10:05 Part of the problem may be that none of the authors have any real experience with the different denominations of Christianity. If Chuck does (and he’s never said. Living in Utah doesn’t mean he’s Mormon or any denomination period.) he may exaggerate what he’s read or researched. I’ve been reading the sample on amazon. Hate to say it, but I knew a few kids just like the MC: fanatically strict on the outside, eager to break the rules on the inside. I was going to pick this up until I saw the Kindle price was 12.99. Uhm. No. I didn’t see anything in the sample that looked interesting. 12:30 My parents told me I was a spinster when I hadn’t married by 23. (My siblings were married at or before then.) To be fair, they married young. 14:19 Wait, she’s 20? She sounds much younger. I’d say around 15. According to the amazon reviews, Rose was held back due to autism? Was that ever mentioned anywhere? (As I watch, the views for this video keep dropping off. From 209 dropped to 98, back up to 109, then back down to 98, then 102, back to 98. Mayhaps the bots are infested?) 27:23 Yeah, you don’t get 100% anything unless it’s a military boot camp. (Even then you get washouts and rejects) 1:49:42 Unfortunately, I have run across ministers who claimed to also be therapists. When I asked questions about their qualifications, all of them grew angry that I asked. (None of them were actual therapists, the Bible was all they used.) You don’t deal with clinical depression by quoting scripture. I don’t how you got through this one, I would have dropped it after the first two chapters. There’s too much spite/pettiness there. Loved the critique, I suspect Chuck churned this out and didn’t feel one way or the other about it.. How it won a Bram Stoker is beyond me.
And summoning demons as christian denominations, sounds it could ve very intersting if you make it a genuine belief, ther are very strange cults and its not that weird to "use whatever nessesary" to brainwash, bu do so in earnest by believing. Ok cults believe weird stuff that still has a logic to it, granted a very strange shizo logic, but still. Which would probably fun to explore and have some demin summoning defending why they have to and that shizo believes thta still are believable someone could believe. Not evil. Dunno yeah most religious people are just chill and live and let live unless something moves them to not, but to have fun with demons and the church, like midnight mass did that very well. And you don have toi be that sympathetic, but still, like that demon summoners should have interesting believes if very shizo and hypothetical one. I mean shizo as all ove the place, seeming nonsensical but having a weird logic. Ok fictional cults at least should have an interesting background. And her is so much interesting about culty stuff there, that is bad, but also interesting. and yeah, granted i warched enough atheist content from some fun creators that, ddo that, not spite but survivor and looking often through weird religious propaganda to explore how that think. Thats what you should do if you hate htat camp, go into where that people behind it come from, even if its terrible, the human parts are important to have a better picture. And a book exploring that, ok i think humanizing is good, and doesnt mean you have to make them likable, it can make awful. And some part grift part genuine believe stumbing on demons and some worldbuilding ther and them discovering and some excusing that it was the thing and , bla bla god showed them the portal, bla bla. The best against that camps is doing justice to the people behind it and, how awful it is. Or at least make it a cult where, thats explored and how scary it is people willin tobelieve, you need to take demons from a hell dimension to dave teenager and how they got there. It could be semi educative? And would make a better cult that does troubled teen(?! ) camps? Also she should have been 15 and against her will, or 16? That horrible and, yeah isnt that supposed to be horror? Ther are adult camps but the teenager camps are the ones where , you can use a lot real life horror as inspiration.
As far as the book's contents is concerned, I do not recall it ever implying or explicitly stating Rose is autistic. It did explicitly state that every kid from Kingdom of the Pines is taken out of school for 2 years to go to religious bootcamp instead. Considering it's in first person narrative, that may be untrue and just what Rose was told, but the only reason she'd have been taken out was to go to Camp Damascus initially as far as we should know, but if that's the case, then why does she remember it (being away for 2 years for kingdom of the pine training) and I don't believe it'd take 2 years for the demon to take over and fill you with bugs to make you forget.
@@KirkpattieCake it could be a case of the reviewer projecting their own view onto the story. More than one praised this book on autism rep, which I don’t think is there. I went back and read the full sample. This book is a Troll against ‘conversion camps’ and cherry picks Christian fringe groups. (Snake handling being just one.) I’m not interested in that kind of story, I can take sarcasm only so long before it turns into petty diatribe. Chuck Tingle is one of the few authors I like as a person, but not as an author. I’m not interested in his books as much as I enjoy reviews of them. (which are often hilarious, and good fun.)
