Responding to YOUR hot takes about books!
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- Sometimes I roll on the floor and pretend to be a snail.
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Is the Subreddit open for submissions of more Hot Takes?
Outrage is more profitable
counter hot take: Self publishing is a necessary evil because Publishers are corrupt, incompetent, and unwilling to take risks quite often.
Full agree. Self publishing is as valid. And of course you have stinker but publishers have too.
Publishers have just more pr. But a lot pr has to do more pr anyways and in the age if social media, pretty valid .
And yeah, publishers stupidle arre very risk averse and most of the time have contradictions what they want. New? Worn out territory?
Also for diversity self publishing is good ( i mean some publishers so but good alternative)
Or maby your a shitty writer.
Publishers wanna make money so they want the best product. Yeah some are incompetent but most aren't. Gate keeping makes it more competitive so more likely to produce better product. Essentially trad publishing is pro consumer.
My hot take: people (be they publishers or reviewers) describing books almost entirely by there tropes (enemies to lovers, redemption arc, anti-hero) is one of the worst aspects of the modern industry
booktok my beloathed
I cant stand that marketing, im on board
The only thing worse than describing a book based entirely on tropes is describing books based off of other books that are vaguely similar to the book that is being described
@@amysteriousstranger1221 i hate that shit too bro
i hate it when people describe books using other books
The thing about grey morality is that you need to have something to say. A lot of people think just being edgy and have all your characters be terrible people for no reason makes it realistic. Yes morality isn’t always clear cut but that doesn’t mean we’re all murdering each other for fun.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are asking for black and white morality simply because there is so much poorly written grey morality that it's like "why didn't you just write good and evil instead..."
Exactly. If they’re just edgy for the sake of it I’d rather go watch a simple good v evil story that’s enjoyable. I love complex characters when it adds something.
As someone who used to be a Wattpad reader can confirm.
@@mikaelvirji5807 Honestly I think good vs evil stories aren’t enjoyable, but neither are stories where characters are just terrible without anything meaningful to say. I feel like ever since stuff like Berserk got popular people started copying the “grimdark” style without understanding what made it compelling in the first place.
My brother in christ, your murder hobo isn't chaotic neutral, they straight up evil
I don't simply judge a book by its cover. I make sure to read the synopsis in the dust jacket, too.
I mean, that is still technically part of the cover.
your books still have a synopsis on the cover?
@@ShRkDa GOSH I hate when I look for a summary on the cover but there's just a bunch of reviews.
@@fairycat23me too! what is even the point? most of the time it is some person or outlet I've never heard of anyway
i hate it when instead of a synopsis it is reviews of the book
Hot take: Everybody who wants to should write books. They may be terrible, but that's irrelevant. Writing can do so much more than create a novel. It can be therapy, wish fulfillment, can help cope with trauma, help sort ideas and develop concepts. If you want: Go write a book!
That's not even a take, it's just basic advice.
Worse than enemies to lovers:
Abduction is love
Oh gods. There's a movie I heard great things about but when I saw it found it awful. Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down by Almodovar. It has that "abduction is love" plot.
I love enemies to lovers done well. I mean, actually developed well. Ideally they become friends too.
@@marocat4749 Yeah, there's enemies learning to understand and forgive each other, and then there are fetishes.
@@douglasdea637 like one person is kidnapped and then falls in love with their abductor?
@@pRahvi0 nah. It’s more kidnapping a someone and forcing them into marriage and then getting them to learn to love you.
As someone who was reading above my age at 11 whose parents accidentally bought a series of terribly written smut for adults, I’d say be careful when giving your kids books outside their age range unless you’re ready to have them learn not just about the birds and the bees but also all the places to do it
LMAO 😭
Fantasy Romance should have a section all to itself
Should that section also have a sub-section (although maybe not that large one) of romance that's NOT just power fantasy porn?
More space operas should be like *A True Story* and just totally ignore realism altogether.
Agreed, though there must be a central sci-fi idea at least to classify them as Space Opera, though I can accept someone writing the story & fact checking afterwards to improve the story.
@@cynfaelalek-walker7003 dude, you ever read A True Story by Lucian? They land on the moon in a boat.
Unsure if this is a hot take or even a take at all but here goes:
Tropes are neither inherently good nor bad, they are only as good as the story they are in.
Thats hot?! I thought its common sense that like execution matters?!
That is less about tropes and more about the skill of the writer.
The best "MC inspects their face in a mirror" scene was in Disco Elysium
The *expression*
I have 2 hot takes. (Probably)
1: Exposition dumps make sense when a character is drunk
2: a lot of writing advice on the internet is extremely contradictory.
Pure Evil Villain isn't necessarily a bad thing. They are super easy to mess up and make boring, true, but when done properly, such a villain can become one of the best elements of the story.
Thanks for including me in the video! If you are interested in an explanation on my take, it's below.
Defending the map thing: I love a good map, but some maps have such huge discrepancies between the time it takes characters to traverse a space and the actual scale shown on the map. Some fantasy worlds just shouldn't be physically represented if it's going to have an inaccurate map. I could just ignore the map, but it's a tool that was meant to help the reader understand the world, so i feel it is my due diligence as a reader to attempt to understand. Also, in case you were wondering if it was a user error, I'm trained in GIS and off trail field navigation, so I definitely know how to read a map.
