If he didn't slide both hands into his pocket, he just slid his left hand where you would wear a wedding ring. If you wore one, he was trying to hide his left hand where his wedding ring would be most people are right handed so they put the things that, they were thinking were more important that they would go for in their right pocket. Your left hand usually isn't used for anything and when you put your hands in your pockets, usually both so if he never put his right hand in his pocket, he was trying to hide that he had a wedding ring on his left hand, and if he tried to interact with you wouldn't like flirt I would assume he cheated on his wife, but it's bad writing because it's way too Angry and bitter she takes it too far I would say he's married and have left it at that. She probably is really day married men to be that bitter guys that later she found out where married and they probably were similar to this guy and she's bitter about her past. The writer probably has that same thing with herself. She's probably dated a lot of married men the dust protest too much.
Does anybody have any good sources for learning how to write for a broader, nuerodiverse audience? I have ADHD as well but I'm realizing that maybe my writing may be lacking in this area.
Personally I feel like neurotypical people jump to conclusions about people based on subtle body language A LOT but their accuracy is pretty much a coin flip.
That's good to know. I grew up hyper-vigilant, so I definitely still have an issue of jumping to conclusions about subtle behaviors. Sadly most if it is about deciding if a man is a creep or not, and the answer my body gives me is basically 80% of the time yes. Even more sadly if I wait long enough, I am often proven right, but I think that's just cause maybe 50% of normal guys can understand the I'm aro ace and have no interest in anything you have to offer me besides friendship blatant statements and vibes as go the fuck away and do. Or maybe I'm just neurodivergently seeing patterns that aren't there. That being said I do now have one entire cis-male friend whom I actually feel comfortable and safe around. So long story short, I haven't taken my ADHD medication yet and I don't remember why I started writing this post.
The body language is fully based on culture (both people's), physical health, mental health, & everyone's mood. & most of the time I find NT people don't guess right most of the time. But then again I'm ND so it may just be that people have 0 clue what's going on w me
Unfortunately, I laughed at my son’s balls right after he was born. In my defense, the nurse referred to it as a “coin purse” when she was changing him and giving instructions on newborn care and “coin purse” is an objectively hilarious euphemism for scrotum.
41:36 god as an aromantic person i cannot stress enough how much it annoys me when characters who enjoy sex but not romance are painted as people who need to be fixed or as people who are inncapable of caring about or loving (platonically) the people they're having sex with so so so much,
Even as an asexual person who isn’t also aro, I hate this too. Like, I personally wouldn’t want a relationship like that with someone, but as long as both parties are aligned on what they’re doing, it’s just as valid a relationship as any other!
This! It annoyed me so bad when someone of the other book reviewers on here were painting Miles as a bad guy for only wanting sex. Sex is fun! Sex feels good! Sometimes you just want sex but don't want anything else, & that's fine!
Glad that Savy mentioned this and glad you mentioned it too. This very much feeds into stigma around alloaros, that they are "heartless" for experiencing sexual but not romantic attraction.
I think Colleen typically writes about pregnancy kink as opposed to breeding kink-as someone who’s a shameless fanfic reader/writer and into the latter, I think the appeal of breeding is the THREAT of getting pregnant and the idea of being claimed by your partner, whereas pregnancy kink is when you get off to the actual process of developing in and birthing a child from the body (which could not be a bigger turnoff for me) Again, I’m not the be-all end-all Ao3 tag expert, but that’s just been my distinction and why I refuse to read any of Hoover’s writing for fear of my stomach getting knotted eight ways to Sunday (and NOT in the fun way)
You are so right. Because the breeding thing doesn’t need to result in a pregnancy. It’s the act of the ownership and the act of getting absolutely lost in the sauce. Like you said, it’s the threat of pregnancy, not the pregnancy itself. Pregnancy kink is a whole other thing, which is absolutely what Colleen has been writing
"I guess being a mind reader is just a main character superpower" is a great description for all the times authors don't bother to vary the way that each character thinks.
Idk if this is what she meant necessarily since I wouldn’t use see-through, but I use clear as a blue descriptor a lot (clear blue sky, clear blue waters). In my mind it’s a marker of vibrancy, like the blue is a light color but it is not pastel, not clouded as though it was mixed with white. An unadulterated hue. I had a friend in highschool with similarly colored blue/grey eyes as mine, but mine read a more cloudy/stormy and hers were more clear/bright And now I’m realizing this was probably just a joke you posted, but I already wrote this so hopefully you enjoy reading by thoughts on blue descriptors lol
I imagined it meant the eyes are very white so they blend in with the sclera, but now that I think about it that would make them less blue, so I have no idea actually
"...he slipped his left hand into his pocket. The hand with the wedding ring on it." To me, that does read as if he was wearing a wedding ring and she noticed before he put his hand in his pocket. It could be more clear if the second sentence was "The same hand I saw bearing a wedding ring" or if she described the ring in some way so we saw it visually and would therefore assume she did, too. "...he slipped his left hand into his pocket, attempting to hide the golden ring I'd already caught a glimpse of." Something like the above would make the gesture more clear. So yes, it's bad writing, but also yes, I immediately understood the original CoHo quote to mean "he hid his hand which was wearing a ring in the typical place one wears a wedding ring so he can flirt and is therefore a bad person."
Honestly, the line is just bad writing. I took it as a weird euphemism for his left hand because those types of unnecessary descriptions are pretty commonplace in books like this. It's like the author thinks its "boring" to just list the body part or action, so they describe it weirdly and muddle the meaning. With the context of the rest of the scene, it could be that he does have an actual wedding ring, but it could also have been meant as characterization for Tate as someone meant to be judgmental.
Tbh I think I would've better understood it had it been a movie where we cut to a close up of the hand sliding into the pocket to signify the importance to the audience. In a book from first person POV, it just reads like the main character is overthinking everything
I laughed when I saw you abbreviate Colleen Hoover as CoHo, because I just moved from Howard County, Maryland, which abbreviates everything as HoCo, because they don’t want to be known as HowCow. But then, would Colleen Hoover want to be known as CoeHoe?
You don't even need to go that deep, just change the indefinite article "the" to the possessive "his" -- "...he slipped his left hand into his pocket. The hand with [his] wedding ring on it." It doesn't change the passage or the flow, just makes it more obvious that she saw a ring on his finger and isn't just assuming he's wearing one because he put his hand in his pocket. I'm an ND myself and I often put my hands in my pockets so I don't accidentally touch people when I'm in public. Yeah, it "hides" my wedding ring, but I don't like physical contact with strangers. Thinking that someone is going to assume I'm trying to hide the fact that I'm married is going to be in my nightmares for the next couple of months XD Thanks Colleen.
Colleen Hoover saw Monty Pythons skit “Every Sperm Is Sacred” while reading “Kidnapped/Sold to One Direction” fanfic on Wattpad and decided she NEEDED to become an author I also firmly believe that Colleen has never actually gone on AO3 because otherwise she would know how to properly market/tag her books
Frrrrrrrrr. I do wonder tho what’s the publishing version of tags tho, cuz I can’t imagine a published book having something like “Dub con, suicide mention, dead dove do not eat”
I think the elevator shit is obnoxiously neurotypical but i also think it demonstrates the casual toxicity that's prevalent especially in cishet dating
No lie, this book made me have a realization. I was like ... How have I gone my whole life without having men stare at my chest instead of my eyes? Like I had 34K size boobies before surgery. And that's when it hit me ... They probably were, and I never noticed because I don't make eye contact in the first place 😂😂😂
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKS Right? I have 38H breasts and the only time I can think of guys looking at my boobs and not my face is back in high school at school dances. And that’s because when dancing it’s really easy to notice because you’re so close. Honestly, the time that stands out the most is when I was dancing with a friend of mine that’s Deaf and also happens to be shorter than me (I’m 6’). We were chatting a little in ASL and I suddenly noticed that he wasn’t paying attention to what I was signing and only then did I realize that he was looking straight ahead at my chest. I bopped him on the shoulder and signed “hey, my eyes are up here!” He grinned, and signed, “but the view is so good down here.” Little twerp. But that was eons ago. I’ve never really noticed anyone else do it.
I just want to point out that fetishes and kinks aren’t mutually exclusive. Kinks are by definition “unconventional sexual tastes or behavior” with “unconventional” being subjective. You can be kinky without having a fetish. Fetishes are psychologically *necessary* for sexual gratification and can impede someone’s ability to achieve gratification normally. You can have be kinky without having a fetish. It seems that every CoHo man has a breeding fetish though 🥲
Kinks and tropes are indeed different... but, please, I need everybody to also know that there's also a bit of a difference between a kink and a fetish. 😭
So what's the difference between a bdsm kink and a bdsm fetish then? Because I'll be real, the only difference i can see is that I'd feel better saying "kink" in mixed company whereas "fetish" is gonna make people give me looks Edit: I no longer believe these things to be synonymous, see replies
@LyzLocked From personal understanding and memory: a kink is something you enjoy in a sexual context, but do not need to get off. A fetish is something you need to get aroused. This might be wrong, but it's how I understand it.
Basically: if someone has a fetish for something, it means they need to involve that thing in sex in order to achieve orgasm - it'll usually be objects, body parts/bodily functions and acts (ie. public sex). If someone has a kink, it means they find that thing appealing/sexy/a good complement to the relationship dynamic, but it is not required to achieve orgasm, nor is it necessarily sexual. If someone's kink is petplay, it doesn't mean that they need to be in petspace in order to orgasm, or even that they like to be in petspace during sex. It's essentially like vs. need.
