Tobias should have worked in a marble quarry and should have been a sculptor. Builds an incredible amount of physical labour and he can daydream on what he could sculpt out of the marble he’s quarrying. Also gets the scrap pieces that he makes into little statues that he can sell.
I was thinking the same thing. Even having him working as a sculptor- it's supposed to be based in ancient Greece for the love of god, and just normal stone chiseling builds insane strength. But I guess it wouldn't have made him a desperate saaadboy needing the money for his sad family and sad life.
Just wanted to say that the original Saviour’s Champion video is what brought me to the channel like a year ago and now I’m doing a whole rewatch of the podcasts. Think you guys are amazing!
Between the two Savior's books, I think it would have been a good time if Tobias joined the tournament to win the hand of the sexy goddess princess, only to discover partway through that she is completely insane and the government just sort of lets her do whatever murderous things she wants because they need her Saviorness or the country will collapse. Tobias is no longer interested in her hand but, unfortunately, he's gotten her attention now, and she ALWAYS gets what she wants...
i'm glad everyone appreciated the effort of my cock-mention statistical study, it was a labor of love **also** THANK YOU maria, the mom's-approval-serotonin-boost i got from your shout out will carry me through the week, and you're SO correct about lindberg too. i have to watch her episodes in short bursts over the course of a few days because she's so glorious its like looking at the sun. (love u linny xoxo sorry you're so pretty)
After the outcome on Tuesday, I'm so glad to have Maria and Katie back on the channel. I also really enjoyed Lindberg and Valerie on the channel. And hopefully, they will be back. Your channel is such a big part of my week, and probably for others, too.
I'M WITH KATIE ON ACOTAR. I enjoy the books, but I also hate them! They're fun to read the same way a soap opera is fun to watch. It's all overplayed, cheesy, easy to guess, and derivative. But it's just entertaining! I can't endorse anything in the books but MAN do I love a good trashy story from time to time. It's like watching Say Yes to the Dress. It's total garbage, but in the heat of the moment, it's MY garbage
Reminds me of when Savyreadsbooks wrote a book like Colleen Hoover and compared our it did when using a pen name. Colleen Hoover is AWFUL for many reasons, but her formula makes things entertaining and weirdly compelling just for the campiness, it works for enough people for a reason.
As a woman with very evil titties I think Jenna's description of Kasima reeks of high school. Just a shallow and completely uninterested approach to a character she looks down on. I used to watch her like seven years ago and she talked about bullies and school quite a lot as she was marketing her first book at the time, which was set at a university that definitely sounded like a high school. I was badly bullied in school myself and I know how much it sucks, but in general I think there's a point in adulthood where you have to find a way to move forward to continue to grow as a person. Like 30 year old me and my evil titties can't be angry at Kevin, 14, who I'm sure has grown up a lot since we last met. Was it fair, or right, that he led the brigade of bullying against me? No, but still letting it affect me today would just hurt me and be insanely pointless. Jenna still strawmanning her bullies combined by how juvenile her writing is makes me feel genuinely uncomfortable. It's like her trauma has taken the form of shiny big titties. But ALL titties are nice titties, and all humans have a story to tell. And as a writer you have to be curious about those stories. Without curiosity there's no creativity. Titties.
I think a lot of the critiques I've heard of Jenna's writing make perfect sense with the advice she gives. She is a very, very strict plotter who seems to think pretty lowly of pantsers, which makes perfect sense when you guys talk about the way she seems to hold onto cogs she wanted to put in her machine, even when they don't seem to fit. She also talks pretty negatively of writers who see their characters as flexible people who can guide their story, because, she thinks pantsing is dumb and plotting is the best way to write a story. But it seems like a lot of her writing suffers from too much plotting and not enough flexibility, willingness to pivot, and an ability to let your characters develop more naturally and change some of your original plans when need be.
Agreed! There’s way too many books out there that don’t focus on enough details or worldbuilding, which makes it hard to slog through. Granted, I don’t want unabridged Hunchback of NotreDame levels of detail, but c’mon!!! I don’t wanna fill in the gaping meteor sized holes with my own imaginary details while I’m trying to focus on the plot; it takes my immersion away from the story!!
I love that alternative Greece has not only sugar cane but guarana... but never has the logic to mention any sort of trade with countries or continents.