What always annoys me is if there's a map in the book but the characters never even travel that much like whats the point?
That's a fair explanation honestly, but it's more of a lack of research on the author's part than a fault of the map's inclusion I guess?
@@TurtleRabbitKim05 It's pretty
I like looking at maps, but if it serves little point, I'll be confused. I read and enjoyed Gwen and Art Are Not in Love, but I still don't understand why there's a map of the castle at the beginning. The map was nice to look at but didn't bolster my understanding of where the characters went. Heck, a few scenes took place outside the castle, and I was wondering how far away they were, so that would've been more helpful than the map provided.
that's how i felt abt the map in shadow and bone because the unsea is HUGE but it always takes the characters like 1 day to cross?? whereas going from town a to town b will take the characters weeks
I’ve noticed when I listen to audiobooks, it’s so much harder for me to imagine visuals in my head than if I’m staring down at the book reading that way. Listening to audiobooks actually gets me to finish books though so it’s a trade off 🤷♀️
There I find that the way that a narrator reads the passages really helps. When they have a measured tone, you can imagine the surroundings. When they go too fast, it boggles a bit.
That's because listening to a book is a passive activity, and reading is an active one.
My hot take is that the vast majority of fantasy series would be improved by staying to a single book or a collection of standalone stories. Most authors in general are bad at carrying a plot across multiple books in a satisfying way, while also keeping each entry compelling in its own right. I think this is especially noticeable in trilogies, you usually end up with a whole book worth of filler in the middle.
(I don't know the mechanics of the publishing industry, so maybe publishers are to blame for this because they want to sell a whole series of books so they require the Author to commit to multiple books as part of their contract.)
Agree. Lord of the Rings was easily the best trilogy I've read where the second book is just as interesting as the other ones. I still find the first and the third to be better but I believe it is inevitable in a trilogy's structure. Dune Messiah was good too, but it seems like a lot of people don't like it that much.
Honestly, I agree. This is even present in books I like, such as the Hunger Games. Catching Fire, in my opinion, was very much filler. Half of it was boring nonsense that dragged on too long. While I did think the story definitely made Katniss feel older, and I personally think her PTSD is handled well in the story, I didn’t really feel connected to the story in that book.
Also, the romance plot with Gale that seemingly came out of nowhere in that book was annoying too. Would it kill an author to leave childhood best friends as just friends, instead of trying to upgrade their relationship to cause cheap story tension? Maybe it’s just my gay side peeking through, but it’s annoying that every boy and girl that show any form of interest in each other are paired romantically.
One thing I noticed in so-called ''grey morality'' stories is that, ultimately, they aren't that grey at all. Think of Game of Thrones for example, House Stark were pretty much the good guys while the Lannisters (other than Tyrion) and Boltons were the bad guys. This is mostly a problem of the show, the books for instance have Tyrion be a much worse person while still being sympathetic, but it still suffers from this to some degree too.
Did we read the same books? There are plenty of decent Lannisters, just not Cersei or Tywin (although the latter did good things as well as bad things). And as for the Starks, Robb sets his wolf against Tyrion unprovoked, Jon bullies his fellow black brother recruits, Arya is an effing menace really disturbing child sometimes, and Eddard is really condescending and judgemental when people don't act according to his moral values.
Did you read the Arya chapters in Storm? They are so focused on the horrors that the Riverlands are seeing thanks to the Starks and Lannisters. I understand the distinction between Stark men and the Starks, but I really don’t think you’re supposed to see “The Starks” as the good guys after those chapters. Also, I don’t think describing it as “gray” is right. GRRM has said that “good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things.” It’s not that everyone is the same gray mush, it’s that people are complex. Jon breaks his oath by wanting to March south to save Arya. That’s wrong even if we love Jon and Arya and understand why Jon wants to.
The story early has ned executing a deserter, who didnot lie, as we see, about the zombies.
@@llindberg194 none of those things the Starks do are nearly as bad as what the atrocities Lannisters commit Jon was going forma place f privilege but learned his lesson. and ned was surrounded by a bunch of amoral people he was right to call them out his flaw was assuming everyone followed his rules
so its bad not illogical and Tyrion does the same thing by laughing out a nightwatchman who has a white corpse hand and it melts because it wasn't shown in time
@@marocat4749 yes but that was understandable it wasn't out of a whim and the guy didn't have any proof as even northerns don't believe magic exists otherisde of the wall
Congrats on finding a more comfortable seating arrangement lol
my secret dream is to write a book and it be so bad that james makes a video complaining about the plot. wish me luck
Do you have a father ?
@@yuvalgabay1023 two, actually. why?
@@erinsintra well being fatherless or having father issues is a good start ate being a cring writer.
But its ok we can still corrupt you
Here's a tip: make somethimg that's a fanfic without telling which is based it off of. Unleash your inner cringe. Listen to criticism, "oh, this works? Then i'll do the opposite."
Best genre to bring the most cringe is Romance so there's a start.
@@2006HondaCivicD make it a love triangle..this is auto cring right here.
Make the mc like super boring and basic.