Huh, the more you know, that does make sense. I guess this is one of those things where there are pretty distinct differences definitionally but in common parlance they're treated like basically the same thing. Sex/gender being another example I can think of. Thanks for the clarification!
Literally the only time I’ve ever experienced insta love is when I meet animals. The idea of falling in love with a total stranger is so fucking weird and creepy to me. Like you’re not in love, you’re just horny
I don't know about insta love, but there have been a couple times when I met someone and I felt a sense of like, almost deja vu. That I immediately felt like I already knew them somehow. However, that's only been like two occasions in my life, and I wouldn't go so far as to say what I felt was love. Definitely a connection, though. So I can't totally rule out the possibility of love at first sight. However, I feel like, if it does happen, it's probably pretty rare and not something to expect you're going to find in life.
I'm autistic, and eye contact is already weird. But he eye contact thing in this book is so funny to me. Like, if Miles and Tate did it in doggy there wouldn't even be a conflict.
My eye description: Brown eyes. Colleen’s eye description: His/her eyes were brown, like a mocha with just a drop of milk in it, but not too much, because it was a deep, dark brown that pulled me in like the allure of a chocolate bar to a menstruating woman. A brown so warm and full that I’d never be able to look at another post torrential downpour puddle the same way again. I would only ever see his/her soft cocoa brown eyes in the sun dappled bark of the trees at central park during my 4 AM strolls to the coffee bar for my equally eyeball reminiscent mocha frappe. Except that would never happen because her character’s eyes are ALWAYS freaking blue. 😂😂
@@seanboggs215Yeah its a thing. I always eat some chocolate during menstruation. I think chocolate is a mild anti inflammatory, and it helps a little. I'm pretty sure it's mostly a placebo effect tho
Well, Id say sweets in general are appealing when menstruating, and chocolates are unusually appealing? I think its both fatty and sweet at the same time. Ive also heard something being said about cocoa satisfying some craving but idk if its true. My only exception is cold stuff, cant stand it when the cramps are going, I need everything to be warm to lukewarm to consume. Of course, different people different opinions.
The absolute obsession romance writers have with blue eyes is kind of unhinged. They go so extreme that it just makes them sound bizarre and unattractive. Like, sure, blue eyes can be pretty. But so blue that they look clear? Unsettling. Weird. Not hot, even if someone in real life could have those eyes and be hot. The description is not hot. It's just weird. Stop it, romance writers. Get some help. Having a super striking and unique eye color just isn't what makes most people attractive and interesting. It's just super easy to describe compared to other potentially cool physical features. It's SO lazy.
yepp. I feel there's a hesitance to describe any other striking feature for fear of making the character no longer conventionally attractive, but a billion barbie dolls with differently colored eyes just aren't attractive to me, personally. Give em crooked noses, sunken eyes, scarred knuckles, anything! Even better if the feature tells you something about who they are as a person or what they do, which eye colors do not
@@Romanticoutlaw very much agreed. It's probably an attempt to appeal to the widest possible audience by making their "hot person" as generic as they can. Which is hilariously misguided, because that's kinda the opposite of what most folks find attractive in reality.
@@maryeckel9682 ah, yes. They've always gotta be unrealistically heavily muscled and defined, too. I don't need my literary hot dudes to look like they spend six hours a day in the gym, actually. It's just goofy! Even people who are extremely strong because they do a physically demanding job every day don't look like goddamn body builders, and I beg every author to learn and accept that fact.
I don’t think anyone casually putting their left hand in their pocket is something every person would clock as “obviously hiding their wedding ring.” Maybe if the ring was seen, and he put his hand into his pocket in some over-the-top way that physically drew attention to it, then yeah maybe it would be noticeable. I think the character was being awfully presumptuous lol
i don't know. I pulled my left hand out of my pocket this morning and that's how I found out that I was married. I'd been wondering for a while why my roommate was so clingy...
For real! Seeing someone having their left hand in their pocket and immediately thinking they're hiding a wedding ring is just like...jfc, paranoid much? I mean, if nothing else, in my expereience married men who hit on other women don't bother to put that much effort into hiding it! When I worked in retail I once had a guy ask for my phone number while his wife was across the store still shopping.
Corbin telling Tate to let Miles in could be explained since Corbin believes Miles is gay so he doesn’t see him as a threat to her, but in reality I think Colleen was just carrying on her trend of men telling women what to do
Look. I hear about a guy with weird facial expressions who randomly announces he's a pilot and I picture Launchpad. In my head this is now a Ducktails fanfic. The main couple are Donald and Daisy, the old man in the elevator is Glomgold, the parents in the flashbacks are Scrooge and Goldie, and... I'll work out the rest later.
I’ve never read a single Colleen Hoover book, but I absolutely eat up reviews of them 😂 Whether it’s you, Reads with Rachel, or other booktubers, it’s so enjoyable consuming these unhinged texts secondhand!
i was getting a rat once and a kid at the pet shop asked me about cheese and i'm like nah, cheese isn't that healthy for rats so i got seeds and nuts and stuff. the kid asks, can i see his nuts? me and the kid's mom share a look of dawning horror; a rat is generously endowed in the testicular department. i'm playing for time so i ask the kid for clarification. clarification is provided. oh, you want to see his FOOD. sure! that's not a problem. conversational train wreck averted! phew. so like, there are wholesome stories involving kids and balls. what ms. hoover wrote is not that.
The bdsm erotica vs bdsm romance comparison really helped something click for me about myself and what I like. As someone who’s ace, I’ve never really sought out erotica, but I once read a bdsm romance and loved that to pieces. I never understood exactly why I enjoyed that one exception so much until now!
I never actually thought before about different genres being in different worlds with their own sets of expectations and understandings, and that's really changing my outlook on media right now.
A really good experiment with this is to watch a sci fi or horror with or without romantic themes, then watch a romantic K-drama in a completely different subgenre, then a K-drama with a similar horror or sci fi plot to the first thing you watched. K-dramas have such incredibly strong genre conventions that they essentially become shorthand for much larger plot points and allow for so much handwaving of the hows and whys, so then when you add in another genre with similar shorthand tropes, it becomes extremely obvious which belong to which and how they play off each other or clash, meaning you become almost uncomfortably aware of these world building and suspension of disbelief expectations for each of the genres that you hadn't necessarily realised you were buying into in the first place. A good genre bending K-drama can pull it off fantastically (highly recommend The Master's Sun for a romcom/episodic horror) and use both sets of tropes and conventions to the best effect, but it's still a pretty fascinating experience. I'd imagine a similar experience would come from other cultural genre media, but I've yet to stumble across a sci fi telenovela or something so far. (here's where I wish I'd had my k-drama phase during my undergrad so I could have done a textual analysis of genre conventions in British/American media vs South Korean media)
@@katharineeavan9705my country has a pretty strong telenovela tradition, and once in a full moon an author tries to insert some sci-fi elements or start with a sci-fi premise, but I don't think any of them truly succeeded. The general public doesn't respond well to it.
This book is written incredibly neurotypical-ly it’s so funny. The main character is so hilariously not relatable to me, it’s like listening to an alien
What the hell is "neurotypical" about this trashfire? This is one of those statements that does in fact, require more explanation about what you even mean by that because I'm pretty sure you're using the wrong word.
@@Wh00000 what they mean is she is constantly over reading into people's body language and making assumptions about how they are thinking. That's something that autistic people and often people with adhd can't relate to or understand. it's also just bad writing, unless she's purposefully supposed to come off as paranoid, which she isnt
The moments of unhinged confusion at the, to use your phrase, "agressively neurotypical" moments in this book are absolutely golden and SO relatable!! I'm so neurodivergent that I didn't realize one of my college friends was interested in me romantically until he asked to kiss me while we were watching anime together. (It was pretty obvious in hindsight, but I didn't register it at the time.) I didn't reciprocate those feelings, so I felt really awkward when I told him that. Thankfully, he was cool about it, and we stayed friends until we graduated.
I had a FWB and we had what was retrospectively kinda a date night every single Friday, and he introduced me to his friends and had started planning a romantic holiday. I sorta unintentionally ghosted because I didn't think it was a big deal because it was no strings, and he was a gentleman enough to stand by what we'd agreed and not push me or get upset (towards me anyway) after a couple of canceled kinda date nights. So I go on with me life thinking I've handled this relationship dynamic that people say is so complicated with ease and finesse, only to have the friend I met him through tell me I broke his heart, and when I was confused and reiterated that we were always just FWB she gave me this look of utter disbelief and said "...he took you home to meet his parents".
I have the same problem 😭. One time at a camp we were having a dance on the last day and one of the friends I had met gave me a note asking me to the dance, and I fully thought they were asking me as just a friend because we had just met a few days earlier, they had a boyfriend (they are poly and we had even talked earlier that week about how I thought I was poly at one point but realized I wasn’t so I thought they wouldn’t be asking me in a romantic way since they knew I wasn’t poly) and (to my at least) there were no signs of them liking me romantically. I said I would but if someone ended up asking me seriously I would probably go with them. I didn’t realize till later that day after I had been told by multiple people that they had been asking me seriously and that they liked me and I had to tell them I didn’t feel the same T^T
Trust, I do not have autism and Colleen is definitely on some magical mind reading pseudoscientific body language analysis type of bs 😂 You never know what is going on in someone else's head. Its just bad writing imo
@@raysofmariehere6441 Even scenes from Psych are more realistic because that is at least based on observation of small details. What Colleen Hoover rights is her character just straight up being able to read minds with a look!
