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Hello, I'm doing a research paper on Octavia Butler's Bloodchild and I came across your video, I would love to use this video-essay as one of my sources if that's okay with you. Do you think I can get your last name so I can make the proper citation on my paper?

THANK YOU for being real and vulnerable! 🙂

This story broke me 10 years ago

Octavia Butler: It is basically a love story. There are many different kinds of love in it: family love, physical love . . . The alien needs the boy for procreation, and she makes it easier on him by showing him affection and earning his in return. After all, she is going to have her children with him. Stephen Potts: In fact, she will impregnate him. OB: Right. But so many critics have read this as a story about slavery, probably just because I am black. SP: I was going to ask you later about the extent to which your work addresses slavery. OB: The only places I am writing about slavery is where I actually say so.

Love a good dose of creative existentialism 😊But seriously, this gave me so much to chew on along with all the thoughtful comments in the comments section 🤌 p.s. love the Ring Shout sweater 💯

Okay, so I'm like 3 years late to this video but oh WOW was this fascinating!! I definitely struggle sometimes to balance the part of me that's fascinated by analytics/statistics and how and why things do well online, and my own self esteem as a creative person / small time booktuber 😅 On the one hand analytics can serve as inspiration for videos I'd possibly like to make in the future, but sometimes I get into the mental rut of being hard on myself for not having purely upwards trending engagement and followers 🤷 It can be a weird little dance/game to play with myself. Usually I end up working on reframing my mindset to just focus on the joy of making - because making booktube videos is something I truely enjoy - and at least for a bit, ignore and tune out the numbers. I'm kind of in one of those reframing junctures at the moment, and watching this video definitely helped me put some things in perspective! It helped me remember that I'd much rather stay true to what I like to make, rather than purely focusing on what kinds of videos will emass a huge amount of growth. Thanks for honing your anxious energy into this video, it's helped me redirect some of creative anxieties ☺😂

I was going to buy that book but after Ijeoma Oluo blocked me from her page because of a comment where I described what happened to me, I obviously am not going to. So sad.

I’m 25 and as soon as I found out people in my life are having kids I fell in love with children’s illustrated books all over again. I’ve bought 3 babies copies of “Our Beautiful Colors” a little golden book by Nikki Shannon Smith. If I buy nothing else that’s the one. It’s beautiful. I found your video because I’m trying to find books by Robert D. San Souci. Thank you for loving kids’ books! I need videos like these, for my own soul, and also the kids… 😅

Hey! I love your videos, and I have a booktube channel too. I think for me, making book reviews is mostly about entertainment. Books are entertaining, and media criticism is entertaining. That's my goal for most of my videos, just to engage the watcher. There's also a part of me that hopes that through my reviews they will find books that they love and read more

I started a channel of my own recently, and while my focus there is writing and reading, the specific focus is: Expose people to useful things. Find and discuss resources. Many of them are nonfiction books, some of them are fiction, some of them might not even be books at all. But the emphasis is on surfacing and sharing resources I find useful, especially if they are not the kind of thing people think of as resources. I also knew long before I ever shot a single frame of video that if I did a channel, I wanted it to be something as distinct as possible from much of what I'd already been exposed to. Most of the discussion in this space is, "I read this book, here's what I think" or "You should read this book few people know about," or "This book stinks." I had to ask myself, what could I do what was separate from that, but still a draw? It wasn't easy, but it seems to be paying off -- not just because I'm getting decent traffic for a fledgling channel, but the work itself feels fulfilling. Finding my own "why" really made a difference. (Something I learned when writing my own books generally.)

I think everything you've named is a part of the benefit of sharing something you've created for an audience, and for me at least, the degree to which external feedback vs putting my thoughts in order vs revisiting my thoughts to edit vs trying to influence somebody else to agree with me is the more important piece depends on which ones I'm getting/not getting from other places in my life. I only really post in relatively small internet communities, and there's often a pretty big delay between the initial idea, the writing, the editing, and the sharing. Sometimes being able to split those out brings clarity (like maybe what you're feeling with tiktok right now?)--there are moments when I just need to write an idea down and moments when I really want to be able to finish something or where an old idea feels relevant again, and since they're separate steps I can figure out what my motivation is in the moment a bit better. I don't really feel compelled to post things I make unless I'm feeling particularly stuck or lonely (sometimes it's just nice to have someone tell me what I'm saying is good). But I also do get very little feedback compared to what I would posting on real social media. I think the scale and speed of it all takes out the time for reflection. I guess that's all part of the cycle? Appreciate the thoughtful vid.

