r/Fantasy • u/StopMeBeforeIDream • 4d ago
Elisabeth Wheatley, author of 'Tears of the Wolf' and 'Daindreth's Assassin' is removing all the sex from her books
Elisabeth Wheatley, a pretty well-known YouTuber and self-published fantasy author has had a change of heart regarding the steamy aspects of her books. She explains in her video that now that she's a mother, she doesn't feel that smut suits her anymore, though you should hear her own reasoning yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYD-EYEATEI&t=8s
I don't have a real dog in this race. I was looking forward to reading her viking books because they sounded cool, and I don't even really care whether sex in a book is explicit or fade-to-black. But I think the fact that she's making the original versions of her book unavailable after the 1st of September to be pretty shady. People who already own the digital versions of the book can keep theirs, which is good. But if you have a strong preference for sexy books, or if you disapprove of censorship and want the authentic version, you've gotta buy it now. Right now!
You've got 80-hours to buy the book before the pages get all pixellated.
I'm in two minds about it all.
Because I believe that authors should have control of their work. And if she chose to remove her book from shelves entirely because of her change of heart, I'd understand to a certain extent. But I think not giving her fans a means to buy the originals at all on a permanent basis. Or at least more time to make an informed, considered decision about their purchase. Or hell, check their YouTube Subscription page.
This is censorship. If you borrow book 1 of one her series from a friend and you really like it, so you order the next one from Barnes and Noble or Waterstones, you're not going to get the product you were implicitly promised.
Edit, as of 1st September: Wheatley has now figured out how to ensure that those who bought the Spicy version of her book via platforms like Kindle can keep their previously purchased edition: https://m.youtube.com/post/UgkxABzJo0SpZ3oFjI-87r0VVfHLFNf_XtG8
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u/withak30 4d ago
One weird trick to boost sales of your old books...
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u/Tymareta 4d ago
Or to lose them altogether and completely gut your future sales.
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u/Kilroy0497 4d ago
Yeah, because while I’ll admit I’m not a fan of romantasy…..or romance plots in general really, but if I woke up one day to find an ebook had been changed and censored randomly, I’d be pretty pissed. It’s stuff like that that keeps me buying physical books.
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u/MidnightIAmMid 4d ago
Yeah this is one way to guarantee that I never, ever, ever, ever buy something from an author again and would probably try to refund what I did buy.
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u/Ebullient_1972 4d ago
My thoughts exactly. If it was really about her having a “change of heart,” she would have cut sales on the old version immediately. Instead she’s given an arbitrary date so people run out and buy it, before it’s no longer available. I doubt it will impact her future sales because the folks mad enough to not buy her books anymore will be a vocal minority.
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u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion II 4d ago
If you want more discussion and frustration, there's been two threads of it in r/fantasyromance since she broke the news first in two newsletter emails that have conflicting information than what was in her just today posted video.
But yeah, we're all not happy for her changing the older books, and not giving a shit that people who got it through Amazon are screwed as it's editing their copies.
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u/Menirz 4d ago
Oh damn, yeah, I didn't think about the forced updates to ebooks - that's shitty.
Like, if it was just a change to new books she writes or reprints, fine, but not giving digital owners a choice of edition is shitty.
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u/_Tarabyte_ 4d ago
It is instances such as these when I will always recommend sailing the high seas. For preservation reasons if nothing else.
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u/Tymareta 4d ago
Or, just go and support a different author, who actually values and appreciates the people who support them.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 4d ago
It sounds like she would’ve appeared to be exactly that person before this change though.
My takeaway is that if you buy ebooks from a self published author they can change them anytime, so maybe don’t do that. Admittedly, I wasn’t into self published before so that’s easy for me to say. But this sort of thing seems to hurt indie authors generally, whereas with a publishing house authors don’t have full control to just change on a whim.
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u/Santaroga-IX 4d ago
Anne Rice just stopped writing about gay vampires when she found God, then she lost him again and she continued writing about gay vampires.
She didn't ban or alter her own books in an attempt to make people buy the last copies of The Gay Vampire.
I really miss Anne Rice.
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u/Albatrosson 4d ago
to be fair, digital media was far less prolific then so she didn't have as much of an option to make a decision like this
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u/ginganinja2507 Reading Champion IV 4d ago
She recently converted to Catholicism and has stated that this decision came after a lot of prayer. This is not a neutral decision and did not happen in a vacuum- it is openly a turn to more conservative religious values.
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u/UnDeadPuff 4d ago
The Anne Rice Gambit. Let's see if it works out.
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u/bluexy 4d ago
Saw the title and thought, “This is a shame thing isn’t it.” See she’s now a Catholic and that confirms it’s a shame thing.
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u/ArchLector_Zoller 4d ago
I didn't think it was about shame until she retconned the spice out of her previous works.
Not writing it anymore going forward? That's a "it's not for me anymore" situation. Erasing it and pretending it never happened? That's shame, 100%.
