#Anti fourth wing

[wingsdippedingold]

RY calling Xaden “not white” is really just reinforcing the idea that a lot of authors in the romantasy space view POC as something to fetishize.

White is the “default” and anything else is exotic. They love to use the “primal” brown man caricature and getting the brownie points for “diversity” while putting no real effort in. The ambiguous tan man is almost always the love interest to a white women.

They don’t actually value their fictional poc on the same value as their white ones, and it’s very apparent when you read about non LI poc.

We see this happen time and time again, and no one cares because the majority of the fanbase fetishize POC they’re attracted to in the same way 🤷‍♀️

[astridhoff03]

This IS so true. I read the first two Fourth Wings and the romance was so toxic and I always hoped the main love interest would die, because he and the protagonist are so horrible together. She always talks about how hot he is and how he’s the most important person in her life, it seems like she doesn’t care about anyone else other than him. Girl, you have a mother, a sister and friends, if you would care about them more, I would maybe care about you more. Also I don’t understand why people compare her to Hiccup, she’s nothing like him. Hiccup is very well written and very releatable, and has his Quirks and flaws aswell as his strengths like his kindness. Violet is just a bland character with daggers. And the main love interest is Characterwise as flat as a flounder.

If you want a good dragon rider romance, DO NOT read Forth Wing watch the How to Train your Dragon series instead.

[youngwitchchild]

I wish the book community would care more about the love interest being well written and having a character arc on its own without being codependent on the FL. I'm sorry, but if he is not his own character, I will not care about the romance.

[1800naveen]

Authors who are opps.

Sarah J. Maas (You already know I had to put her as number one. Her ass ain't seeing the pearly gates.)

Collen Hoover (Never getting over "We laughed at our son's big balls")

H.D. Carlton (Creating Zade Meadows should be a crime. Trust, she ain't seeing the pearly gates either.)

Penelope Douglas (I heard Damon does SA but I don't know shit about this series. Still don't trust it).

Rebecca Yarros (I just hate fourth wing, can someone let me know what's the controversy around her? One of them is her stance when it comes to Palestine and I think another one is her being pro military. Correct me I got something wrong!)

Zade Meadows 🤝🏾 Rhysand: assaulting their girls and have their fans defend said action🥰

[thebellekeys]

My 2024 bookish predictions:

The Dragon Renaissance - With more Fourth Wing sequels in the works and season 2 of HOTD coming out in the summer, I think there's a good chance dragons and dragon-shifters could become the next big thing. Maybe they'll replace the fae as the "big" fictional creature?

The Percy Jackson Renaissance - It will be in full swing, accompanied by a noticeable Greek Mythology Renaissance among locals on Twitter whose knowledge of Greek Mythology is limited to... Percy Jackson. The Hunger Games renaissance will see its last days in January/February or so.

(Poorly written) military fantasy will become popular. Again, I think this will be an unwanted side effect of Fourth Wing's popularity. But I think the Gaza Genocide and institutions endorsing Zionism will play into this as well. I thinks we're about to see a lot of military propaganda in the book world and military-themed books trending.

Dark academia will enter into the beginning stages of its flop era. I say this as someone whose blog is largely dedicated to dark academia, but with Kuang not publishing anything in 2024, with Olivie Blake's Atlas trilogy coming to an end, and ST Gibson's An Education In Malice being... not that good, I can see people moving away from dark academia by the end of the year.

Colleen Hoover will release something. I don't particularly care for this, but I can easily see it happening. She didn't release anything this year so it makes sense she may have a 2024 release (and maybe one designed to improve her reputation).

The ACOTAR series adaptation will get chopped (officially, that is).

People will become less open about enjoying smut and dark romance with all the Twitter radfem discourse and backlash against poor quality romance ruling publishing. There will also be more "discreet" book covers. There will be a lot of anti-erotica discourse.

The Nobel Prize winner will be a POC.