But also every one wants him/her for some fucking reason
Or make him/er a fucking Psycho
More Hot Takes of my own:
1. _The Silmarillion_ is a better book than _The Lord Of The Rings_ .
2. If one of the protagonists (or antagonists) in the book is a Mermaid, that in itself makes the story already predictable- either the Mermaid falls in love with a human, someone dies violently, or both. Every story with a Mermaid as a main character is arbitrarily either a Romance or a Horror story for no explicable reason.
3. Hans Christian Andersen would be a 2nd or 3rd Rate YA author nowadays because all of his 'fairy tales' are all either allegorical, based on his personal life, or edgy depressive angst. _The Little Mermaid_ was even what would today be called a gender-flipped Author Self-Insert, and Andersen killed off the mermaid to express his passive suicidal ideation over an unrequited gay crush.
4. Web serials are as valid a form of literature as traditionally-printed books. If web serials like _Worm_ and _A Practical Guide To Evil_ have fandoms big enough to write their own fanfiction and draw their own fanart, they are as valid as 'normal' books.
Hey, he would be a good but a bit overly dramatic maybe controvrsal ya writer.
your mermaid take involves dragons for me
In what SFF circles are web serials were looked down upon?!
@@archlectoryarvi2873 There are people who say only books are 'valid' literature.
Here’s my hot take on isekai stories: the worst ones are when the main is transmigrate/reincarnate/teleported to another world and the story doesn’t do anything else with it, they could wrote a regular fantasy book with no difference!
(Hope you do another one of these james)
A lot of isekai could be seriously improved by investing more into the slice of life side where the character is just living their life normally. You get attached to them, their friends, their family, their pet dog, and suddenly it’s all ripped away from them. The reader can more easily understand the horror of being transported to a new world along with the character
I get what u mean but that would also mean the character won't be the person who's completely alien to the world and has to figure stuff out. Which kinda the point
@@luxill0sehh why do that when u can just have the Mc Transport to the world and all the bitchs with giant tits just want to fuck him for absolutely no reason.
Probably ice cold, but just because a book (or series) has a female protagonist, doesn't mean it's automatically feminist (if anything, it's often the opposite).
Also, any time I think a book or series could be interesting, the moment I hear "800 pages", I groan, even worse when I hear that it's porn with bullshit plot. I'll take the romance without the BS, and I'll even take the BS without the romance, but to endure both is too much to ask - especially when it's so goddamn long.
I see someone’s been traumatized by Throne of Glass… or at least another fantasy series that turned out to be a self-insert romance.
When you hear it's that long you should probably look it up more to get a better idea of what to expect,as there are great stories out there that are very long (like Lord of the Mysteries, a mere couple thousand pages)
I think romance is good with more of a genre mixed it usually.
Theproblem is most romance is terrible written. And itsnot that hard make the plot lead into romance and drama.
And romance, and even love triangle can and shouldplay into thematic importance.
Other plot can help bridge outside problems thst could be annoying in pure romance. And force characters together by plot, whicj is awful in pure romsnce, abd help characters have other problems too.
It with other can sidestep romance hardest downfally,if you develope both and there is thematic relevance somehow.
I think a lot of the romance fails because the author either doesn't write the love interest or doesn't write the romance if you know what I mean by it.
@neviemrobitsgooglom5142 Sometimes it's that, sometimes it's a sandwich with a great middle and soggy bread. Sometimes I WANT to be invested in the romance but the more bullshit in the world or plot, the more it starts to ruin the romance. Context matters, despite what so many writers want to shove down their readers' throats.
I have a bit of a hot take. Dune is fantasy, not sci-fi. It focuses more on mysticism than actual science. Just because it takes place in space, that doesn't automatically make it sci-fi.
I the issue there is if you believe or not that someone could be so preceptive that they could perceive future events. That's a borderline mysticism thing, but not beyond the realm of possibility.
Scifi can have a lot overlap with fantasy. Its still scifi. Or sci fantasy at worst?!
I agree. And this is basically a variant of the 'Romance/Fantasy' take that was at the beginning of this video.
Dune is a sci-fi world, but not a sci-fi story. Somewhere in Dune's world there's people calculating faster-than-light travel, engineering tiny assassination drones, working on phasing shields, concocting black liquid for Harkonnen to bathe in, building dragonfly copters, etc etc.
But the story itself, and it's a big one, really shoves all that waaaaay in to the shadows in favor of telling a medieval-like fantasy tale about certain high profile characters in the world. It's a scifi world, but the book should be in the Fantasy section. Just like the Romance/Fantasy novels are in fantasy worlds, but belong in the romance section.
@@atomicNoodleI love this explanation, thank you!!!
Sci fantasy is still a valid genre I hate how people act like a combination can not be real
I'm not sure if this is necessarily a hot take, but I don't think magic in fantasy has to have a "price" or negative side effect or cost or whatever you want to call it. Sure, you should have to learn to use it, but it's magic god damn it!