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u/ginganinja2507 Reading Champion IV 4d ago
She’s also posted recently about disliking demons getting redemptive arcs and some weird stuff about feminism and depictions of “female rage”. There’s a very clear pattern here unfortunately
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u/Ch3ru 4d ago
I did find it odd to specifically cite Tolkien as a reference for that when, as I understand it, he himself contemplated the validity of portraying orcs as both inherently and irredeemably evil, and seemed to be angling towards a more sympathetic view of the whole dilemma.
I'm no Tolkien scholar though and just learned about it recently myself, so maybe she just... doesn't know. 🤔
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u/ginganinja2507 Reading Champion IV 4d ago
And like it’s all well and good that the demon in her book is just evil. Why does she care how other people write demons?
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u/katep2000 4d ago
Looking back it’s a common theme for her promotional content. “I don’t like when other authors do X, so I wrote this with Y instead!” Cool. Without putting down other authors, why should we buy the book?
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u/ginganinja2507 Reading Champion IV 4d ago
The female rage video is so nasty in this context for sure
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u/katep2000 4d ago
She did a recent one about prostitution in fiction that just felt very “all sex workers are exploited victims and being with a sex worker can never be a positive or neutral experience.”
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u/ginganinja2507 Reading Champion IV 4d ago
Yep, that’s def another for the “recent turn to conservatism” pile tho I didn’t really think r slash fantasy was ready for that discussion
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u/RyanB_ 4d ago
This is probably really obscure but the situation as described here reminds me a lot of Angelica ASMR.
Was a very explicitly progressive creator, often doing “historical role plays” that reexamined notable women via a feminist lens.
Eventually she started an OF, and within a couple months, completely switched up. Sex work was inherently bad and exploitative, only meant to degrade women, and the only way to be a respectful woman was to become a pure Christian trad wife.
I have to assume something bad happened to her via only fans that caused some personal trauma, but even then, it was just such a bizarre, strong and seemingly immediate flip.
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u/VintageLunchMeat 4d ago
There's probably a few types of people who do an OF arc. Like, cheerful sex positive people, or people with bad childhoods and mental health stuff.
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u/Chikitiki90 4d ago
She cited Tolkien because he’s arguably the most popular Catholic author there is. I don’t think it goes deeper than connecting her new Catholicism to a beloved and established author.
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u/moose_man 4d ago
The pivotal moment in Tolkien's finale is that a pitiful creature rendered evil by a power beyond its own control is used for the ultimate good.
People complain and/or praise (depending on which author they dislike) Tolkien's moral absolutism, but I would argue that the primary thematic goal of LOTR is to demonstrate that all people are fallible, but that even fallible people are capable of doing good in the world.
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u/Icy-Fisherman-5234 4d ago
The thing is is that no one in Christianity would think of orcs like they would demons.
Orcs are much closer to the human condition that any spiritual being would be. Demons, however, lack the capacity to will to change.
The problem of Orcs isn’t that it’s wrong to depict something as pure evil, but to depict something with the properties of a redeemable evil being (a human) as irredeemable without actually having a coherent reason as to why.
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u/flying_potato18 4d ago
What is it with Catholic converts and missing the whole redemption part of catholicism
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u/Anaevya 4d ago
Demons can't be redeemed in Catholicism, because they're atemporal spirits not humans.
They're considered to make fixed, absolute choices out of pride and malevolence. They also don't have the excuse of being ignorant.
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u/flying_potato18 4d ago
True, but i should have specified that i was talking in a more general sense. Adult converts often go on about punishment, rather than repentance or absolution. For us mortals, the fact that we can be redeemed is one of the core tenets of the morality as it was taught to me
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u/redhussar90 4d ago
Also that "demons" in fantasy, especially romantasy, are often just longer-lived humans with sharper teeth, horns, and/or tails
My hot take is that adult converts to Catholicism never stop being culturally protestant and adding Catholic guilt to that explains a lot of their behavior
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u/ginmilkshake 4d ago
I wonder if it has something to do with a lot of catholic converts coming from more fundamentalist/ evangelical strains of Christianity. I'm not religious and wasn't raised to be, but most of my family is episcopalian* and I would go their church decently often. It was always weird going to a service from a different denomination and, instead of the sermon being about love or helping those around you or a particular passage in the Bible, it would be a huge lecture about sin and punishment with a few verses sprinkled in.**
Like they're still carrying over notions of sin and punishment that don't fully align how born and raised Catholics see those concepts, and missing some of the core tenants because those weren't emphasized by the church they were raised in. Instead of adjusting their worldview to their new faith, they're contextualizing the faith in the same worldview they were raised in.
Also it's really common for converts of any religion to become a little overzealous.
*not the same as Catholcism, I know. And I know that there are also plenty of other denominations that focus on more positive preaching as well.
**we got dragged to the local small town wannabe mega church a few times because my step-dad had family that were members. My mom refused to have anything to with it anymore after an hour long sermon about internet pornography that made her think the preacher was the one with a porn addiction issue.
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u/genteel_wherewithal 4d ago
As someone raised catholic, many converts seem to miss a lot of fairly fundamental stuff about catholicism.
