#anti booktok

[azure-arsonist]

Our fandom forbearers did NOT suffer through Anne Rice, strikethrough, and other bullshit for fucking ACOTAR and Harry Potter fans to fucking ruin it for all of us by selling fanfiction. I am not losing novel length yaoi epics because some of you don't know how to act in fannish spaces and yes I do blame the booktokification of fanfic but I also blame those of you that treat fandom like content to consume and not a community to engage with.

#bound fanfiction #ao3 #fandom wank #anti booktok

[kasmusser]

The way so many "feminist" retellings actually give their women less agency makes me want to bite someone

#anti booktok #spitball #ask me to rant & I will

[theboarsbride]

i saw people saying how TikTok is turning reading and publishing into the next 'fast fashion' and I feel ill. Because. Yeah.

#you shouldn't have to become an influencer to publish books. #the over-consumption is INSANE. #just for that.......gonna go on a library trip today. #anti booktok #anti tiktok #jojo reads #jojo vents #booktok

[ree-duh]

At this point they have to be making this stuff up

#ri✨talks #anti booktok

[the-oddest-inkling]

How fast smut has inflitrated books, mostly bestsellers aimed at young girls and young adults is very concerning. Back in the day it was mostly just to be found in fanfics and doujinshis and stuff like that and frowned upon by the public.

Now the consens has shifted to being completely fine with hardcore stuff put in fantasy books and the like with no warning whatsoever on the covers. This is absolutely irresponsible from the publishers.

I don't wanna name names, but it's definitely the fault of booktok and how smut has infiltrated any form of mainstream media.

Booktok was a mistake.

#ani talks #anti booktok #books and reading

[weaponizedducks]

you know what i think kids/teen books do 'fantasy romance/fantasy books' way better than any of the adult fantasy books booktok raves about. i try and read some of them and 90 percent of the time its just smut and abusive relationships disguised as 'dark romance'. then i read books like Keeper Of The Lost Cities, The School for Good and Evil, Percy Jackson, Land of Stories, the Nevermoor series, that kind of thing, and they are all actually so amazing because they have fleshed out characters with flaws and an engaging plotline instead of just badly written romance. and when they do have romance it's well written and about the people rather than the tropes.

#anti booktok #six of crows is the only booktok book i have loved #this is not me being anti- smut #it's just when it's the only thing driving the plot it's bad #it should not be used as a plot device #anything by taylor jenkins reid i don't mean you you are beautiful #keeper of the lost cities #the school for good and evil #nevermoor #the land of stories #percy jackson #six of crows #anti sjm #anti coho #booktok #you know what i'm talking about #blue analyses things

[angel-maybe-alive]

He was a man written by a woman, unfortunately the woman was Sarah j Maas

#anti booktok #anti sjm #anti acotar #anti sarah j maas #anti rhysand #jokes

[fridayiminlcve]

what is your problem with tiktok or booktok and colleen hoover lmao its not that bad surely

the fact that it actively promotes overconsumerism, the way it sells books to you by just playing into already heavily milked out tropes with very specific character niches that are seen in every book nowadays and how the reading is just seen as something aesthetic or a part of the "it girl routine" maybe? if those are enough reasons for you?

does the fact that these books are the first things you see when you walk into a bookstore not bother you? when you ask someone for a book recommendation they'll follow it up with "its a romance slow burn enemies to lovers". it's always about the aesthetic of the book, how many lines can you take out of context and post as a compilation of your super cute romantic annotations page on instagram. no analyzing the book, no theories, no symbolism or meaningfulness at all. how people stand reading those kind of books and still feel any kind of emotions over these flat as hell books with no world or character building is genuinely baffling to me

no one seems to know about actual literature anymore, which not to sound like a boomer but i think its definitely true. there's always been trend cycles, i agree such as the harry potter craze from the 1990s to the 2000s and the dystopia hunger games/maze runner/divergent blast in the early 2010s but tiktok has just.. shortened these cycles so much. as a result, people like our darling colleen hoover whose written around 46 books since 2015 (according to google) try come up with as much fresh content as they can as quickly as possible for the readers (see overconsumption). the fact that this lady outsold the bible is not outstanding to me, its fucking concerning.

