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nicosraf · 7 months

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hey! just finished abm and it was a great read. i was wondering though, about the plot-choice to make god a perpetrator of ass*ult. do u think it would have been less impactful if instead, god sent others to enact this “punishment” on lucifer instead? or if lucifer were to develop a hatred of god by himself without the ass*ult being written in? i suppose i just find it an interesting decision to see god take such a direct approach, especially when we see that he has normally taken a more indirect seat when it comes to warnings (like the parable of the doves), and normally has his archangels carry out his will. i guess what im trying to say is it’s difficult for me to see god characterized as a perpetrator just bc he seems less hands-on and more like a spectator/moderator for most issues. nevertheless, abm is a wonderful read! the way u write language is like the way mantis shrimp see color

Hello! First I have to mention that my anxiety immediately spiked at this because — especially post-Booktok — I've had to deal with very invasive DMs from strangers demanding an explanation from me for what you mentioned and, really, for everything sexual in the book. I've gotten used to just not answering now — I've made the mistake of thinking people are just curious before they start trying to argue with me (and become even more invasive about me/my-sexuality/traumas/etc)

That said, I think you are approaching me sincerely, so I can talk about it below the cut. It's a bit heavy so CW for SA. I'm sorry if my answer feels jumbled.

I mentioned that I basically got inspiration for how the tragedy of Lucifer would unfold from Ezekiel 16 — in which God grooms (in a very literal way) the personified Jerusalem until she is "old enough for love." God dresses her in all the finest jewelry and ensures she has the best food. Jerusalem is so beautiful that she became famous among all the nations, and God marries her. But then Jerusalem begins to put her faith in her beauty instead; she becomes a "prostitute" unfaithful to God. God threatens sexual violence:

I will gather them against you from all around, and I will strip you naked in front of them so they can see your nakedness. 38 I will punish you as women guilty of adultery or as murderers are punished. I will put you to death because I am angry and jealous. 39 I will also hand you over to your lovers. They will tear down your places of worship and destroy other places where you worship gods. They will tear off your clothes and take away your jewelry, leaving you naked and bare. 40 They will bring a crowd against you to throw stones at you and to cut you into pieces with their swords. (Ezekiel 16 NLT)

And he threatens Jerusalem for similarly in Jeremiah 13, this time even calling out her pride (some line earlier) in specific:

Will not pain grip you like that of a woman in labor? 22 And if you ask yourself, “Why has this happened to me?”— it is because of your many sins that your skirts have been torn off and your body mistreated. (Jeremiah 13 NIV)

And right below, God uses a very direct threat:

“I will scatter you like chaff driven by the desert wind. 25 This is your lot, the portion I have decreed for you,” declares the Lord, “because you have forgotten me and trusted in false gods. 26 I will pull up your skirts over your face that your shame may be seen— 27 your adulteries and lustful neighings, your shameless prostitution!

(You might notice these lines sound similar to those in ABM. That's very intentional. I modified them.)

But it is much deeper than that, of course. And you asked why God does it, rather than order someone else to do it.

For story reasons, I briefly considered God forcing Michael to do it, but that would be too forgivable. I would be taking away Michael's responsibility; in the future, Lucifer could realize Michael was forced to do what he did and they live happily ever after. That's not what I wanted. I also considered God ordering other angels to do it, but there was an obvious predator relationship from the start between him and Lucifer, and so it made less sense for other angels to do it. And, I didn't want the other angels to understand what happened to Lucifer, absolutely nobody.

It's really Lucifer's alienation that pushes him over the edge.

After all, he doesn't start the war after the incident. He grieves, then he returns to life. (The scene with Dina). It was the same thing he did when he lost his voice, and after getting it back. he begins to realize this is different. But, really, Lucifer was already resentful before the incident. In the lead up, before the chasing, Lucifer is talking bad about God is his head, he's talking back. He's furious at him already; if God hadn't done what he did, Lucifer would have started fully hating him over time and, most likely, after sleeping with Michael.