We really should read aloud more to family and friends.

This is a very very interesting topic and it’s something I often think about.. why? Like seriously why? I learned that I started with doing it for me and I’ve been blessed to do it for so long but in these days community isn’t the same. People didn’t want something for something before but now I see the why and I’m more focused on providing some type of value to everyone not just my audience. I’m not in the book community at all but this really hit home with me. Thank you for making this. Thanks TH-cam for popping it up. ❤️ I wish you the best and much success with your journey.

Such an important question. I think for me it's a mixture of sharing my thoughts on books and expanding to life sometimes (mostly rambling in vlogs) and my hope is that I will introduce people to books they might enjoy as well and also have them feel comfortable about reading whatever they want, however they want. I can't say I make videos I don't feel like or out of pressure for someone else. Then again I am a small channel, making no money from this and just do it for fun/me anyway.

I think as long as we have an online presence we have some awareness of performance. I think the difference is in the audience: size, diversity, reception and the fact we choose to perform vs interacting with people physically. A lot of our motivations we won't know until we're confronted with outcomes we didn't expect or desire.

I actually experienced a microcosm of this despite never really being a book influencer. Since like the 5th grade I used goodreads as nothing more than a personal log and journal for my bookish thoughts. Nobody read my reviews and despite being on a public platform they felt like they were exclusively for me . And then a couple years ago I started a book blog and got a (very small mind) following of real human beings I knew read my book reviews and even occasionally commented on them. Honestly it was really fun to know my thought even if minorly had a genuine impact on others. The thrill of writing a really passionate 5 star review and seeing your friends add it to their tbr is really great and that process of interpersonal influencing is fun. And like you with editing I find the process of writing reviews for books really gratifying. Trust me i don't think I'm doing pulitzer worthy writing but before I actually committed to blogging I underestimated how much hard work articulating your own thoughts well and and in a useful or entertaining manner is. It forces you to think a little more deeply about a book and work through the whys of how you feel about something. I also suddenly felt a responsibility to books I didn't like to do more that express my emotions about them but provide a fair and thurough assessment of their merits and failures. And the way my relationship to books almost instantly shifted is the craziest part for me. Because I was in no way significant book blogger. The amount of people reading my reviews were in the dozens if that. And I still felt the pressures of it. Honestly a reason I stopped publically reviewing was because of the way my reading feeling observed grated on me. It just added a layed between myself and the actual process of reading that over time made it less fun. lol sorry for the essay. i didn't realie I had so much to say on this topic

If you want to grow a big audience I think you have to do videos that the wider BookTube audience responds to. If that’s not what you want I would say only make the videos you want to make. I think your audience finds you and that kinda means the people who watch you are the kind of people influenceable by you. If that makes sense.

Love that you're back! I found your channel shortly before you took your break. 😁 I guess it doesn't have to be one Why, it can be all of them or some of them some time? I love booktubers that just talk to me about books. Sharing their reading experience in any shape or form. But that is why I mainly watch smaller and very small channels, where it always feels like random people you might as well know in real life talking about books to you in a normal way. Bringing their perspective, whatever that is. So I guess what I'm saying is that I like to watch those videos that people want to make. 😉

I have no answers, but I love to hear you talk books and I hope you'll do that more soon <3

A thought: notice our 4th dimensional form (assuming 4th is time) appears worm like. Look ahead to form your next segment. Overcoming mediocrity. Checking out the sum of us next.

Was a choice😂😂😂

Meat and potatoes… I should eat. Loved the books.

Incredibly helpful. Thank you for sharing the tips and insights!!

My bias: life is too short to read questionable books. My opinion: I’m only fifty pages in, but if this wasn’t a Christmas present it would already be in the discard pile. Nothing about Ellis’ very long set-up compels me to keep reading. Tedious doesn’t cover it. I expected more insight snd sensitivity with female characters, but no. The characters are given female names, but otherwise are cross-dressing tropes of male-ness. It’s a first novel, I accept that, but they needed to assign a 70 year, old chain-smoking editor named Marge to this one. Someone needed to tell Ellis to get her shit together and stop writing like a high school senior who is use to being the cleverest person in the room. The self-indulgence is suffocating.