"The hand with the wedding ring on it" is pretty clear to me that there was a ring there, not "He slid his hand in his pocket, as if to hide a wedding ring." And how dare Colleen Hoover use the name Miles Archer. He's a famous character in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.The book and movie are so iconic that the City of San Francisco has even posted a plaque dedicated to the fictional character at the spot where he was "done in by" another fictional character. She stole that name from a better author. Also, "I'm 14 and this is deep" is pretty much how I feel about Colleen Hoover in general. Colleen Hoover is stuck with the emotional intelligence of a young teenager.
I think the ring thing is one of those "film language" things for lack of a better word. Like in media if a woman puts her hand on her belly it always means she pregnant. If a man hides his left hand its because he's hiding a ring.
Okay, but 'MEET FEAR' sounds actually so cool! Dolleen's books are Just being put on the wrong category at bookstores, her true genre is thriller and psychological horror 😂
Oh my god I was not ready for the baby scene. For some inexplicable, horrible reason, I burst into laughter when you said he was suddenly hit by a truck 💀 like… WHAT?! Either way, after hearing about this and the last one you reviewed, I have a lot more confidence in my writing ability
I get the appeal of trash and shallow literature, and I’ve read a lot of smut with dark kinks and fetishes over the years, but good god Colleen fails at both aspects. She acts like her books are incredible yet edgy romances with complicated but ultimately good characters, but they’re just awfully written and full of fetishised abuse that pretends to be non-kinky relationship goals
The difference between 'Fu*king' and 'Making Love' in most contexts that I've heard it are the emotional engagement. A 'No Strings Attached' or 'Friends with Benefits' relationship, where sex is just for physical gratification and sexual release, they're just fu*king, but if they're having sexual intimacy as part of a deep relationship, to grow closer as people, and for the pleasure of experiencing your partner, that's Making Love. And in other contexts its the difference between a quick smash and lots of sex with foreplay, or even as simply as 'Rough' vs 'Tender' sex.
I feel like Colleen considers the "struggle/will they won't they phase" as the "dating phase", it's the only thing that makes the skip to marriage make any sense.
gestures and facial expressions are already hard enough to decipher in real life, but written descriptions of facial expressions are even worse. the same facial expressions can convey different emotions and different degrees and inflections of an emotion depending on context, and it's really difficult to convey the exact form someone's facial expression takes in writing without sounding really weird. I'm also AuDHD, but I have to imagine that even a neurotypical person would have trouble determining what's going on in a scene if that's how it's written.
I try to embrace some of the weirdness when writing my characters. Human expressions are weird (to me) if you pay close attention. No two faces are the same. I like that to translate into storytelling. What’s more, fiction is a hyperbolic reflection of reality. Think of an animator drawing a character or an actor conveying emotion. No matter how naturalistic your style, expressions and gestures are probably going to be somewhat heightened. People in fiction aren’t exactly the same as real humans. In storytelling, you have to expediently convey a character’s feelings without too much ambiguity.
I just finished a book where the main character routinely stated (through the first-person narration) that he put on his "learned advocate" or "dutiful apprentice" or "grateful supplicant" face and I was like what do these phrases even mean?? What is he doing with his face and why is he doing it?! I couldn't figure out if he was supposed to be mocking the other characters when he did it, because he acted that way with his love interest too. And why does he feel the need to tell us what his face was doing in such an obnoxious way, because the story is written as if he's reciting the events back to someone else. It was such a weird way to write nonverbal communication. I hated that book for many reasons but this was definitely one of them
As a neurotypical person myself, I can at least say that for me nothing about how Colleen wrote these scenes and assumptions made any sense. Different people from different backgrounds, cultures, experiences, or who are neurodivergent all engage in body language in different ways. It’s something you can observe and notice, but not something you should ever make assumptions about unless you know someone really well and know their mannerism already (and even then, it’s still best to ask, “Hey, I’m getting a sense from your body language that you might be uncomfortable, is that accurate?”).
As a neurotypical person, you are correct! It's not normal to step onto an elevator and think you know what the person inside, whom you've never met before, is thinking just from their facial expression. Not unless they're showing some very strong emotion like it looks like they've been crying, or they look very scared, or they're visibly scowling as if angry. And even that doesn't work 100% of the time. It's why the idea of RBF exists. Some people can look angry when they actually aren't. Mostly, though, people in elevators just all have the same neutral/bored expression. That is if you care to look...which most of the time you don't. You're not worried about what the stranger in the elevator is thinking, you're too busy thinking over whatever is going on in your life at that moment.
Thank you Savvy for reviewing Colleen's books as a discussion of genre and marketing. It makes so much more sense than any of her books ever had before for me. I have to express my annoyance that all false marketing does is get the author's book in front of the wrong readers which does zero people any good (even considering the financial publishing side, because yeah you got that one reader's money, but that could tank the entire author's ability to write and sell more books in the future, whereas getting the author in front of the right audience could mean a long and lucrative career for the author and their publisher.
the problem with this is that colleen sells very well and she continues to sell very well even though a lot of people online hate her. the general public don't share our opinions. colleen is the cheap erotic trashy novels of the modern era and tons of people read her
I just started this video, and...why doesn't she want to describe Vegas? That city has the coolest themed hotels/casinos. They're a real treat for the eyes!
I am aggressively neurotypical (no diagnosis to speak of). I would not immediately suspect infidelity just because a guy put his left hand in pocket (could be a nervous tick since most people like to fiddle with something when nervous). I might find it odd if he started flirting, I looked at his hand, and then he quickly shoved his hand in his pocket but I wouldn’t immediately jump to accusing him of cheating. It was a clunky sentence and to me it’s not clear if Tate is saying she saw a wedding ring or she is assuming there is a ring because he’s trying to hide his hand. If she did see it, and then he put his hand in his pocket, I could understand the assumption he is trying to hide his marriage, but I still think it’s a leap since there could be other explanations
THANK YOU for being one of the first reviewers that I've seen who acknowledge that Colleen Hoover is an erotica author and her works are meant to be exaggerated fantasy and not representational of the real world.
Hardcore agree at 13:30 about AO3 being a better reading experience! I read kinks on AO3 I wouldn't touch in traditional literature with a ten foot pole because I've been surprised with them in traditional literature, but when it's tagged and I know what I'm getting into, it's great!
I REALLY appreciate the way you break down the difference between erotica and romance, because the world of trying to explain like, why it's more okay for one story to depict something problematic than another is something I've tried to explain but struggled to. In the past I've tried to explain it as the tone of the story - how serious the tone is and such - but your explanation is so much more helpful.
Incorrect tagging is so annoying, regardless of the medium. DDLG is pretty common and often the assumed dynamic even when it's bot tagged which, as someone who's very uncomfortable with the kink, is a problem.
Oh nothing bugs me more than when that's not tagged and they suddenly throw it into the sex scene. Instantly kills the whole piece for me. Which, while irritating when it's free fanfiction, would be infuriating if I spent money on a physical book and got hit with it.
When I’m writing someone interpreting thoughts and intentions based on body language, probably a good 80% of the time, they’re wrong. Idk if that’s a sign of good writing or a sign that I’m objectively bad at reading people. Or maybe it’s just a sign I write characters who struggle as much as I do
When it comes to published books and fanfiction I also agree. I will never read published romance. AO3 and fanfic sites are everything I need, so much more reliably - which honestly isn't even that much anymore, now that I have accepted my own aro ace and sex repulsed nature and gotten cats. But I will say for when I didn't understand my own relationship to romance and sex, A03 and its predecessors were phenomenal for letting you easily pick and choose what level of romance, kink, or fetish that you wanted to be involved with. It really is so much better than the terrible marketing that has tricked me so many times after promising me a horror or adventure/fantasy/spy thriller, only for it to be a romance or erotica with a subtle veneer of plot paint instead.
Someone should write a book with a Protag like Tate who turns out to be wrong about everything by the end of the book. Oh yeah I’m married but my wife and I have an open relationship. She’s actually slept with Miles a few times.
wait is it tate's brother who thinks miles is gay? because if so, that would explain why he wasn't concerned letting him be drunk and stay the night with his sister when they first met on one hand, cool that it wasn't ever something he felt weird about (i mean, that's the bare minimum but..... yeah), but on the other hand, it NEVER came up even once, in 6 years?
I would not think anything of someone putting their hand in their pocket in an elevator. But I am an oblivious adhd so not sure if I’m a good source either
I’m neurotypical and observant and I would not think anything of it either. Colleen is banana pancakes with how she has this character “read” body language.
I really wish I knew what the publishing equivalent of tags are. Cuz like, I really appreciate tags but I can’t imagine IRL publishing to have something like “Major Character Death, Dead Dove Do Not Eat” on it
There is, as far as I'm aware, an actual difference between sex & making love. Usually, when people use the term 'making love', they're talking about something more passionate but slow, something more emotional where the point is for the two people to join together, while sex is supposed to be more carnal & pleasure-chasing. It's that difference between seeking pleasure & seeking connection that distinguishes sex from makimg love
Savy, watching to grow and feel more comfortable in your body over the last few months has been extremely inspiring for me. Every time I have to lift something heavy, or go up too many stairs, i think of you.
as an audhd haver this entire story hurts my brain so bad, hardly do i ever get a strong reaction to videos that aren't memes but there were so many points in this review where i just HAD to grimace in confusion
I always worry my books will end up like this one day, but then I remember I have an understanding of consent and healthy boundaries so I can't be *as* bad.