Why didn't she just make the competitions match the categories of the participants. Each category of participants could be a quality the king should have. Each participant is sorted into one group depending on which quality he display the most but the winner would be the one who excels in all categories.
Ah, another addition to my comfort video playlist, aka UTT's Savior series. Legit your video where Will and Katie showed off their editorial prowess is one of my favorites, along with the rewrites, that kind of nitty gritty look at things is so great to me, verses the common basic advice that you'll get first when you try to look it up. Not even a backhand towards the author, genuinely will look up art tutorials and such with comics and will need to save every one that pops up to a "watch later" list just because I just know that I'll need to wade through them all in order to find just one single new advice among the others that I already know and have a handle on that will bump up my skills by one point. The self-help book/other struggle Maria mentioned is real... I think that's why top tens are popular, because then you're guaranteed to hear at least ten tips you already know rather than waste time going one by one.
Okay so I normally listen on Spotify so I don’t really leave comments BUT please know that y’all have become my favourite podcast and I’ve been following since Lightlark (I had a mild hyperfixation on reviews of it without having read it when it first came out). I listen to an episode every night to fall asleep it’s like getting bedtime stories with bonus education. I’m doing a masters (not in English or literature) right now so I don’t have a lot of time to read so listening to y’all helps me feel like I’m still reading. I did get the chance to listen to Scorpio Races on a drive over the summer and it has become one of my favourite books ever. (Also I’ve been watching Swell since like 2018 it’s still so goofy to me that Will is her editor because he was always this omniscient presence on her Chanel)
I've been lurking on Jenna's channel for news of the third book, but there's nothing official. She's had it pretty rough these past few years so it's understandable, but I also wonder if, to some degree, it's taking this long due to criticism. Jenna says she doesn't care, but a friend and fan left a mildly negative review on Jenna's discord and apparently she got banned and blocked on twitter or smth. Mind you, that was a patron, so it makes me wonder.
Not sure if you guys are gonna read this, but there's a really interesting video by Jenna that exposes her backwards morals. It's actually the video that made me dislike her after being a pretty big fan for several years. Sadly I don't remember the name of the video, maybe someone here can help me out. But basically, she said that she hated the trope of good guys with no-kill-codes, or even just with qualms about killing bad guys whatsoever. She said that it's lame, boring and stupid, and no one has patience for it. The bad guy is evil, so, just kill them! Obviously! What else is there to talk about? According to her, there's no point in even having a conversation. No point in discussing nuance. The role of punishment in society, implications of vigilante justice, trust in the courts system or lack thereof, the question of who should get to decide who lives and who dies, the mental and emotional toll it may inflict on the protagonist... apparently, all these are just a waste of time, just kill the guy. I never went from really liking a TH-camr to instantly hating them so quickly.
@skylar4390 That might be it, thank you! Ima have to check it out again. Edit: Checked it, yeah that's the one. Glad to see my comment on there got popular!
Why would you do this to yourselves? 36:19 my priblem with hets is that she shit talks pantsers. How they make stories full of plot holes, illogical characters and so on. Yet saviors champion has all of this and worst in savior's sisters.
@amylizard Yep. "EVE: The Awakening" _is_ on her website, but you can't actually get to its page through her website's menu. You need to look up the book in a search engine, then find the link to its page on her website. She wants to keep that book buried.
How I summarised this stream: Heresy in the Evil Tunnel. Tits and one peacock. You're the problem with society, high school revenge! Your group critique and snark is much more entertaining for the second time around than a published book I spent actual money on.
Welcome back, Maria & Katie. I was wondering what happened to Katie… I already figured out Maria was probably dealing with hurricane madness. To start, guys, I want to thank you for doing this channel. I know I’m rather late to the 🎉 party 🎉 and started watching you guys maybe a couple of months ago, as your channel was recommended to me via YT algorithms, but I really like your take on most books you’ve done. I live for the hate-reading videos lol 😂 cause there’s too many books out there that really shouldn’t have made it past the editor’s desk. As far as this particular video goes, Katie: thank you for saying The Hunger Games is basically trash! It’s honestly just Battle Royale but with less details and more fashion runway moments with a The Bachelor segment thrown in. (As a side note, if you guys haven’t checked it out already, I highly recommend reading Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. It’s a fantastic book with way more character depth and more stakes involved; it’s honestly more realistic).