This review is really unconvincing that this is a bad book. The main criticism seems to be that in this fictional world in this parody book, religions are overblown caricatures of real religions. Then you get the normal bellyaching common when your mind is already made up. "oh, and the characters are also oblivious." "this tiny plot hole is ruining it for me." "That wallpaper is completely unrealistic."
I think you're missing that Chuck isn't satirizing mainstream Christianity. (Also he has said repeatedly that he doesn't really intend to write satire. I'm not sure why you jumped to that conclusion.) He's allegorizing the way it feels to be a queer person in a restrictive cult. I'm queer and an exmormon and this book *deeply* resonated with my own experience. Obviously your mileage may vary.
It’s a typical gey person’s stereotype of Christianity, not how it actually is. A lot of gey people just can’t see it as an inaccurate stereotype because they seriously think it’s the reality of Christians and that Christianity in general is a ‘cvlt’. I’ve met so many LGBT people who have convinced themselves that stories like this are REAL. When really it’s just slander. The hatred and attack of re1igion, particularly Christianity (because that’s the one you’ve been given permission to hate), is something I personally could never jive with in that ‘community’. And I’m not even religious, let alone Christian.
Sometimes I wonder why there doesn't seem to be that many (if any) similar stories based on other religions... If it's because "not knowing enough about the culture / customs / etc", I wonder why this book exists :D Sometimes it feels like anything goes if it's criticising "Christianity" (even if the storyteller has no clear idea what they are talking about). It makes me a bit sad that many storytellers seem not to understand (or want to understand) the concept of personal faith and just think "believer = poor brainwashed zombie who needs to be saved with The Right Knowledge". Anyway, thanks for the video, you are making great points as usual :)
There’s a really great way to work in “butterflies” in the stomach here with the bugs motif. Typically, at least in the US, butterflies in the stomach is thought of as this “oh, I’m so excited and nervous” thing, but more and more people are coming to the conclusion that it is just straight up discomfort. A couple examples being: 1) person A expresses interest in another person, and\or makes a move on person B and person B feels butterflies, reciprocates, but later realizes that the butterflies were a sign that they didn’t want to consent and that actually that situation may have even been harmful. 2) Inversely, Person A does the same as above, as does Person B, but person B later realizes they felt that discomfort, not because they didn’t want to reciprocate, but because they felt ashamed for reciprocating. There are other examples out there, and obviously some people do experience butterflies out of being excited to the point of low grade anxiety, but this is what I’m rolling with for the setup for what I mentioned earlier. There are so many ways he could have incorporated this- and explored themes of internalized homophobia and cis/het normativity- into the scenes of the bugs falling out of people’s mouths. She could’ve felt arousal, and felt butterflies (the bugs) rolling around and doing their thing. It could’ve been a “oh my god, I spit up bugs every time I feel intensely aroused- ergo I’m a monster” but not actually a monster, we love a self-love/acceptance arc! There could’ve been a great scene with someone purging the bugs (sensitively, not in an allegorical eating disorder king of way) as part of them exorcising their internalized homophobia demon, thus symbolically resolving the fear and disgust of themself and their sexuality. Like, there was some gold there and he just…. Didn’t do anything with it.
I can't say I am shocked at how poorly plotted and written it is. I mean, the author might be a hugely successful one, but it isn't because of skill. It's because of doing near-parody level shock ideas as his nonsense stories and LGBT focus. I wouldn't expect anything better than this from someone whose works include "Pounded in the butt by my own butt". Not exactly high literature. Its success built on a gimmick rather than any legitimate talent or effort. More power I guess. He's rich now because of it, but I'd rather be little known and write something solid than well known and having my talentlessness on display like this.
I’ve heard about this book a lot and have avoided it like the plague. I generally despise ‘spite writing’, as you call it, and immediately pegged this as such from everything I’ve heard about it. I especially dislike the tired hatred that many LGBT people have against religion, Christians, and especially ‘conversion therapy’; this seemed to be exactly that and little else. So yeah, nothing in this review surprised me. Sounds like this book was exactly what I thought it was. That’s really gross that this won a Bram Stoker award. Makes me lose even more faith in humanity.
The "like he would his wife" took my knees out, I had to pause to laugh.
10:05 Part of the problem may be that none of the authors have any real experience with the different denominations of Christianity. If Chuck does (and he’s never said. Living in Utah doesn’t mean he’s Mormon or any denomination period.) he may exaggerate what he’s read or researched. I’ve been reading the sample on amazon. Hate to say it, but I knew a few kids just like the MC: fanatically strict on the outside, eager to break the rules on the inside.