Rivals-to-Lovers will replace Enemies-to-Lovers as the top trope. Less hate and more competition. More academic rivals, magic rivals, popularity rivals, etc. I can see people vibing with this in 2024 instead of the "I hate you but I wanna make out with you" vibes of full-on Enemies-to-Lovers.

JK Rowling will accidentally get herself arrested and/or indicted and she'll be all White Woman about it.

George RR Martin will announce that he "intends" to publish The Winds of Winter before the end of 2025.

A former Disney/Nickelodeon/child star/boyband member will write a memoir describing their trauma and they'll thank Jeannette McCurdy for giving them the courage to do it. The revelations will be insane and unprecedented.

[florals-cardigan]

Temeraire walked so Fourth Wing can tripped and fall

[uwuyongyapper]

alright wrap it up now that's enough

[vampireprose]

I just stopped reading fourth wing after around 50 pages...

What the hell is this rubbish of a book? The writing is worse than in many wattpad stories I have read and don't even get me started on all these clichés that appear in the first few chapters...

I mean Violet's dad is dead and her mother doesn't love her or at least doesn't show it? She has a dead brother?

And then Xaden, this guy that looks like every other book boyfriend existing on this earth that is being a total asswhole. Oh his father was killed by Violet's mum and they are enemies now? Wow, very creative, Rebecca! (Not)

And than this whole Dain situation? Of course Violet is in love with him at first untill someone dark and heroic such as Xaden arrives and is now the hero that is the standard for men.

Congrats, Rebecca! Nicely copied from Sarah, the queen of fantasy (spoiler alert: she's not!!!)

Aahhh! I could rage about this piece of shit forever!

[nikalaeva]

Time to take a break from the damn fairies and talk about damn dragons

"The Fourth Wing" was quite a big hit, but there are almost no critical posts (at least on Tumblr). Maybe because the series is new. But in my country there was a loud promotion for this book - and my disappointment was the same.

First - where is the plot? There's a preamble that throws you into this brave new world instead of immersing and hits you in the face with infodumps. Then 2/3 of the book is a vacuum where the characters walk, talk and kill each other. And the culmination is a big fight with a cliffhanger at the end that's so lazy I felt like a squeezed lemon.

I don't understand the tendency to write 700-1000 page books if the story takes place on 200-300 pages. Anton Chekhov ("Brevity is the sister of talent"), go fuck yourself 😮‍💨

Second - where is the characters? There are only two in this book - Violet and Xaden. The rest are so empty and faceless that fans apparently invented a personality for them instead of the author and made it canon by their collective unconscious. Characters play a role they are meant to play for the author, not for the story. Does FMC need a friend, an enemy, a rival for her love interest? Here's Rhiannon, Jack, Dain, their role is to be a friend, an enemy, a rival. They do not exist as individuals outside of their roles.

Third - what's about dragons? Shit. The author didn't try even a little bit, but she wrote a thousand times about Violet's heat to Xaden. Dragons are different by their colors and tails. Making tails into weapons is a good idea, it makes sense. But color, which defines... character? Rebecca Yarros, how the hell does pigment relate to personality?

When you write about creatures that are closer to animals than to humans, their appearance should make sense for the HABITAT, not for your damn aesthetics.

And Fourth - you know, romance. I've been betrayed on all fronts. This ISN'T ENEMIES to lovers. This ISN'T slow BURN. This isn't love at all. I have no idea where the fans dug it up after wading through Violet's horny thoughts. Here's how it was for me:

Violet: "Xaden hates me, he'll kill me, he could kill me at any moment. Gosh, he's so hot, I wanna fuck him"

Xaden: "I loved you at first sight. I never tried to kill you, never even thought about it. Gosh, you are so hot, I wanna fuck you"

You've just read a summary of the romance in this book. Literally.

I tried reading "Iron Flame" three times. DNF at 15, 22 and 35%. I learned half of it from YouTube reviews. The book tortures the characters, humiliating the reader's common sense. I wonder what to do - go to the end, because you can't criticize without studying the material, or remember about self-respect.