Its bizarre how this book is so fun to hate - even after years its still fun to listen to you guys.😅 It was so annoying to me that the only reason all these guys entered was boobs (for the "bad" guys) and all the "good" guys where just in it for the money. Why the heck is there not a single political motivation - it should by all means be a GoT situation, cause yeah, it literally is a game for a throne. Not even mentioning that the competitors get money for entering. What?! Its much more likely people would have to pay a hefty fee to even be allowed to enter (already creating an imbalance between lower and upper class). And it sucks out any tension the moment he gets in. You can almost see him slump over and "resign to his death", now that his family gets the money. Whyyy??? It's also why every other "good" character felt like a paper lamb at the slaughter - cause that's literally what they thought of themselves. You got money, now you die. 🙄But yeah, I guess she couldn't think of another way to make Tobias enter without him being one of the baaad guys. (Its even worse that the solution would have been so easy. His sister is sick/disabled - the Savior has magic healing powers. Make him enter to gain her assistance to save his sister. Then he falls for Layla and is really torn cause he wants to marry the Savior to save his sister, but also doesn't really like her and wants Layla. Or geez, let there be a ginormous prize money - or that the future sovereign would probably be loaded - easily helping his sister like that.) Also, why does no one know the name of their Savior? Not knowing her face? Okay. Not knowing her name? Nah, not without a good "in-world" reason. (And also also, I believe the sometimes strange word choices are the result of Jenna looking up thesaurus synonyms to sound more "varied".)
I haven't read much of the book, but from what I have read I think the problem with this book is exactly the same as with her writing advice videos (which I have seen quite a few of): there is no depth. Everything is the most shallow version of itself. Worldbuilding? Don't think about it too hard. Characters? They don't have much actual characterisation. Plot? Don't look into the events too deeply or they'll fall apart. Her writing advice videos work the same way. How to write an engaging villain? She'll give a list of things to consider, but they're not well explained or explored. She'll just say "give them a motivation" without ever considering how you do that, or how the motivation could fit with the rest of the story, or the theme, or with the other characters. She'll just say "give them a motivation", then makes a joke, and moves on to the next subject.
Do y'all plan to read TSA whenever it comes out? I loved your videos on TSC and TSS and I think it would be great to hear your thoughts on TSA when that time comes.
IMPORTANT!!! Please please please look at this comment As someone whose cat has peed in their car, change the carpet, the smell does NOT go away. At all. I never leave messages, too much of a lurker but PLEASE change the carpet unless you can’t ( like we couldn’t) then i recommend you leave the windows at least 1/12 of an inch because the florida sun WILL make it more potent, even months or years after the fact
I know Maria’s has a situation going on with her mic and such, but if she’s going to record another video with that same mic is there any way to turn it down a bit! I kept turning it up to hear Will and Katie and then her mic would break my ears everytime 😭 Loved this video a lot!! Got me through my work shift without wanting to kms 🤪
1:02:51 I am 10000% convinced that for her early HP books, Rowling heavily borrowed/stole a lot of her ideas from Anthony Horowitz's Groosham Grange. Not necessarily the chess scene though.
01:04:47 - 01:05:30 --> The adaptation of Ooku was not ... of the desired quality 😅 but the manga comes highly recommended. The pitch I've heard is "surprise surprise, a bunch of men being wiped out by plague and women moving up into leadership roles within the same structure does not, in fact, end patriarchy as a social system!" Basically, patriarchal thinking, patriarchal social organizing, patriarchal understanding of the natural world, etc. go far deeper and are more complicated than just "men ruling". I think the author is also sort of applying that same kind of analysis/engagement with class and the court but I don't hear that being talked about as much outside of spoiler circles.
i remember watching a few jenna moreci videos some years back and being kinda baffled at how vapid her advice was. she gives really limited and prescriptive advice aimed at a specific slice of ya/ new adult/ romantasy while marketing it as general use writing tips. finding out that her books are equally vapid and narrowminded is so vindicating
“The Bachelor” meets “Hunger Games”. They fight crime! Sport has an important societal function, it funnels people who could become gangsters away from gangs. Actually, I don't know much about ancient Greece, but if I understand correctly, they had this culture of a perfectly developed body. So, even artists were expected to work out. Why not just say that Tobias is a struggling artist who spends everything he can spare on excersizing? Would be culturally appropriate.