Yes, thats a good one, there can still be a price for important stuff, but it doesnt have to come from magic
Rather, sometimes using magic to inflict a consequence, is a waste chance to use realism to inflict a consequence
While magic requiring skill makes it look cooler
You forgot that such a price is all many authors nowadays can show as a consequence. There usually isn't a decent consequence for anything that happens, so they just bake it into the magic system
Although xianxia and wuxia novels are more at fault for this, at time even telling a price/consequence that isn't followed (oh look! This character is using his life force to sustain his abilities! I wonder what the effects will be. And then there's literally no effect)
There needs to be a limit. It can be in a form of price i.e. the limit is what you're willing to sacrifice, but that's not the only possibility. There are decent books out there where the only limit is what the character has learned so far and it works fine. It just has the risk of a power creep.
@tuluppampam
(Spoiler) WWX being basically just as strong as he was before the golden core incident as he was afterwards :facepalm:
Xianxia novels ime are notorious for the “he was hit by a super powerful spiritual weapon! [He walks away basically unscathed]” issue. If magic or spiritual power is going to have a price then actually give it one
@@luxill0s you forgot all the time someone is hit by a super powerful attack or weapon and they get injured, but after at most a week they regain full functionality of their body
Consequences often don't exist in xianxia (and wuxia. But mostly xianxia)
My hot take:
Most people like non-fiction. They just don't know how to read it/get into reading it.
Any recommendations for a newbie in Non fiction?
Historycan be really fun. And zany.
@@akshathahegde6550
I recommend you grab whatever you already have. Who knows? Maybe there's a gem in your library that's yet to be found.
If you don't have any non-fiction books,
If you come from a sci-fi background, Asimov's non-fiction can be fun (take it with a grain of salt). Also stephen Hawkins', or overall books about the universe. I really like those.
If you come from a fantasy background, Tolkien's biography is interesting, or historical non-fiction like the story of civilization by will durant. Or symbolic dictionaries and mythology books can be very fun.
If you like classic lit, most of those authors also wrote non-fiction essays.
There are also philosophy books, urbanism, physics, sociology... Too many subjects.
Or you can read Wikipedia entries on whatever. In the references, there are usually a lot of books on that same subject.
@@marocat4749 i love reading nf about nature and especially birds, it's almost impossible to find fiction that scratches that same itch
My freezerburn take is that fae is just magic hot people but they needed a word to be associated with sexy instead of nerdy, and I will say this until I am put in the ground.
Anyway, furiously taking notes.
Don’t forget all the animal features they get to sneak in without being called furries 👀
A book I love only mentioned the hair color of one of the pov/main characters in the epilogue, ca page 800. I realized later this was a Deliberate Choice bc it was a prequel novel with only 1.5 shared characters between the two, and the hair color was a plot twist that tied into the idea of the original/chronologically second work 😂
My hot take is that mediaeval -based fantasy worlds dont have to be historically accurate in any way. In fact, it doesnt have to have anything in common with the actual medieval world apart from the aesthetic. its fantasy not historical fiction.
My only problem is the other way around - people take their idea about medieval period from this kinda fantasy (including "historical" stories that are the same minus magic and name droping some places and people from history textbooks).
They offten think about medieval Europe as this unchanging homogenus thing and not wierdy fluxuating regionaly different mess. And that that idea of "medieval" covering everything from late ancient word to edge of 19th/20th century.
true
10:43 I say this actually in the sense that the mainline "medieval fantasy" setting totally misrepresents a lot of European culture and mythology. Plus most Fantasy focuses on Germanic (mainly Norse and Anglo-Saxon) mythology, only keeping around aspects of, for example Irish or Polish mythology for flavour. Something with the aesthetic of like Bronze Age Ireland would go insanely hard you have no idea
Medieval fantasy is also very good when you don't want to create an entire complicated world and just want to write about characters doing stuff (which is valid)
On a sidenote, anyone complaining about medieval fantasy should just read books from other cultures, so that they too may be annoyed at other very recurring settings (wuxia, for example)
Lot of "medieval" fantasy could be describe as "anything between fall of West Rome and mass adoption of gun powder works"
@@petrfedor1851 but in fantasy stories is some kind of still really centralised system but with very flourishing cities, so it can be pinpointed to be almost certainly after the year 1000. But there are also other weird things, and the nobles still hold lots of power within their own land, which creates a weird dynamic that I don't remember existing in medieval Europe at basically any time
One might solely wonder
It's probably true that there's more than enough fantasy inspired by Medieval Europe, but I, for one, am gonna say there's plenty of room for more _good_ fantasy inspired by Medieval Europe. Particularly other parts of Europe than England, France and maybe Germany and Italy.
Or maybe medieval fantasy that is medieval and not just a renaissance fair turned into a boom.😊
My hot take: mysteries and thrillers work better as movies because of the faster pace, music, and actors’ performances. They are more rewatchable than rereadable
So many people think the phrase "hot take" just means "slightly unflattering opinion"😂
For my hot take, it seems like Japanese like Western fantasy worlds in their isekai more than Eastern fantasy. Strangely, they have Japanese main characters trying to introduce Japanese cultures to the fantasy world.
Sometimes good versus evil is just as good as grey moralites. Some people are just evil. That exists in reality. And when people forget that people are just evil that usually means they've been fortunate enough to not encountered it.
The longer it takes the consume something, be it books, video games, or television series, the more it should have a satisfying/happy ending.
Wow, this one rubs me the wrong way.
I know the longer the serie the more i Hope for a good ending, but i dont think it should have one....
