Assigned youtuber unintentionally. Author, pigeon wizard, very ill, very powerful, angel enthusiast. A. M. Blaushild. I talk about really bad books you've never heard of and should never read, especially old YA. My main focus is books but I aim to expand and chase whatever I feel is fun, from pulp to paper monsters to movies!
I know this is an old video but the aztecs NEVER lived in any jungles, they DEFINITELY didn't live in the amazons and this false news is really frustrating. The aztecs were in central/northern Mexico..the inca were closest to the amazons as at last there in the same continent. The aztecs were in NORTH AMERICA.
Yeah, I know, I live in horror all the time for all the errors I make. A lot of the time it's a flub I don't notice. I do know cacophony it's one of my fav words :( frankly I use it too much for someone who frequently mispeaks
Just finished reading it! While I didn't dislike it as much as you, I was still pretty disappointed, especially by that ending and the non-exploration of the broader aspects of things. But I will say that I understand that the author has to make adjustments to accommodate the premise of human meat farms, the main one being that humans can self-reflect and weigh the consequences (or in this case, benefits) of killing themselves to prevent their babies from living in that world, so the idea of removing limbs or otherwise preventing pregnant women from self harming made sense to me. I also see where you're coming from about the conspiracy thing, a lot of the conspiracy theory shit is openly harmful, but sometimes powerful people really do conspire in order to accumulate wealth and power at the expense of many others, so I think that worked fine for the book too, as a way of showing how people are dehumanized for profit in our world. A lot of our everyday products come about from a result of human exploitation. The worst aspect for me was how poorly it used its short length, and how it wanted to have it both ways with the protagonist just so it could pull the rug out from under you at the end. I mean, there were hints that he still saw Jasmine as less than human (he still kept her tied up all throughout, and his inner-monologue expressed concern only for the baby she was carrying, instead of just her), but he still reacted with anger/disgust to the treatment of 'head' more and more towards the end and and bothered to train and dress Jasmine to humanize her. It just felt so confused in what it wanted to prioritize, and I think a bit of revising could have made that ending work a lot better. Thanks for sharing your thoughts in such detail! I'm trying to write a review video for this myself ^^
I think I say it in the video, but I can understand how the author wouldn't know this, and especially why the book character might not. However. 1. This isn't secret lore only the dedicated may discover. The fact spaz is a slur in England is something Jeremy might have learned if he'd done any research into writing disability at all. Like. "Language to not use when talking about disability" is a pretty basic thing to research. 2. This is a published book sold for money, and it's okay to ask for standards. The editor was obviously asleep at the wheel the entire book, but it is an editor's job to spot this sort of thing. Knowing things like "what words have different meanings elsewhere" is part of that, especially when the word is DIRECTLY related to the entire theme of the book. 3. People in Britain read books. This is a book sold by a RU-vidr with a wide international audience. It doesn't matter to him or Americans perhaps, but it does to others. Imagine a disabled kid excitedly starting their fav youtubers book and getting hit with a casual hard slur use.
Honestly every time I hear about "instagram face" or other various things usually involving surgical practices that people will complain make a lot of people look similar I always think of Uglies and I'm like "oh......I'm so glad I get to see something like that play out irl......"
Ninja isn't a general term for assassin. It requires specific training and years of mastery to be a ninja. "The eastern world calls it ninja" THE TF IT DOES NOT! EVEN IF IT WAS THE GENERAL TERM IN JAPAN OR CHINA, EACH ASIAN COUNTRY HAS DIFFERENT LANGUAGES! THAT'S LIKE SAYING THE WESTERN WORD FOR POTATO IS "APPLE OF THE EARTH"
...there is so much OBVIOUSLY medically incorrect about touching a rock wall with an open wound, even one hot enough to cauterize it. All that does is seal the dirt inside your body. If she didn't have sepsis before, she definitely would after.
How common is it for a series that's meant to be a trilogy gets its last book split into two? It happened with Paolini's Inheritance Cycle and now I learn it happened here. Though I'd argue the Paolini did it better as a lot of Brisingr is character work and gives Eragon the eponymous sword.
@@Crowcaller in Paolini's case, at least, it was because Eragon made a decision he hadn't planned on that added, like...100 pages to the book and he and his editor decided that was too long and cut it into two.