Yo. So the shepherd thing has me... She's taking the characters from greek myths that are like 2 lines. "In those hills lived a shepherd "Fucknuts" who would have his sheep eat all travellers that chanced upon them, nuts first" & Cossima is like Helen of Troy + Lucrezzia Borgia OhOH FLYN IS THESEUS TITANNIA IS PHAEDRA LEELLA IS ARIADNE The reason shes so rigid is because either change renders the cameos unreadable OR make it difficult
Now I can't stop replacing Layla for Raven from Teen Titans. I imagine Katie thought of the version from the cartoon, but I like to think of the 80s comic version, who is way prettier than Layla could ever be.
would you guys ever read a warhammer book for the podcast?? i’ve never played but my siblings are big into warhammer and i’ve painted a couple minis and read a couple of the novels in my time.
1:59:42 ooofff asking the real questions here. I say no. It's clearly she just googles stuff that she doesnt use in her books and makes "advice" videos about her findings...
I think Jenna wanted to write with diversity in her characters but unfortunately her portrayal of them came off as stereotypical and didn't enhance her world any. She wrote her entire story with Leila as the center, almost like a self insert. Which in my opinion has ruined many a franchise in mainstream media. I understand wanting people to see things the way you do, but you need more subliminal scenarios. Her story was a marble slab, but she took a sledgehammer to it when in fact it needed a chisel.
Oh, yeah, the lesbian who's promiscuous being a 'girlboss' is such a weird, fetishy trope that very few people seem to call out for some reason. Same goes for the sexual deviant villain also being bi... sheesh. She preaches so much about diversity and not being offensive, but then she writes that? How could she not see what she was doing?
Um... technically, being allowed to stay with your ex's parents doesn't mean you have a great relationship with your ex. It means you have a great relationship with their parents.
Everybody has *got* to jot down a note instead of interrupting! Maybe new rule: silently raise your hand if you'd like to be next to speak. At least let your cohost finish their witty sentence! Everybody is obviously very observant and incisive--slow down! If nobody interrupted, you'd have the same amount of content in a longer video, resulting in more "watch time" and greater rhetorical clarity.
Hey guys, if it makes no difference to you, would you be able to tone back the language, especially around Jesus/God? I’ve been a long time listener and have always looked forward to your vids, but this one went too far for me.
Tobias should have worked in a marble quarry and should have been a sculptor. Builds an incredible amount of physical labour and he can daydream on what he could sculpt out of the marble he’s quarrying. Also gets the scrap pieces that he makes into little statues that he can sell.
I was thinking the same thing. Even having him working as a sculptor- it's supposed to be based in ancient Greece for the love of god, and just normal stone chiseling builds insane strength. But I guess it wouldn't have made him a desperate saaadboy needing the money for his sad family and sad life.
Just wanted to say that the original Saviour’s Champion video is what brought me to the channel like a year ago and now I’m doing a whole rewatch of the podcasts. Think you guys are amazing!
Between the two Savior's books, I think it would have been a good time if Tobias joined the tournament to win the hand of the sexy goddess princess, only to discover partway through that she is completely insane and the government just sort of lets her do whatever murderous things she wants because they need her Saviorness or the country will collapse. Tobias is no longer interested in her hand but, unfortunately, he's gotten her attention now, and she ALWAYS gets what she wants...
Welcome back, Maria and Katie.
i'm glad everyone appreciated the effort of my cock-mention statistical study, it was a labor of love
**also** THANK YOU maria, the mom's-approval-serotonin-boost i got from your shout out will carry me through the week, and you're SO correct about lindberg too. i have to watch her episodes in short bursts over the course of a few days because she's so glorious its like looking at the sun. (love u linny xoxo sorry you're so pretty)
It’s been 3 years already?? Your savior videos made me start writing and reading again and it’s been so much fun!
After the outcome on Tuesday, I'm so glad to have Maria and Katie back on the channel. I also really enjoyed Lindberg and Valerie on the channel. And hopefully, they will be back. Your channel is such a big part of my week, and probably for others, too.
