"If you don't have balls, I will reach through the screen and attach some, and punch you there" That is somehow the most inclusive and most petty thing I've ever heard 😂 *SUBSCRIBES* In all seriousness another great one.
I gravitate toward videos about bad books because I know I'm never going to read them. If a book is supposed to be good I'd rather just read it myself, avoid spoilers, and form my own opinions. Even when I'm struggling to understand well-written series like Dune or the Book of the New Sun, I tend to avoid listening to smarter people analyze them. It just feels like cheating.
After consuming a work, I like listening to reviews and deep dives of them afterward because I know I definitely did not catch everything on my first read through. For instance, the details of clan flags in the Song of Ice and Fire series play to certain themes! It makes repeat readings more interesting.
I feel the same way. I like to try and consume something in full on my own before interacting with heavy discourse. Even confusing things I like to give a chance to so I can attempt my own interpretation before seeing other's
one of my favorite great scenes in a bad book is probably from The Final Warning, the fourth book in the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson. A childhood favorite series of mine, really didn't hold up well much at all. However, the first actual chapter of the book is a funeral for a character who died in book 3- Ari, a villain turned ally and the main character's half brother. One of my problems with the books is an overwhelming amount of like, snark and sass? Like having the characters say things just to sound tough and cool, especially the main character, that it got old really fast. She doesn't actually talk at all during the funeral, even has some internal thoughts on how weird that is, and how it takes a lot for her to cry after everything she's been through. It showed an actual good amount of vulnerability from her as well as some of the other characters, plus it paid respect to a character who had largely been done dirty by the series. The rest of that book is kind of a trash fire, but that bit was good. great vid lol
Worm is basically 30 books spliced together back-to-back, so I'll cheat here and say Alec's interlude from Arc 10. What was otherwise a weird and subpar part of the story suddenly had me by the balls the moment his PoV chapter began, and we got the classic line of ' "Im letting you go", Regent lied.' Brilliant.
Since I haven't sought out any bad books, I'll say my favorite scene in a bad movie. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is the worst movie I've seen that isn't "so bad it's good". In short, this is mostly due to the terribly fast pace and character assassinations. However, the scene where the Alpha team is in the mansion and they have to fight zombies in the dark is golden cinematography. You can only see the zombies from the muzzle flash of the heroes' guns and the scene is genuinely pretty terrifying.
If you want my favorite scene in a bad book, it is the unwinding process from the book Unwind. The book is an absolute generic snoozefest, until about 75% through when there is a brilliant scene of body horror where someone is deconstructed and all their organs are harvested. Then the rest of the book is also a snoozefest.
I think of the scene in Two to Conquor where the main character is riding into this misty valley to reach an island protected by a goddess. He is on a quest to abduct the woman who was once betrothed to him. Yet as he rides, he sees the ghosts of all the men he has slain and the women he has abused and violated, until it becomes too much and he flees. It was a horrific scene, but beautifully described.
I cant stress enough just how plagiarised the last scene is from Zulu (1964). Like beat for beat, the imagery and the tactical scenario is identical. Definitely recomend watching. Its a favourite historical epic of mine. Had michael Caines first major role. Irs classic.
James needs more of those world building videos. I think unless the series is already famous (or infamous like Sarah J Mass or Divergent) these sort of 1 hr deep dives aren't interesting imo.
Ive never heard of On the Oceans of Eternity, but im floored at how shanelessly it seems to have copied the historical event of the battle of Rourks drift... THATS THE REAL NAME OF THE HISTORICAL EVENT!!! The events of that storu i believe were recounted in a novel and then excellently adapted to film in 1964's Zulu. The battle was between a small detatchment of British redcoats, 150 or so, 30 of whom were sick or injured holding a small chapel against an army of 4000 zulu warriors. The colonial army was more technologically advanced but the zulu were an extremely sophisticated, if technologically archaic fighting force, and they were fearless. All in all i believe 50 or so British were killed in the battle and 700 Zulu were eventually counted as KIA. I adore the film but its crazy how completely identical the "battle of o'raurks drift" is to the battle of rourks drift. Like i heard the name battle of orourks drift and thought it must be homage, but as the details kelt coming, down to the barbarians being somewhat armed with some advanced weapons and this too beimg directly lifted from Zulu i was just flabbergasted at the brazenness of the plagiarism. Yea its historical but the dramatisation of the assymetrical seige is so iconic that I simply cant accept that the Author of Oceans wasnt just solely inspired by the tense scene that they lifted it near verbatim.
