive to write hamilton fanfics
LMAOoo I thought of these too! It's like this BS isn't new, but the scale definitely feels way bigger now lololol
FR!!!!!
booktok would not survive the tomas jefferson hatsune miku binder era 💀
That person who WHAT
Having your second identity trashtalk your friend and the same friend to go to you for emotional support is crazy 😮
Half of these words would kill like anyone who actually goes outside.
remember when the biggest book drama was dicksoap 😭
Simpler times
Di- what? Do i want to know what this was?
@@isaa1782OOH MAMA YES YOU DO
ELABORATE
PLEASE WHAT DOES THIS MEAN 😭 😭 😭
I saw all the drama about the instagram post with the cat and was like "man idk what is going on but I can't wait for someone to tell me about it" thank god cindy is here, a(wo)men
it is quite confusing to follow at first glance!
I know there's a bunch of actual evidence but it's so funny to me that people were pointing at a black cat going omg! That's the exact same cat!!! 😡 Like, cats do be looking similar to each other y'know
I don’t get how people have the time to “be” multiple people…. I barely have time for myself 😂
Me, after deleting Twitter, TikTok, Insta, etc...: I am *so* done with internet and social media drama. Cindy: **uploads**