I was going to pick this up until I saw the Kindle price was 12.99. Uhm. No. I didn’t see anything in the sample that looked interesting.
12:30 My parents told me I was a spinster when I hadn’t married by 23. (My siblings were married at or before then.) To be fair, they married young.
14:19 Wait, she’s 20? She sounds much younger. I’d say around 15.
According to the amazon reviews, Rose was held back due to autism? Was that ever mentioned anywhere?
(As I watch, the views for this video keep dropping off. From 209 dropped to 98, back up to 109, then back down to 98, then 102, back to 98. Mayhaps the bots are infested?)
27:23 Yeah, you don’t get 100% anything unless it’s a military boot camp. (Even then you get washouts and rejects)
1:49:42 Unfortunately, I have run across ministers who claimed to also be therapists. When I asked questions about their qualifications, all of them grew angry that I asked. (None of them were actual therapists, the Bible was all they used.) You don’t deal with clinical depression by quoting scripture.
I don’t how you got through this one, I would have dropped it after the first two chapters. There’s too much spite/pettiness there.
Loved the critique, I suspect Chuck churned this out and didn’t feel one way or the other about it.. How it won a Bram Stoker is beyond me.
And summoning demons as christian denominations, sounds it could ve very intersting if you make it a genuine belief, ther are very strange cults and its not that weird to "use whatever nessesary" to brainwash, bu do so in earnest by believing. Ok cults believe weird stuff that still has a logic to it, granted a very strange shizo logic, but still.
Which would probably fun to explore and have some demin summoning defending why they have to and that shizo believes thta still are believable someone could believe. Not evil.
Dunno yeah most religious people are just chill and live and let live unless something moves them to not, but to have fun with demons and the church, like midnight mass did that very well. And you don have toi be that sympathetic, but still, like that demon summoners should have interesting believes if very shizo and hypothetical one.
I mean shizo as all ove the place, seeming nonsensical but having a weird logic. Ok fictional cults at least should have an interesting background.
And her is so much interesting about culty stuff there, that is bad, but also interesting. and yeah,
granted i warched enough atheist content from some fun creators that, ddo that, not spite but survivor and looking often through weird religious propaganda to explore how that think.
Thats what you should do if you hate htat camp, go into where that people behind it come from, even if its terrible, the human parts are important to have a better picture. And a book exploring that, ok i think humanizing is good, and doesnt mean you have to make them likable, it can make awful. And some part grift part genuine believe stumbing on demons and some worldbuilding ther and them discovering and some excusing that it was the thing and , bla bla god showed them the portal, bla bla.
The best against that camps is doing justice to the people behind it and, how awful it is.
Or at least make it a cult where, thats explored and how scary it is people willin tobelieve, you need to take demons from a hell dimension to dave teenager and how they got there. It could be semi educative?
And would make a better cult that does troubled teen(?! ) camps? Also she should have been 15 and against her will, or 16? That horrible and, yeah isnt that supposed to be horror?
Ther are adult camps but the teenager camps are the ones where , you can use a lot real life horror as inspiration.
As far as the book's contents is concerned, I do not recall it ever implying or explicitly stating Rose is autistic. It did explicitly state that every kid from Kingdom of the Pines is taken out of school for 2 years to go to religious bootcamp instead. Considering it's in first person narrative, that may be untrue and just what Rose was told, but the only reason she'd have been taken out was to go to Camp Damascus initially as far as we should know, but if that's the case, then why does she remember it (being away for 2 years for kingdom of the pine training) and I don't believe it'd take 2 years for the demon to take over and fill you with bugs to make you forget.
@@KirkpattieCake it could be a case of the reviewer projecting their own view onto the story. More than one praised this book on autism rep, which I don’t think is there.
I went back and read the full sample. This book is a Troll against ‘conversion camps’ and cherry picks Christian fringe groups. (Snake handling being just one.) I’m not interested in that kind of story, I can take sarcasm only so long before it turns into petty diatribe.
Chuck Tingle is one of the few authors I like as a person, but not as an author. I’m not interested in his books as much as I enjoy reviews of them. (which are often hilarious, and good fun.)
I bought this without knowing anything about the author and when my mom saw it in our audible library she was like uhhh what are you listening to? 😅
🤣🤣🤣
Christian girls don't believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein, or Superman. All they wanna do is--
BICYCLE! BICYCLE! BICYCLE! lol
Chuck Tingle wrote a non-erotica book? Wow! (Never read him, but have enjoyed reviews of the wackier books he’s written.)