The SA is mostly unnecessary to Lucifer's development into hating God, except in modifying the hate and tying in the core inner struggles of the book. The scene's existence is more thematic.

ABM is a story about bodies, about body hate, and body autonomy. Lucifer has his autonomy denied over and over in the book; God says that he owns Lucifer's body because he created it. I'm referencing 1 Corinthians 6 with that:

All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. 19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (1 Corinthians 6 NIV)

(Relevantly, this chapter also mentions that homosexuality is wrong. And it also states how we should become one with God in a way parallel to becoming one with another person through sex: "Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.")

So when God does what he does, he violates Lucifer's autonomy and his body. It's not just a statement about Lucifer's body belonging to him (the body that Lucifer has struggled for so long to find comfort in), it's a way of showing that Lucifer has no escape. When Lucifer ran, God warped the world around them so that Lucifer kept returning to him. Everything on the outside was God, and then...

It's a punishment against promiscuity. Lucifer was growing into his sexuality. He was like an adolescent. He was flirting with the angels in the baths. He was learning to be sensual and to enjoy it. Punishing promiscuity with SA is incredibly Christian; it's what God does in the excerpts I shared above.

It's allegorical to Christian authority figures who've taken advantage of young people, particulalry very vulnerable people.

It's about screaming how violating the Christian God's actions have always felt. He's in your head, he owns your body, he is everything. He is allowing horrible things to happen to you. He is the thing hurting you. But he loves you. But he is watching you and ensuring you stay pure.

It's attached to this theme of a lonely God at the center of it all, so lonely he made a universe where all these things have to love him and adore him and gush about him. So lonely he made Lucifer, who is as close as he can get to an equal, which God neither wants nor believes he can create. But he wants something almost like him. Almost.

So — in most ways the SA is mostly metaphorical. The point is about domination and bodies, rather than God experiencing real desire or the SA just being a Bad thing that happens. And, if it helps, I don't imagine it to have been... normal. God is never described. He might not be human shaped (I don't imagine that he is).

Agh I'm ranting too much now, but this might be the last time I really talk about it. Despite all these things (and I didn't even mention everything), it's at its core a personal book about personal things, and talking about it can get difficult without getting worked up.

But I'll mention this was one of the big decisions I made when I stepped away from traditional publishing for the first time. In the original version of ABM, the SA was actually so subtle that only 1 beta reader caught it. But I didn't want to be a coward.

Thank you so much for reading. I'm really glad you enjoyed. Thank you for asking respectfully! I'm sending you good wishes. And I will think of shrimp mantis colors forever

#mine #ask

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lesbienneanarchiste · 3 months

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Obligatory disclaimer that I don't think this is gospel or that the complaints aren't valid bc they are and I will probably continue to complain myself, this is just me spitting into the void a few minutes after waking up while I wait for my coffee to be done. But. I sometimes suspect that a lot of people who complain about the quality of cultural media these days, e.g. movies and books etc, need to just like. Learn how to find the good shit. Is the sequel-and-rebootification bad for film culture as a whole? Yes obviously. Is the tiktokization of a lot of pop music bad for music culture as a whole? Obviously yes. However. Have you considered watching/listening to/reading something that wasn't written in a year starting with a 20? Has it occurred to you that maybe ""booktok"" is not only whatever the first person you see when you search #booktok on the app says? And that there are many people talking about all kind of excellent new releases that show there are plenty of books with literary merit still being written? Published even?

Perfectly valid complaint to be angry about the way arts and media have devolved into Content but I also think some of you are just bad at finding new stuff so you keep reconsuming the same things over and over and talking about how nothing meaningful has ever been made in the last decade.