However, i cant think of a longer story with an unhappy ending that i would read again, so you might be right.
Love short w40k stories that end bad or in the status que.
I have a hot take too though, i think nowadays most people associate fantasies with elves and faeries only.
No. Game of Thrones.
@@tompatterson1548 yeah the thing is people who are into game of thrones aren't into typical fantasy
@@Galvatronover i mean, GOT is still a very widely recognized fantasy series, so it can serve as a counterexample.
Why do I feel that whoever it was that said that fantasy maps are boring and unneeded could also not find their own town if given a paper map of their home region.
My take (i dont even think its hot that much) is that harry potter’s worst effect is that it means no one talks about young adult p/young teen fantasy from the time. They dont get talked about and dont get adapted.
I get why people feel that way about the Malazan books, but I think there's a valid appeal to the idea of figuring out something by yourself as its goes along without guidance from the author. It's definitively not something every reader should be expected to do and maybe from a technical standpoint its not as impressive as some authors want us to believe it is, but its a vibe that a lot of people enjoy
The problem is that Malazan tends to tell way too little and that doesn't make an enjoyable read
Subtext is a must, but Malazan goes too far with it, to the point that we can't really call it subtext anymore
I sometimes can't believe that a publisher hasn't at least tried to get their authors to truncate their novels for mass release and then bring out a 'director's cut' version of the book that has all the extra scenes.
The traditional vs. self publishing may have been true at some time, but it's not anymore. There are a couple of pretty good authors now who self publish and then you have traditionally published E. L. James...
I just wish people would have a bit of compassion for adults like me who struggle to read. I used to avoid reading cause it was very hard. In school I had a few extra classes to help me get my reading and writing abilities up to the standard for my grade.
Librarians and my instructors at community college are super encouraging, but a lot of folks think I'm an idiot cause I'm slow
The problem with lumping fantasy with romance or any other genre is that some people don't want to read about elves or magic. Most of those people don't understand that there's other genres out there and they also generally think that fantasy is a waste of time.
Bean bags are only comfortable in theory, not reality.
My hot take is that I like that the Wheel of Time is as long as it is. I listened to the audiobooks at work so the length didn't bother me and I enjoyed having such a long time to spend watching the characters grow. Like ya some of it's not necessary but I don't mind that in this case at least.
Hot Take: There should be more crossovers between Fantasy and Sci-Fi.
20:45 no this is so fucking right like.. when i played DND, i decided my character was misogynistic. however, he was always wrong each moment he acted as such, as this is one of his character flaws. portraying = X = endorsing; it's how you portray it.
The myth of consensual sex: James Tullos does not consent!
My hot take is that as soon as I read in the synopsis that there's two main characters and one's a boy and one's a girl, unless it states that they're related or ace, I put it back on the shelf 90% of the time. It shouldn't be, but it's yet to fail me to be a big red flag that the story and characters are going to be overtaken by an absolutely unnecessary romance based on their proximity.
My other hot take is that most lgbt+ romances are just as bad as the straight ones, but they are given a pass and treated as if they're amazing pinnacle of romance just because it's two guys instead. You still have to give your characters depth and something to talk about besides talking about how in love they are, a homophobic bully isn't a substitute for a personality.
While yeah, its not as oversaturized ,i mean it gets better , but its still notcas oversaturized.
And to get better representation, you have to mention at least the mid honorary.
Plus its romance, a lot of people like it. I dont think its a hot take, but its probably good not critizing too hard.
Plus a lot , yeah give queer people guiltypleasure mid romances too.
Which is why i think its not critizized hard.
But yeah its overhyped too for same reason often. Its fine to say its ok but just your average guilty pleasure romance, good it exists who likes that, just its no masterpiece.
Also you could have bi- psn characters.
Honestly at this point every time I see a piece of media with a man and a woman in it who are in the same age range and neither of whom are stated to be gay I start trying to guess how long till they end up together
I think that people are quick to defend bad LGBTQ romance because we’re afraid to put on bad appearances for non-LGBTQ people-if we perform badly, if our romance isn’t good, then we as a whole might be less accepted. It’s extremely silly and something we need to get out of the habit of doing. Shitty romance is (unfortunately) endemic to all minorities and majorities
I have a feeling you didn't like Heartstopper
@@amysteriousstranger1221 Stephen King doesn't even make you wait he just plops them together as soon as they meet . (this makes sense sometimes when its kids or teen like It with Bill Beverly/beverly and ben or the 4th dark tower book but sometimes its kinda forced
Another thing to consider with battle shonen manga is that many of them are super long, so it might be helpful to flashback to things that happened hundreds of chapters ago, (which would have happened several years ago in real world time). Although this doesn't always justify it as Naruto, for example, went way too crazy with the flashbacks in the war arc.
Flashback to hundreds of chapters ago? Nah man, by that point the author themselves probably forgot what happened. Or maybe it's just that some of the ones I've read are in the thousands of chapters range.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Malazan can be pretty easily understood. The people who don't get it are just skimming it to get to book 3 or 8 or whatever. Yes, I'm heavily biased, what with it being my favorite with no close second, but I really feel like people don't even try when it comes to Malazan.
