Rave: Antiheroes

It's been so long since I've done one of these and that's because I made this Rant and Rave platform to let out everything I'm angry about and everything I'm absolutely crazy about, but it just hasn't been happening as much. I'm not as angry as previously and I guess that's a good thing.

Everyone loves a hero. Or almost everyone, however, heroes can be a bit tiring. They're just such upstanding citizens and can sometimes just be unrelatable.

There's a reason that Deadpool was so popular when it came out. People found him to be relatable, and funny, and the lack of rules made his story exhilarating. Deadpool wasn't a completely bad guy, there was a reason for what he did, but he didn't ever try to save lives when negotiating with villains. He had skewed morality, but he still had morality which kept him from killing people he deemed innocent. He isn't full-blown evil like a villain, but he definitely isn't a hero.

This is also why people love V. E. Schwab's Vicious so much. We had two characters that could easily have been villains and pitted them against each other without a sense of which side was right and which side was wrong.

Whenever I think of Antiheroes and heroes and villains one quote from Karen Marie Moning's Fever series always comes to mind because I feel like it really captures different alignments.

People like heroes, but they are never quite as popular as the characters that are a bit morally grey. It's because people don't like perfect characters. Speaking from my own experience, I like characters that are a bit flawed, that have issues, that don't always do the right thing because they're more believable. It's all about relatability. It's hard to relate to a character who always does things because "it's the right thing to do" and much easier to relate to a character that does things because of something more personal.

Thoughts? Do you guys love or hate antiheroes?


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Rant ot Rave: The "Big Reveal" Trope

Time for Rant or Rave! This week the topic is a rave about the "Big Reveal" Trope. I love it.

You know that scene in almost every YA paranormal/Urban Fantasy book where a “normal” character meets some mysterious person, usually a hot guy, and they find out that that guy isn’t exactly human or that there is a whole other world out there they had no idea about? This is a trope that I will never get tired of.

I love having the big reveal, it adds so much drama and it’s exciting when you know something the protagonist doesn’t. It also says so much about the characters with how they react to this. Some characters take this in stride and others lose their shit. Either way, it’s extremely entertaining. If I could only read books with one trope for the rest of my life it would be this one. 

The big reveal can tell you so much from the authors writing style to the characters themselves. You can tell who the hothead is and you can tell who the wallflower is. 

Raven Boys Spoilers

Also, the big reveal doesn’t even have to happen during the beginning of a book. If it’s part of a series it could just be a plot twist that happens at the very end of a book. The one that comes to the forefront of my mind is the Raven Boys. If you haven’t read the Raven Boys yet skip to my end of Spoilers in bold. So we end off The Raven Boys with the iconic:

“I guess now would be a good time to tell you," he said. "I took Chainsaw out of my dreams.” 

This sets the stage for the rest of the series. We realize that there truly is magic in the world. Ronan’s abilities and big reveal tell so much about what we never understood throughout the series. 

End of Raven Boys Spoilers

Even though a lot of these are really well written and very revealing, I have to admit that my main fascination with this trope is that I find it entertaining. Not even from a critical standpoint, I just like to see characters lose their shit when they find out their love interest is a vampire or they’re actually a Shadowhunter. It’s a guilty pleasure.

Thoughts on the topic?

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Rave: Friendships

Happy Chinese New Year to all my fellow Chinese out there! This post is going to be primarily gifs of Friends because I have an obsession.

Everyone loves to have friends. It doesn't matter who you are, you don't like being alone. Just as long as there is that specific person you like being around is there, you don't mind what you guys are doing. Connection makes people happy, and sometimes we have to get that sense of connection through novels as we can't get any in real life, therefore friendships in books are really important.

Friendships in books are probably the most important thing in the characters life. Not only is it good for the reader to see the protagonist making connections, it also makes the reader feel more connected to the characters.

When an author wants to make you and the protagonist feel sad and isolated they take away their friends and family, leaving them completely dependant on themselves and that in turn makes the reader feel how much those friends and family members are important to the protagonist.

I find that if I'm reading a book and the protagonist doesn't have many outward connections, it can make the story feel isolated and I know that sometimes that is exactly what the author is trying to do. they are trying to make you feel the isolation that the character feels. Whenever I read a romance I like to look for a friendship somewhere in there as I feel like a lot of the time the romance authors can just forget about building up any relationship that isn't part of the love story. I've read so many romances where the protagonist wither doesn't have any friends or just ditches their friends to hang out with the super hot guy they barely know. This makes the story feel really flat to me.

When you're reading a book and the protagonist is in a sticky situation and they don't know what to do and they feel very alone, there needs to be that perfect character to help them through it. Maybe they don't know what they're doing but they make the protagonist not feel so alone. They create a support system which infinitely makes whatever the protagonist has to do that much simpler.

Friendships are also important because I feel like without them characters can make really bad decisions, with a friend they will have someone to bounce ideas off of or have someone to tell them when something is a terrible idea. It adds another layer to the story because you know that the protagonist will probably be okay because they have a good friend standing by them.

It's really just the best aspect of a characters life to have those they love. Love interests will come and go, but as Phoebe Buffay says, friendship is forever.

Thoughts?


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Rave: Telling

In the writing and reading world, there is this known rule when writing books "Show don't tell". I, however, love when authors write telling books, just as long as the author is good at doing the telling. There are cases where showing just doesn't satisfy you as much as telling does. However, some books *cough cough* Twilight, aren't so good with their telling and should honestly have more showing. I'm here today to talk about how telling in books isn't always a bad thing.