#disgruntled octopus #maybe this is the anarchist in me but i find it frustrating to only see criticisms with no effort being put in #to build up artists who ARE trying to combat the problem #or at the very least explore the past instead of relying solely on new releases that you can see in theaters/concert/etc #this is not abt mutuals or anyone btw like this was inspired by multiple things but mostly just my lil brain first thing in the morning #and the episode of Teacup Demagogues i was listening to #TD is hosted by a tiktoker i like who recommends 'new music for old heads' and she was talking abt this exact phenomenon #ppl in her comments will be like 'no good music is made anymore' and then her whole channel is just abt sharing new(er) releases #that are likely to be enjoyed by people who like old(er) music #like. her channel is right there. you're commenting on it. there is good shit being put out you just ignore it or dont try to find it #''''everything is so commercial and soulless these days 😤😤😤''''#meanwhile they refuse to seek out anyone with less than 100k monthly listeners on spotify #or read self-pub or indie press books #or watch people's passion projects on youtube #nevermind shit being released by small indie studios #''''games are just data farming flashes in the pan made by artistic sweatshops'''' but they wont download a single indie game on steam #like. again. valid complaint overall and i am going to say that shit myself at times.#but. very frustrating counterphenomena

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declanscunt · 2 years

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maybe i’m in my angry era or maybe it’s bc it’s almost 3am but can ppl in fandom spaces (particularly book ones) stop treating canon content as if it’s only purpose is to pander to or satisfy an audience like u are aware that a single person writes that shit and its their brain child that has…oh idk…meaning beyond fanservice?????? sometimes a story is JUST A STORY and it might serve u well to LEARN A MF LESSON from it…not to be a lame ass english teacher dick sucker but im so sick of the entitlement that some fans feel (esp on booktok etc ugh) toward ownership of a narrative like…bro touch some grass…it’s not a crime to write an actually good story and maybe piss some ppl off in the process…sometimes art does that

#critical. thinking.#PLEASE #like #if ur looking for pandering and fanservice there’s a PERFECT wonderful place to do that it’s called ao3…#authors aren’t here to write the story we want to hear…they are here to write the one they WANT TO TELL #if u want a story write ur own. or literally just use ur mf imagination #everything is fake and nothing matters so can we pls just stop hating on things that rly don’t need it #and start hating things like politicians and billionaires #idk i’m also annoyed by the sheer amount of ppl that r trying to like. cancel lolita. stfu

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tolerateit · 1 year

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ok i was Atlas Six anon and I really enjoyed it, I'm hoping to try and find the second one bc I would love to read more! VERY angry that it keeps being advertised as a "booktok" book though.... it deserves better than that

WOOT we love to see it !! And so true it's a great fantasy and absolutely doesn't deserve that booktok sticker dkdkdkd im glad you like it!!

#you ask for the tab*#wonderful mutuals 💖#Same with Babel

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theliterarywolf · 2 years

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MORE #Booktok complaints! No, but for real, this is a complaint about the general state of book reviewers. (PS: English isn't my native language, so if I use the wrong terms for something, it's bc I just translated the ones used in my language to English.) I feel like many of them have no idea about the basics. They can't tell you the POV, they can't tell you the tense, and they can't even explain the basic story structure. (Though with some books being recommended, I've noticed the writers apparently have no idea either.) I don't think you need to put much focus on it when reviewing a book, but I will tell you, a story's tone can shift based on what POV you have. And as a reviewer I think you should actually know the basics, before you hit the ground running, I mean basics like: 1st person, 3rd person-omnipresent view, limited view, and more. It makes heaps of difference in a story. Tense? Some people don't know the difference between past and present tense. (Honestly, I hate books written in present-tense, it's just really weird to read.) I'm aware there are different ways to structure a story, and in some cases, I feel like the reviewer should at least be able to explain it while talking about the main story, what the structure is. (Aka: Not focus on it directly, but make it known from the review itself what the structure is. Is it a three-point structure? Is it a serial-structure? Etc etc.) There are a handful of good book reviewers, the rest are often just personal ramblings about why they like a book, but without the substance of what makes a good review. It's like stale bread they dropped some jam on, in the hopes that it ends up being tasty, but it just isn't.

I'm going to leave this submission as is. However, I'd like to expand on the 'just personal ramblings about why the like a book, but without the substance'.