Ugly Love definitely isn't the first book I've read where the main character is banging her older brother's best friend and he gets weirdly incest-y about it. It's pretty common with that trope and I never understood it. It's like a "touch her and die" thing except it's the brother saying that to his friend. It would make more sense if Tate was much younger than Corbin - I could totally understand him being angry at Miles. But they're all adults!! And he makes a big, huge deal about "protecting her from Dillon," implying (at least this is how I read it) that Dillon might actually make a move on Tate without her consent. And not ONCE does Corbin *or* Miles stop hanging out with him or call him out on his behaviour. Corbin throws a tantrum over Miles and Tate having consensual (most of the time) sex with each other *as adults,* but his married friend constantly hitting on Tate doesn't make him angry enough to stop hanging out with Dillon or forbid him from coming over? It's just so dumb. One of these days I'm gonna write a story with the same weird type of brother/sister dynamic, only it's going to actually be called out as fucking weird and creepy. On an unrelated note, I just find it so funny that Colleen actually uses an infant's death as a plot device to explain why Miles is so fucked up, and not once do we see Miles do any type of serious grieving that any parent would have after losing a baby not long after they're born. He grieves his relationship with Rachel more. It's like, Colleen has to make it a point on why motherhood is great and normal and natural and she can't write a book where someone doesn't end up pregnant, but the death of a child gets, what, a chapter and that's it? Non-specific grieving that's solved after exactly one conversation with Rachel? You'd think it'd be treated with the seriousness it deserves. Then again, it's Colleen we're talking about here. If you end up reading Verity next, be prepared because her breeding fetish is really on full display there. To her credit, though, she'd be a great horror/thriller writer if she stopped believing that the shitty dudes she writes about are heroes and not the villain. She has nothing on Dolleen though - the true genius.
My favourite reaction to this book has to be from Reads with Rachel's review of this book: "This is my first ever Colleen Hoover book and I was expecting it to, at least, have some sort of writing that is making everybody feral for this woman's books. This is it? That's it? That's what's selling more copies than the Bible? My God the Bible's better written than this."
Thank you so much for going into the differences between romance and erotica. I could not have put it better if you gave me a million years. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen people going apeshit over something “glorifying abuse” when it is erotica made for people who are adults who know what they are doing and are aware of how to interact with it in a healthy way.
46:20 using “christen it” for a rug instead of a new living space is so weird When it’s a sex euphemism irs always about fucking in your new house for the first time 😭 😂
100% true story: We had our first AMAB baby while I was a labor & delivery nurse, and I made my husband swear up and down beforehand that he wouldn't say anything about our baby's balls until we were alone. Most term AMAB's have big balls!! It's the hormones and water weight newborns have, just puffs those puppies up!!
Oh my god, I've watched so many videos about this book and yet I never put together that Miles and Rachel's relationship is so similar to Claire and Jack 😭 They really did everything in that show, huh
God, i cant get over savys hair. The texture/curl pattern is incredible. As someone with pin straight hair, im incredibly jealous (i know curly hair is more work, particularly to get it to look "good" (i think even frizzy curly hair looks good, so i might just be weird) and im lucky that i dont really have to do much other than brush it once in a while (i often do just roll out of bed and go about my day without even running a comb through it--its so straight it just very rarely tangles. I mostly just brush to distribute my hairs oils so i dont have to wash it as often 🙃) but its just... so. Dang. Flat. I have so much hair but people always think it's thin because it just hangs limply unless i take 2 hours to curl it, lol
Thank you so much for putting in to words what I have been trying to explain to people for so so long (specifically about books like Fifty Shades and the like-) and how the true problem was how they were marketed and not what was actually written in them
I’ve heard so many reviews of these books I wasn’t sure if I’d be into this series. But I love your perspective and you brought up things in the last video I hadn’t seen highlighted. I’m excited for this one!!!
Oh tumblr someone coined the term “diegetic BDSM” which I think you explained perfectly in your erotica v. Romance explanation. I’ve been trying to find words for it but you two have explained it very wel
SAVY can I just say you are an absolute gem. I have zero interest in Colleen Hoover or book reviews in general but I clicked on your video and couldn’t stop watching…. From your quippy one-liners to your interview with Dolleen Hoover, I’m genuinely surprised I haven’t awoken my baby napping upstairs because you’ve got me bursting out laughing thru this whole video. LOVE YOU and your channel, keep the book reviews coming bc they are amazing and since I guess I like book reviews now lol. PS, favorite line of your entire video-“but no it’s all the same story, the printer just didn’t give a single fuck” BBAHHAHA I’m dead. you’re the best. ❤
Your explanation of the difference of erotica and romance with how one is your fantasy and how one is your tutorial for bdsm is perfect. Don't let anyone ever tell you different and if they try I'm your champion.
20:13 see, now this whole discussion makes me want to read a book about an animator who looks at other people and goes “wow, interesting idle animation you got there :0!”
I thought the whole body language thing was so "telling vs showing" but in real-life I wouldn’t discern shit from that gesture. (I MIGHT be neurodivergent but I'm undiagnosed, but also looking at other people I really suspect I didn’t get the memo on certain things.) Living for your CoHo reviews btws!
idk why people focus so much on eye contact anyway. yes i'm autistic but doesn't it just make more sense to watch someone's mouth when they talk? lots of deaf people do this whether they're autistic or not. i imagine people with other hearing problems do this. oh, autism and auditory processing issues lol. idk maybe i'm biased because of my own autistic experience. it just makes more sense to watch someone speak. it's kind of like subtitles irl. if someone turns their head away from me, whether they're quieter or louder, i find it more difficult to understand them because i can't watch their mouth.
I'm neurotypical and the whole 'communicating just with your eyes' is BS the way Colleen Hoover uses it. It's something you might be able to do with someone that you know well, or someone who's expressing extreme emotion. Such as if someone were really terrified and their eyes were wide and scared, or if it was a creepy guy who was openly leering at you. However, being able to communicate and know what someone is thinking just through their eyes after you just met them an elevator? That's not a thing! Most people in elevators are thinking about what's going on in their own lives, they aren't having unspoken conversations with people they just met.
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If he didn't slide both hands into his pocket, he just slid his left hand where you would wear a wedding ring. If you wore one, he was trying to hide his left hand where his wedding ring would be most people are right handed so they put the things that, they were thinking were more important that they would go for in their right pocket. Your left hand usually isn't used for anything and when you put your hands in your pockets, usually both so if he never put his right hand in his pocket, he was trying to hide that he had a wedding ring on his left hand, and if he tried to interact with you wouldn't like flirt I would assume he cheated on his wife, but it's bad writing because it's way too Angry and bitter she takes it too far I would say he's married and have left it at that. She probably is really day married men to be that bitter guys that later she found out where married and they probably were similar to this guy and she's bitter about her past. The writer probably has that same thing with herself. She's probably dated a lot of married men the dust protest too much.
Savy, you're looking very 80s and I like it 👍
That baby was so tragically weighed down by their family jewels that nobody could pick him up out of the wreckage.
Not all big balls are good 😔
Omg 😂
“Aggressively neurotypical” is a phrase I need on a stamp to put on books that are aggressively neurotypical for my AuDHD brain to be aware of.
Same!
Right? I need it almost as a content warning.
“You won’t relate to or understand the motivations in this book because it’s aggressively neurotypical.”
Does anybody have any good sources for learning how to write for a broader, nuerodiverse audience? I have ADHD as well but I'm realizing that maybe my writing may be lacking in this area.
nodnodnod
omfg yes 💀
Personally I feel like neurotypical people jump to conclusions about people based on subtle body language A LOT but their accuracy is pretty much a coin flip.
Amen.
That's good to know. I grew up hyper-vigilant, so I definitely still have an issue of jumping to conclusions about subtle behaviors. Sadly most if it is about deciding if a man is a creep or not, and the answer my body gives me is basically 80% of the time yes. Even more sadly if I wait long enough, I am often proven right, but I think that's just cause maybe 50% of normal guys can understand the I'm aro ace and have no interest in anything you have to offer me besides friendship blatant statements and vibes as go the fuck away and do. Or maybe I'm just neurodivergently seeing patterns that aren't there.
That being said I do now have one entire cis-male friend whom I actually feel comfortable and safe around. So long story short, I haven't taken my ADHD medication yet and I don't remember why I started writing this post.
The body language is fully based on culture (both people's), physical health, mental health, & everyone's mood.
& most of the time I find NT people don't guess right most of the time. But then again I'm ND so it may just be that people have 0 clue what's going on w me
Same! Half the time they're wrong anyway so why try reading into it so hard??
“I have a 6th sense about people”
No Felecia that’s called stereotypes and bias and you really should analyze those.
Unfortunately, I laughed at my son’s balls right after he was born. In my defense, the nurse referred to it as a “coin purse” when she was changing him and giving instructions on newborn care and “coin purse” is an objectively hilarious euphemism for scrotum.
That's hilarious 😂
Gross.
Yet what happens to little Clayton next is even more disgusting.