and after all that, the result is badly written books with characters who're about as dimensional as a piece of paper, overuse of tropes, read like they've been written by a toddler, toxic-ass relationships being romanticised, very unnecessary sex scenes and countless other things. seriously if i wanted to read about the kind of stories hoover tells i would just open a wattpad account.

not clowning on those who made the choice to read it. i'm trying to highlight some of the flaws i find in authors like colleen hoover, sjm, ali hazelwood, casey mcquinston. some of them might be good, i wouldn't know because i actively try and avoid them at all costs. also i am BEGGING u all who will have an objection to this post to reach out of your comfort zone and read something different like non-fiction or fantasy or one of the classics for once if you only read booktok like seriously it might be hard but just do it for the love of god!! if you're annoying on this i will block you by the way i don't care

#nike muses #asks #anon #anti tiktok #anti booktok #anti colleen hoover #anti intellectualism

[chainsawh]

On the booktok there is this huge thing of "don't damage the books". And the whole "never break your spine" "no dog-eared page" thing pisses me off so much. Since I was a child I learned that the more the book is damaged the more we like it. And reading old books, I saw which page was read again and again. I want to see that the book had gone to the beach even if that means the page is crumpled. Books are literally a part of our lives, so it's only normal for them to look worn down from life.

I specifically remember this book when I was 8yo , Inkeart where the main character Meggie talk a lot about this and I think it has greatly influenced my way of being a reader (since I read this book I always keep my reading of the moment under my pillow)

#reading #books #anti booktok #bookish #bookworm #books & libraries #booklr #books and reading #used books

[andrigyn]

HELP THIS SENT ME

#anti booktok

[synaspensprungvomdorf]

Regret it or was it worth it?

#booklr #booktok #anti booktok #I'm curios because none of that was ever on my list but 90% have half of this #sarah j maas #anti sjm #colleen hoover #anti colleen hoover #fourth wall #ana huang #a good girls guide to murder #haunting adeline #the cruel prince #the seven husbands of evelyn hugo #tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow #ice breaker #poll #tumblr polls #polls

[volunteerfelinedetectives]

After months of staying silent on literary discourse here on Tumblr, I finally have something to contribute.

Fanfiction is not the problem. Fanfic is a free, communal and valid form of writing which, although not always high quality, has yielded some genuinely great stories. The real problem, the reason for ‘booktok books’ and the flaws in modern literature, is fanfic being hijacked by corporations. The minute people try to make money off of it, the minute fanfic and fanfic-style stories lose their meaning. Fanfiction is written on the notes app at 3am for you and 5 friends who share your taste. It is self-indulgent, chaotic, often told through a queer and/or neurodivergent lens, and free from any pressure to be commercially palatable. The minute a few stereotypical fanfiction tropes and ideas are stolen by commercial publishers and twisted into patriarchal, heteronormative versions of themselves with no character depth beyond the romance (a problem that for obvious reasons doesn’t apply to fanfic), that is where the real problem begins.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

#booktok #text post #essay #fanfic culture #anti intellectualism #book discussion #book discourse #literature discourse #literature #anti booktok

[azure-arsonist]

If I wanted to read something that read like tropey fanfiction then I would just.. read tropey fanfiction... for free. I'm not an affluent white women who can waste money on bad books if I buy a book I want it to be good or at least enjoyable.

#anti booktok

[happysharkintensifies]

Booktok makes me sick, not just because of all the shitty books. It's the prevalence, no, the celebration, of toxic masculinity. Every single booktok book features some variation on the same man. And without fail, against all sensible reason, these characters are portrayed as handsome and charismatic and desirable.

It makes me sick when these authors hold up these toxic, predatory traits and put them on a pedestal as some kind of Ideal Man.

It makes me sick when their aggressiveness and possessiveness is treated as romantic. It makes me sick when these shitty men forcibly grab women, invade their personal spaces, and render them helpless by 'purring' in their ears, every. single. fucking. time.

It makes me sick that these misogynistic, heteronormative, and hypermasculine social conventions keep appearing in so-called feminist literature.

Strip away the idealized elements and you have what is basically the rich, white, cishet, alpha-male archetype. He's tall, usually six feet, physically fit and muscular with obligatory six pack abs, and conventionally handsome, with a chiseled jawline. He's usually clean-shaven, and any hair he may have on his body is minimal. He maintains composure at all times and rarely shows anxiety or uncertainty. He exudes raw charisma and charm and navigates social spaces effortlessly.

