tiktok hype, conspiracy theories & questionable authors 

Thank you, @johanleee. This literally made me laugh out loud. Well done.

Same!!

Agreed! While I don't agree with the claim that TikTok is turning publishing into fast fashion, I think there's merit in exploring and critiquing why people say that. It goes back to the audiences, who are mostly new readers that have grown up with other forms of media that do pump out content at a faster rate than books, who then expect for publishing to be the same.

I don’t know how anyone could love this book. It is manipulative, terribly written and psychologically incorrect

​@olgadonskaia I've seen you say it a couple times, but what do you mean "psychologically incorrect"? Like, what exactly did Klune get wrong? Do you have examples?

@@changelingreader14 well, firstly, orphans wouldn’t trust a person from a system (my adopted children recognise social workers and are scared of them). Secondly, the protagonist who never cared about the results of his reports suddenly getting all sympathetic. And finally, the phoenix guy would never be able to provide care for those traumatised children being traumatised himself. Though I can believe the part where he falls for any man who appears on the island:)

@@olgadonskaia They didn't really trust him at first, but they also had abilities that he didn't, so it makes sense that they weren't terrified of him the way that some kids fear random social workers in the real world. Why would you be terrified of someone who you could technically kill if you really wanted to?

@@explicitlyme7497 of course you can try to make sense of anything but building characters is the author’s job, which he fails to do properly. He just uses the orphan trope as a cliche. I think he does more harm than good with his book

On the other hand I thought it was a story about acceptance of extremely strange children and found family.

I disagree. I think the children all had their own issues and were given so much humanity. They had dreams, fears, struggles, expectations, etc.

Linus Baker also goes through such a big transformation. He goes through a process where he goes from the corporate factor of his job to living among the children and understanding what his job really does. It is a wonderful look on the child protection services/the foster system and how the corporation of it takes away the humanity of the children stuck in it. It is a beautiful critic of the system while also highlighting a different perspective on what a family can look like.

same indian boarding schools here in the U.S., but he didn't write about that or try to put a happy spin on it, he was inspired by it to write a different kind of story. even though i didn't enjoy the book i have no problem with being inspired by anything at all, authors are going have to pass on talking or writing about their process for fear of the trendy moral outrage generation. all i care about any artist is if the art is to my liking.

More white children were removed than aboriginal children. Blatant race baiting.

​@@tinagarcia3571 It is perfectly valid when you say that you personally do not care what inspires an author's work - completely fair. But I think that calling it a problem of the "trendy moral outrage generation" is very dismissive for a discourse the author inserted himself into. Fair enough if you do not have a problem with it but other people do. Because here is the thing: the author could have read that Wikipedia article, written his novel, which, as Emma points out, draws no connection whatsoever to the traumatic part of Canadian history that inspired it, and enjoyed the success of his book. However, by saying publicly that his novel was inspired by this part of history that he himself says he has no place in writing about places his novel into the wider discourse of that history. And within that discourse, unfortunately, his novel perpetuates the white savior narrative that is at the heart of this traumatic period of history. So, really, the problem is less with the book itself than with the author's thought process that as long as he makes it a fantasy book his narrative decisions do not have to critically engage with the source of inspiration AND YET he can at the same time cash in on a deeply traumatic past as his inspiration to... what? Give his novel depth? Increase sales? Gain reputation as a 'deep author'? Pointing out this discrepancy and communicating that we as a society of readers are not okay with this is an important contribution to the wider discourse about telling stories about or inspired by indigenous peoples.

@@angeliqueazul8670 But he didn't tell a story about indigenous people, if he had you might have a small point. I am dismissive of this trendy moral outrage.

@@tinagarcia3571 No, he did not directly tell a story about indigenous people. However, he created a story that parallels real life events and that he himself admitted was inspired by traumatic experiences of indigenous people. So, while the book does not talk about indigenous people directly, the author has effectively made this a fictional story about them through giving additional context to the story in interviews - and as such it is part of the discourse of indigenous stories and it is valid for people to criticize it as such.

I only finished it because my book club didn't so I gave the tldr of the ending lol

I DNF'ed it one chapter in 😅

I also DNF'd it.

Tbh ive only read norwegian wood and it was super disappointing, i just couldn't get over the writing of women and girls, it made me super uncomfy I get that murakami is super popular and im open to trying his other works but this one was really disappointing.

Well now I'm scared...I heard so much of Murakami that I picked up "Desire" when I came across it on a second hand site. I think it's a short story collection. Now I worry what awaits me when I do decide to read it 🫠

I remember she did mention it in her old videos reading Murakami.

He just shouldn’t have said anything about it! When I read the book, I had no idea he was thinking about the 60’s scoop, it just seemed like a cute romance with a backdrop of ‘fantasy racism vs. the power of love’. Cheesy but still nice. If anything I thought the magical kids seemed more like an allegory for disability, in that they look, talk, and think differently and some people just didn’t bother to learn how to interact with them. Klune should have just left it at that and not claimed that it was supposed to be an allegory for a very specific time in history that it didn’t represent at all.