Ok wow this is really something and I feel obligated to comment as a certified practicing Catholic (weekly mass and such). This is… such a gross misrepresentation of the faith. First of all, saints have to be dead to be saints. And they have to preform two(occasionally one) miracle verified by independent, non-Catholic experts in order for it to count. Also, Catholics don’t worship saints. The best way I can explain it is like when you ask a shift lead to bring an issue up with the manager- you ask a role model, but still mostly a peer, to bring something up to what is unquestionably both of your superiors, because they have your superiors ear more. Idk if that’s clear, I can reexplain but that’s the best secular analogy I can think of. ALSO using a real, legitimate type of religious artifacts as magical girl bracelets is gross and rude. And the church name being precious blood is weird, Catholic Churches are almost always named after saints. I will add more as I finish this video but yea oh my lord this is so gross and weird.
Also, the church is pro-psychiatric medication???? The only med that’s not cool is birth control for purely birth control reasons (ie, it’s chill for cramps control or PCOS or mood helping reasons).
One bad thing doesn’t doom you to hell???? This is practically heresy. The whole reason for the sacrament of confession is that practically any sin can be forgiven with true repentance, and with certain consequences. This is ridiculous.
Ahhh kill me writing the martyrdom of saints as weird erotica is so gross and like disrespectful frankly considering a few died to stay virgins I can’t.
I don't know why, but I started laughing immediately at "Right off the bat, Beth meets the seemingly unavailable Xavier Woods, whose girlfriend died in a housefire about two years ago." It just sounds so much like the opening description of someone satirizing these kinds of books, except I know it isn't satire. Like, of COURSE the love interest would be a broody boy with a tragic backstory.
The book is of course racist in how it handles it, but how is believing that any social group if given the chance, excuse, and opportunity would oppress others racist itself?
Because it assumes the natural state of humanity, even in the far future post modern civil rights, is to be racist. That people who have suffered under racism have just been gleefully waiting for their time to do it back - which is very similar to real conspiracy theories today like the Great Replacement Conspiracy! The thing is, oppressed groups do not want to become oppressors nor is it "human nature" for that to happen. That's a rhetoric of fear- fear those who suffered under a system will get revenge (and thus society must oppress them so this never happens). But that's not true. Gay people don't want to ban straight marriage, they just want equal rights.
I think the protest of NaNoWriMo is simply misdirected rage honestly. We should be suing the pants off the AI companies, not attacking each other. In our economy, anything that boosts revenue or improves productivity will only be replaced by something that does it better. AI is here to stay. We would do well to work with lawmakers and companies to design and develop safeguards for authors IP, and prevent AI from becoming the literary Napster. Whether we choose to use AI or not is irrelevant. Whether we wake up to the reality that AI isn't going anywhere, and make efforts to ensure protections for authors is not.
Full disclosure, I haven't read the book so I don't have the same depth of experience with it as you but .... There are a few things about this review that I feel like diverge greatly from some of your other videos. The first thing is that in Unwind, you seemed a lot more accepting of a just as ridiculous premise + just as strange world building choices as this book. There's even a point here where you say it's really silly to have people harvesting meat from live sources, but doesn't the same thing happen in Unwind with organ harvesting? To be honest, if I hadn't watched your Unwind video before this, I probably would've scoffed at this book from the start - that's why I bring this point up, because you're the reason why I've opened my mind to accepting a premise even if it seems ridiculous. Second, I know you said the ending was a jarring reversal of character portrayal, but from your description of the MC's complicity I would think that was the point? Like a man who is engaging in horrific work is not capable of being good at all. But I do think that accepting this kind of portrayal (where a character's voice is intentionally written to appear good, but later showcases their monstrous nature) requires faith in the writer, because there are def some that will write terrible people but not see them as monsters and instead as "grey characters." Basically, I think it's something that should nag at readers to the point where when the last line in the book gets uttered, they feel vindicated for their original judgement. Lastly, there are a few distressing scenes which you describe as being exaggerations of actual livestock farming / not something that happens to cows, but in fact they ARE things that have been discovered at factory farms? Especially the mutilation to prevent animals from killing themselves, like that's a very common thing, if not in cows then at least in factory farming of other animals. In general, it sounded like the author was just transferring irl practices to her world. With that in mind, I wonder if the details about speeding up human growth and making other genetic modifications was the author's way of NOT drawing a false equivalency between humans and animals like cows. Because like you said, their developmental stunting ensures that they can't reach the same level of cognition that other humans do. With this generous interpretation, the author actually appears to have a reasonable equivalency - after all, animals like cows and pigs have intelligence that has been compared to human toddlers. All this aside, is there any chance you speak Spanish / would be willing to read a version of the book in its original language to see if that changes your opinion? I only ask because I love your takes and have seen some online discussions about how word choices in the translation affected interpretation, for example with the last line.