41:36
god as an aromantic person i cannot stress enough how much it annoys me when characters who enjoy sex but not romance are painted as people who need to be fixed or as people who are inncapable of caring about or loving (platonically) the people they're having sex with so so so much,
+
Even as an asexual person who isn’t also aro, I hate this too. Like, I personally wouldn’t want a relationship like that with someone, but as long as both parties are aligned on what they’re doing, it’s just as valid a relationship as any other!
As a demisexual - yes. I need the platonic relationship.
This! It annoyed me so bad when someone of the other book reviewers on here were painting Miles as a bad guy for only wanting sex. Sex is fun! Sex feels good! Sometimes you just want sex but don't want anything else, & that's fine!
Glad that Savy mentioned this and glad you mentioned it too. This very much feeds into stigma around alloaros, that they are "heartless" for experiencing sexual but not romantic attraction.
I think Colleen typically writes about pregnancy kink as opposed to breeding kink-as someone who’s a shameless fanfic reader/writer and into the latter, I think the appeal of breeding is the THREAT of getting pregnant and the idea of being claimed by your partner, whereas pregnancy kink is when you get off to the actual process of developing in and birthing a child from the body (which could not be a bigger turnoff for me)
Again, I’m not the be-all end-all Ao3 tag expert, but that’s just been my distinction and why I refuse to read any of Hoover’s writing for fear of my stomach getting knotted eight ways to Sunday (and NOT in the fun way)
You are so right. Because the breeding thing doesn’t need to result in a pregnancy. It’s the act of the ownership and the act of getting absolutely lost in the sauce. Like you said, it’s the threat of pregnancy, not the pregnancy itself.
Pregnancy kink is a whole other thing, which is absolutely what Colleen has been writing
@@Jay-cz5pw okay thank god, I was afraid I was just talking out my ass based on a vibe and a prayer XD
Yeah you're probably right 😂 either way it's just a world I can't relate to
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKS I mean, hey, different strokes for different folks, as they say
Anything that reminds me of Onision's gross fetishes is an automatic turn-off. OK Gooner.
"Meet-fear" fits every single Colleen Hoover mc meeting their love interest to an UNBEARABLE degree.
"I guess being a mind reader is just a main character superpower" is a great description for all the times authors don't bother to vary the way that each character thinks.
Exactly!!! Like ... Have your main character be wrong sometimes!
I have no idea what to picture when Tate says Miles's eyes are so blue that they're almost see-through. Like, can she see his brain back there?
Idk if this is what she meant necessarily since I wouldn’t use see-through, but I use clear as a blue descriptor a lot (clear blue sky, clear blue waters). In my mind it’s a marker of vibrancy, like the blue is a light color but it is not pastel, not clouded as though it was mixed with white. An unadulterated hue.
I had a friend in highschool with similarly colored blue/grey eyes as mine, but mine read a more cloudy/stormy and hers were more clear/bright
And now I’m realizing this was probably just a joke you posted, but I already wrote this so hopefully you enjoy reading by thoughts on blue descriptors lol
@@mixxuie I do lol
@@mixxuie Hehehe, it was a joke, but I appreciate the clarification anyway!
It is possible for you iris to be see through little but I don’t think that’s what she meant
I imagined it meant the eyes are very white so they blend in with the sclera, but now that I think about it that would make them less blue, so I have no idea actually
"...he slipped his left hand into his pocket. The hand with the wedding ring on it." To me, that does read as if he was wearing a wedding ring and she noticed before he put his hand in his pocket. It could be more clear if the second sentence was "The same hand I saw bearing a wedding ring" or if she described the ring in some way so we saw it visually and would therefore assume she did, too.
"...he slipped his left hand into his pocket, attempting to hide the golden ring I'd already caught a glimpse of."
Something like the above would make the gesture more clear. So yes, it's bad writing, but also yes, I immediately understood the original CoHo quote to mean "he hid his hand which was wearing a ring in the typical place one wears a wedding ring so he can flirt and is therefore a bad person."
Honestly, the line is just bad writing. I took it as a weird euphemism for his left hand because those types of unnecessary descriptions are pretty commonplace in books like this. It's like the author thinks its "boring" to just list the body part or action, so they describe it weirdly and muddle the meaning. With the context of the rest of the scene, it could be that he does have an actual wedding ring, but it could also have been meant as characterization for Tate as someone meant to be judgmental.
Tbh I think I would've better understood it had it been a movie where we cut to a close up of the hand sliding into the pocket to signify the importance to the audience. In a book from first person POV, it just reads like the main character is overthinking everything
I laughed when I saw you abbreviate Colleen Hoover as CoHo, because I just moved from Howard County, Maryland, which abbreviates everything as HoCo, because they don’t want to be known as HowCow. But then, would Colleen Hoover want to be known as CoeHoe?
You don't even need to go that deep, just change the indefinite article "the" to the possessive "his" -- "...he slipped his left hand into his pocket. The hand with [his] wedding ring on it." It doesn't change the passage or the flow, just makes it more obvious that she saw a ring on his finger and isn't just assuming he's wearing one because he put his hand in his pocket.
I'm an ND myself and I often put my hands in my pockets so I don't accidentally touch people when I'm in public. Yeah, it "hides" my wedding ring, but I don't like physical contact with strangers. Thinking that someone is going to assume I'm trying to hide the fact that I'm married is going to be in my nightmares for the next couple of months XD Thanks Colleen.
Colleen Hoover saw Monty Pythons skit “Every Sperm Is Sacred” while reading “Kidnapped/Sold to One Direction” fanfic on Wattpad and decided she NEEDED to become an author
I also firmly believe that Colleen has never actually gone on AO3 because otherwise she would know how to properly market/tag her books
Frrrrrrrrr. I do wonder tho what’s the publishing version of tags tho, cuz I can’t imagine a published book having something like “Dub con, suicide mention, dead dove do not eat”
*slams both fists on a table*
"BREEDING."
Dolleen is intense
“I NEED THOSE PICTURES OF BREEDING ON MY DESK BY *TOMORROW!* ”
"we both laughed at our sons big balls." Who is her editor, and why did they allow that to go to print lmao
I think the elevator shit is obnoxiously neurotypical but i also think it demonstrates the casual toxicity that's prevalent especially in cishet dating
No lie, this book made me have a realization. I was like ... How have I gone my whole life without having men stare at my chest instead of my eyes? Like I had 34K size boobies before surgery. And that's when it hit me ... They probably were, and I never noticed because I don't make eye contact in the first place 😂😂😂
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKS Right? I have 38H breasts and the only time I can think of guys looking at my boobs and not my face is back in high school at school dances.
And that’s because when dancing it’s really easy to notice because you’re so close.
Honestly, the time that stands out the most is when I was dancing with a friend of mine that’s Deaf and also happens to be shorter than me (I’m 6’).
We were chatting a little in ASL and I suddenly noticed that he wasn’t paying attention to what I was signing and only then did I realize that he was looking straight ahead at my chest.
I bopped him on the shoulder and signed “hey, my eyes are up here!”
He grinned, and signed, “but the view is so good down here.”
Little twerp.
But that was eons ago.
I’ve never really noticed anyone else do it.
@@SAVYWRITESBOOKSI just want to say: The more autistic the man is, then is less likely to look as woman chest (THEY ARE TOO CLOSE TO THE EYES!)
I just want to point out that fetishes and kinks aren’t mutually exclusive. Kinks are by definition “unconventional sexual tastes or behavior” with “unconventional” being subjective. You can be kinky without having a fetish. Fetishes are psychologically *necessary* for sexual gratification and can impede someone’s ability to achieve gratification normally. You can have be kinky without having a fetish. It seems that every CoHo man has a breeding fetish though 🥲
Kinks and tropes are indeed different... but, please, I need everybody to also know that there's also a bit of a difference between a kink and a fetish. 😭
Nah, those two are basically synonyms.
So what's the difference between a bdsm kink and a bdsm fetish then? Because I'll be real, the only difference i can see is that I'd feel better saying "kink" in mixed company whereas "fetish" is gonna make people give me looks
Edit: I no longer believe these things to be synonymous, see replies
@LyzLocked From personal understanding and memory: a kink is something you enjoy in a sexual context, but do not need to get off. A fetish is something you need to get aroused. This might be wrong, but it's how I understand it.
Basically: if someone has a fetish for something, it means they need to involve that thing in sex in order to achieve orgasm - it'll usually be objects, body parts/bodily functions and acts (ie. public sex).
If someone has a kink, it means they find that thing appealing/sexy/a good complement to the relationship dynamic, but it is not required to achieve orgasm, nor is it necessarily sexual. If someone's kink is petplay, it doesn't mean that they need to be in petspace in order to orgasm, or even that they like to be in petspace during sex.
It's essentially like vs. need.
Huh, the more you know, that does make sense. I guess this is one of those things where there are pretty distinct differences definitionally but in common parlance they're treated like basically the same thing. Sex/gender being another example I can think of. Thanks for the clarification!
Literally the only time I’ve ever experienced insta love is when I meet animals. The idea of falling in love with a total stranger is so fucking weird and creepy to me. Like you’re not in love, you’re just horny
Animals are so pure, they deserv all the insta love!xD
I don't know about insta love, but there have been a couple times when I met someone and I felt a sense of like, almost deja vu. That I immediately felt like I already knew them somehow.
However, that's only been like two occasions in my life, and I wouldn't go so far as to say what I felt was love.
