Tea-Ink-Pages

lover of books, video games, art, history and storytelling | appreciative of niche fiction │she/her ― ♡☽

[arahir]

i just can't convey the frustration and sorrow that it's been to grow up at first without the internet and then watching it bloom into this useful, fun, connecting force you sometimes spent time on, only for it to degrade into this constant oppressive waste of time and energy where people are constantly pumping out algorithmically designed content for max algorithmic appeal and even the most simple search generates either no results or an infinite abyss of ai generated slop none of which is usable or correct. we briefly had a library of alexandria and then fed it into a paper shredder so advertisers could sell a random mash of pulp back to us at a premium.

[longsightmyth]

"The problem is people don't read classics anymore"

No I think the problem is people don't read WIDELY. The ONLY ya and/or fantasy romance crowd is just as insufferable as the ONLY classics crowd or the ONLY litfic crowd or the ONLY nonfiction crowd and vice versa.

You gotta get some variety in there my guys

[longsightmyth]

Upon this post I have seen people assert that nobody needs to read 'books by dead white guys' to be widely read with the context that they believe only dead white guys wrote classics,

People saying that because classics are in fact written not only by dead white guys you can get by on only reading classics,

And the classic (hah), people are just always going to be insufferable.

All of these have missed the point and are examples of why people should in fact read widely.

[moniquill]

Read widely. Read beyond what you've been told are 'the classics'. Read works by authors from other times and places. Read works by authors who are different from yourself.

[ephemeral-gremlin]

dare i add: read a bad book once in a while too. flex your critique muscles a bit

[longsightmyth]

Actually yes this last point is an extremely valid addition

Not only does it help you learn and hash out your critique skills, you might be surprised

[longsightmyth]

I am actually saying that sometimes you should read something you 'can tell' you'll hate, both because learning to articulate why something doesn't work for you is a good exercise and because sometimes you will be surprised and have your horizons broadened either way.

[tea-ink-pages]

on the surface, i get this can be somewhat insulting to victoria and the red queen books which were published almost a decade before powerless (2015 vs. 2023) even ya book readers like myself who have read in the space for a long time have been vocal about powerless being nothing but the latest romantasy cliches with little substance. powerless reads like a shallow, carbon copy smoothie of 2010's ya fantasy tropes with an excessive amount of one-dimensional "banter" as an excuse for poor characterization and world building no question, however...victoria's book isn't the most unique either once you dig into the genre more. once i gave rq a bit of distance, its admittedly rather surface level too with cliches that were already in previous books and other ya fantasy since then have pulled them off much better imo / even when it comes to world or magics. however victoria happened to publish her novel at a time when those tropes weren't all too noticeable amid the flashy magic system and backdrop she had and she seems very successful when equating her contemporaries in the same genre so i dont really understand why readers are suddenly up in arms about the "originality" when powerless is esentially what red queen was back in 2015 with what other ya dystopia fantasy were doing... just with a different label. lowkey id say choose rq over powerless but at the end of the day there's other books too that are even better than these that should have that level of success.

[bloodraven55]

kinda love the ominous ass cinematography they're using for qifrey bro really looks lowkey evil as fuck sometimes

[mafuyuh]

Witch Hat Atelier | Opening

[alltoowsll]

GOD BLESS AMERICA. AND HE NAMED EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN COUNTRY

[osinthewhite]

"but physical media is worse quality and will break with time" I DON'T CARE! I WANT TO OWN THINGS I LIKE! I WANT SHELVES FULL OF DVDS, CDS, AND A LIBRARY!