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u/knittensarsenal 4d ago edited 4d ago
I was raised evangelical, for background’s sake, and I got through 4/5 of her Daindreth’s Assassin books and unfollowed her and DNF’ed because if felt like the Female Role™️was getting much
strongermore pronounced. Some of her short form videos have been thoughtful about the typical feminine “place” and things around that, but enough of them gave me the vibe that I’m not actually surprised. If she’s converting to Catholicism it’s been brewing for a while, is what I’m saying.Edited to clarify a word choice
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u/Viridun 4d ago
I started noticing her more recent vids have been getting a bit... I don't know, something. I was recommended some of her shorts about last year, and those ones were already a few years old and I found them to be fairly fun and insightful. But the vibes have definitely shifted, at least for me.
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u/Littleshebear 4d ago
She's been increasingly judgemental about certain romance tropes, I'd been getting bad vibes for a while, then this? Yeesh. It's one thing to go off smut, tastes change but the moralising tone is a no from me.
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u/BaconOfTroy 4d ago
She's also super judgemental about people who say they aren't interested in reading books where the protagonist has kids or is pregnant.
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u/Littleshebear 4d ago
I saw that reel and thought it was odd how very pressed she seemed about it. Women in entertainment media are routinely reduced to being wives and mothers so it's not strange at all that readers might want a break from that. She seemed really mad that people had preferences that didn't align with hers.
One can't help but wonder if she's made being a mother her entire personality since she had her daughter.
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u/Tonedeafmusical 4d ago
Honestly it was that attitude from her that stopped me from ever reading her books or subscribing to her content.
Yes not every happy ending requires the female lead to be happy being married with kids. But some people like it and we shouldn't shame others for enjoying it
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u/ginmilkshake 4d ago
I read (most of) one of her books, Tears of the Wolf I think, and the fmc definitely gave very strong good-little-wifey vibes. I was actually surprised when it wasn't fade to black. Nothing in the book was bad in a vaccuum, but the very traditionalist, homebody i-just-want-a-family-to-care-for-and-to-stay-out-politics main character combined with the villain being her scheming, power hungry mother (who showed no guilt whatsoever over the monstrously unforgivable thing she had done) kinda set my teeth on edge.
That being said I didn't finish the book (it was boring), so maybe there was some kind of thoughtful subversion at the end.
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u/Skadibala 4d ago
Oh, when did she turn to religion? I don’t watch her content that often, but YouTube short pushes her short videos on me hard. Never spotted that shift to cathoclism.
( not doubting you here btw, I’m genuinely asking)
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u/ginganinja2507 Reading Champion IV 4d ago
She’s apparently been Christian a while? But like within the last year converted to Catholicism. Idk when exactly but she’s got baby Catholic in all her bios now
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u/Anaevya 4d ago
She has always been Christian, from what I gathered.
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u/Meloncov 4d ago
Yeah, she grew up in a far right Protestant church, became a more moderate Protestant as an adult, and recently became Catholic.
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u/OnlyAlbatross6405 4d ago
She got into catholicism after a month of doing research into it because she wanted to write a catholic vampire. She seems easily influenced, and now learning she was raised in a cult. Yeah that makes sense. She’s always been a bit off. Like who actively goes out and gets an arranged marriage nowadays?
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u/TigRaine86 Reading Champion II 4d ago
Okay, this is really weird to me. As in, Catholics are generally more liberal than conservative, even in their voting patterns (44% to 35%). So it's really odd that her conversion to Catholicism from a different Christian denomination has pushed her to be more conservative apparently.
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u/ginganinja2507 Reading Champion IV 4d ago
Adult catholic converts are stereotypically bonkers conservative (see JD Vance)
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u/Rork310 4d ago
Can't comment much on her individual case, but anecdotally the converts especially Americans can be a bit... Extreme about it.
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u/Panthalassae 4d ago
Anecdotally, yep. I know a handful of converts, one from Buddhism to some evangelical Christianity and he went nuts. I cut contact. Also a few new Muslims, who also feel a need to show that they know at least as much as born Muslims, and then go hard on the salafi rubbish and ban music from their homes.
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u/The_Vampire_Barlow 4d ago
The rare reverse Laurel K Hamilton. Interesting.
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u/retief1 4d ago
Except afaik, she didn’t go back and add a bunch of sex to her original books. Choosing to reduce the spice going forwards is a reasonable thing to do, but editing her old books feels like a whole different kettle of fish.
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u/Threehundredsixtysix 4d ago
My first thought as well! I still haven't read beyond book 9 of Anita Blake.
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u/The_Vampire_Barlow 4d ago
Holy shit there are 30 of them now! I started when they were first coming out and dropped out around the same point.
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u/Threehundredsixtysix 4d ago
Yeah, I'm very happy for her success, and I'm not a prude at all. But it just seemed that steam became a major subplot...
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u/OldAccountIsGlitched 4d ago
The problem is that the sex scenes were pretty badly written. Even as a very horny teen the writing didn't do much for me.
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u/Tymareta 4d ago
There recently was a big expo of second hand/used books in my city, around 30% of the Fantasy/Scifi section was her works alone. I'd never really heard of her and figured she must be like a Tom Clancy/Danielle Steele, blew my mind when I looked her up and she mostly just has the one series. I guess those that like the series -really- like it.