Definitely a connection, though.
So I can't totally rule out the possibility of love at first sight.
However, I feel like, if it does happen, it's probably pretty rare and not something to expect you're going to find in life.
“Creep cute” was right there!
I'm autistic, and eye contact is already weird. But he eye contact thing in this book is so funny to me. Like, if Miles and Tate did it in doggy there wouldn't even be a conflict.
Colleen Hoover is the person your parents are talking about when they say, "If someone told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?"
Oh nooo you're right 😂
My eye description: Brown eyes.
Colleen’s eye description: His/her eyes were brown, like a mocha with just a drop of milk in it, but not too much, because it was a deep, dark brown that pulled me in like the allure of a chocolate bar to a menstruating woman. A brown so warm and full that I’d never be able to look at another post torrential downpour puddle the same way again. I would only ever see his/her soft cocoa brown eyes in the sun dappled bark of the trees at central park during my 4 AM strolls to the coffee bar for my equally eyeball reminiscent mocha frappe.
Except that would never happen because her character’s eyes are ALWAYS freaking blue. 😂😂
...........wait, why are chocolate bars so alluring to menstruating women? Is that a thing?
@@seanboggs215Yeah its a thing. I always eat some chocolate during menstruation. I think chocolate is a mild anti inflammatory, and it helps a little. I'm pretty sure it's mostly a placebo effect tho
Well, Id say sweets in general are appealing when menstruating, and chocolates are unusually appealing? I think its both fatty and sweet at the same time. Ive also heard something being said about cocoa satisfying some craving but idk if its true.
My only exception is cold stuff, cant stand it when the cramps are going, I need everything to be warm to lukewarm to consume. Of course, different people different opinions.
Probably the sugar combined with the iron content (moreso in dark chocolate) plus the fact that eating it apparently triggers endorphins in the brain
The absolute obsession romance writers have with blue eyes is kind of unhinged. They go so extreme that it just makes them sound bizarre and unattractive. Like, sure, blue eyes can be pretty. But so blue that they look clear? Unsettling. Weird. Not hot, even if someone in real life could have those eyes and be hot. The description is not hot. It's just weird. Stop it, romance writers. Get some help.
Having a super striking and unique eye color just isn't what makes most people attractive and interesting. It's just super easy to describe compared to other potentially cool physical features. It's SO lazy.
There's always biceps
yepp. I feel there's a hesitance to describe any other striking feature for fear of making the character no longer conventionally attractive, but a billion barbie dolls with differently colored eyes just aren't attractive to me, personally. Give em crooked noses, sunken eyes, scarred knuckles, anything! Even better if the feature tells you something about who they are as a person or what they do, which eye colors do not
@@Romanticoutlaw very much agreed. It's probably an attempt to appeal to the widest possible audience by making their "hot person" as generic as they can. Which is hilariously misguided, because that's kinda the opposite of what most folks find attractive in reality.
@@maryeckel9682 ah, yes. They've always gotta be unrealistically heavily muscled and defined, too. I don't need my literary hot dudes to look like they spend six hours a day in the gym, actually. It's just goofy! Even people who are extremely strong because they do a physically demanding job every day don't look like goddamn body builders, and I beg every author to learn and accept that fact.
I don’t think anyone casually putting their left hand in their pocket is something every person would clock as “obviously hiding their wedding ring.” Maybe if the ring was seen, and he put his hand into his pocket in some over-the-top way that physically drew attention to it, then yeah maybe it would be noticeable. I think the character was being awfully presumptuous lol
facts. Some people (like myself) just have mannerisms!
The actual ring or ring tan line is more reliable, here it's more of a guess due to the combo of actions, I think. Or bad writing.
i don't know. I pulled my left hand out of my pocket this morning and that's how I found out that I was married. I'd been wondering for a while why my roommate was so clingy...
but of course, in a CoHo book, the pov character is magically always objectively correct. Sigh
For real!
Seeing someone having their left hand in their pocket and immediately thinking they're hiding a wedding ring is just like...jfc, paranoid much?
I mean, if nothing else, in my expereience married men who hit on other women don't bother to put that much effort into hiding it!
When I worked in retail I once had a guy ask for my phone number while his wife was across the store still shopping.
Corbin telling Tate to let Miles in could be explained since Corbin believes Miles is gay so he doesn’t see him as a threat to her, but in reality I think Colleen was just carrying on her trend of men telling women what to do
Look. I hear about a guy with weird facial expressions who randomly announces he's a pilot and I picture Launchpad.
In my head this is now a Ducktails fanfic. The main couple are Donald and Daisy, the old man in the elevator is Glomgold, the parents in the flashbacks are Scrooge and Goldie, and... I'll work out the rest later.
I’ve never read a single Colleen Hoover book, but I absolutely eat up reviews of them 😂 Whether it’s you, Reads with Rachel, or other booktubers, it’s so enjoyable consuming these unhinged texts secondhand!
i was getting a rat once and a kid at the pet shop asked me about cheese and i'm like nah, cheese isn't that healthy for rats so i got seeds and nuts and stuff. the kid asks, can i see his nuts?
me and the kid's mom share a look of dawning horror; a rat is generously endowed in the testicular department. i'm playing for time so i ask the kid for clarification. clarification is provided.
oh, you want to see his FOOD. sure! that's not a problem. conversational train wreck averted! phew.
so like, there are wholesome stories involving kids and balls. what ms. hoover wrote is not that.
The bdsm erotica vs bdsm romance comparison really helped something click for me about myself and what I like. As someone who’s ace, I’ve never really sought out erotica, but I once read a bdsm romance and loved that to pieces. I never understood exactly why I enjoyed that one exception so much until now!
I never actually thought before about different genres being in different worlds with their own sets of expectations and understandings, and that's really changing my outlook on media right now.
A really good experiment with this is to watch a sci fi or horror with or without romantic themes, then watch a romantic K-drama in a completely different subgenre, then a K-drama with a similar horror or sci fi plot to the first thing you watched.
K-dramas have such incredibly strong genre conventions that they essentially become shorthand for much larger plot points and allow for so much handwaving of the hows and whys, so then when you add in another genre with similar shorthand tropes, it becomes extremely obvious which belong to which and how they play off each other or clash, meaning you become almost uncomfortably aware of these world building and suspension of disbelief expectations for each of the genres that you hadn't necessarily realised you were buying into in the first place. A good genre bending K-drama can pull it off fantastically (highly recommend The Master's Sun for a romcom/episodic horror) and use both sets of tropes and conventions to the best effect, but it's still a pretty fascinating experience.
I'd imagine a similar experience would come from other cultural genre media, but I've yet to stumble across a sci fi telenovela or something so far.
(here's where I wish I'd had my k-drama phase during my undergrad so I could have done a textual analysis of genre conventions in British/American media vs South Korean media)
@@katharineeavan9705my country has a pretty strong telenovela tradition, and once in a full moon an author tries to insert some sci-fi elements or start with a sci-fi premise, but I don't think any of them truly succeeded. The general public doesn't respond well to it.
Dolleen is an incredible author. She has so much to teach us.
This book is written incredibly neurotypical-ly it’s so funny. The main character is so hilariously not relatable to me, it’s like listening to an alien
I think it's just badly written
What the hell is "neurotypical" about this trashfire? This is one of those statements that does in fact, require more explanation about what you even mean by that because I'm pretty sure you're using the wrong word.
I second the “it’s just badly written” comment.
@@Wh00000 19:22 around this part is where Savy describes the book as “Aggressively Neurotypical” and gives an explanation on what she means by that.
@@Wh00000 what they mean is she is constantly over reading into people's body language and making assumptions about how they are thinking. That's something that autistic people and often people with adhd can't relate to or understand. it's also just bad writing, unless she's purposefully supposed to come off as paranoid, which she isnt
The moments of unhinged confusion at the, to use your phrase, "agressively neurotypical" moments in this book are absolutely golden and SO relatable!! I'm so neurodivergent that I didn't realize one of my college friends was interested in me romantically until he asked to kiss me while we were watching anime together. (It was pretty obvious in hindsight, but I didn't register it at the time.) I didn't reciprocate those feelings, so I felt really awkward when I told him that. Thankfully, he was cool about it, and we stayed friends until we graduated.
I had a FWB and we had what was retrospectively kinda a date night every single Friday, and he introduced me to his friends and had started planning a romantic holiday.
I sorta unintentionally ghosted because I didn't think it was a big deal because it was no strings, and he was a gentleman enough to stand by what we'd agreed and not push me or get upset (towards me anyway) after a couple of canceled kinda date nights.
So I go on with me life thinking I've handled this relationship dynamic that people say is so complicated with ease and finesse, only to have the friend I met him through tell me I broke his heart, and when I was confused and reiterated that we were always just FWB she gave me this look of utter disbelief and said "...he took you home to meet his parents".