Things the author of this book seemingly has no understanding of: - melanin being for keeping folate from breaking down (see pinned comment) - lack of melanin being for vitamin d production (see pinned comment) - the genus Panthera (contains all big cats; two of the traits being long vocal cords and an incompletely ossified hyoid bone, which both allows them to roar and keeps them from purring, snow leopards being the exception to the roar thing) - Incans - research into literally any of these things The first book came out in 2012. The internet was a thing then. Do some googling. It's not that hard.
It's just funny that Phillip's interests are just Jeremy Cinemasins interests. He likes movies, games and Batman so he just gave him those interests uncritically. His description of their hangout spot sounds like an old man imagining what his kid self would find awesome
Yes to answer your overall question. But no, if it's anything like our current meat industry. Plus the finances wouldnt make sense. Humans take so long to grow to maturity...or even if you wanted the veal equivalent it would still take years or at least your cost per pound of flesh would be so absurd that I would then say no, but mainly due to that reason. Would I stop eating meat if a steak cost over $500? Yes.
Marvel has many, many disabled superheroes, honestly, the fact that the disabled characters in this book is so poorly written honestly feels bad, there are many superheroes in mainstream media who are disabled
The heavy-handedness of this book is insanely funny to me. "I saw somebody's pet meat human, and right next to them was a book titled 'how to kill your pet meat human in the most fucked up way possible .'"
2:33:08 actually if the skylings have kids with people that aren’t skylings there’s a chance they wouldn’t have the skyling curse and then could live over 25- so really they have a good reason to want to be around everyone else
I dunno that I MISSED anything, I think the book simpky failed to execute any of its intended messages beyond gross-out meat horror. I know about capitalism! I wish the book was better about discussing it
All these new YA books coming out (ESPECIALLY COLLEEN HOOVER) are going to get the Twilight treatment. Everyone loves them now, but ten-ish years in the future people are gonna look back and say "Ew wtf is that..."
I remember hearing one of onionsans fans offered to edit his books for him and he got so offended because spelling errors were part of his "artistic vision"
My original “Mary Sue” was so OP for no reason. Her name was Line. She was super normal looking, brunette with pretty eyes, I think I did green or hazel, pale, skinny. Why was she OP? She had the ability to rip holes in space time at will, she can make a weapon of pure space time, and she has wings she’s trying to recover from her abusive dad. So like, she isn’t “emotionally” or “verbally” a Mary Sue, she’s very goal oriented and trying to actually DO HER PLOT, but I’m also aware that the OP power, the name, and the fact she looked like me as a kid, I know she’s a Mary Sue. My more recent characters are far more fleshed out and tragic now. One is a forty year old man who lost his wife and baby at 19 and has to save the world unwillingly and the other is also unwilling to save the world and a run away seer. ✨Evolution.✨😩
Tbh, Only Ever Yours feels like a particularly fitting comparison here, cause it also revolves around a world where teenage girls have been made in labs to serve as companions to wealthy men. The key difference being, Only Ever Yours doesn't shy away from its subject matter of choice and embraces it more than this series seems to do
They seem to have completely missed the point of their own competition. Challenge yourself to write 50,000 words in a month and be suprised at what you can accomplish. What's the point of slogging away getting down 1,700 per day in a month, when someone can get an AI to CHEAT for them? They've just made the existence of their own challenge pointless. Also, notice how it's all about the editing, beta-reading. feedback and publishing part of writing, again none of these are actually the point of the challenge. The challenge is to write... no ediiting, no self-correction, just write and see what you get.
I occasionally show ChatGPT segments of my novel to gauge its reaction - if an AI can understand it, then so can a human. I have no desire whatsoever to let it do the writing for me.
I'm 23 minutes in and something just occurred to me- Does Jeremy not have any disabled friends who he could have like asked what they thought of this book? I feel like if he did at least one of them would have been like "buddy..."
As a blind author, I’ll never read this book. It’s true, writing a deaf character would be a lot more difficult for me, because sound is my main sense. For whatever reason, sighted people (disabled in other ways or not) have this weird fascination with “the concept of blindness” as such a unique experience. Bleh… what kind of the blindness? Because it’s a spectrum.
I remember reading this book as a kid and could only get through the first one and half and it took me like two weeks because the premise made me uncomfortable and the writing was just so hard to follow/get into. I was that kid who read a book every three days so like saying I couldn’t into it/it took me two weeks to read a book and a half is saying something
So what the book describes as "stumping", in my home region (western upstate NY) is called muddin' because, you know, you do it on muddy backroads. I've only ever heard stumping used to refer to the campaign speeches like you put up.
I’m so sorry but when you mentioned a character named Dirk I just started picturing him as Dirk Homestuck I literally can’t take the name Dirk seriously anymore