Thank you for this review

It’s a racist book

Omg I grabbed this book because the cover looked cute. Like you, just a few pages in I was like...wait minute, is this a terf? The part where she talks about sitting in an LA cafe with the "Holy Freakin' Trinity of modern-day witches" and one of them is the author of a book about the pill that's full of misinformation is what sent me to Google to see if I was being too critical but.. yeah, it seems like trash. Plus also yeah, in addition to the deeply problematic stuff, the writing style is just soooo obnoxious.

Taking the review of another of Lisa's books Love Your Lady landscape and putting them here for some balanced commentary: "I love Lisa. It’s true that as a queer person and as a queer person with a host of non-binary loves, that she doesn’t always speak for us. That’s okay. I see a lot of folks getting burnt because she doesn’t speak for them. It’s okay. She’s speaking from her lived experience. If you feel some kind of way, like you’re underrepresented in her work, that’s just you being called to write. So don’t throw shade at Lisa! Just sit down and write that thing so we can see you more clearly!"

So I guess it’s bad to talk about periods now…

I finished this book today,... I couldn't agree more with most to all of this🖤🖤🖤👏🏾👏🏾. "The whole plate" got a laugh outta me

I was approached by an author's team to read and review two of her books and they mentioned Instagram and Goodreads so I did not realize that you had to include a review in the Netgalley website so now my rating is still sitting at zero😬

The ending of this story disturbed me more than any other part. It felt a victim of abuse choosing to stay with their partner out of pure codependence. There are stong elements of grooming and lack of control that really make me feel like Gan should have taken the more drastic choice, but then he'd just be leaving his family hurt and confused and still stuck in their station. Really makes me feel for the mother on subsequent reads.

This is super helpful. I went into NetGalley totally blind and requested probably 6 books and got them all approved. 😞 I have a super simple bio and didn’t expect to get approved so quickly but I’m looking forward to using it now that I know how.

Beautiful camera work

Beautiful, thanks for sharing

Girl, you have all the freedom to use the proper pronouns for the men and woman in this story!!😂

Can one really state that T'Gatoi's priority are the grubs over Lomas? The fact of the matter is if the grubs aren't removed as quickly as possible, the host will be eaten alive.

I don’t understand this Terf logic of “I’m a cis woman so it’s cool for me to trample all over survivor/victims like this”. It’s just another person using my organs in a way I never consented to so nope. No thank you. Every time someone uses transphobia and what so many of us have lived through in the same sentence, the scorched remains of my (non-menstrual) blood just boil a tiny little bit more. And Kali Maa….as a white woman, I’m not the best voice for this (clearly). The whole way we’re going about this is embarrassing, we’re doing this in a very colonial round 2 way, and is yet another example of when we need to stfu and listen to people for whom this is part of their testament and their story. Basically, your rant review was amazing, and you’re honestly and openly talking about stuff which appears to be hinted at or…suspiciously missing when you look for it. Thank you 🤲

such a brilliant video! i love the way you talked about your points. subbed!

May we please have this type of video for the thirties 😅

Just listened this story and i choose optimism and resignation. Gan plants the idea of encouraging closer relationships forming between the Terrans and the Tligs by allowing more Terrans to see the births at a younger age and under more controlled circumstances so that it's not so shocking and I hope over time and generations and probably a few bloody revolutions the relationship between t species will level out into something more equal. I have to believe the gross imbalances are only growing pains and eventually progress will happen.

Thank you for sharing. This is beautiful.

Gorgeous. Thank you for sharing.

Sounds like you're the target audience for Morgan Jerkins' Wandering in Strange Lands--my first read of 2023, 5 stars. Love this ode!

Fantastic

Hi Shey, new subscriber here. I love how articulate you are, and the pace and your voice are super soothing! Just wanna express my gratitude.❤ also, can you share how you can speak so eloquently please? I am fascinated by how familiar with the story you are and can do this long video with ONE TAKE! How many times have you read the story? Or you are just born with this talent of super memory

A wonderful story. Everything seems so familiar having lived in NC for so long. Thank you for putting this together. Beautiful.

I watched three other reviews for this book and yours was the first to name the problem with transphobia

Thank you for this review 🙏🏳️‍⚧️🔮🧹🐈‍⬛🌈

Absolutely beautiful 😊