I have the same problem 😭. One time at a camp we were having a dance on the last day and one of the friends I had met gave me a note asking me to the dance, and I fully thought they were asking me as just a friend because we had just met a few days earlier, they had a boyfriend (they are poly and we had even talked earlier that week about how I thought I was poly at one point but realized I wasn’t so I thought they wouldn’t be asking me in a romantic way since they knew I wasn’t poly) and (to my at least) there were no signs of them liking me romantically. I said I would but if someone ended up asking me seriously I would probably go with them. I didn’t realize till later that day after I had been told by multiple people that they had been asking me seriously and that they liked me and I had to tell them I didn’t feel the same T^T
Trust, I do not have autism and Colleen is definitely on some magical mind reading pseudoscientific body language analysis type of bs 😂 You never know what is going on in someone else's head. Its just bad writing imo
It’s like a scene from Psych
@raysofmariehere6441 right like left hand in the pocket? Who even pays attention to stuff like that. Creepy
@erika2m16 okay its funny but how is that creepy 😭
@@clownmonomaniac2630It just feels like weird behavior to immediately analyze every little thing about a complete stranger you just met
@@raysofmariehere6441 Even scenes from Psych are more realistic because that is at least based on observation of small details.
What Colleen Hoover rights is her character just straight up being able to read minds with a look!
"The hand with the wedding ring on it" is pretty clear to me that there was a ring there, not "He slid his hand in his pocket, as if to hide a wedding ring." And how dare Colleen Hoover use the name Miles Archer. He's a famous character in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.The book and movie are so iconic that the City of San Francisco has even posted a plaque dedicated to the fictional character at the spot where he was "done in by" another fictional character. She stole that name from a better author.
Also, "I'm 14 and this is deep" is pretty much how I feel about Colleen Hoover in general. Colleen Hoover is stuck with the emotional intelligence of a young teenager.
Is that why this story is set in San Francisco, I wonder 🤔
I think the ring thing is one of those "film language" things for lack of a better word. Like in media if a woman puts her hand on her belly it always means she pregnant. If a man hides his left hand its because he's hiding a ring.
Okay, but 'MEET FEAR' sounds actually so cool! Dolleen's books are Just being put on the wrong category at bookstores, her true genre is thriller and psychological horror 😂
Like I know my left and right well enough to know which hand is going into a pocket
My edible kicked in right when she was explaining the balls thing and I haven’t stopped laughing
Oh my god I was not ready for the baby scene. For some inexplicable, horrible reason, I burst into laughter when you said he was suddenly hit by a truck 💀 like… WHAT?!
Either way, after hearing about this and the last one you reviewed, I have a lot more confidence in my writing ability
That's why I love these reviews. They give me so much motivation, lol
I get the appeal of trash and shallow literature, and I’ve read a lot of smut with dark kinks and fetishes over the years, but good god Colleen fails at both aspects. She acts like her books are incredible yet edgy romances with complicated but ultimately good characters, but they’re just awfully written and full of fetishised abuse that pretends to be non-kinky relationship goals
plot ❌
vivid descriptions of eye color ✅
The difference between 'Fu*king' and 'Making Love' in most contexts that I've heard it are the emotional engagement. A 'No Strings Attached' or 'Friends with Benefits' relationship, where sex is just for physical gratification and sexual release, they're just fu*king, but if they're having sexual intimacy as part of a deep relationship, to grow closer as people, and for the pleasure of experiencing your partner, that's Making Love. And in other contexts its the difference between a quick smash and lots of sex with foreplay, or even as simply as 'Rough' vs 'Tender' sex.
"It's not my fetish, but if it's yours, have fun." I'm going to get a lot of use out of this phrase going forward. Thank you!
I feel like Colleen considers the "struggle/will they won't they phase" as the "dating phase", it's the only thing that makes the skip to marriage make any sense.
gestures and facial expressions are already hard enough to decipher in real life, but written descriptions of facial expressions are even worse. the same facial expressions can convey different emotions and different degrees and inflections of an emotion depending on context, and it's really difficult to convey the exact form someone's facial expression takes in writing without sounding really weird. I'm also AuDHD, but I have to imagine that even a neurotypical person would have trouble determining what's going on in a scene if that's how it's written.
I try to embrace some of the weirdness when writing my characters. Human expressions are weird (to me) if you pay close attention. No two faces are the same. I like that to translate into storytelling.
What’s more, fiction is a hyperbolic reflection of reality. Think of an animator drawing a character or an actor conveying emotion. No matter how naturalistic your style, expressions and gestures are probably going to be somewhat heightened.
People in fiction aren’t exactly the same as real humans. In storytelling, you have to expediently convey a character’s feelings without too much ambiguity.
I just finished a book where the main character routinely stated (through the first-person narration) that he put on his "learned advocate" or "dutiful apprentice" or "grateful supplicant" face and I was like what do these phrases even mean?? What is he doing with his face and why is he doing it?! I couldn't figure out if he was supposed to be mocking the other characters when he did it, because he acted that way with his love interest too. And why does he feel the need to tell us what his face was doing in such an obnoxious way, because the story is written as if he's reciting the events back to someone else. It was such a weird way to write nonverbal communication.
I hated that book for many reasons but this was definitely one of them
As a neurotypical person myself, I can at least say that for me nothing about how Colleen wrote these scenes and assumptions made any sense. Different people from different backgrounds, cultures, experiences, or who are neurodivergent all engage in body language in different ways. It’s something you can observe and notice, but not something you should ever make assumptions about unless you know someone really well and know their mannerism already (and even then, it’s still best to ask, “Hey, I’m getting a sense from your body language that you might be uncomfortable, is that accurate?”).
As a neurotypical person, you are correct!
It's not normal to step onto an elevator and think you know what the person inside, whom you've never met before, is thinking just from their facial expression.
Not unless they're showing some very strong emotion like it looks like they've been crying, or they look very scared, or they're visibly scowling as if angry.
And even that doesn't work 100% of the time.
It's why the idea of RBF exists. Some people can look angry when they actually aren't.
Mostly, though, people in elevators just all have the same neutral/bored expression.
That is if you care to look...which most of the time you don't. You're not worried about what the stranger in the elevator is thinking, you're too busy thinking over whatever is going on in your life at that moment.
@@Sprklngglassslipper Exactly!
Thank you Savvy for reviewing Colleen's books as a discussion of genre and marketing. It makes so much more sense than any of her books ever had before for me.
I have to express my annoyance that all false marketing does is get the author's book in front of the wrong readers which does zero people any good (even considering the financial publishing side, because yeah you got that one reader's money, but that could tank the entire author's ability to write and sell more books in the future, whereas getting the author in front of the right audience could mean a long and lucrative career for the author and their publisher.
the problem with this is that colleen sells very well and she continues to sell very well even though a lot of people online hate her. the general public don't share our opinions. colleen is the cheap erotic trashy novels of the modern era and tons of people read her
I just started this video, and...why doesn't she want to describe Vegas? That city has the coolest themed hotels/casinos. They're a real treat for the eyes!
I am aggressively neurotypical (no diagnosis to speak of). I would not immediately suspect infidelity just because a guy put his left hand in pocket (could be a nervous tick since most people like to fiddle with something when nervous). I might find it odd if he started flirting, I looked at his hand, and then he quickly shoved his hand in his pocket but I wouldn’t immediately jump to accusing him of cheating. It was a clunky sentence and to me it’s not clear if Tate is saying she saw a wedding ring or she is assuming there is a ring because he’s trying to hide his hand. If she did see it, and then he put his hand in his pocket, I could understand the assumption he is trying to hide his marriage, but I still think it’s a leap since there could be other explanations
THANK YOU for being one of the first reviewers that I've seen who acknowledge that Colleen Hoover is an erotica author and her works are meant to be exaggerated fantasy and not representational of the real world.
*Queing AC/DC's Big Balls for this episode*
Hardcore agree at 13:30 about AO3 being a better reading experience! I read kinks on AO3 I wouldn't touch in traditional literature with a ten foot pole because I've been surprised with them in traditional literature, but when it's tagged and I know what I'm getting into, it's great!
“The courthouse is fake news” killed me!
I REALLY appreciate the way you break down the difference between erotica and romance, because the world of trying to explain like, why it's more okay for one story to depict something problematic than another is something I've tried to explain but struggled to. In the past I've tried to explain it as the tone of the story - how serious the tone is and such - but your explanation is so much more helpful.
Im convinced the men who complain about metoo and that women always pick the "bad guys" only know women in erotica like this or 50 shades
Incorrect tagging is so annoying, regardless of the medium. DDLG is pretty common and often the assumed dynamic even when it's bot tagged which, as someone who's very uncomfortable with the kink, is a problem.
Oh nothing bugs me more than when that's not tagged and they suddenly throw it into the sex scene. Instantly kills the whole piece for me. Which, while irritating when it's free fanfiction, would be infuriating if I spent money on a physical book and got hit with it.
Literally, idk why some people seem to think it's the norm.
When I’m writing someone interpreting thoughts and intentions based on body language, probably a good 80% of the time, they’re wrong. Idk if that’s a sign of good writing or a sign that I’m objectively bad at reading people. Or maybe it’s just a sign I write characters who struggle as much as I do
I’ve had dudes put a note in my pocket/ tuck a napkin in my jeans belt buckle. So creepy. Just touched me as I walked by. Instant turn off!
When it comes to published books and fanfiction I also agree. I will never read published romance. AO3 and fanfic sites are everything I need, so much more reliably
- which honestly isn't even that much anymore, now that I have accepted my own aro ace and sex repulsed nature and gotten cats.
But I will say for when I didn't understand my own relationship to romance and sex, A03 and its predecessors were phenomenal for letting you easily pick and choose what level of romance, kink, or fetish that you wanted to be involved with. It really is so much better than the terrible marketing that has tricked me so many times after promising me a horror or adventure/fantasy/spy thriller, only for it to be a romance or erotica with a subtle veneer of plot paint instead.