​@@emmanarotzky6565 but he never claimed it was supposed to be an allegory! He literally just said he encountered the article, drew some inspiration from it and decided to do his own thing. I agree that even bringing up the sixties scoop as his inspiration was a bad idea because then it opens him up to all this disingenuous criticism, but he's clearly a clumsy sort of guy and he put his foot in his mouth in this case and people are acting as if he wrote the book to whitewash cultural genocide.

@@BlueCoolOla I shouldn't have bothered writing my long comment lol because you said it just right! I'll add that by citing this scoop, TJ Klune made some people want to educate themselves about it! I had never heard of it before.

Yess,i agree...he was 40 btw-not 27 as Emma said!

I think the problem is you can tell- the kids are taken from their homes to live in this school/boarding house and they face discrimination from larger society for being inhuman. The main government agency thing is trying to enforce the schools and have the kids reject their magical heritage and teach them to act civilized. They also quote the “see something say something” rhetoric. It’s so blatant I didn’t know about it when I picked it up and I pretty quickly realized when I was reading. What makes it worse too is that the children are literally not even human- one is a blob monster and one is the literal antichrist. There obviously isn’t any conversation on colonialism or anything like that, and the solution in the end is to advocate for the boarding school to *stay open* with magical leadership. He basically repackaged and watered down genocide into a one dimensional lighthearted fantasy. I also don’t think that it’s inherently a problem for an author to take a real life tragedy and fictionalize it or tell it in a way suitable for younger audiences, but in this case his approach completely undermines and minimizes what reformation schooling actually was- and as a white man from Oregon it wasn’t his story to tell in the first place.

But didn’t he explicitly word it as ‘inspiration’, if he hadn’t, then it would be a different story. The subject matter is horrifying to say the least. And how come his takeaway inspiration was…social workers are saviours?

Having read the book, I agree with your point. I fell like Klune's biggest mistake was to tell what inspired him, not to actually write this book.

But the thing is the history he used is riddled with violence against indigenous people. The only people who have a right to use said history and turn it into a lighthearted fantasy are the children who lived it, not the people who are far removed from it. Otherwise that's profiting off of a painful history that's still affecting people till this day.

​@@rizzobeloved I understand your perspective, but there's a line between directly using a story and drawing inspiration from it. In the case of Klune's work, he incorporated the concept of 'children seen as different being taken away' without specifically portraying indigenous children or anyhow exploring their narrative.

Spies are not generally nice people.

Are you being sarcastic?

His portrayal of women in his books is always a thorn in my side. Either he has never grown up, or he hasn't had any actual relations with a woman as an adult.

I liked Killing Commendatore but I know what you mean. What’s worse in KC is the 13 year old girl talking to the middle aged main character about the size of her breasts. Can you imagine this ever happening in the real world? Okay this isn’t the real world it’s Murakami world but you have to wonder about an old male writer conjuring up this scene out of his imagination.

@@circleofleaves2676 or maybe he writes it that way, because people like that actually exist in various stages of life

@@circleofleaves2676 I totally agree but I didn’t see that as a teenager. Maybe I don’t regret reading this book after all, since it was my “wake up call”

I learned that long ago 😂 I read "House in the Cerulean Sea" because of the crazy high ratings and I just had the most "meh" time even before learning of the author's statements and understanding the super icky background.

I wonder about this too. I disliked the book for other reasons but I’m not mad that the author used knowledge of a real event as a springboard for a story that ended up being about something else.

I respect Emma and other white people who feel icky about it, but I kinda feel like this is just another case of white people getting offended on the behalf of poc 😅

@@aleenakhan6230 that's how I feel about it too. White liberals and performative virtue signalling is just a match made in heaven lol. Would love to see them put their money where there mouth is instead of trying to say the "right" set of words for a change.

Thank you for that comment! It's sad that one thing taken out of context is still after all those years completely misunderstood and that people are so easy to jump onto a cancel culture band wagon. I expected better from this chanel...

@@aleenakhan6230 Especially since the actual story warrants its own criticism. It’s about a white male government employee who works to enforce the status quo of oppression and only changes for the better when the status quo started affecting him and taking away what he wanted. It’s not like he goes back to undo the harm he’d previously done. But we’re supposed to be mad about loose historical interpretation?

Exactly! I don't see the evil everyone's talking about...

Yeah, it just seems like she’s trying to tell writers what they are and aren’t allowed to write and/or be inspired by, which seems really stifling to creativity.

The book is just bad. Full stop. I didn't know the entire story when I read and it still felt so icky.

​but "bad" is subjective..... most prople don't find it bad..... besides, her critic of it isn't because it's bad.....

i think its more so the odd response from klune himself, but reading it, it is a very big stretch to say stuff like appropriation and "social worker saving the day" and rewriting indigenous history. If we apply this thinking and perspective to every fantasy novel, then Mistborn would be completely bashed (slavery).

It was definitely socially inept of him to admit where he took his inspiration from. He clearly just read one wiki article and decided he liked this "idea". Better to keep that to himself unless he's gonna write something that's more than just a fluffy fantasy romance

@@oliverxhmll I don’t think it’s ‘socially inept’ to reveal your original inspiration. Then again, I’m actually socially inept myself, so what do I know. You humans play dümb social games that are impossible to entirely figure out. LOL. I don’t know the context of the quote, but I’m guessing it’s probably what’s he’s said when directly asked about his inspiration. If that’s the case and it was genuinely his inspiration, then what else is he supposed to say? Is he supposed to lie and make up something just to make you feel better? Because that’s silly IMO.