[astrababyy]

200 pages into fourth wing and it’s giving walmart acotar, which is saying a lot because acotar itself isn’t even that good.

[wingsdippedingold]

Nth reason why I hate the “booktok” side of booktok

It turns the people who call anyone who criticizes their books as literary snobs into the aforementioned literary snobs.

The hive mind has given people the sense that they’re superior because they managed to properly understand (they don’t actually, the just don’t care, as they say “we’ll see everything explained later) something others don’t?

The release of Onyx Storm has sparked a serious discussion amongst booktok, but I’ll talk about that on another post. I hate it here

[stargirlbryce]

The way the fourth wing fandom is so used to seeing and creating "AI art" that they genuinely forget how a real attractive person looks like is unsettling.

[1800naveen]

That's wild.

I knew Daenerys would always be famous but bro...

[twogolddoubloons89]

I haven’t read Fourth Wing but most of the ‘art’ I see of it is all AI generated which is really sad. Regardless of my (negative, honestly) thoughts on the book itself one of the best parts of fandom is real human-made fanart. Even if you wanted to ignore the big issues of AI (a whole separate post) the ‘art’ itself is so lifeless.

[sluttypatrickstar]

someone in the bad books chat mistakenly disparaged the name catriona as being “catrina with an extra vowel” and i was like no no catriona is a real name that’s a real scottish name. and suddenly it occurred to me, why is catriona the first scottish name i’ve heard of from fourth wing? you’re using scottish gaelic and your characters are called fucking – violet, xaden, jory, sAWYER??? WHAT IS THIS SETTING??? MINIMAL WORLDBUILDING MORE LIKE NONW WHAT DO ANY OF THESE NAMES HAVE IN COMMON WITH THE SETTING

guess yarros just decided that having an edgy bad boy called angus or ruairidh just wasn’t edgy enough

[geekwiththeglasses]

Would love to hear you rant about Fourth Wing. That book makes me so mad lmao

I literally dashed to my desktop when I saw this because this deserves a desktop response (out of character for a millenial/genz cusper I actually type much faster with a keyboard).

Now to note, I am only 50% done with the book so far so this is limited to that (though I have watched spoiler reviews so I feel justified in my thoughts because I know it's not getting better).

By the way, I learned that this entire series was a publisher request, not like a passion project of Yarros and while I ain't judging (I would do it in a heartbeat if it meant I could pay rent for the next year), to me, you can kinda feel it, like there's a distinct lack of creative verve. You can especially feel it in how shallow everything (and everyone) feels.

A read more because this became obnoxiously long (it's almost 2000 words) and I respect people's dashboards.

Except for this article about toxic perseverance which I think everyone should have to read if they've read Fourth Wing.

There are, first of all, some major issues with this book. The biggest one is, of course, the toxic perseverance, which is covered quite well in the article, but if you're not going to read it, to pull a quote from it:

Creating a narrative in which a character with a disability overcomes all of their pain and other symptoms through force of will alone sets unrealistic expectations—unrealistic expectations which are, as I mentioned previously, a very real issue for very real disabled people in our very real world.  I believe we should have seen some impact of that lifestyle if the author was trying to engage with this intentionally. Because fiction is not created in a vacuum and this narrative goes unproblematised in-text, it’s unclear whether Yarros actively endorses this mindset, or is accidentally endorsing it, neither of which is good.

Just to elaborate a little on something I didn't see in the article, but this book hates the idea of accommodations. Like it's a horrible, horrible thing and how dare you ever suggest Violet might need something as disgusting as a saddle to stay on the equivalent of an airplane. It's not like accommodations are something that actually can end up helping non-disabled people as well. There wasn't potential for a scene where she actually acknowledged she needed help and suddenly everyone's like "hey, that's actually really smart, we should totally do this too, this makes life much easier/safer and will improve everyone's quality of life". Or even just a scene where it only helps her but damn it helps her a lot because it takes in to account her needs and specific body. Because that would require acknowledging that Violet has limitations and not allow her to power through the pain. And also get thrown from her dragon repeatedly, which definitely doesn't fuck up her joints.