Hey me too i had to take the Ohio Achievement Test every year
how about the other book about bury your gays meta
This review is really unconvincing that this is a bad book. The main criticism seems to be that in this fictional world in this parody book, religions are overblown caricatures of real religions. Then you get the normal bellyaching common when your mind is already made up. "oh, and the characters are also oblivious." "this tiny plot hole is ruining it for me." "That wallpaper is completely unrealistic."
I think you're missing that Chuck isn't satirizing mainstream Christianity. (Also he has said repeatedly that he doesn't really intend to write satire. I'm not sure why you jumped to that conclusion.) He's allegorizing the way it feels to be a queer person in a restrictive cult. I'm queer and an exmormon and this book *deeply* resonated with my own experience. Obviously your mileage may vary.
It’s a typical gey person’s stereotype of Christianity, not how it actually is. A lot of gey people just can’t see it as an inaccurate stereotype because they seriously think it’s the reality of Christians and that Christianity in general is a ‘cvlt’. I’ve met so many LGBT people who have convinced themselves that stories like this are REAL. When really it’s just slander. The hatred and attack of re1igion, particularly Christianity (because that’s the one you’ve been given permission to hate), is something I personally could never jive with in that ‘community’. And I’m not even religious, let alone Christian.
"Proper Christians do not read Superman"
*Is a Catholic and a huge Superhero nerd*
... Am I a joke to these people?
I’d try hard next time to not spoil anything from a book in your thumbnail or title even if you don’t think it’s good 👍
I got you, fam. 👍
Sometimes I wonder why there doesn't seem to be that many (if any) similar stories based on other religions... If it's because "not knowing enough about the culture / customs / etc", I wonder why this book exists :D Sometimes it feels like anything goes if it's criticising "Christianity" (even if the storyteller has no clear idea what they are talking about). It makes me a bit sad that many storytellers seem not to understand (or want to understand) the concept of personal faith and just think "believer = poor brainwashed zombie who needs to be saved with The Right Knowledge".
Anyway, thanks for the video, you are making great points as usual :)
I like how the author forgot to add the horror to the horror novel
There’s a really great way to work in “butterflies” in the stomach here with the bugs motif.
Typically, at least in the US, butterflies in the stomach is thought of as this “oh, I’m so excited and nervous” thing, but more and more people are coming to the conclusion that it is just straight up discomfort.
A couple examples being:
1) person A expresses interest in another person, and\or makes a move on person B and person B feels butterflies, reciprocates, but later realizes that the butterflies were a sign that they didn’t want to consent and that actually that situation may have even been harmful.
2) Inversely, Person A does the same as above, as does Person B, but person B later realizes they felt that discomfort, not because they didn’t want to reciprocate, but because they felt ashamed for reciprocating.
There are other examples out there, and obviously some people do experience butterflies out of being excited to the point of low grade anxiety, but this is what I’m rolling with for the setup for what I mentioned earlier.
There are so many ways he could have incorporated this- and explored themes of internalized homophobia and cis/het normativity- into the scenes of the bugs falling out of people’s mouths.
She could’ve felt arousal, and felt butterflies (the bugs) rolling around and doing their thing. It could’ve been a “oh my god, I spit up bugs every time I feel intensely aroused- ergo I’m a monster” but not actually a monster, we love a self-love/acceptance arc! There could’ve been a great scene with someone purging the bugs (sensitively, not in an allegorical eating disorder king of way) as part of them exorcising their internalized homophobia demon, thus symbolically resolving the fear and disgust of themself and their sexuality.
Like, there was some gold there and he just…. Didn’t do anything with it.
I can't say I am shocked at how poorly plotted and written it is. I mean, the author might be a hugely successful one, but it isn't because of skill. It's because of doing near-parody level shock ideas as his nonsense stories and LGBT focus. I wouldn't expect anything better than this from someone whose works include "Pounded in the butt by my own butt". Not exactly high literature. Its success built on a gimmick rather than any legitimate talent or effort. More power I guess. He's rich now because of it, but I'd rather be little known and write something solid than well known and having my talentlessness on display like this.
I’ve heard about this book a lot and have avoided it like the plague. I generally despise ‘spite writing’, as you call it, and immediately pegged this as such from everything I’ve heard about it. I especially dislike the tired hatred that many LGBT people have against religion, Christians, and especially ‘conversion therapy’; this seemed to be exactly that and little else.
So yeah, nothing in this review surprised me. Sounds like this book was exactly what I thought it was. That’s really gross that this won a Bram Stoker award. Makes me lose even more faith in humanity.