I'M WITH KATIE ON ACOTAR. I enjoy the books, but I also hate them! They're fun to read the same way a soap opera is fun to watch. It's all overplayed, cheesy, easy to guess, and derivative. But it's just entertaining! I can't endorse anything in the books but MAN do I love a good trashy story from time to time. It's like watching Say Yes to the Dress. It's total garbage, but in the heat of the moment, it's MY garbage
Reminds me of when Savyreadsbooks wrote a book like Colleen Hoover and compared our it did when using a pen name.
Colleen Hoover is AWFUL for many reasons, but her formula makes things entertaining and weirdly compelling just for the campiness, it works for enough people for a reason.
Season 2 of Arcane and Unresolved Textual Tension TSC live stream out the same day?
Best day ever.
Ahhhhhh I spaced put about arcane starting today!!! Yes!
As a woman with very evil titties I think Jenna's description of Kasima reeks of high school. Just a shallow and completely uninterested approach to a character she looks down on. I used to watch her like seven years ago and she talked about bullies and school quite a lot as she was marketing her first book at the time, which was set at a university that definitely sounded like a high school. I was badly bullied in school myself and I know how much it sucks, but in general I think there's a point in adulthood where you have to find a way to move forward to continue to grow as a person. Like 30 year old me and my evil titties can't be angry at Kevin, 14, who I'm sure has grown up a lot since we last met. Was it fair, or right, that he led the brigade of bullying against me? No, but still letting it affect me today would just hurt me and be insanely pointless.
Jenna still strawmanning her bullies combined by how juvenile her writing is makes me feel genuinely uncomfortable. It's like her trauma has taken the form of shiny big titties. But ALL titties are nice titties, and all humans have a story to tell. And as a writer you have to be curious about those stories. Without curiosity there's no creativity. Titties.
I think a lot of the critiques I've heard of Jenna's writing make perfect sense with the advice she gives. She is a very, very strict plotter who seems to think pretty lowly of pantsers, which makes perfect sense when you guys talk about the way she seems to hold onto cogs she wanted to put in her machine, even when they don't seem to fit.
She also talks pretty negatively of writers who see their characters as flexible people who can guide their story, because, she thinks pantsing is dumb and plotting is the best way to write a story. But it seems like a lot of her writing suffers from too much plotting and not enough flexibility, willingness to pivot, and an ability to let your characters develop more naturally and change some of your original plans when need be.
Yes! At last someone said it! If a writer is uninterested in worldbuilding, they shouldn't write fantasy!
Agreed! There’s way too many books out there that don’t focus on enough details or worldbuilding, which makes it hard to slog through. Granted, I don’t want unabridged Hunchback of NotreDame levels of detail, but c’mon!!! I don’t wanna fill in the gaping meteor sized holes with my own imaginary details while I’m trying to focus on the plot; it takes my immersion away from the story!!
I love that alternative Greece has not only sugar cane but guarana... but never has the logic to mention any sort of trade with countries or continents.
I've seen the TSC and TSS videos so many times haha, probably have some of it legit memorized.
So sorry Maria. Glad you are safe
Why didn't she just make the competitions match the categories of the participants. Each category of participants could be a quality the king should have. Each participant is sorted into one group depending on which quality he display the most but the winner would be the one who excels in all categories.
That would have been so cool!
17:16 start
"What I meant was just pray for the worm" and then the video cuts off AHAHA....thank you guys for this!
Ah, another addition to my comfort video playlist, aka UTT's Savior series. Legit your video where Will and Katie showed off their editorial prowess is one of my favorites, along with the rewrites, that kind of nitty gritty look at things is so great to me, verses the common basic advice that you'll get first when you try to look it up.
Not even a backhand towards the author, genuinely will look up art tutorials and such with comics and will need to save every one that pops up to a "watch later" list just because I just know that I'll need to wade through them all in order to find just one single new advice among the others that I already know and have a handle on that will bump up my skills by one point. The self-help book/other struggle Maria mentioned is real... I think that's why top tens are popular, because then you're guaranteed to hear at least ten tips you already know rather than waste time going one by one.
Okay so I normally listen on Spotify so I don’t really leave comments BUT please know that y’all have become my favourite podcast and I’ve been following since Lightlark (I had a mild hyperfixation on reviews of it without having read it when it first came out). I listen to an episode every night to fall asleep it’s like getting bedtime stories with bonus education. I’m doing a masters (not in English or literature) right now so I don’t have a lot of time to read so listening to y’all helps me feel like I’m still reading. I did get the chance to listen to Scorpio Races on a drive over the summer and it has become one of my favourite books ever. (Also I’ve been watching Swell since like 2018 it’s still so goofy to me that Will is her editor because he was always this omniscient presence on her Chanel)
Yet again, beard is looking fantastic!