So... In the book-reviewing video content sphere, the core sentiment seems to be presenting one's self as a remnant of a bygone era:

90s-Early 2000s Book Clubs.

Now, Book Clubs do still exist. However, a lot of them have devolved into just an excuse for groups to get together, drink, smoke weed, and maaaaybe ask if anyone read anything that week.

So the large majority of BookTok and BookTube have molded themselves to fit that niche of 'hey, welcome to my personal library. Pick up a cup of tea or coffee. Let me tell you about the latest book I read and why you should or shouldn't read it but only use fanfic tropes to back up what I'm saying so I don't scare you away'.

It's a similar dynamic to the current state of video game reviewers. For every Rerez or SomeCallMeJohnny out there, people who are charismatic and knowledgeable enough about their passion to review something, give a personal take, but still tell you the relevant aspects of where a game succeeds or fails...

You get a bunch of people who think that the only things that effective game reviews need are an energetic or angry personality and different ways of saying 'THIS GAME IS THE BEST GAME EVER' or 'THIS GAME SUCKS DICK!'

#submission

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avee09 · 2 years

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Its 2 am on a Wednesday but i am angry bc booktok does not talk about the best book ever

I live and die by this book

We got murder

Mystery

Thriller

Sci fi

Haunting

Fighting

Monsters

Tunnels

(Ok im realizing its like stranger things but idc)

The lgbtqs

(Kinda) religion inclusivity

And a little bit of spicy romance

Im still not tellin yall the title ima get you hooked first

The first chapter starts(kinda spoilers but like not really cuz this stuff is only really mentioned twice but here is ya warning) with finch going to her audition to get into this school for arts bc shes like a prodigy in piano. She’s at her audition when the pov switches to selena and kyra who are in the pit of the auditorium (where the audition is happening) when selena or kyra(i don’t remember who) knocks into a music stand and makes noise. When they busted they are trying to hide the alcohol from the teacher when finch sees it. Shes in shock cuz shes been homeschooled and doesn’t know anyone who is her age and drinks. So she calls it out ‘is that alcohol.’

When finch and her family are driving home she’s kinda freaking bc someone ruined her audition and her mom is like ‘its just a school its ok if you don’t get in.’ Finch is like ‘no id give anything to get in’

‘Anything?’ ‘Anything.’

BOOM

Plot starts

My Dearest Darkest

By kayla cottingham

Ahhh just read I LOVE this book fhgggfvvcfvcfh

#booklover #my dearest darkest #in love

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failbaby · 3 years

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honestly i hate that my barnes and noble has a book tok table bc it’s labeled “as seen on tik tok!” and “tik tok made me popular” and it makes me angry bc so many books there i wanted to read before tik tok made them popular and now people there literally go “ugh, stupid teenagers needing dumb apps to get them to read books” and it makes me feel like shit-

it’s such an unpopular opinion too that advertising books as though they’re only popular bc of tik tok is kinda harmful to those who want to read them. its discouraged me from reading so many books bc of the negative comments i’ve gotten from workers. and they never believe me when i say “oh no i’ve wanted to read this book for awhile, i don’t even have tik tok! i just got paid so now i’m splurging on books” and i always get judgmental looks or snippy comments-

idk i’m probably the only one here that thinks that but i hate it bc it honestly ruins the joy of getting new books for me. and i love book tok (i do have a tik tok) but going to buy books that were recommended to me by a teacher and seeing it exclusively on the book tok table makes me fucking depressed bc damn, now i have to deal with asshole boomers. great.

Yeah honestly as a Barnes and Noble employee and a literature major, I don’t agree with this

I don’t think it matters why kids are reading, as long as they’re reading. If tiktok gets teenagers to read , I think that’s great, and I don’t see anything wrong with bookstores putting the books together in a convenient location to help those kids find them 🤷🏻‍♀️

If you don’t want to read books that were popularized by tiktok because you’re worried about backlash, Barnes & Noble has a massive selection to choose from. Our booktok table is one paperback table out of twelve tables and over two hundred shelves full of books, and we have a massive warehouse containing even more inventory available for order than we have in our stores. Tons of options!