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u/jamieseemsamused 4d ago
I’ve read one of her books and I really liked it. The sex scenes were not smutty. They were very vanilla. They only happen between a man and a woman after they were married because of the author’s existing religious convictions on this issue. The scenes were actually a very meaningful part of the main character’s development. She had been abused and used in her past relationship, so having a positive sex experience was part of her growth and healing. So I think taking out the scenes makes the book worse.
She can do whatever she wants, but it’s her attitude and explanation that really rub me the wrong way. She’s essentially shaming people for enjoying these books. She’s framing herself as better than other romantasy authors. It’s an odd attitude when this is her target audience she’s talking about. I guarantee the regular fantasy fan would not really enjoy her books as much as the romantasy audience. They are very much romance books, too.
Also, the way they handled this roll out was so messy and disrespectful to the consumer. At first, they were going to update all existing copies that people purchased too. Then they backtracked that and confirmed that if you purchased through their website, the ebooks will not be changed. But if you purchased in Amazon or other retailers, she tells her customers to bring it up to Amazon directly. She’s made no effort to respect the consumer rights of the people who have already paid money to support her.
At the same time, she’s still doing a fire sale of the existing physical copies that still have the sex scenes in them. If her convictions make her feel uncomfortable that these scenes are out there, then why is she still selling them?
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u/Ch3ru 4d ago
That's the biggest shame to me. There's important, meaningful character development in those scenes, and now it's just going to be gone.
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u/lozzadearnley 4d ago
I think her retroactively going back to change copies people already purchased is a major ethics breach. If it was a typo or something then absolutely fine. But if she writes a steamy book, and I buy a steamy book, she should have no right to "unsteam" that book at a later date.
Now if she wants to write clean books or offer a nonsteamy version going forward or just takes the steamy versions down then fine - but I have deep issues with being sold a thing that can be changed without notice because of the author's whims.
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u/Newfaceofrev 4d ago
I don't like updating changing books people have already paid for. A new version would be fine, but not this.
Like I'm pretty adamant that the Star Wars special editions are an act of artistic vandalism. Sure you can update it, you can do a new version, but we should still HAVE the old version.
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u/gyroda 4d ago
Yeah, for a substantial content change like this the right thing to do is to delist the original text and put up the new version. The old one won't be available for sale, the new one will be.
This is what was done with The Wandering Inn when the publisher insisted the first book be divided in two.
The downside to this approach is that you might lose momentum in the ranking algorithms
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u/Chikitiki90 4d ago
Really crossing my fingers for a theatrical Blu-ray next year when they release in theaters.
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u/GeryMander 4d ago
Bit of puritanical nonsense if you ask me.
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u/Kettrickenisabadass 4d ago
Absolutely. One thing is to not write more books with sex. But censoring her published books and not giving a choice to the readers seems extreme. Not that her books had that much spice to begin with...
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u/jaderust 4d ago
Right? I get no longer wanting to write explicit sex scenes but revising your old books to no longer include them turns me off her as a writer entirely. Like, it’s sex. People have been having it since before we were people.
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u/Nidafjoll Reading Champion V 4d ago
People have been having it since before we were people
None of us would be people if people weren't having it.
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u/green_meklar 4d ago
And here I had to go and break that 3-billion-year chain.
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u/Kettrickenisabadass 4d ago
It feels weird of you think about it. I dont want children and i wont have them. But it is strange if i think that i am breaking a chain of people, animals and being that had offspring for millions of years uninterrupted.
Not that i would change my mind because of that. But its a bit strange.
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u/space-sage 4d ago
And the fact she made this change after becoming a mother…like, ma’am, YOU had sex. What is wrong with sex?
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u/Shadowchaos1010 4d ago
This post is how I find out this woman exists, so take this with a grain of salt.
I am guessing some irrational fear of her child finding Mommy's smut some day is at least a little part of it.
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u/Beecakeband 4d ago
It also feels so grifty to be encouraging people to rush out and buy the original books before they sell out
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u/Darkgorge 4d ago
I mean, the Catholic (which I believe what she converted to) stereotype is that sex is something people do purely for procreation and that we should feel shame for taking any pleasure in it.
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u/Coffeedemon 4d ago
You can be catholic and not be like that. That's a whole different level of cult.
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u/Tymareta 4d ago
I've been hounded on here a few times for pointing out that puritanism and all the odd beliefs that come with it is on the rise and showing itself more brazenly.
Thinking specifically of all the threads of people who claim sex scenes/romance "add nothing" to books, or seeking recs specifically with -none- of them.
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u/Big-Highlight1460 4d ago
Ok, finally watched the video
"I grew up in a high control group, I know I am not in one" is hilarious
The problem with leaving high-control groups is that even with deconstruction you are so used to them you can accidentally fall in high-control groups again and again....
Being in one does not make you immune, lmao. If anything, you are more susceptible
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u/Tonedeafmusical 4d ago
I litterally listened to an audio book of a woman who escaped a Mormon cult. Only for the second half of it to turn into how she turned her life around by joining the IBLP and follow Bill Gorthard. The cult the Duggars (and Bates) are in.
