#i think this follows the trend of many of my fictional preferences being escapism-oriented

[transhualians]

the human mind is truly such a fascinating thing bc why do I find the fictional idea of being a tradwife for my f/o appealing but if you made me be a tradwife irl i would kill you and burn your body

[supified]

A long winded introduction

Who am I and why should you care?  To say that I’m a nobody is a pretty big understatement.  There are over seven billion people in the world and everyone is a perfect snowflake.  And when everyone is a snowflake no one is.  Clearly, I’m not important in the grand scheme of things and yet, you’re reading this.  That is the only thing I can be sure of is if someone is reading this than they’re reading this.  So why should you care?

 The first thing about this blog that I ought to make clear is what the point is.  This is a blog entirely built around reviewing and discussing the craft of writing and story books.  I am not an author, at least not when I wrote this, but I do read a lot of books and try to help other people filter through the endless mass of books to find the ones they will enjoy.  Think of it as a service I provide for the satisfaction of sharing my passion.  If you’re reading this blog then you should be interested in either my point of view on books or reading books yourself at the very least and maybe writing, although there are probably better blogs for that.  Probably better blogs for all of this.

 Now to the million-dollar question still unanswered, why should you care who I am. What books someone enjoys will depend on several factors and quality is only one.  The fact is a very high-quality book may yet still be unenjoyable to you specifically as determined by your taste.  I can go into what I think makes a book quality and for the sake of argument, let’s pretend I’m right.  Does that mean you will enjoy the book…? Not necessarily.  Taste matters.  Take any genre and there is going to be master works in those genres and people who won’t enjoy them.  I for one do not enjoy the romance genre at all, or the regency, so books like Jane Austin, who is unquestionably a master writer, wouldn’t particularly interest me. While my reviews are aimed to express my point of view while exposing the lens I view it through to help anyone reading them to know if they share my point of view and may enjoy the same sorts of things I do.  The fact remains my lens and point of view matters if you are reading my review.  It matters because without knowing what that lens is you won’t know if the view you are getting is distorted to your taste. It’s kind of like eyeglasses that way I guess.

 That isn’t to say a good reviewer who likes stuff you do not won’t be useful. I will express why I dislike something or like it and then if you’re already reading my review you might be able to say, huh, they didn’t like that but I like that in books so maybe this book is for me even.  I have a friend who loves romance for instance, and she doesn’t particularly mind if a book sub plots to include it.  She’ll enjoy stuff I won’t and I try to keep that sort of thing in mind when I critique a book.  So if I’m going to include that explanation, why then again should you care who I am? Well because if a book is Jane Austin, whom I recognize as good but not down my alley I simply won’t read it to begin with.  So that is why it matters who I am.

 Now that I’ve got that out of the way, who am I?  Well, I’m not actually going to tell you that.  Rather I’m going to tell you what I like and appreciate and look for in literature.  This is where you put your taste against mine.  First, I like female inclusion if not female protagonists.  Media is over whelmed with male leads and male oriented stories. Most fiction, games, movies, tv, ect. . will include this magic number of thirty percent or less female inclusion. Just count the characters and you’ll see it is this bizarre trend that for whatever reason goes across lines, even cultures.  It is like all content creators got together and agreed on this in advance.  Obviously, it isn’t -all- media, but it is very pervasive. So one thing about me is I try to find the stuff that doesn’t follow that.  For me to want to read something I will generally look for fifty percent or greater female inclusion (because to make up for all the times the opposite was true we need to head in the other direction).

 Second, I care a lot about stories telling the truth.  What is telling the truth?  In a nutshell, it means an action or event shouldn’t happen that doesn’t fit the world that the story already established or character motivations.  Dues ex Machina (hand of god) are great examples.  When the author forces an outcome and it just doesn’t fit this sort of thing bothers me and I will always attempt to call them out. Why this bothers me is because to put it simply it isn’t any fun to read about something with shifting rules.  You can’t speculate about the world if there are no criteria with which to speculate on and if the author demonstrates willingness to break rules they themselves set then there is a problem.  Examples might include having a character cliff hanging involve falling into deep water in full armor and somehow swimming to escape anyway.  If you don’t want your character to die, don’t put them in a situation they can’t escape, it cheapens the experience and the story.  

 Third I care a lot about guiding principal.  I realize story telling is an art and not a science really, but I think everything should be built on something.  If you are designing anything you should have a purpose in mind and stories are no different.  Sub plots are a great example of a violation of this, something tossed into the story that doesn’t belong or have anything to do with what the story is about.  The most common subplot is romance, many stories will include this for the sake of a quick fix for the reader, like taking a drug. Instant gratification may sell, but it rarely makes for quality.  I find sub plots to be distractions and often detracting from a story.  Since this is the third thing on my list I’ll also mention these are in order of importance to me.  Generally, I’m more willing to forgive something farther down on the list than earlier.  Rules are made to be broken, right?  Just make sure if you’re breaking them you know what you’re doing because if you just think rules don’t apply to you than you’re probably just a bad writer.

 Lastly, I prefer there to be modern elements to the story, like LGBT awareness. This isn’t to say everyone in every world has to be gay or what have you.  No, this is more a comment on the author themselves.  If the author is homophobic I probably won’t read their stuff. If their work simply doesn’t touch the subject, okay, but I would rather that in some ways it is at least acknowledged. Once again, this doesn’t have to be by making a character non-het norm, tokenization can be worse than exclusion, but for instance same sex characters should be able to have meaningful friendships with each other.  For me the LGBT issue goes beyond simple sexual preference but it goes into gender identity and comfort with members of the gender which someone is not attracted to. A great example of being anti-lgbt in my view is if a character only truly interacts with potential partners and ignores everyone else and treats same sex characters purely as romantic rivals. In those hyper het-norm settings I find my interest quickly wanes.

 So now in a nutshell you know what kind of books I’ll be considering.  The last thing to touch on is genre.  The only one I don’t particularly like is romance. Why don’t I like the romance genre? Mostly because I feel it focuses a little too heavily on one aspect of human nature.  Stories usually exclude description of the main character when they shower.  Most people shower every day, see themselves naked every day.. ect.  These things are not parts of stories, why?  Well one it doesn’t usually have anything to do with the guiding principal, but two it’s just gratuitous.  I feel many or maybe most romance novels to be gratuitous. There is probably lots of good ones in the genre, but I’m not prepared to dig through the others.  It is unlikely I will review many, if any, romance novels.

 Now that you have a feel for me, you can keep reading my blog, or you know, not.  Also, my reviews are available on Amazon.  I try to review everything I read, though the stuff that is already reviewed to death I may just skip.  Happy reading!