I’m sorry if this is rude, but what’s bothering me about this is that you say it’s “harmful to those who want to read them,” as though people who find them through tiktok don’t also want to read them. You don’t have any more of a right to those books than anyone else does just because you heard about them from teachers and not social media

#ask #lit #if old people are giving you shit about reading booktok books that sucks but that’s not Barnes & Noble’s problem

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silverflamcs · 2 years

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idk if this is an unpopular opinion, but i hate booktok. mostly bc i’ve been getting nesta slander on my fyp lately and idk why bc i always keep scrolling. idk if there’s been an influx of ppl starting this series and these are new videos or what but it makes me irrationally angry tbh. i just try to scroll past anything tagged as booktok or anything identical bc i don’t wanna see that shit on my fyp anymore.

this is also why i’m not looking forward to the tv series and having to deal with ppl and their hatred toward her. i’m tired of the hate women in books and media get for being ‘bitches’ but have ppl drooling for male characters who are identical to them. it comes off as misogynic tbh.

#ooc #i can write a whole essay on this but i'll spare all of you #mostly bc i know most of you who follow me understand

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simpforthebaron · 3 years

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ok kids today we’re gonna talk about lesbophobia because i am so angry!! its under a read more and tagged for tw because this is fucking rough!!

so if any of you are on tiktok, particularly booktok, and you are at all on queer booktok you’ll have seen the absolutely disgusting video of this straight white girl being like “i loved red white and royal blue (a mlm book, shortened to rwrb in the rest of the post) but i just couldn’t finish one last stop (a wlw book), and i think its because i’m just not attracted to the characters, rwrb was just so cute and the two boys were so cute and they happened to be gay” (this is paraphrasing bc i couldn’t watch the actual video bc it made me so angry) and then after people pointed out that’s incredibly homophobic towards lesbians she said “i’m not homophobic, one last stop was boring, that lifestyle is just not relatable and my opinion still stands”

holy FUCKING shit there’s so much that’s already been said but like the blatant hatred of lesbians???? the fetishization of mlm relationships?????? it’s disgusting, it’s hateful, it doesn’t belong in the queer book community, and like i love for people to read books centered around characters who are a different gender or sexuality than themselves because it encourages diversity!!! it helps develop empathy!!! it makes those books more popular so people who ARE queer get more representation and more fun books that are about all kinds of things not just coming out!! but then these fucking straight assholes say shit like this and imply lesbians are somehow less “pure” and cute than gay men???? fuck that get out you are not welcome in the queer community i’m so sick of it

on a personal note, i’m a queer woman, but because of these shitheads who are ACTUALLY fetishizing gay men, there was a time i felt guilty about all my mlm gay ships, about the mlm books i read, INCLUDING RWRB, because i wasn’t as all in on wlw relationships in the same fandom (think harry potter, mcu, glee (derogatory) ) and i was genuinely afraid i was bigoted towards wlw, which in turn made me question my own attraction to women, and this is all to say that is a fucking lot to handle as a teenager, and i’m very confident about my sexuality now but i wish someone had told me that these people, the ones who see gay relationships as entertainment and not genuine human beings who love just as big as anyone, these are the people who are harming the lgbtq+ community, not you ya baby queer

* on a side note i do in fact love wlw books, i just hadn’t found the right ones, but now i’ve got a library full of them, to name a few, One Last Stop was incredible, Not My Problem is so cute, Written In The Stars is the LITERAL perfect fake dating trope, Her Royal Highness is RWRB for lesbians absolute enemies to friends to lovers perfection

#book talk #rwrb #one last stop #cw homophobia #tw homophobia #cw lesbophobia #tw lesbophobia #i really just emotion dumped on all of you i’m very sorry #pls forgive me i’ll reblog some more daniel content after this #thoughts from the baroness

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