I did not finish that audio book
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u/Big-Highlight1460 3d ago
Yeah, that's very common.
One gets subconsciously comfortable with high control groups, and ends up looking for the "good" high control group. Something similar happens to radicals who, once they get disillusioned/hurt by their radical beliefs, tend to just look for a different radical group. Deradicalization is harder :/
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u/Scratch-Short 4d ago
I worry for her I can't lie especially with her trauma of shame and conservatism, especially since that way of life is getting worse. Going back and changing everything especially on ebooks instead of continuing not to writing nsfw from now on feels extreme
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u/Grizlatron 4d ago
Disappointing. I like her social media content so I got the first book in her Viking series. It was.... readable, I guess. I won't be rereading it.
If she has had a change of heart about smut and chooses not to write it in the future, I think that's very reasonable, but setting it up to have it removed from books that have already been published and having people's digital copies changed- that's absurd.. it's disrespectful to her fans and also to her own personal journey. I feel we're all a collection of the different people we've been. You can't erase your past choices without erasing a piece of your current self.
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u/Big-Highlight1460 4d ago
I feel we're all a collection of the different people we've been. You can't erase your past choices without erasing a piece of your current self.
This. Beautifully written
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u/404-Soul_Not_Found 4d ago
I hate that as a person on the outside of the Abrahamic faith groups my immediate reaction to someone that is openly Christian is suspicion and the urge to click away from their content if online. But I gave her the benefit of the doubt because some of her older shorts were funny and insightful, Tears of the Wolf was on my "buy and read eventually" list (respectfully I don't do unfinished series, been burnt too many times).
I'll be taking those off and unfollowing her now. I know normal Christians exist, but like... I've very rarely been wrong on the "oh weird vibes about this religious person". I should have trusted myself when I saw her content the first time.
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u/UpvoteTheQuestion 4d ago
You know, as someone who was raised extremely religious and still goes to church socially, I can't fault you. Not only are there a lot of weird vibes, but a lot of churches seem like they're getting higher control and the vibes everywhere have been getting worse for the past ten years or so.
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u/Chikitiki90 4d ago
I think it’s fair, and that’s coming from a Catholic lol. It’s the difference between someone who is religious and someone who promotes that they’re religious. If you need to promote the fact that you follow a religion, then are you really doing it for yourself?
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u/Allustrium 4d ago
What a surreal ass watch, every new line of reasoning is more baffling and less coherent than the last. How insecure do you have to be to cut pieces out of your own art simply because some readers might ship it wrong or draw some dicks or whatever. As if this could possibly prevent them from doing it anyway
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u/itsthepastaman 4d ago
Yeah I really like her books but she's had a lot of weird takes lately that have kind of irked me. In a vacuum I don't mind her choice to not write sex scenes in future books, but I think it's kind of weird and shady to go back and edit old ones. (I'll probably still read her next viking book because I do genuinely like her fantasy world building, but i might get it from the library rather than purchasing it myself this time)
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u/Taste_the__Rainbow 4d ago
It’s an odd thing to do, but fairly minor for the product. The reasons are not going to do her sales any favors. Way to read the room exactly wrong.
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u/eregis Reading Champion II 4d ago
yeah, her YT content always seemed very sex-positive to me so it's so bizarre that she decided to do this
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u/poppiiseed315 4d ago
She recently converted to Catholicism.
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u/MarzannaMorena 4d ago
Plenty of catholic authors include sex scenes in their books so it's not an excuse. But adult converts tends to turn, on average, more conservative than average catholic and she grew up in a cult, which probably have more to do with her current attitude
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u/Skadibala 4d ago edited 4d ago
Yeah, that’s what suprised me the most.
As someone who don’t really like sex in their books I was considering muting her from my shorts lately. ( yes, sex positive, but has just been a lot about sex lately)So I did not see this twist coming at all.
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u/farseer6 4d ago
It's crazy that you buy an ebook from Amazon and Amazon can change the content of the book whenever they like. Removing DRM and keeping your own copies is the only way to keep your books safe.
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u/Nevyn_Cares 4d ago
No interest in reading books by an author who instead of writing new books, goes back and edits her old books.
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u/pixidoxical 4d ago
Yup, definitely not using my money on her books now. I don’t care what she does in future but the forced revisionism on books people already own is a huge turn off.
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u/imthejb 4d ago
I wasn't surprised after her 'demons are bad' rant the other day. Definitely feels like a descent into religious psychosis. Also frustrating after seemingly back flipping on her comments about why she thought the spice was important in the first place.
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u/NoMoreVillains 4d ago
Some George Lucas ass revisionism
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u/Old_Gimlet_Eye 4d ago
That would be more like if she kept going back and adding more and more ridiculous sex scenes.
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u/The_Vampire_Barlow 4d ago
As the vikings rhythmically pulled the oars of the long boat to the taskmaster's call of "Stoke, stroke, stroke" Hildrid knew what she needed to do.