I heard the third Lightlark book is coming out soon, I wonder if you'll suffer through that for our sake.
Linberg( I hope I spelled it correctly) and Val were wonderful cohosts, but I missed you girls incredibly parasocially. So happy you are back!
MY GIRLS ARE BACK😍
25:07 William's character development moment caught on camera.
I've been lurking on Jenna's channel for news of the third book, but there's nothing official. She's had it pretty rough these past few years so it's understandable, but I also wonder if, to some degree, it's taking this long due to criticism. Jenna says she doesn't care, but a friend and fan left a mildly negative review on Jenna's discord and apparently she got banned and blocked on twitter or smth. Mind you, that was a patron, so it makes me wonder.
I’d love to know y’all’s opinions on the Cyborg Tinkerer drama… I recently saw a post by the author announcing she was unpublishing it.
I liked Jenna's videos. I was a fan. Then I read the book and cringed through the entire thing and could not watch another of her videos.
Not sure if you guys are gonna read this, but there's a really interesting video by Jenna that exposes her backwards morals. It's actually the video that made me dislike her after being a pretty big fan for several years. Sadly I don't remember the name of the video, maybe someone here can help me out.
But basically, she said that she hated the trope of good guys with no-kill-codes, or even just with qualms about killing bad guys whatsoever. She said that it's lame, boring and stupid, and no one has patience for it. The bad guy is evil, so, just kill them! Obviously! What else is there to talk about? According to her, there's no point in even having a conversation. No point in discussing nuance. The role of punishment in society, implications of vigilante justice, trust in the courts system or lack thereof, the question of who should get to decide who lives and who dies, the mental and emotional toll it may inflict on the protagonist... apparently, all these are just a waste of time, just kill the guy.
I never went from really liking a TH-camr to instantly hating them so quickly.
I think it was her video about 10 Worst Action tropes! I know that because I was rewatching stuff to have noise in the background.
@skylar4390 That might be it, thank you! Ima have to check it out again.
Edit: Checked it, yeah that's the one. Glad to see my comment on there got popular!
Why would you do this to yourselves?
36:19 my priblem with hets is that she shit talks pantsers. How they make stories full of plot holes, illogical characters and so on. Yet saviors champion has all of this and worst in savior's sisters.
Not you having the exact same profile pic as me. I thought I was reading my own comment for a sec. What are the odds…? LOL
@MrDevil-jb1fl God that's wild. First time I met someone the same pfp. I think a friend found this for me back in 2016 or so. You?
@@flameloude
2018 or 2019 when I first made this account. What are the odds of seeing somone with the same pfp!?
@@MrDevil-jb1fl very very rare you are the first person I met
I still need y’all to read Eve the awakening
A book so bad Jenna pretends it never existed 😅
@amylizard Yep. "EVE: The Awakening" _is_ on her website, but you can't actually get to its page through her website's menu. You need to look up the book in a search engine, then find the link to its page on her website. She wants to keep that book buried.
it's out of print and hard to high seas so i wonder how they'd do it
How I summarised this stream: Heresy in the Evil Tunnel. Tits and one peacock. You're the problem with society, high school revenge!
Your group critique and snark is much more entertaining for the second time around than a published book I spent actual money on.
Welcome back, Maria & Katie. I was wondering what happened to Katie… I already figured out Maria was probably dealing with hurricane madness.
To start, guys, I want to thank you for doing this channel. I know I’m rather late to the 🎉 party 🎉 and started watching you guys maybe a couple of months ago, as your channel was recommended to me via YT algorithms, but I really like your take on most books you’ve done. I live for the hate-reading videos lol 😂 cause there’s too many books out there that really shouldn’t have made it past the editor’s desk.
As far as this particular video goes, Katie: thank you for saying The Hunger Games is basically trash! It’s honestly just Battle Royale but with less details and more fashion runway moments with a The Bachelor segment thrown in. (As a side note, if you guys haven’t checked it out already, I highly recommend reading Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. It’s a fantastic book with way more character depth and more stakes involved; it’s honestly more realistic).
Welcome back Maria and Katie!