[yume-fanfare]

i think it's really fun when a rly specific trope is super popular in one particular medium but in other ones it's just totally unheard of. it's the time knife. visual novel players are suuuuper used to death games but many others encountered them for the first time in squid games. the other day my mom showed me all excited the summary of a super original novel she found and it was about a girl who got reincarnated as the main character in her favorite fantasy book

[paperjoshi]

what the fuck is a time knife

[bramblepatch]

[strawberrylovely]

[tea-ink-pages]

i'm struggling to enjoy more recent (post 2023-) published fantasy books bc the writing styles these days feels way too modern, repetitive and stylistically bland...even books pre-booktok while having occasional mutual similarities among certain demographics or subgenres in their writing, they still managed to read as distinct and the delivery of the writing felt vastly "different"? i'm struggling to enjoy prose in fantasy books as of late particularly the last couple years bc it all feels like everything is being spelled out to me or explained in the most dullest way imaginable. while many authors have said publishing has been letting go of editors for a while it really shows in a lot of recent work and i hate to say this but authors are partly at fault. they are rushing to publish their books and it clearly shows in the writing, characters, plot momentum, messaging or themes, that don't feel as though theyre getting proper editing or development time and the writing on a line level is missing the mark. its not even a 'ya books' issue either, i'm seeing this across genres. maybe i haven't identified the recent fantasy books that do have stylistically great prose, but i feel as though in general, prose is vastly being overlooked these days??

[thegravityshark]

Gotta say it is really annoying to try n critique romantasy books nowadays bcuz a lot of those are made by people who label romantasy smut as "degenerate filth" or whatever when most of my issues revolve around

1. Plots that make no sense

2. Characters that suck

3. The smut isnt even that good

and 4. The fact that a non-zero amount of these books try to push a "our mc is a total #feminist girlboss!" And that just means shes a dick, uses knives & can quip. Meanwhile the romance portion continues to push the male love interest as extremely overprotective and paternal, who is constantly swooping in and solving all the MCs problems for her. Also shes (small, tiny and Still Very Feminine) and hes (tall, large, the most masc dude to ever masc)

But if you ever try to point out that these books try to label themselves as feminist while still covert/overtly sending rather non-feminist messaging about relationships and gender, you just get told "you hate it when women like things"

[thoodleoo]

if you ever feel like you’re too obsessed with something, just remember that, according to plutarch, alexander the great slept with his prized copy of the iliad under his pillow alongside a dagger, presumably so that he could murder anyone who tried to take his copy of the iliad away from him

[tea-ink-pages]

maybe i've been in the book community + publishing sphere for a long while now, but something that irks me about booktok (among other things), is how the community or certain creators will only to be willing to uplift that *one author of color / POC for a particular genre and no one else?? as a woc, i've found that so odd and off-putting which is why I don't really go there for recommendations so much anymore bc there's this exclusionary air in the books they recommend and the diversity is unsurprisingly sorely lacking. for example i'm glad legendborn (a black teen/YA fantasy) got a major boost on there but readers act as if that's the *only black ya fantasy they can talk about or celebrate which is very weird....like do they know other black ya authors are writing in fantasy too?

[miseria-fortes-viros]

do publishers realize that advertising books using fanfic tropes spoils the experience of reading an original story. stop telling me it’s enemies to lovers and there was only one bed and unrequited love hurt comfort golden retriever black cat timeloop major character death. why do i give a fuck if i don’t know any of the characters and now plus i already know the entire plot of the story. that’s what ao3 is supposed to be for

[miseria-fortes-viros]

with complex characters and a compelling summary

[classystaches]

what if we were a demon boy band and we all ran like goofy guys? haha jk...unless? 🤔

[sapphireicecream]

🎤

[solarsyrup]

Still blows my mind how quickly capitalism self-destructed streaming tv

Like netflix rejuvenated a dying market and made it way more afforadable and accessible, and then... everyone needed a slice of the pie and fucked the whole thing up

Incredible

[solarsyrup]

An actual genius: What if we made television convenient and inexpensive again?

Corporations: What if we milked this money cow until it fucking DIED

[tea-ink-pages]

thinking abt this post again...but in the context of how so many other streaming platforms have started since then and how its gotten...so much worse...starting this month hbo announced it was removing courage the cowardly dog from the app.

you get all these services and have to jump between three different kinds to watch your favorite movies and television shows but also never know when they'll get removed until you try to search it one day and come up empty. don't even get me started on how tweens/teens too don't have the programs we did that feel more catered to them

i hate how this current model can entirely scrub entire series and pivotal shows, not making it available anywhere else. we need to bring back physical media

[tinyleavesdream]

Gonna be making this into a sticker coming up here soon. On this blog we respect and protect the lindworm! 🌷