His hobbies, if he has any, are stereotypically masculine. When it comes to sex, he's confident, skilled, exclusively dominant, and always knows what to do without communicating with his partner. The sex he enjoys is usually rough, animalistic and overpowering. He may have been with several women in the past, and he may be regarded as a sex god, both in-universe and out.

His toxic traits are rarely portrayed as negative. But when they are, they're usually held up as some edgy, anti-hero persona and the reader is inevitably manipulated into sympathizing with him. He'll be portrayed as a tortured, wounded animal, and his female love interest (and, by proxy, the reader) will decide on some variation of 'I can fix him'.

He is essentially the unrealistic standard the ideal Proper Man; the one that men are expected to emulate, and that women are expected to swoon over.

But what really irks me is the lost potential.

If there are men who don't fit into this mold, they are depicted as pathetic, ineffectual, or any number of negative traits.

The narrative quietly and passive-aggressively mocks them and portray them as boring and un-sexy.

After all, is this the kind of man who will bravely swoop in and sweep a helpless woman off her feet? Of course not. Such men are boys. Wimps. Cowards.

These books are supposed to be fantasy: a genre in which easily anything can be explored. If faeries, magic, and contrived mating bonds can exist, then why can't we also have male characters who exist outside the stereotypical, hypermasculine mold?

Why is it that we can have so many fantastical, impossible, and wondrous magical forces, creatures, and peoples, but we can't have men who aren't possessive, abusive, or controlling?

Why is it that male characters, have to be so innately dominant, abusive, and violent? Why do they have to be so fit and muscular and strong?

Even worse, why is it treated as something that is so natural, so inescapable, even in the realm of fiction?

Where are the men who aren't tall and fit? Where are the men who don't have sculpted abs or chiseled jawlines? Where are the men who aren't lean and muscular?

Why can’t we have men who are skinny or overweight? Why can't we have men who aren't handsome or attractive, but just average looking? Why can't we have men who are shorter or just average height?

Why can't we have men with non-stereotypical hobbies? Why can't we have men who love to read, or paint, or write, or sing, or dance, or build model kits?

Why can’t we have men who are timid and shy? Why can't we have men who feel anxiety, fear, and sadness? Why can't we have men who aren't afraid of crying openly?

Why can't we have men who aren't sex gods? Why can't we have men who aren't confident in bed? Who are anxious, or even scared, at the prospect of sex? Who are passive instead of dominant? Who want to experience intimacy and affection?

Why can’t we have men be kind and gentle and sweet for once?

I'll tell you why we can't. Because booktok says men like these are not 'man' enough. Booktok says men like these are the 'boring' option, and completely devoid of interesting quirks, traits or personality. Booktok says men like these are underserving of attention, and only fit to be background noise.

As far as booktok is concerned, men like these can't exist.

#anti sjm #anti booktok #anti colleen hoover #anti coho #masculinity #toxic masculinity #booktok critical #healthy masculinity #fuck booktok

[raviosprovidence]

listen i love my little anti this anti that curated tags and shit but isn't it fucked up that we HAVE to have a completely separate tag for criticizing media and any sort of criticism in the more general sense gets completely shat on? I get having your own curated internet space and all but i don't think seeing criticism of your favorite show is gonna be the end of the world. I dare even say it might widen your horizons.

#fandom wank #fandom critical #anti sjm #anti harry potter #anti cassandra clare #anti disney #anti lore olympus #anti loki series #anti booktok #media criticism

[bookishfeylin]

I don't have all the words for it now but. The way booktok is so hyper-consumerist. The way the "badass feminist" protagonists are more often than not white self-inserts for the audience to project onto rather than actual characters. The same repackaged "golden" male love interest with dark hair. The obligatory racism. The way 90% of the booktok girlies are white women and the few woc are used as tokens to shield the current mess that is YA/NA books from any discussions of the rampant racism. It's all connected, it all goes back to the largely white audience, somehow, but I don't have the words for it yet.

#hmmmm i dont have all the words for it yet but. this will be an essay one day. mark my words #anti booktok #publishing #on media #anti intellectualism #bookish rambles