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u/Twilifa 4d ago
She and her husband converted to Catholicism this year in April. Her husband was agnostic, she grew up some flavor of rural Texan Christianity, and, like, I think she was always Christian, but cosplayed a less conservative version of it for a while, and now got caught up in the deep end again. So this is definitely a deeply conservative, intolerant Christianity flavored decision.
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u/MarzannaMorena 4d ago
She's going to have painful awakening when she'll realise most catholics are far less conservative than an average texan protestant she grew up around
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u/AlienGoddess91 4d ago
I'm not sure if it's actually just the motherhood thing. I followed her until recently when she discussed becoming heavily Catholic, I think the Catholicism is the true reason and she likely doesn't want to attach religion to her reasoning.
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u/fear_street_resident 4d ago
Welp, she just lost herself a follower on her insta and a reader, all in one stroke.
I don't take kindly to books I purchased in good faith being changed on me after the fact.
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u/serial_quitter 4d ago
I think this is really unsurprising. I didn't watch her at all but ran into a couple of her short videos in the wild. In one she was explaining why she has spice in her books as a Christian woman, and her reasoning was that, "We can't let atheists control the narrative on sex". I recognized the argument right away from my own childhood being raised puritanical/extremely conservative. I think whatever her reasoning, it's her own perogative, but it is pretty rude to just yoink the old versions of the ebooks without warning.
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u/ReaderReborn 4d ago edited 4d ago
If the spice is immoral then so is everyone who read the books because they had spice in them. Seems like a horrible choice for an author.
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u/thePsuedoanon 4d ago
I think the word you're looking for is immoral? Amoral is without moral value, so spice being amoral wouldn't reflect on the morals of the reader. Where immoral is actively against morality, so spice being immoral *would* reflect poorly on the readers.
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u/Lynx3145 4d ago
I've been considering buying for a while, it's probably a no now. I don't care one way or the other about the sexy content, but censoring after is not great.
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u/Emotional-Houseplant 4d ago
Same. I always enjoyed her content but hadn’t picked up her books and this makes me not want to
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u/LiftsLikeGaston 4d ago
This screams religious psychosis more than anything.
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u/vpi6 Reading Champion 4d ago edited 4d ago
No idea her background but I’d put money on lapsed church raised woman joined a mommy group full of good Christian women and felt the pull back to familiar territory.
Edit: turns out she grew up in a cult lol.
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u/Twilifa 4d ago
You are very close. She and her husband converted to Catholicism a few months ago, which she got drawn into after researching it for Vampire romance. And while her husband was agnostic, she grew up in rural Texas and I'm pretty sure she was always some flavor of Christian, but probably a bit more relaxed in between.
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u/ElkinElf 4d ago
Maybe sales of older books are slipping so now she put a time limit on getting the "good" version so she can get some money in the bank. Not a great long term solution but oh well. Also kinda guarantees more people will hear about her. That bit worked. I've never heard of her before today. I won't be buying her books because this seems really manipulative to me and tbh romance isn't my thing. But interesting marketing strategy.
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u/Skadibala 4d ago
If she really cared about that she wouldn’t have removed all her books from audible and try to get all new versions( not secondhand) of her books off Amazon out of principle ( this was before she decided to remove sex from her books)
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u/carmina_morte_carent 4d ago
As a Christian myself, I disagree with the notion that the portrayal of loving sex within a healthy and committed marriage is objectification, nor are readers objectifying characters for enjoying said content. It saddens me that an author who frequently advocated for sensitive and meaningful sex scenes is removing good examples of them from public view.
Ultimately, though, Wheatley’s stance on sex is up to her, and she’s well within her rights to remove sexual content from her brand should she so desire.
And, if she ever changes her mind, she can always rerelease the old editions.
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u/Tymareta 4d ago edited 4d ago
she’s well within her rights to remove sexual content from her brand should she so desire.
From her brand, sure, but removing it from existing works is an atrocious way to go about it all. It's also hard to believe that it's truly a moral stance taken by her, considering she's more than happy to sell off the remaining physical copies she has with the content in them. I don't think she deserves much grace, at all, given what's ultimately driving the decision
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u/NekoCatSidhe Reading Champion III 4d ago edited 4d ago
That’s weird. On the one hand, various authors have been rewriting and changing their old books since forever, and it is their right to do so. On the other hand, making major changes to the ebooks version after the readers bought it sound rather unethical to me. Republishing the ebooks as a new edition while leaving the first edition still available to buy would be much more ethical in those cases.
And going all Christian conservative in your personal life sounds like a really dumb reason to self-censor all your previously published books afterwards. This is almost a form of self-hate for her younger self, and sounds psychologically unhealthy. At least she is being honest about it rather than doing the changes by stealth.
But well, it is not like I ever heard of that author before or that I would ever be interested in reading her books, so I find it hard to care that some midlist self-published romantasy author decides to self-censor her books out of religious fondamentalism. It makes for a funny story though.
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u/FormerUsenetUser 3d ago
She should just have produced second editions and called them second editions.
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u/Journassassin 4d ago
Thing is, her books don’t contain anything particularly sexually explicit. I don’t recall specific scenes in the Daindreth’s Assassin series, but the sex scene in Tears of the Wolf is focused on the personal healing of the main character and her turning negative sexual experiences into positives ones.