19:21
Past hope. Past kindness or consideration. Past justice. Past satisfaction. Past warmth or cold or comfort. Past love. But past surprise? What an endlessly unfolding tedium life would then become.
My take: A lot of love triangles could have a better ending with the adition of bisexuality and polyamory
That’s what I’m saying! Like seriously, this all could’ve worked out if they idk talk out all of their feelings, and they don’t have to choose or fight for no reason. Also an exploration of queerness is always delightful and interesting to me.
Polyamory for the win.
Not even better endings. Just conflicts that make more sense, without resorting to the ever-used "I'm in love with the prince AND the guy who wants to overthrow him!"
Literally the ONLY love triangle that I ever read that hit me right was in the Infernal Devices trilogy, where you had two guys who cared for each other and a girl between them. But seriously, more polyamory. Would love if the two guys trying to win the girl suddenly looked at each other and thought 'why not' more often.
Ugh polyamory
I kind of get the surprise thing.
I often struggle to enjoy a book until I know how it ends. I will drag out an audio book for months then immediately listen to it again in a weekend once I know how to feel about it and the characters. I'm too suspicious of the story and characters after so many shock reveals and twists.
I like being surprised(but sometimes I go on wikipedia)
My hot take: characters (and real people too) can be close or even intimate without either of them being romantically or sexually attracted to the other.
I mean, this shouldn't be a hot take, yet it's starting to feel like one these days, especially when you spend too much time on the internet...
And you can write romance without smut every 2 chapters…
the constant clips of ice related clips were great lol
15:21 in literary fiction, there's no clear villain just a bunch of "unlikable morally grey characters" as put by the author and the readers of the books and those books are hardly ever enjoyable. That's what I was talking about and did not consider that you may not read books from those genres😅
I think there are two "hurdles" to the Witcher books (I read them and love the series):
1. You might have heard this before, but the english translation is garbage. Though I have not read them in polish, but in german, I started reading the series in english first, then in german, and for the first time I came to understand just how much of a difference translation can make. One of the major points of the Witcher is the themes and how cleverly these are conveyed by Sapkowskis prose. If you speak english only, you might think "So? I'm not gonna learn polish for some books" and you're right, I just wanted to mention it.
2. I think because of the games, people especially struggle with the "main" books (from "Blood of Elves" to "Lady of the Lake") because they expect the story to feature Geralt as a protagonist when in actuality this is more of an ensemble cast situation, with a main focus on Ciri. So there may be expectations that are not met
I read them in Czech translation and that one is pretty well put together (and these two languages are more similiar to each other than English is)
Also here the short stories are by many consider as best part of books.
Also also Sapkowski has little bit of a problem of overexplaining how hot some of his women charaters are and for some it could come as distastfull.
Hm, james trying the witcher in german cound be interesting. As he learns german.
@@marocat4749right, that totally slipped my mind! It would be definitely worth it, though nothing compares to the original language of course
@@petrfedor1851I think especially the first two books suffer from weird descriptions of women, but as a woman myself I didn't mind it tooo much, though I completely understand that this is my subjective opinion
Military sci fi is GOATED, books like the wizard scout series are so good
I don't like a lot of stories based on crime because of the ending. They most of the time end in some sort of adrenalin rush ending, where the criminal is trying to escape and then there is the conviction. That's why I like Dominik Dán's books, because the ending is less about catching the guy and more about setting the guy up to confess the crime. The adrenalin is less pumped up and more sprinkled in, mainly because the guy used to be a police officer.
I love the edits in this video. Thank you, James. You are saving my sanity.
I have a hot take I developed only early today. GRRM is to blame for the problematic ending to GoT. He allowed a show to be made about an unfinished series that itself has become somewhat meandering (offset by great world and characters, but meandering nonetheless). A time jump after the war fizzled out may have done this series a lot of good. Too many story lines with too few books to sort them all out, the last two of which have already stalled out for several plotlines, especially in Essos.
tldr; there's no reason to believe the books, should they be completed, will be any more satisfying to the many many many plotlines ending than the show was. Keep in mind, all the major characters' endings in the show will be similar in the books. Having their inner thoughts only goes so far imo, but in fairness GRRM may very well finish the series and prove me wrong.
note: oh, and i should add I do absolutely love many of the developments from the last couple books despite this complaint. I just think D&D are getting all the blame for the show when GRRM was alongside them for the entire ride.
a lot of people think this
Fight scenes against animals/monsters in fantasy and sci fi are boring because you know the (important) characters aren't going to die to some random creature. And even if there are real stakes, fights are more interesting between humans or more intelligent enemies since they can involve a wider variety of complex tactics and morals.
*Robert Baratheon disliked that*
5:00 - I think this has been a pushback against a lot of how "grey morality" has been used in fiction. A lot of the time it ends up either being edgy grimdark, or trying to make all our villains sympathetic.
For me, I think a lot of it comes down to this belief that sympathetic==complex/realistic and "pure evil"==simplistic/unrealistic. Frankly, I just dont think this is true. Looking at many "evils" of real life, what it usually boils down to is someone prioritising their own wants/urges/impulses over the wellbeing of others. You think that drug dealers, kiddie diddlers, thieves or murderers all consider themselves heroic people? Of course not. Many of these people either don't care, refuse to acknowledge they've done anything wrong or find some way of victimising themselves.