1:12:36, did Maria really sing the Secret Tunnel melody from Avatar?
Because Maria, from this day on you are my hero and saint.
Its bizarre how this book is so fun to hate - even after years its still fun to listen to you guys.😅
It was so annoying to me that the only reason all these guys entered was boobs (for the "bad" guys) and all the "good" guys where just in it for the money. Why the heck is there not a single political motivation - it should by all means be a GoT situation, cause yeah, it literally is a game for a throne. Not even mentioning that the competitors get money for entering. What?! Its much more likely people would have to pay a hefty fee to even be allowed to enter (already creating an imbalance between lower and upper class). And it sucks out any tension the moment he gets in. You can almost see him slump over and "resign to his death", now that his family gets the money. Whyyy??? It's also why every other "good" character felt like a paper lamb at the slaughter - cause that's literally what they thought of themselves. You got money, now you die. 🙄But yeah, I guess she couldn't think of another way to make Tobias enter without him being one of the baaad guys.
(Its even worse that the solution would have been so easy. His sister is sick/disabled - the Savior has magic healing powers. Make him enter to gain her assistance to save his sister. Then he falls for Layla and is really torn cause he wants to marry the Savior to save his sister, but also doesn't really like her and wants Layla. Or geez, let there be a ginormous prize money - or that the future sovereign would probably be loaded - easily helping his sister like that.)
Also, why does no one know the name of their Savior? Not knowing her face? Okay. Not knowing her name? Nah, not without a good "in-world" reason.
(And also also, I believe the sometimes strange word choices are the result of Jenna looking up thesaurus synonyms to sound more "varied".)
Katie, Maria! I missed you! William was okay 😂
I haven't read much of the book, but from what I have read I think the problem with this book is exactly the same as with her writing advice videos (which I have seen quite a few of): there is no depth. Everything is the most shallow version of itself. Worldbuilding? Don't think about it too hard. Characters? They don't have much actual characterisation. Plot? Don't look into the events too deeply or they'll fall apart.
Her writing advice videos work the same way. How to write an engaging villain? She'll give a list of things to consider, but they're not well explained or explored. She'll just say "give them a motivation" without ever considering how you do that, or how the motivation could fit with the rest of the story, or the theme, or with the other characters. She'll just say "give them a motivation", then makes a joke, and moves on to the next subject.
Damn I've been watching you guys for 3 years ?! I mean love it , just don't know where the time went.
Do y'all plan to read TSA whenever it comes out? I loved your videos on TSC and TSS and I think it would be great to hear your thoughts on TSA when that time comes.
IMPORTANT!!! Please please please look at this comment
As someone whose cat has peed in their car, change the carpet, the smell does NOT go away. At all.
I never leave messages, too much of a lurker but PLEASE change the carpet unless you can’t ( like we couldn’t) then i recommend you leave the windows at least 1/12 of an inch because the florida sun WILL make it more potent, even months or years after the fact
Glad to hear you're all okay!
Excited to watch this as it was my introduction to you guys "way back" haha.
I know Maria’s has a situation going on with her mic and such, but if she’s going to record another video with that same mic is there any way to turn it down a bit! I kept turning it up to hear Will and Katie and then her mic would break my ears everytime 😭
Loved this video a lot!! Got me through my work shift without wanting to kms 🤪
1:02:51 I am 10000% convinced that for her early HP books, Rowling heavily borrowed/stole a lot of her ideas from Anthony Horowitz's Groosham Grange. Not necessarily the chess scene though.
01:04:47 - 01:05:30 --> The adaptation of Ooku was not ... of the desired quality 😅 but the manga comes highly recommended. The pitch I've heard is "surprise surprise, a bunch of men being wiped out by plague and women moving up into leadership roles within the same structure does not, in fact, end patriarchy as a social system!" Basically, patriarchal thinking, patriarchal social organizing, patriarchal understanding of the natural world, etc. go far deeper and are more complicated than just "men ruling". I think the author is also sort of applying that same kind of analysis/engagement with class and the court but I don't hear that being talked about as much outside of spoiler circles.