Idk if anyone here has read Keeper of the Lost Cities (if you haven't, don't bother because it's garbage) but there was just ONE well-foreshadowed plot twist where the villains manipulated the MC's friend into creating a device that would inhibit her powers. It actually added some stakes and conflict between the characters (which was undone 5 chapters later but never mind that) and was the only part that actually had me invested
the third book in the arclight series isn't even listed with the first 2 on goodreads, the plot synopsis paints an actually interesting looming final battle but we all know how plot synopsis hold up
I didnt like Name of the Wind I found your channel by typing those very same words in the searcher, no kidding And the problem lies almost entirely on Kvothe. When one his teachers, tricks hin into jumping from a roof I laughed my ass off. Its my favourite scene in the entire book.
It's kinda complicated because I haven't read this series in years, and I think there's a framework for really good fantasy ruined by the author being a horrible person who injected his views into every little bit of the storytelling and worldbuilding, but the final battle scenes in the last book of the Belgariad series have stuck with me for years after reading them as kids. The way the actual ground battle with the siege at the city coincides directly with the fight with the god Torak (the only character name I can remember off the top of my head lmao) really stuck with me as a presentation for the culmination of the first series' events .
In the light novel series a certain magical index the 7th book is very painful to get through although the wooden submarines and the way they are utilized is good. The series has some of the lowest lows, and highest highs that i have read overall I recommend against it but some parts are great or funny. The golden retriever who fights god,s in a mech suit is up there.
Gilded Ones spoiler: The blood metal reveal before the boss fight in The Gilded Ones. I liked the build up for that one, the seeds were dropped at decent intervals and I figured it out not too long before the MC did. Otherwise the book was pretty meh, or maybe I just didn't care for the trauma prawn...
There's this YA Christian fantasy series I like read in highschool called Dragons in our Midst (there's like 2-3 sequel series last I remember). It's about the children of dragons turned into humans by Merlin and there's witches that survived the Biblical Flood and Jesus is involved somehow. Anyway, the series also has inter-dimensional travel and a machine that can turn humans into light to travel into magical gemstones. It's insane but the writer Bryan Davis also has an obvious passion for sci-fi, which made exploring these concepts super fun. The obvious downsides are that the plot mandates all the good guys be completely devoted to God, which makes the story painfully predictable. I know James threatened to punch my hypothetical balls, but the protagonists, Billy and Bonnie, are boring as shit and I was always more fascinated by what the side characters were doing, specifically one called Walter. Why does religious fundamentalism ruin actually good stories?
While I haven't read it myself, New Moon seems to be hot garbage outside of one part. Bella being in a stupor over Edward leaving was dumb, sure, but the use of blank pages to show time passing while she's basically comatose was really well done IMO.
The "Star Carrier" series has a scene where the human fleet runs into this massive megastructure and when they travel through it, they find they’re actually in the past and in another galaxy, and that the aliens they've been fighting are actually refugees fleeing the collapse of their civilization. There's actually a lot of other interesting high-concept stuff in it, but the series really is just bogged down from being this right-wing circlejerk about how banning religion (and by that the author means christianity) is bad along with some other stuff regarding a subplot of how europe is trying to conquer the world, etc. It is a fascinating look into someone spiraling deeper into their own propoganda. It's a shame, too, because the early books have a lot of interesting scenes regarding the alien points of view.
In the Heck series (basically Dante’s inferno for kids, and bad) there’s one scene where the kids discover if they hit this massive tuning fork disguised as a building and say God’s name backwards they can rewrite something about the universe. They do this and everything becomes ink on paper for a moment. They use this to escape their punishment in kid hell for a bit but they end up getting caught anyway and it’s kinda pointless but the description was cool. Don’t read Heck. My parents made me read it because it was “good Christian values” or some shit. Tbf there’s more rancid puns in there than “Christian values”
I know people hate on The Poppy War because the main conflict is just a Second Sino-Japanese War ripoff, but I fucking love the first book (I have not read the sequels yet)