Sure, some may have tragic and sympathetic life circumstances, but just as many don't. But the thing is, that doesn't mean that they can't still be complex. Some people are just horrible people who do bad things because they just like doing it, bit they're still people. They have aspirations, insecurities, likes, dislikes, pastimes and many other aspects that make them their own distinct person.
Fundamentally, I think this is the problem. People get more focused on "Good vs Evil" or "Grey Morality" rather than just writing actual interesting characters, and in both cases the result often ends up being stories filled with shallow archetypes. Both can yield great stories, but both also require effort.
"This guy says the Witcher is poo...and then goes on about reasons the Witcher is poo." I never learned brevity, it is my greatest shame.
The cursed shirt is back!!
19:05 I feel that this is the case because Fantasy and Sci-fi are more an aesthetic, and not necessarily a genre.
Those clips were pretty doggone great, Jimmy James. I especially had a hard time keeping a straight face when you started with that whole Foreigner thing where they said "You're as cold as ice!"
here are mine:
A book shouldn't be loved just for having good representation.
Fantasy is too similar and always uses the same tropes, and honestly can be really boing
I also agree 100% with the one that Fantasy is over represented.
For Witcher, I kinda agree with that take. I wouldn't say it's "poo", but it's pretty overrated. The first few books that are just a collection of short stories about Geralt's random misadventures are cool, but once the series goes into a more straight plot with all these countries, wars, and prophecies, it all fell down really fast to me.
My takes:
1. I hate the books that are complex just for the sake of complexity. It's basically the book version of "I'm not like other girls".
I'm talking about books with a fuckton of subplots and when that one miniscule detail that you reasonably discard as not important, somehow turns out to be crucial later in the story.
If I have to make notes while reading your fiction book to stay on track, you're doing something wrong.
2. The Chekhov's Gun is a valid tool, but it shouldn't be overused or fanatically followed. Not everything in the book has to be crucial to the plot.
I think chekhov’s gun should be more “you shouldn’t put an excess amount of emphasis on something if it won’t amount to anything.” You can say there’s a gun on the wall if it’s not important for anything other than establishing scenery and maybe a character’s personality, but don’t devote extra time to it if it’s not important beyond that use. Turning trivial details into major plot points is taking chekhov’s gun too literally
mine is that fanfiction is not better or worse compared to original fiction. it, along other transformative works like fanart should be judged on different merits. there are tropes and things I'd accept in fanfiction that i'd feel weird seeing in an actual book
I totally feel the person who looks up a medium on Wikipedia to avoid (bad) emotional surprises. I do that too.
I have mental health problems and sometimes a dream or a book can put me in a bad place for a day or two. But I need all my energy to manage my life, so I try not to read books or watch movies that I know will "knock me out" emotionally. Cannot do anything about dreams though.
Three hot takes for the price of one:
1. Scrappy independent spacers are the scifi equivalent of the orphan protagonist. Way overdone.
2. Fantasy novels with made up plants and minerals are just a way for lazy writers to get out of doing research.
3. Horror novels never have fully satisfying resolutions because horror as a genre relies on fear of the unknown. Once you resolve something, it's known, so it's not horrifying anymore, so it doesn't feel satisfying as a payoff. However, this is to be expected and is 100% okay, and when someone complains that a horror novel's ending falls flat, I assume they don't read much horror. (Exception: sometimes cross-genre novels manage to pull off a good ending by paying off the non-horror genre at the same time the horror gets resolved, so it feels cohesive and works.)
23:25 I self insert as Kaladin because I have crippling depression (like he does) and I fuck things up a lot (like he does). So yeah, representation baby
I always liken female authors writing gay romance to a girl playing with dolls
I have no doubt that Lord of the Rings is overrated. It’d be hard for something so popular to not be.
I think the issue is less 'overrated' as 'over-REVERED'. Some fantasy fans treat those books like hardcore Christians treat the bible, as though it's a holy text. I love those books, but they don't mean THAT much to me.
@@robertgronewold3326 without a doubt, it’s probably one of the most influential works of the 20th century.
@@tompatterson1548 Yep, it established so much modern fantasy.
I agree with Robert here. The use of "overrated" is kind of, well, overrated. Cause in my opinion, Lord of the Rings deserved its spotlight although personally the book doesn't really mean to me that much either.
About the grey morality thing: I would like to see more „white vs. grey“ fantasy stories. Have the good guys be the clear good guys but have the antagonists genuinely think they are doing the right thing as well, exen if they are misguided in some way.
Also hit take there is one character I can think about who is written super unlikeable (IMO) who I guess is supposed to be a „grey“ character: Rand a‘l Thor from about book 2 to the end of book 12 (so most of the series)
so good guy vs anti villain
And I’m not going to say the booktubers name, but she has a tendency I think to seek out all the bad books, read them as if someone is forcing her and then act like it’s a personal attack against her. I know some people joke about the book caused them physical pain, but this person does it so much it’s like, “do you even enjoy reading?”
And her reaction to books she actually likes is like “well this was good,” and shares no more about what makes it good.
2:20 feeling very called out as someone trying to write a fantasy novel that mainly focuses on religion (it is very difficult ngl)
Hey you read mine! and yes! I didn't think about goodreads one star reviews haha, you're right.