I hate that "submissive and breedable" are so accurate in describing Colleen Hoover's work
Someone should write a book with a Protag like Tate who turns out to be wrong about everything by the end of the book.
Oh yeah I’m married but my wife and I have an open relationship. She’s actually slept with Miles a few times.
I sighed when she said the book has POV switches, before remembering I am writting a fanfic with POV switches
Omg I lost it with “the breast cancer line in the Room causes it to pass the Bechdel test” 😂😂😂
wait is it tate's brother who thinks miles is gay? because if so, that would explain why he wasn't concerned letting him be drunk and stay the night with his sister when they first met
on one hand, cool that it wasn't ever something he felt weird about (i mean, that's the bare minimum but..... yeah), but on the other hand, it NEVER came up even once, in 6 years?
I would not think anything of someone putting their hand in their pocket in an elevator. But I am an oblivious adhd so not sure if I’m a good source either
I’m neurotypical and observant and I would not think anything of it either. Colleen is banana pancakes with how she has this character “read” body language.
I really wish I knew what the publishing equivalent of tags are. Cuz like, I really appreciate tags but I can’t imagine IRL publishing to have something like “Major Character Death, Dead Dove Do Not Eat” on it
There is, as far as I'm aware, an actual difference between sex & making love. Usually, when people use the term 'making love', they're talking about something more passionate but slow, something more emotional where the point is for the two people to join together, while sex is supposed to be more carnal & pleasure-chasing. It's that difference between seeking pleasure & seeking connection that distinguishes sex from makimg love
Savy, watching to grow and feel more comfortable in your body over the last few months has been extremely inspiring for me. Every time I have to lift something heavy, or go up too many stairs, i think of you.
Hold on.... Did this guy have a child with his step sister?!
I am 100% with you about fanfiction being better because you can expect things to be tagged!
Hi nice fellow ADHD, OCD, Autism triangle friend!
Funny enough, it's kind of a meme among pilots (especially private pilots) to state their profession without anyone asking
The intro with Dolleen was unhinged and hilarious. I think I like Dolleen better than Colleen.
"The courthouse is fake news" lmao
I appreciate being told by Dolleen that my asexuality is an illness, lol.
as an audhd haver this entire story hurts my brain so bad, hardly do i ever get a strong reaction to videos that aren't memes but there were so many points in this review where i just HAD to grimace in confusion
I always worry my books will end up like this one day, but then I remember I have an understanding of consent and healthy boundaries so I can't be *as* bad.
Ugly Love definitely isn't the first book I've read where the main character is banging her older brother's best friend and he gets weirdly incest-y about it. It's pretty common with that trope and I never understood it. It's like a "touch her and die" thing except it's the brother saying that to his friend. It would make more sense if Tate was much younger than Corbin - I could totally understand him being angry at Miles. But they're all adults!! And he makes a big, huge deal about "protecting her from Dillon," implying (at least this is how I read it) that Dillon might actually make a move on Tate without her consent. And not ONCE does Corbin *or* Miles stop hanging out with him or call him out on his behaviour. Corbin throws a tantrum over Miles and Tate having consensual (most of the time) sex with each other *as adults,* but his married friend constantly hitting on Tate doesn't make him angry enough to stop hanging out with Dillon or forbid him from coming over? It's just so dumb. One of these days I'm gonna write a story with the same weird type of brother/sister dynamic, only it's going to actually be called out as fucking weird and creepy. On an unrelated note, I just find it so funny that Colleen actually uses an infant's death as a plot device to explain why Miles is so fucked up, and not once do we see Miles do any type of serious grieving that any parent would have after losing a baby not long after they're born. He grieves his relationship with Rachel more. It's like, Colleen has to make it a point on why motherhood is great and normal and natural and she can't write a book where someone doesn't end up pregnant, but the death of a child gets, what, a chapter and that's it? Non-specific grieving that's solved after exactly one conversation with Rachel? You'd think it'd be treated with the seriousness it deserves. Then again, it's Colleen we're talking about here. If you end up reading Verity next, be prepared because her breeding fetish is really on full display there. To her credit, though, she'd be a great horror/thriller writer if she stopped believing that the shitty dudes she writes about are heroes and not the villain. She has nothing on Dolleen though - the true genius.
As someone in healthcare SO many nurses believe addiction is a choice. 🙄😒
Savy, I felt transported back to the 80s when I saw your hair and outfit today. I love it. Edit: fixed grammar mistake.
My favourite reaction to this book has to be from Reads with Rachel's review of this book:
"This is my first ever Colleen Hoover book and I was expecting it to, at least, have some sort of writing that is making everybody feral for this woman's books. This is it? That's it? That's what's selling more copies than the Bible? My God the Bible's better written than this."
Thank you so much for going into the differences between romance and erotica. I could not have put it better if you gave me a million years. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen people going apeshit over something “glorifying abuse” when it is erotica made for people who are adults who know what they are doing and are aware of how to interact with it in a healthy way.
WAIT WHY DID NO ONE EVER MENTION THAT THEY GET IN Q CAR ACCIDENT IMMEDIATELY AFTER "BIG BALLS"???
46:20 using “christen it” for a rug instead of a new living space is so weird
When it’s a sex euphemism irs always about fucking in your new house for the first time 😭 😂
100% true story: We had our first AMAB baby while I was a labor & delivery nurse, and I made my husband swear up and down beforehand that he wouldn't say anything about our baby's balls until we were alone. Most term AMAB's have big balls!! It's the hormones and water weight newborns have, just puffs those puppies up!!
LOL! The Doll intros are fantastic!
Oh my god, I've watched so many videos about this book and yet I never put together that Miles and Rachel's relationship is so similar to Claire and Jack 😭 They really did everything in that show, huh
God, i cant get over savys hair. The texture/curl pattern is incredible.
As someone with pin straight hair, im incredibly jealous (i know curly hair is more work, particularly to get it to look "good" (i think even frizzy curly hair looks good, so i might just be weird) and im lucky that i dont really have to do much other than brush it once in a while (i often do just roll out of bed and go about my day without even running a comb through it--its so straight it just very rarely tangles. I mostly just brush to distribute my hairs oils so i dont have to wash it as often 🙃) but its just... so. Dang. Flat. I have so much hair but people always think it's thin because it just hangs limply unless i take 2 hours to curl it, lol
The only realistic thing about this is that a teenaged boy is obsessed with a girl without having even one conversation.
Thank you so much for putting in to words what I have been trying to explain to people for so so long (specifically about books like Fifty Shades and the like-)
and how the true problem was how they were marketed and not what was actually written in them
I’ve heard so many reviews of these books I wasn’t sure if I’d be into this series. But I love your perspective and you brought up things in the last video I hadn’t seen highlighted. I’m excited for this one!!!
Oh tumblr someone coined the term “diegetic BDSM” which I think you explained perfectly in your erotica v. Romance explanation. I’ve been trying to find words for it but you two have explained it very wel
SAVY can I just say you are an absolute gem. I have zero interest in Colleen Hoover or book reviews in general but I clicked on your video and couldn’t stop watching…. From your quippy one-liners to your interview with Dolleen Hoover, I’m genuinely surprised I haven’t awoken my baby napping upstairs because you’ve got me bursting out laughing thru this whole video. LOVE YOU and your channel, keep the book reviews coming bc they are amazing and since I guess I like book reviews now lol. PS, favorite line of your entire video-“but no it’s all the same story, the printer just didn’t give a single fuck” BBAHHAHA I’m dead. you’re the best. ❤
Your explanation of the difference of erotica and romance with how one is your fantasy and how one is your tutorial for bdsm is perfect. Don't let anyone ever tell you different and if they try I'm your champion.
20:13 see, now this whole discussion makes me want to read a book about an animator who looks at other people and goes “wow, interesting idle animation you got there :0!”
I thought the whole body language thing was so "telling vs showing" but in real-life I wouldn’t discern shit from that gesture. (I MIGHT be neurodivergent but I'm undiagnosed, but also looking at other people I really suspect I didn’t get the memo on certain things.) Living for your CoHo reviews btws!
RIP big balls baby
Maybe it was the gravitational pull of those fuckin things that caused the accident 😢
I fully believe Tate was short of Potatoes/Taters and could not read her name right without whining a potato the whole time 😂
idk why people focus so much on eye contact anyway. yes i'm autistic but doesn't it just make more sense to watch someone's mouth when they talk? lots of deaf people do this whether they're autistic or not. i imagine people with other hearing problems do this. oh, autism and auditory processing issues lol. idk maybe i'm biased because of my own autistic experience. it just makes more sense to watch someone speak. it's kind of like subtitles irl. if someone turns their head away from me, whether they're quieter or louder, i find it more difficult to understand them because i can't watch their mouth.
I'm neurotypical and the whole 'communicating just with your eyes' is BS the way Colleen Hoover uses it.
It's something you might be able to do with someone that you know well, or someone who's expressing extreme emotion. Such as if someone were really terrified and their eyes were wide and scared, or if it was a creepy guy who was openly leering at you.
However, being able to communicate and know what someone is thinking just through their eyes after you just met them an elevator?
That's not a thing! Most people in elevators are thinking about what's going on in their own lives, they aren't having unspoken conversations with people they just met.
The intro burn about her biceps akskekke I cannot 😂😂 Savy, you're amazing! Loved that self-aware joke and throwback to the last video 💖