What's your hot takes about books, etc.?

Elitism when it comes to the genre of books, author, and more…is terrible.

Person A: You like reading? What’s your favorite genre?

Person B: I enjoy a good-hearted romance with some typical cliches.

Person A: Oh…I see. Well, I enjoy fantasy and horror.

Person B: Yeah, I can’t get into genres like that. I much more prefer pure romance.

Person A: Ah.

Person B: Yeah…ah.

Person A and B thinking: What a weirdo?!

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Literally. :sob: It is extrememly frustrating. Its like i have to become a detecitve to even find more info on why they missed the release date and it ahould be clear. They should have posted about it. I get if you have to push the book back, but also TELL US? Dont just leave us hanging in the dark. Its not fair to readers.

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Not so much book related, but more so character related.

I used to love shipping characters together, but my times have changed so much. I’ve grown to utterly HATE shipping, shipping wars, and the entirety of the shipping fandom.

I always keep my voice silent because shippers get tired of hearing the voice of people like me, when we are clearly just stating our feelings. The same way they express their feelings, we should be able to as well.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some old ships that I will stand by forever and love them wholeheartedly. I just don’t go out of my way to ship EVERY single fictional character that comes my way when the romance isn’t there and never will be.

Even if it was, I ain’t playing cupid with fictional people. I don’t even do that for my stories. I just want to enjoy the characters, story, and with or without the bit of romance.

Sorry if it feels like a bit of a rant.
I just hate shipping these days.

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I really hate it when most of fandom discussion is centered around shipping over theory, story analysis, etc, because most fandoms with a heavy emphasis on shipping turn very toxic very fast. Just look at the differences between Voltron Legendary Defender and the entire rest of the super robot fandom. People don’t have ship wars over Gurren Lagan, you know?

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It’s interesting you say that. I can’t even remember if Gurren Lagan had any shipping wars or shipping discussions that became toxic as fuck.

Ah, man, I will never forget how bad the shipping wars gotten for Bleach and Naruto/Naruto Shippuden. It did not matter if it were Yaoi or Yuri ships or plain hetero ships along with some cringey as hell ships.

We can not escape the horrible shipping fandoms no matter what. There is either chemistry or not, but either way the ships will not cease.

Humans are combination of crazy, weird, and irksome.

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I can think of something worse, though – a canon relationship that has no chemistry, but the animators put these two characters “together” because they’re trying to appeal to a teenage male audience who think girls should have nothing else on their minds except boys, and boys should be cold, uncaring and indifferent to them. (-᷅_-᷄๑)

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Name two characters who are in a ship like that?

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There is a maturity barrier to some of it.

Don’t get me wrong, the intuition to put people together is very strong.

But I’d have more respect for it if people shipped “besties”, “talented coworkers”, “potential family” and not just romance. What the current situation screams is " people can’t have no relationship but a sexual one". Not everything has to be a romance.

Plus there is this vicarious relationship issue. It’s the same thing with a strong obsessed fandom (Stan). I have absolutely NO interest in investing too much of myself in someone who can’t invest in me.

It all screams " I will not work with what I have". It screams “I’m lonely”. It screams " I’m coping". And frankly, it’s the same mentality as these creepy male fans that cheer on female performer’s 18th birthday.

No, I’m not saying everyone is a creep. I’m saying it’s got some very similar mechanics: dreaming about the unobtainable instead of investing in your real life.

And honestly if I’m going to break it down that simply, that’s why I write, that’s why I read. Escapism.

I guess the best way to put it is: there should be some personal barriers about how deep you’re willing to immerse yourself into leaving your real life. And in all honesty, most shippers aren’t that deeply stuck.

But I bet it’s hard to not feel “personally attacked” when people strip everything from it.

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Can’t speak for self published here, but as an author with a small press publisher… sometimes it’s not the author’s fault.
My publisher told me when I signed up last year and got my deal, they’d release in July, and I could tell people about the month it would be out. So I did.
Then I heard nothing. No word, no cover, no editor.
August rolls around and Ive emailed then a thousand times.
I’m then moved to September, and can tell people. I didnt that time.
Then September happens and Ive done my edits, but no cover.
They cancel my book.
Then they realise they’ve paid the editor so they give me one more release date. This time they also provide a cover, so I can tell people September the whatever it was.
I tell people.
Then they delay it because of a technical glitch.
Then it finally comes out 3 days later than it should’ve.

The thing is, while it annoys readers, it can annoy authors too and sometimes it’s out of their hands. It’s not all sunshine and roses - technical glitches, Amazon glitches, publishers, editors, cover makers… whatever.
Sometimes the best thing to do is say nothing because there is no reason.

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Heero Yuy and Relena Peacecraft
Treize Kushrenada and Lady Une
Zechs Marquise and Lt. Noin

all from Gundam Wing and Frozen Teardrop

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Okay. I honestly had no idea.

What do you think should have happened between those guys instead?

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Realistic human relations would’ve been nice. Either the male characters should show an interest in the female characters, or the female characters should stop worshipping the male characters. In real life, if you treated a girl either like garbage or like she was invisible, it wouldn’t be normal for that girl to keep following you around hoping to win your affection, would it? I’d simply like normal human interaction in these shows instead of reinforcing the message that boys are superior to girls. ¯\_(ﭢ)_/¯

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That makes sense.

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That i can understand. Unfortunately, none of the books getting pushed back are from small press publishers. They’re big house name publishers, and self published authors. Completely self-published.

In fact ill drop the names here.

The Ruined, book #4 in the The Beautiful Quartet
Bone Island, book #2 in Tales of Weeping Hollow

The Ruined came out 2 days ago. Its not up for sale however. And theres NO word from author or publisher which is absolutely not cool.

Bone Island was set to release September 13th last year. But she pushed it back to mid November, saying “no later than November”. November roles around. December rolls around. No word. Its February and still no word or release date.

And its becoming a lot more aparent, especially with 100% self published authors. And its frustrating.

I am friends with an author who was meant to be oublished through a small indie publisher, but then things didnt go right and thus, she dropped them and completely self published on her own. I dont need a reason, and most readers dont. We just dont want to be promised a date, then ghosted as if the book is forgotten. And the books above have no excuse as to why nobody has simply said “the date has been postponed, more details later.”

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The comedy value of a booktoker reading, reacting, and reviewing Fukumoto Nobuyuki’s work, especially if they love dark mafia romance but hate Goodfellas, is very high.

You might not want to admit it, but some of these tik tikers’ reactions would be gold.

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Trigger warnings in books should and are getting more common. It’s not chapter by chapter but a page at the beginning of the book is starting to become a thing. It’s in Yolk, Iron Widow, and maybe there are more that I don’t know but it’s extremely helpful for readers to know what is and isn’t for them. It’s not spoilery and it serves the same amount of information as the blurb.

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My hot take is that e-book piracy ultimately does more good than harm.

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I disagree because nothing is more harmful than reading Empress Theresa to your braincells even if it is free

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The best thing about trigger warnings is that it actually attracts more people because they know exactly what they’ll be getting.

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lol, at least it tells you how to NOT write a book XD

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