Rhiannon gets so shafted. She gets the double whammy of two stereotypes: the black best friend and the promiscuous bisexual. She's seen with multiple partners, none of which seem like long-term or serious partners. And while some bisexual people have more sex with more people than others, if you're going to do that, include more than one bisexual person in your story. She has very little to do with the story unless she is there for the white, straight main character. We've gotten her helping Violet, but so far there's zero dedicated scenes of that tutoring help that was offered in the beginning and as far as I know we never get it (I may be wrong). I hear we get her family later, but that they're also glossed over for More Important Things. It doesn't feel like Rhiannon (or honestly any other character) exists except for when they're around Violet. They all kinda blend together, which at the 50% mark is fucking unacceptable. What is special about them, distinguishes them from the others other than Liam (is it Liam? whoever her bodyguard is) who whittles? There is so little to distinguish any background characters except for Dain. Even Xaden feels lackluster and a bit hazy around the edges, like he never finished rendering.

Let's not forget that Yarros is 100% a military wife and a US military bootlicker and from what I've heard she's had some unsavory and unsupportable opinions on Palestine. We do not like.

She also took Gaelic names and just decided the pronunciation doesn't matter??? Insulting.

Onto the less serious issues:

Firstly, as to my previous complaint, the entirety of Dain's storyline is the most impressive speedrun in character assassination I have ever seen. I described it to a friend as Yarros lovingly caressing a 2x4 before repeatedly beating you over the head with it. He gets like... a scene to be besties and then immediately he must be the worst thing to ever exist, specifically to prop up Xaden. Dain is the asshole holding her back, unlike Xaden who pushes her to be her best (entirely ignoring that her body literally has physical limitations and accommodations are not a dirty word)! He's such a rule follower, but Xaden understands when to bend or break them (pay no attention to him breaking all the rules to try to get her into the scribe's quadrant)! He doesn't believe her immediately when she accuses someone of murder, but Xaden absolutely believes her with no proof (let's forget that Amber is a good friend of Dain and that it would honestly be natural to want to believe that your friend isn't capable of cold-blooded murder with zero proof especially since that would lead to her execution which Violet somehow forgot would be a consequence of her accusation). Dain is overprotective and condescending to Violet (I mean he wasn't the one to force her to have a bodyguard, but he just doesn't believe in her). I bet he doesn't even wash his ass. Xaden definitely washes his ass.

Murder college makes zero sense, especially since she definitely based the military off the US (which makes sense since it's the one she has the most exposure to). Most militaries that I am aware of have rather high requirements for physical fitness, especially an academy for officers (which, in Yarros' face, I actually have experience with, as my father went to the Naval Academy so I know for a fact they're strict as hell with requirements). The US military won't even let you be slightly overweight, even if you can fulfill the physical requirements. It was hard to find any info on whether EDS would out and out disqualify you, but the fact that it wasn't even brought up as a barrier for entry that she had to overcome does not make sense to me.

Ah, I hear someone hypothetically argue, but the college is supposed to (theoretically) weed out the weak so they'll let anyone in who wants to join! Ok, then why is Violet the only physically disabled person in the entire college? I have been to rodeos with bull riders who were amputees, but there ain't one person missing an arm or a leg in that college. The only other disabled person we get so far is a scribe, but you're telling me not one deaf person wants to be a rider? Why is Violet the only one that gets to be "exceptional"?

Back to the murder part of murder college, the fact that this is a murder college gets technically lampshaded, but never really justified in why people keep coming. Like it's not some greater commentary on the lengths people will go for power or greatness or the insidious nature of military propaganda. It just felt like we needed to up the stakes that our protagonist was in danger at every turn, but honestly I never feel like the stakes are that high, because, well, she keeps emphasizing how much danger her life is in, how screwed and dead she is. And if her life is always in danger, it's never in danger.

