Cait Corrain

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Name: Cait Corrain
Also Known As: Enterprisingly (AO3)
Occupation: novelist, fantasy writer
Medium:
Works: Play To Win
Official Website(s):
Fan Website(s):
On Fanlore: Related pages

Cait Corrain is a fantasy author in the science-fiction/fantasy book community. They have ties to the Reylo fandom from Star Wars, and wrote under the AO3 username Enterprisingly.[1]

Cait Corrain is a pseudonym, not their wallet name.

In December 2023, Corrain was the central figure of a highly publicized review-bombing controversy on Goodreads.

Notable Works

Controversy

On December 5, 2023, author Xiran Jay Zhao posted on Twitter, "If you as a debut author are going to make a bunch of fake Goodreads accounts one-star-bombing fellow debuts you're threatened by can you at least not make it so obvious"[2]. After Internet speculation on the author's identity, Zhao named the author as Cait Corrain and shared a Google Doc showing screenshots of low ratings from accounts allegedly owned by Corrain.[3]

Corrain initially blamed the review-bombs on someone they had met through Reylo fandom, a user named Lilly who also went by "Lemonado." However, as many Reylos were already familiar with Corrain and their work, other Reylos disputed this claim, saying that they had never met a Reylo named Lilly/Lemonado who was also associated with Corrain in any way.[4] Additionally, many noticed that Corrain's Discord screenshots with "Lilly" had inconsistent timestamps in the messages, leading many to believe that they were faked.

Like...I don't want to dump EVERY reylo fic into the category OP makes (not that I don't think that's true, but I have to imagine there were more/other fics out there obviously), but the reylo community is essentially it's [sic] own mini-fandom with EXTREMELY passionate fans. I hope that everyone is aware of the recent book controversy involving Cait Corrain, in which she tried to allege an ex-reylo fan friend of hers was responsible for the whole mess, only for the reylo fandom to PULL UP with an EXCEL SHEET full of documented usernames (with their associated nicknames!!!) as proof that Corrain's friend didn't exist. Like, that isn't a joke, and it was casually dropped into the whole melting pot of insanity. The reylo fandom is a fucking continuing insanity that will (unfortunately) be dominating fandom and real-world publishing spaces for god knows how long. Which, depending on how you feel about reylo, is either a boon or a bust.[5]

[Corrain] created fake Good Reads accts and started giving awful reviews to other Reylos published works.

Then, when caught, created fake texts with someone she named 'Lilly' and said this person was an obsessed fan who was trying to 'help' her by trying to get readers AWAY from other published Reylo works.

She said "y'all know Lilly!! She's huge in the fandom!!"

Except there's never been a Lilly! We all compared notes. Nope, no Lilly.

Cait eventually spilled the truth. She blamed it on her medication.

It was very strange though, she mainly only went after the POC Reylos who've been published.

It was very sad. She wrote "Play to Win" one of my all time favorite fics. She's a talented writer. Extremely talented. She didn't have to do all that.

Her book probably would've been huge.

The publisher is no longer publishing it, because of her actions. She ruined her own chances, being racist and petty.[6]


Corrain later issued an apology, admitting that Lilly/Lemonado was non-existent, and that they had recently "suffered a complete psychological breakdown" after "fighting a losing battle against depression, alcoholism and substance abuse"[7]. They entered an "intensive psychiatric care" facility on December 12, 2023.[8]

The fantasy novel Crown of Starlight was scheduled to be Cait Corrain's debut title, published in 2024 through Del Rey, a science fiction and fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House[9]. As of December 12, Corrain was no longer represented by agent Rebecca Podos. Del Rey and UK publisher Daphne Press also cancelled their contracts with Corrain.

Many Reylos, fans, involved authors, and critics alike noted that Corrain had proportionally targeted authors of color, indicating a blatant pattern of racism through Corrain's apparent feelings of being threatened by their nonwhite peers. Though Corrain did not initially acknowledge these criticisms in their December apology, in one of the screenshots with "Lilly" that they later admitted to have doctored, "Lilly" does point this out, and remarks upon it being racist. Many found this hypocritical as Corrain marketed themself as inclusive; the main character in Crown of Starlight is shown to be a black woman on the novel's cover art.

The controversy was cited by industry professionals as an example of abuse issues on Goodreads.[10]

Affected Authors

  • R.M. Virtues
  • K.M. Enright
  • Frances White
  • Kamilah Cole
  • Molly X Chang
  • Thea Guanzon
  • Bethany Baptiste

Corrain, who is white, left review bombs under the names Emily Bartlet, Chantal B, KJ Horrowitz, Sarah Dudley, Brett Spinner, Shaharizad Moën, and Oh Se-Young on Goodreads, as early as April 2023.