@@oliverxhmllYep he seemed to make a blunder here.

@@bluecannibaleyes I can see where you’re coming from that he was honest about where his idea came from and he shouldn’t have to lie. But it’s also very normal that it raises eyebrows when he takes a real part of history when children were taken from their family and basically tormented and even lost their lives in these institutions, and with it he declares that he wrote a story about monster kids (if i understand correctly) and some man finding his path in life or what. There’s nothing wrong with ideas being sparked out of real events, but the parallels just seem disrespectful to me and like there’s complete apathy towards the source material, as from what i understand Emma says none of the real issues of it are explored or referenced in the novel. I haven’t read it myself as it’s definitely not my type of book, but just wanted to say that I see where you are coming from but I also understand Emma’s criticism

This is such a bad faith read on what Emmie was saying. You can write whatever you want, nobody can stop you, TJ klune did and the book is wildly successful. People can critique whatever they want. Criticising a white man taking a narrative from a mass trauma and attempted genocide/assimilation of First Nations people and using it as a backdrop to for the main character’s self discovery is something worth being aware of. The trope of a person of colour existing in a story primarily to help the white protagonist realise important things and find themselves is not new but is problematic. The author’s proxy for the Indigenous people were literally monsters. The system he based the story off of is represented in a way that absolves the social workers and masters of the “schools” that held Indigenous children of their actions which actively harmed those communities. I hope you can understand why these are harmful. This is a very nuanced conversation and you are shutting it down with no real reason why except that maybe it makes you uncomfortable or you just think uncritically.

@@iris-vu8wk I’m not shutting down anything. Not sure what that even means. But If you were not aware of what she mentioned you wouldn’t have a problem with that book. If your starting point is extra-textual then you are not engaging in literary criticism but analyzing personal motives. This is the sort of thing English majors used to be taught not to do. I’m sure Emmie knows about New Criticism and the Intentional Fallacy. I’m not even saying this guy was right or wrong to use these events this way. That’s a personal judgement call. I’m saying it should have no bearing on whether the work is any good.

@@Tolstoy111 the author’s life, inspiration and politics can actually be a really important part of criticism and readings of text. Intentional fallacy occurs with “assumed intent”, it doesn’t apply here as we know that Klune was inspired by residential schools as he said it. Closed reading can be a great tool but it is not the only way to analyse a text. It is frequently important to look at the lives of writers as often it impacts novels, poetry, etc. Reading books like The Picture of Dorian Gray for example, knowing that Oscar Wilde is a gay man provides many more readings of the novel and adds further scope for analysis. It makes the aesthetic of the book make sense within the context of dandies, and his (unfortunate) opinions on Jewish people and people of colour come through in the book and we can understand why they got their and how they function within the novel. And honestly I don’t know what you mean, generalising that english majors are all taught to singularly look at a text and not pull context from elsewhere, that was not my experience in english university courses, nor is it now as an art writer.

I find it strange that this post has 24 thumbs-up currently. Conspiracy alert!

@@iris-vu8wk Intentional Fallacy is using authorial intent as a thought terminating argument for a given interpretation. A work doesn't necessarily correlate to that. Sometimes it can "mean" the opposite of what an author intended. The "meaning" of Hamlet comes from the text of Hamlet, not from what Shakespeare may or may not have intended. It doesn't matter what he intended. Regardless of what one knows about an author, if it cannot be supported with textual evidence then it's only important to biographers. My B.A. and M.A. is in English. If I turned in a paper making claims about a given work with no evidence from that work but only biographical data/authorial interviews from the author, the paper would get an F.

wdc abt g4 y ppl she's right

Hm I think there are some people in my younger generation that require the authors/artists they enjoy be morally perfect but that doesn't really some to be Emmie's approach with this video. Most of these books were stories that she genuinely didn't enjoy the content of, and if the authors shortcomings were mentioned (such as fabricating evidence in the name of pushing a lucrative conspiracy theory or having a very misogynist view of women) it was largely because their shortcomings make the writing actively worse and unenjoyable. This wasn't the case with each book mentioned, but a vast majority of them.

I can’t imagine having the luxury of only reading authors I morally and/or p01itically agree with. If I did that, I’d never read anything.

@@bluecannibaleyes Neither do I. But emmie even talked about in the video that she reads classics that has values and beliefs that are from that time period.. She's not selectively reading, you're still allowed to give criticism, and you're also allowed to like or dislike them.

Haha they do say never to meet your heroes.. Yet it's not a bad thing that these things come to light sometimes. One of the books in my tbr is Ender's Game and knowing the author started to loudly say hateful things about the things that he used to portray in his books so beautifully is pretty saddening

@@Bread_bread01 idk much about the author of Ender’s Game but from the few vague criticisms I’ve heard, it’s making me want to bump him up higher on my TBR. LOL