Speaking of murder, the story doesn't challenge the idea that "weed out the weak through murder" doesn't actually work but just kills people and probably gives the survivors like the worst anxiety (because if everything can kill you your mental health will probably deteriorate). It's like that meme:

Basgiath War College: I have made the perfect rider Me: you fucked up a perfectly good person is what you did. Look at him. He's got anxiety.

Why is Violet so enlightened and above having any prejudice? If anything she should have way more animosity towards the rebel kids than she does. It's literally stated in text that she was not immune to the propaganda and misinformation she's read, but you want me to believe that between (what she believes is) losing a brother to the rebellion and a mother who was kinda involved, not to mention growing up in a group that would be full of anti-rebel propaganda she somehow didn't end up believing anything beyond "yeah some of them will definitely want you dead" which is true??? Instead she's fine with them and will definitely sit with rebel kids because unlike people who grew up with probably less or about the same propaganda than her, she knows not to judge people for the sins of their parents. Those other kids are just so much more prejudiced than she is, isn't she wonderful and has zero biases to unlearn. Oh, you may say, but she thought Xaden was going to kill her! He literally does confirm that the only reason initially he doesn't kill her is to keep a hold of his humanity which does actually confirm that he wants her dead! So the narrative even confirms that this bias was, in fact, the correct opinion to have.

I do not understand why Violet and Xaden are drawn to each other beyond Xaden hot. I am asexual and somewhere on the aromantic spectrum so perhaps it is just not in my nature to understand the ways of the heterosexuals, but I don't get it. Why does she like him? The only reason given is he's hot. Maybe a reason is given later down the line but this is a romantasy. You live and die by building up that damn romance and I am not convinced! I haven't even been given like a "oh I see him with his dragon and it's heart meltingly cute how he interacts with her". Is this why Dain had to be assassinated (we are holding his burial next week by the way, there will be funeral potatoes)? So that Xaden had something to be compared to because he has all the substance of one of those inflatable dancing men?

(Dance, Xaden, dance.)

Yarros cannot do exposition, it's so jarring. She tells us so much, shows little, and bores me the entire time. You seriously decide to make exposition a character quirk for when she needs to calm down? Seriously???? The parapet scene was hard to listen to because you were jerked around like a rag doll between quick action and exposition. Who thought that was a good idea? Exposition is always a difficult thing to include and make it work and sound natural, but this is not how you do it.

A minor complaint, but once you learn Yarros is Mormon you cannot unsee the fingerprints of Mormonism throughout this book. People do not cuss like people, they cuss like you put fuck into a fresh AI and asked it to try it out. I cuss like a sailor and I was wondering why it felt so jarring until I realized that it's not how people talk. I mean Holy. Fucking. Hot. I'm well the fuck aware. You tried ma'am, you tried. Here's a gold star. Also, I'm 99% sure there is zero alcohol. You seriously want me to believe that none of these kids are sneaking in alcohol? That no one is using booze to cope with being in a murder college? As if, we all know these kids are making midnight dragon runs to the liquor store.

Also, the fact that I had to hear an audiobook narrator try to make this dialogue and prose sound like something that would actually come out of a human mouth was truly something to behold. The fact that "for the win" was not left in the 2010s where it belonged is an outrage. If I had a better memory I would put in more quotes cause there have been other doozies.

But really, the greatest crime this book commits, is that it has the audacity to be boring. You give me dragons and you have the sheer, unmitigated gall to bore me. I will accept a lot from a book. I will accept plot holes. I will ignore shallow world building. I will tolerate character assassinations. Do all that if you must, but at the very least make it interesting. This book is not interesting. I listen to a few chapters at a time and I am not having a good time. I only continue out of sheer stubbornness and feeling an obligation that for once I should actually read a book that I have seen negative reviews about to see if perhaps it is not so bad.

I just happened to pick a book where it is, in fact, that bad.