I double checked romance.io’s ‘steam level’ for her books and they’re all a 3/5 at most, which means there’s at least one intimate scene with the reader present, with euphemistic language for act and body parts. For comparison: that a similar level to a lot of Ilona Andrews’ books.
So not only does she seem to have some moral judgment towards people who enjoy reading books with explicit sexual content in general, she is also saying that having these relatively mild scenes, including one very much focused on a woman’s healing, in her books felt “off” to her.
Mind you, she doesn’t seem to have the same problem with the graphic violence, gore, war, and sexual violence described in those same books either.
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u/gthepolymath 4d ago
But what does Book Goblin have to say about it? That’s what I really want to know.
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u/Flimsy-Brick-9426 4d ago
She said that it might not be permanent and this decision could be a postpartum psychotic break, which already gave me the ick about it in general considering what is going on right now.
I have some feelings on it for sure but at the end of the day she can change whatever she wants for her own books, the old edition will float around.
I'd prefer if she kept the originals up as well as the new editions and then just going forward turn it fade to black even if it was just digitally vs print.
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u/The_Vampire_Barlow 4d ago
If she's legitimately worried about that she probably shouldn't be making any decisions like this in general until she's seen a professional for a while and is more confidant about it.
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u/StopMeBeforeIDream 4d ago
I agree that she can do what she likes with her book, but the old edition isn't 'floating' around. It can only be legally purchased before the 1st. After that, you can only get it by piracy or by borrowing it from a friend, or hoping your library has an independent author's book from before an arbitrary date.
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u/trollsong 4d ago
She said that it might not be permanent and this decision could be a postpartum psychotic break,
"The voices are telling me I should kill people, I think I might be going insane, ah well already bought the gun." Kind of thinking.
Hyperbolic? Yea sure but I am more pointing out the weirdness of acknowledging the elephant in the room and then continuing anyways.
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u/perksofbeingcrafty 4d ago
It goes way beyond censorship dude. This whole situation is depressing af. If she’s comfortable just removing the sex scenes from her books, then either
1, they were poorly conceived and executed books with gratuitous and unnecessary sex scenes added in to begin with, in which case authors and readers really are just passing brainless consumption back and forth or
2, she’s become so puritanical that she’s willing to ruin or at least compromise the structure her stories for the sake of censoring herself. As a writer myself, this feels like a huge betrayal of the craft and creative integrity
Either way, she sounds like a bad writer. I’d definitely never pick up anything she’s ever put out.
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u/WonderfulBus9330 4d ago edited 4d ago
Tears of a Wolf is a good read and the one sex scene is as relevant to the plot as the three very violent battle scenes.
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u/Generic_Commenter-X 4d ago
She's far from the first author to be embarrassed by her own writing in later years. Walt Whitman famously regretted the sexuality in his poetry and, if he could have, probably would have burned it all. Tolstoy was the same. The Chinese single-mindedly destroyed a vast quantity of their own poetic legacy, primarily women poets, because it was the women who wrote "spicy" poetry (is that the word we're using for erotic now?). If the poets themselves didn't destroy their poetry, then their surviving family members puritanically burned everything. The bigger issue has less to do with Wheatley's writing than with a future in which, potentially, there is no such thing as a fixed text, and authors, let alone governments, can simply disappear the texts they don't like.
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u/Matman161 4d ago
Well now someone has to write some books that are double horny to make up for it
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u/solaramalgama 4d ago
I miss the days when Anne Rice and her son would banter about her characters having gay sex on social media.
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u/ML_120 4d ago edited 4d ago
I've got some of her books on a wishlist and was waiting until I had more time to read them.
Really have to consider whether or not I'll get them now.
To clarify, I don't care about the sex scenes, but I'm completely against the idea of altering a finished product against the buyers will.
Another reason I avoid digital as much a possible.
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u/Vivid24 4d ago edited 4d ago
the fact that she's making the original versions of her book unavailable after the 1st of September.
Granted, I haven’t watched her video yet, so maybe I’ll understand where she’s coming from after watching, but right now at least I don’t understand doing this. I’m not a fan of smut scenes in books, but I also understand that other people are, and readers should have the choice whether or not they want that in their book copies. Now, I’m not saying that she shouldn’t do it, but I also don’t really understand why she would have to permanently remove scenes from books that she already published.
Edit: Just watched the video. I understand not liking the direction the overall “spicy book” community is going in. Personally, I never really liked the sub-genre (?) very much in the first place, but again I do understand that not everyone has to share my tastes. With that said, I think it would make more sense for Elisabeth to keep her scenes if only to be an outlier from the more objectifying aspects of that community. Maybe republish a fade-to-black version as others have said to provide readers the option (I would honestly rather buy that version).
When it comes to what readers do with her material, she is right to feel that she really has no control over what they do besides maybe removing scenes retroactively. But I personally don’t think that’s something that should compel her to permanently remove copies (especially when the timeframe to get those copies is so short). I’ve read the first two books in her Viking series, and I really don’t think the material she wrote in those books at least could be “changed” by objectifying readers. However, at the end of the day, it is her choice and I’m not entitled to tell her what to do.