Hot take. I like to read the ending of the book sometimes first before reading it in full. I like to have something to look forward to when reading the book when I read the ending first to see how the characters get from the beginning to the end
That's almost what I did that made me read Lord of the Mysteries (a lovely couple thousand pages long Chinese novel. It's good) in two weeks. I was just looking up in the fandom all the advancements of the main character and trying to read as much as possible to reach it
But this meant that I didn't get much of the subtleties and good writing of the author, which I instead enjoyed over a second reading
Very funny and interesting video, James! Adding those small clips after each take was great
My take; the name of the wind is just kind of meh, the prose is pretty good.
Hot take: we need more fantasy where armor funtions properly
This will be fun to watch.
on the percy jackson one:
100 percent valid, in my personal opinion. although i think Leo is by far the most interesting character in HOO, there's a reason i read it more recently, and yet remember far less of it. its solidly mediocre. less likable cast (with exceptions), and despite an arguably more interesting plot, it gets kneecapped all too frequently. the only emotionally resonant moments in it were conversations with specific gods and the dichotomy of roman/greek counterparts, percy and annabeth in hell, and (not to spoil literally the last couple sentences in the series) the plot with calypso was genuinely emotionally captivating. that's basically it. there were a lot of good characters, and some of their plots were interesting (frank, Hazel sometimes, thalia, and maybe one or two others) but nothing resonated like the plotline in the OG percy jackson. its not bad by any means, but it shouldn't be held on nearly the same pedestal.
also, for anyone who hasn't, please read the kane chronicles, if you liked percy jackson you'll like those books just as much, they are just as good, and depending on who you are, subjectively better.
I really loved the 2nd Percy Jackson series (reyna is my girlbossy queen) but I agree that it’s not as good as the original
Nothing beats the first 5 books. Period
your channel is awesome and videos are great keep ‘em coming! 👏
My hot take: In worlds where only a few amount of people can use magic, using the magic should have major negative consequences.
I wish I knew about this beforehand:
There are only four good Harry Potter books. Azkaban, Goblet, Prince and Hallows. The rest are forgettable to godawful.
Mildly Warm Take: I enjoy learning about the world Tolkein built a lot more than i do reading the stories he wrote in said world.
The stories just put me to sleep. Couldn't tell ya why ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
EDITS:
1) Regarding the take at 2:19,
If you're looking for a series with a very believable religious society, i highly HIGHLY recommend The World of The Five Gods series by Lois McMaster Bujold.
All the characters are religious to varying degrees regardless of moral alignment.
Different characters and societies have unique interpretations of the same religion.
2) Hell fucking yes to 15:38. Jorg is not anything REMOTELY resembling a hero and that's part of what makes him interesting as an epic fantasy protagonist.
Good luck to everyone whose takes are featured!!!!
I kinda disagree with the breasted boobily thing...women do it to both males and females because it's usually in smutty fictions. Whereas with males it's one sided and misplaced 😭
In the last point about self publishing as someone who did it. It was purely done because Trad publishing is basically booktok for publishing. If your not chasing the Trends then your fighting an uphill battle and you have a far lesser chance to even be noticed
I go to audible STRICTLY for radio shows
9:25
i would say that its better to not have a picture of the character in the beginning because it allows you to think what they will look like, and if your image is close to the picture it will be a positive shock and when your image isn't like the picture you'll still be positively shocked because you didn't predict their looks
20:55 can’t wait to see what happens if I ever publish my overtly anti-monarchy fantasy novel, lmao
Don't judge a book by it's cover, but certainly do judge a book's cover. Older books get a pass since back in the day it was harder to find someone to put together a fitting cover, plus a lot of old books that survived were made in a way that facilitated such survival, usually at the expense of having a fancy cover.
Nowadays, the work or value put into a cover reflects how the publishing body(whether it's traditionally published or self published) values the book. If they throw something basic together from stock images on photoshop then any scrutinizing eye will see it and avoid that book, if they didn't put any money or work into the cover who's to say they put any into the contents? Covers are the first thing that a prospective reader will see, alongside the title and followed by the blurb. These are your elevator pitch and if you can't get your pitch together you shouldn't expect anyone to read your work over someone else's.
On the flipside, you've got terrible books that have great covers. Usually because the publisher was willing to throw enough cash at the cover artist and pr to make a questionable investment in a dodgy manuscript worth it.
The 'your' I used above is a 'royal your' by the way, referring to nobody in particular.
Two hot takes related to romance:
1. There should be more (good) romance in stories where it's not the main focus, I think the reason people hate forced romance is because it's usually badly written and not because it's there
(and "it doesn't add anything" is a bad argument, stories have lot of shit that doesn't contribute anything the the main story or themes but still makes the experience better)
2. We should get rid of the idea that getting together and staying together is the ideal & the main goal of a romance.
A good relationship can also end on friendly terms and still end up having been a positive & worthwhile experience for both/all participants instead of having to end in drama/a breakup or go on forever.
(A lot of people don't even know their childhood friends anymore but still have warm & positive memories of their past friendship so why not apply the same standard to romantic relationships)
Also more less monogamy bias & more healthy non-monogamous romance in stories but someone already said that.