To be more specific, when the book is in the third person. It feels like someone is sitting there telling me a story. I have nostalgic feelings of sitting in front of the fireplace on a rainy day listening to my grandfather telling me old tales. I mean, I've never actually had those experiences, but that's what those books feel like to me.

A prime example of this is Practical Magic and it's prequel Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman. These two novels have very limited dialogue, there's almost none at all, but the stories are still so rich and you don't even miss the dialogue. Rules of Magic was so full of emotion and characters that I loved and a plot that was very real despite being about witches. It was just so beautiful that I cried numerous times while reading it. The fact that it was mostly telling made it feel seamless when we went from one character to another, going along with their experiences and feeling their emotions. You can't get a lot of that through showing.

And then there are books like A Dog's Purpose where the author has almost no choice but to do most of the telling. Dogs can't talk unless they're Scooby-Doo. Even when the main character is mostly telling you what is happening around them it also creates an atmosphere for the character. You're seeing how they perceive these events int heir lives. Just look at Lolita, that's considered a classic and is critically acclaimed and most of that book is telling because that is the only way for us to see how truly unhinged Humbert Humbert is.

My point is I just like when I'm reading a book and it feels like someone else is reading a story to me. It feels so nice and especially works well for when that book is made into an audiobook. After all of my points, I honestly can't say that I agree with the saying "Show don't tell".

What are your thoughts on the subject?

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Why I Love Booktube

Since I run a blog this is a bit ironic, but one of my favorite things is in fact Booktube. If you don't know what Booktube it's basically book bloggers on Youtube. Mostly the same stuff except you can actually see them while they tell you things. I would have loved to do Booktube, but honestly, I don't think I'm that entertaining to watch and I'm way too self-conscious to put myself out there like that, therefore I stick with my blog. Don't take that to mean that I don't love my blog, because I really do, this blog has pretty much taken over my life.

What I love so much about Booktube is that you get a face to go with the words. It feels a lot more genuine when you can actually see the person saying it and if you're good at reading people, you can tell whether or not they're being genuine. It's also nice to have someone tell you. I love blogs as much as the next person, but I also like to listen to things. I like seeing people getting excited about things they love, it gives me personally some really good feelings.

It's like making a new friend. You see this person so much that it's like you know them on a personal level. You want to talk to them all the time and wonder what they would think about a certain book because their input also matters to you. They aren't some faceless person adding in their two cents, they are someone you have gotten to know from their videos.

There is a bit more freedom with videos. You can watch several Booktubers get together and play games, talk about things in general. Even when they interview authors, I generally enjoy watching interviews more than I like to read them. There are just so many things you can do with a video that is so much harder to do if you're just writing it and using pictures.

Sentimental value, it's what got me into the whole book blogging scene. I don't know how I came across Booktube, I think some videos just sort of showed up on my Youtube recommended videos list, but the moment I watched my first Booktube video was the beginning of the end. I didn't know that people could do that and it blew my mind that there were all these amazing books out there that I had never even heard of before. The more of it I watched the more I wanted to be a part of this whole bookish community, thus inspiring me to start my own book blog.

There is also the tiny fact that I find Booktube videos to be completely entertaining. I've gotten so many good book recommendations from Booktube and have just been completely immersed in people talking about my passion.

Do you guys watch Booktube? Who are some of your favorite Booktubers?

Best Book Adaptation: The Princess Bride

Time for another rant or rave! This week is a rave, as evident by the title. I just have to as that I'm so sorry it's been like two weeks since I've done one of these, I just kept going back and forth between two raves I wanted to do and just ended up settling on this one. Now let's get into it.

I read the Princess Bride a few months ago and loved it. Before I had read the book I'd seen the movie. Now obviously the movie is a classic, everyone and their mother has seen the Princess Bride. It's a necessity of life. What really cements the movie as worth a watch is that it is also incredibly accurate to the book.

I don't think anyone realizes just how true the movie is to the book. While I was reading the book I was just amazed that the movie had actual dialogue from the book, not just a line or two like most adaptation. This legit had entire scenes that were exactly as they were in the book. Honestly I could have watched the movie and read the book at the exact same time as reading the movie, just using the book as a script or something because it was that precise.

As for the casting choices, I think those were also fantastic. Especially Andre the Giant as Fezzik. The casting directors completely lucked out when they found him because all I could think whenever reading about Fezzik and what he looked like was that Andre was perfect for the role. Now the rest of the cast was also pretty good, especially Wesley who I have to admit was really attractive. Overall Andre was the best casting choice by far.

I might have even liked the movie a bit more than the book, it kept it more simple. In the book there is this entire subplot with the author and his fake life as an author and it was a bit confusing to say the least. On this not I thank the writers of the movie for just making it about a man telling a story to his grandson because that entire subplot in the book was just a huge whirlwind.

To end off, the story itself is truly one of a kind. It takes stereotypes and tropes and flips them on their head. Instead of being cheesy it's packed full of action, adventure, and true love. There is something there for everyone and that's what I think is the best part about the Princess Bride.

I can honestly say with 100% certainty that this was the best book to movie adaptation of which I have both read the book and seen the movie. This doesn't count those that I have only seen the movie or only read the book of.

Has anyone else read the book or the movie? What did you think?


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