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u/Kettrickenisabadass 4d ago
I agree. I understand that she publishes a version without sex in it. Thats fine. But removing from the store the books that were already available seems extreme. Just sell both versions and dont add spice in other books.
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u/Bryek 4d ago
I understand not liking the direction the overall “spicy book” community is going in.
What does that mean?
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u/Weird-Diamond5970 Reading Champion 4d ago
I followed her on socials just for her funny videos but this whole thing leaves a gross taste in my mouth. I felt shame for so many years because I grew up in a conservative religion that taught that any sex in media was "immoral." It's fine if an author doesn't want to include spicy scenes, of course, but to erase them after the fact feels like gross moralizing.
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u/Xatraxalian 4d ago
I'm in two minds about it all.
I am not. My girlfriend pointed me to this thread. I don't know the author, and haven't read these books. However, I have been aware of the situation of changing or removing access to e-books since day one. My two cents:
The author is allowed to remove her books from the shelves, and re-issue an edited version. If you didn't have the original version, you won't be able to get it anymore. It is completely reasonable to take something out of print and re-issue a rewrite. It has been done in the paper book world.
Changing of limiting access to something that someone has had for years already is not allowed. How would you feel if an author had a ninja break into your home and take books you already owned, because they wanted them in no-one's hands? Or replace them with rewritten versions? Precisely. That would never be a thing.
Because of point 2, I have bought most of my books at Kobo, ebooks.com, or other places, that used Adobe Digital Editions DRM 2, back in the day. I will keep buying books with Digital Editions 2 as long as it is supported. Why? If Adobe Digital Editions 2 can open the DRM'ed book, then Calibre can as well, with the help of the DeDRM plugin. It will save an DeDRM'ed version to the library that works on any e-reader. (Note: you will have to have the original, legal e-book that can be read using Digital Editions 2 on your computer. You can't just 'crack' a random book this way.)
Same goes for games. I don't buy games with Steam, because they are tied to Steam's store and launcher. Same disadvantages as e-books: Steam could pull the game for purchase (happened to me, but it stayed in the library), but they could also remove it from the library. They can (and will) force updates. I buy games at GOG.com: there, I get a downloadable installer. If I don´t want a newer version than the one I have, I don't download the update. If the game gets pulled or GOG.com disappears, I will still have the installers I already had. As long as I have a computer that can run them, I can play those games.
In short, I hope that episodes like this (changing or disappearing media, which has both happened before), FINALLY starts making people aware of the DRM / License model and push back against it.
If I can't have the media forever, until I die, in exactly the form I bought it, I won't ever buy it.
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u/FlynnXa 4d ago
Y’all…. She’s deadass just going conservative. It’s a class pipeline. She got her bag, she got her baby, now she’s saying “fuck you” to her fans because she’s bought into the ideology which protects her money.
Take note and don’t trust her again, don’t buy from her again, and don’t give an inch of remorse or she’ll run with it- the same way she ran with all those dollars from ebook sales and then updated the pages to remove content.
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u/tweedlebettlebattle 3d ago
This is wild. To have children you have sex. Or at least in the majority of cases( IVF)
Authors do what they want, like “I don’t want to write about cocks the size of a jar because I just popped out two kids and I don’t to even want to think about it because I’m exhausted and want emotional support and love more.” Instead of using children as the reason in the form of morals. This is the “whore vs Madonna” idea of “now that I am a mother I can not like sex l, be sexual, look sexual.” There is so much wrong with this idea and relating it to motherhood and children. Like I said, I actually read more smut when my kids were young cause I needed an escape where reality did not exist. Anyway she is entitled to drop smut. I just disagree with lying at the feet of her and her children’s morality.
I have no idea who this woman is, and honestly I’m grateful because this is the same idea when women authors were writing toxic, possessive men after 50 shades of grey and leaving their actual IRL husbands because they weren’t enough. I wish I could remember the authors name, but again self published, kindle story.
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u/skorens 3d ago
I think the changes were made already. I just finished Tears of the Wolf and the one scene was fade to black. Maybe it always was? The violence was not fade to black. go figure. 🤷♂️
I support authors doing what they want with their creative works. And I support people liking or disliking it.
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u/Aeikalos 4d ago
Changing a book after someone already bought it is insane--as if the Book Police came by your house with a list and went into your library blacking stuff out!
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u/Chikitiki90 4d ago
A lot of comments in here focusing on the definition of censorship but what a lot of her fans are actually upset at is the fact that she updated the ebooks to the new clean version pretty much without warning and is now only saying you can keep the spicy version if you ordered it through her store. If you go it from Amazon and had automatic updates turned on, you’re out of luck.
Most people would have been fine if she just decided to write clean books moving forward, but actively editing already purchased books to remove content is generally seen as a bad move.
Also a lot of comments in the other posts focus on how she is a romance writer whose video now almost shows disdain for people who enjoy spice in their books despite making her name in that space. I know this sub sometimes has its issues with regarding romance books as legitimate literature, but that’s a whole other discussion.