Yes! The original trio! And a Saviours champion roast! 🎉🎉🎉
Carie can read and unresolved textual tension crossover. Please 🥺🥺🙏🙏
i remember watching a few jenna moreci videos some years back and being kinda baffled at how vapid her advice was. she gives really limited and prescriptive advice aimed at a specific slice of ya/ new adult/ romantasy while marketing it as general use writing tips. finding out that her books are equally vapid and narrowminded is so vindicating
“The Bachelor” meets “Hunger Games”. They fight crime!
Sport has an important societal function, it funnels people who could become gangsters away from gangs.
Actually, I don't know much about ancient Greece, but if I understand correctly, they had this culture of a perfectly developed body. So, even artists were expected to work out. Why not just say that Tobias is a struggling artist who spends everything he can spare on excersizing? Would be culturally appropriate.
Yo. So the shepherd thing has me...
She's taking the characters from greek myths that are like 2 lines. "In those hills lived a shepherd "Fucknuts" who would have his sheep eat all travellers that chanced upon them, nuts first"
& Cossima is like Helen of Troy + Lucrezzia Borgia
OhOH
FLYN IS THESEUS
TITANNIA IS PHAEDRA
LEELLA IS ARIADNE
The reason shes so rigid is because either change renders the cameos unreadable OR make it difficult
Oh! Something to help train kids out of AI is "make them grade each other's AI written work"
Now I can't stop replacing Layla for Raven from Teen Titans. I imagine Katie thought of the version from the cartoon, but I like to think of the 80s comic version, who is way prettier than Layla could ever be.
1:44:37 Not God smiting the stream for suggesting that people think unclean things about Jesus 😭😭😭
We missed you Marie and Katie.
So, Katie, which is worse: this book or The Cyborg Tinkerer?
Didnt she write another book before TSC and TSS called Eve: The awakening? Are you gonna review that one too?
Sorry your feet are hurt, Katie. I just hurt my ankle a couple of days ago. Lady Cheeto is a very big jumping spider.
my body is ready 👏
At 41:42 is she talking about The Cyborg Tinkerer?
I said it once, and i'll say it a milliom times. When I read Eve the awakening, I lost all respect for jenna and her writing and her channel...
would you guys ever read a warhammer book for the podcast?? i’ve never played but my siblings are big into warhammer and i’ve painted a couple minis and read a couple of the novels in my time.
Maria and I actually did read two a few years back: the first Eisenhorn one, and the first Ciaphas Caine one.
--Will
@ oooh i’ll have to go back and check those out! ciaphas caine is fun
16:21 my car is red and I know why ❤
1:59:42 ooofff asking the real questions here. I say no. It's clearly she just googles stuff that she doesnt use in her books and makes "advice" videos about her findings...
I so want yall to read "Our Share of Night" by Mariana Enriquez so badly 😭 (A great horror novel in translation from an Argentinian author 🤧)
Will, you can't fix what isn't broken
I think Jenna wanted to write with diversity in her characters but unfortunately her portrayal of them came off as stereotypical and didn't enhance her world any.
She wrote her entire story with Leila as the center, almost like a self insert. Which in my opinion has ruined many a franchise in mainstream media. I understand wanting people to see things the way you do, but you need more subliminal scenarios.
Her story was a marble slab, but she took a sledgehammer to it when in fact it needed a chisel.
Oh, yeah, the lesbian who's promiscuous being a 'girlboss' is such a weird, fetishy trope that very few people seem to call out for some reason. Same goes for the sexual deviant villain also being bi... sheesh. She preaches so much about diversity and not being offensive, but then she writes that? How could she not see what she was doing?
ok i need to know Maria's football team
To continue on my drive 43:55
01:11:15
2:12:53 Pssst.....different people will get different search results on youtube. That is how the algorithm works.
“having a bipolar moment” is actually a really offensive thing to say, it’s a serious mental illness and using it like that can be very hurtful
Um... technically, being allowed to stay with your ex's parents doesn't mean you have a great relationship with your ex. It means you have a great relationship with their parents.
Everybody has *got* to jot down a note instead of interrupting!
Maybe new rule: silently raise your hand if you'd like to be next to speak.
At least let your cohost finish their witty sentence!
Everybody is obviously very observant and incisive--slow down! If nobody interrupted, you'd have the same amount of content in a longer video, resulting in more "watch time" and greater rhetorical clarity.
Hey guys, if it makes no difference to you, would you be able to tone back the language, especially around Jesus/God? I’ve been a long time listener and have always looked forward to your vids, but this one went too far for me.