Corrain's Response

On February 13, 2024, the Daily Beast posted an exclusive interview with Corrain wherein they discussed and responded to the controversy, claiming that their review-bombs were not racially motivated. Instead, a combination of substance abuse, mental disabilities, and deep-rooted insecurities were the source of their actions:

“I want to just be extraordinarily clear that race had absolutely nothing to do with the authors that I chose to go after,” Corrain said. “The fact that there were a large number of people of color amongst the authors that I targeted is an unfortunate coincidence that happened because I was going off of Goodreads lists. That was the only driver, and I am so distressed and heartbroken by the fact that the impression that people have of me now is that I am a racist.”

“I understand how difficult the publishing industry is to navigate when you are marginalized,” Corrain told The Daily Beast, adding that she is a Jewish neurodivergent person. She seemingly understood and empathized with how much of a professional setback the negative reviews would cost Black authors.

“Especially for people of color, there is another really serious layer on top of that, that I don’t have to deal with,” she said. “And so, the fact that my actions impacted other marginalized people—and specifically a lot of people of color—in such an awful way, just breaks my heart. And I would rather live and admit to a very frightening truth than allow myself to be defined by such an awful harmful misconception. And by harmful, I don’t just mean harmful to me. I mean, harmful in retrospect, to my friends of color, who are now left thinking that this whole time I was harboring this deep, dark hatred for them.”

“I became increasingly paranoid that I was being set up to fail. … By that point, I was starting to experience what’s called a medically-induced psychotic break. And psychosis is when you are completely disconnected from reality. And so the logic of all of this, if it doesn’t make sense to you, it’s because it doesn’t make sense—period—to anybody who is not in it.

“They were people that I was perceiving as competition in this really altered state,” she explained, though she pushed that mental illness is not an excuse for her actions. “This was not a story about me going on a racist rampage. This was a story about a really insane attempt to make it look like none of my competitors were nearly as popular as I was.”

“I think that [the authors that I actually targeted] are allowed to be as angry with me as they want to be. I think that I hurt them in a way that if somebody had hurt me like that, that I don't know what I would do with that level of anger. I do not want to invalidate their pain, their anger, their feelings because I think that would be completely inappropriate for me to do.”[11]

However, the article does not touch upon Corrain's choice of names to review-bomb under, notably "Oh Se-Young" and "Shaharizad Moën", which was among the primary evidence that caused many fans and critics to believe their actions were racially motivated.

Video Essays

Further Reading

Citations

  1. ^ https://twitter.com/CaitCorrain/status/983908228592357376 Tweet by Cait Corrain: "Play To Win just hit 2,000 kudos on ao3. That means TWO THOUSAND people read my story and said "yeah, I like that". It's not even done yet. This is crazy. I've never had people respond to anything I've written like this before." Attached is a screenshot of the Reylo fic, "Play to Win" by Enterprisingly. Posted April 10, 2018. Accessed February 7, 2024. Corrain also used their Twitter heavily to update readers on new chapters of the fic.
  2. ^ Murray, Conor (2023-12-13). ""Author Cait Corrain Loses Book Deal For 'Review Bombing' On Goodreads—Here's Why It's A Longstanding Problem For The Platform". Forbes.
  3. ^ An Author Review Bombed Books on Goodreads. Then Her Debut Book Was Dropped by Laura Zornosa, TIME Magazine, December 13, 2023. Accessed February 6, 2024.
  4. ^ https://x.com/StorySorcery/status/1733119715147502078?s=20 Tweet by StormSorcery from December 8, 2023. Accessed February 6, 2024
  5. ^ Screencap of a Tumblr response by freevoidman on a tweet by Giana Bryne https://twitter.com/GianaBryne/status/1750046428762673543 (Posted January 24, 2024. Accessed February 6, 2024)
  6. ^ https://x.com/GianaBryne/status/1750154291157811666?s=20 Tweet thread by Giana Bryne, posted January 24, 2024. Accessed February 6, 2024)
  7. ^ Publisher drops author for using fake accounts to ‘review-bomb’ peers by Ella Creamer and Lucy Knight, The Guardian, December 13, 2023. Accessed February 4, 2024.
  8. ^ Gelt, Jessica (December 12, 2023). "Cait Corrain apologizes, checks into rehab after Goodreads 'review bombing' rival authors". LA Times.
  9. ^ "Writer admits to 'review bombing' other authors' books, then has own novel cancelled". Associated Press. December 13, 2023.
  10. ^ Taken from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cait_Corrain_review_bombing_controversy
  11. ^ Author Who Review-Bombed Writers of Color: ‘I'm Not Racist’, Howard, Brooke Leigh, The Daily Beast. Last updated 14 February, 2024. Accessed February 19, 2024.
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