fourth wing is worse than cancer

I hate zodiac signs more now.

0:00 - Intro
3:45 - Summary
22:33 - There is no conflict
30:01 - Violet is the worst protagonist ever
38:49 - The other characters aren't even blank slates
42:37 - The tropes are unearned
47:15 - The themes are just tokenism
50:01 - No one involved cared

[JamesTullos]

Hey, I'm sorry about the sound quality here. Youtube has been acting up lately and videos will sound fine when I export them, but uploaded they sound... well, like this. I'm working on fixing it, sorry again.

[bj]

I will not be gaslit into thinking Violet scored high in agility

[MissKashira]

Why would you make a school where murder is allowed, filled with your children *and the children of your enemies?* These people just don't like their kids.

[fmsyntheses]

In my day we were happy with two wings

[mollywalker]

This book portrays Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome so badly. It's mentioned and then just forgotten about. Theres no further exploration into Violet overcoming her disability, experiencing symptoms, having to deal with chronic pain (or muscle cramps at inconvenient times), etc. As someone who read the book because my fiance and a lot of his family has EDS, I was really disappointed with the representation. It feels like the author added in a disability for brownie points rather than letting it affect the character or plot in any way.

[Attaxalotl]

The author of Fourth Wing seriously deserves some kind of award; they somehow managed to make ACTUAL GODDAMN DRAGONS boring.

[Arkonu]

I wish you'd write your own "bad on purpose" young-adult series. Have a shitty vapid main character named Hornita Wanabaang whos a half-goddess fairy human elf magic princess who falls for Dour McBroodlord the hot edgy half vampire demon werewolf goth destined to break her heart. Just go all in and make it the literal worst. I think you could really do it justice. :3

[nhmcazenav]

To be polite, how do you build an army if everyone's murdering each other?

[mikubrot]

as a fanfiction reader/writer i sincerely apologise for the crowd that demands that all original fiction "panders" to them

[pizzajoke]

This sounds like the author watched Terrible Writing Advice and took all of the “advice” to heart without realizing it was satire. Super-special awesome protagonist that’s the bestest there ever was, a love triangle (square? Hexagon?), the entire plot just being a thin excuse for the author’s power fantasy, worldbuilding that actively tries to avoid believability and consistency, it’s got it all!

[petrairene]

What's also absurd is that new recruits have to climb a rock face, without any previous climbing training. Alpine climbing is a learned skill that takes a ton of training to do it safely. So a total newbie falling to their death trying to climb something beyond their experience has zero to do with their lack of talent and ability, just with their lack of training. So when applying to a military school the new students are killed because they lack the training that the military school is supposed to give them. How dumb is that!

[dollblades]

one thing that made me roll my eyes was the fact that violet was "disabled." it would've been nice to see her generally deal with chronic pain and things like that because as a person with a chronic disease... yeah that stuff isnt the easiest to ignore LOL

[dragngamng]

That ending rant spoke to my soul, as a writer shitty books getting popular used to encourage me because I thought a good book would do twice as well. I’m not so sure anymore and it’s depressing

[GibbyandKieran]

That end rant was so cathartic to hear! I agree so much. I've always read fantasy, romance, and dabbled in paranormal romance, but this new "romantasy" genre is so awful. It shows absolutely no respect for fantasy as a genre and what really boils my blood is ppl saying "oh well it's a good introduction to fantasy for ppl who read romance". No it's not! Bc when those ppl go to pick up a real fantasy book (IF they ever do) they're all "ugh why does it have [feature common in fantasy]".

I recently ran into this looking at reviews for the Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri. Ppl reading it bc it's sapphic were complaining about the slow pacing and I was like?? Yeah it's a 550 pg fantasy novel. It's building a world and complex characters. It takes time.

Not counting that if you're used to air-sandwich romances like fourth wing then I can imagine how excruciating it would feel to read actual character development and detailed relationships between characters

[Goblinatrix]

I survived a heart attack this year. I'm currently reading Fourth Wing. Reading this book physically hurts me more than my heart attack did.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[ookaookaooka]

Me, naive: I love dragons! I wish a dragon book would be mainstream and super popular
Monkey’s paw: *finger curls*

[Geark]

Best part about the whole "students kill each other" thing is that we have somewhat of a historic precedent. Originally, the officer corps came from the nobility and/or upper class. Which were the same people who liked to settle their disputes with duels, often to the death. Which they of course continued to do while in the army.
The militaries eventually had to clamp down on this because *obviously* they realized how stupid it was to let their best officers kill each other over some bullshit.

And those were proper, formal duels, not people attacking each other randomly.

[DaughterrofHades_Cabin]

When the mentioned the black dragon I instantly said: “She’s going to bond to him, isn’t she?” So many tropes that I wasn’t surprised at all

[milestrombley]

If Violet is fragile as glass, how the f*ck can she survive having sex with her love interest!? DEATH BY SNU SNU!!!

[GunmetalRaven]

I'm still trying to figure out why dragon riders, who are basically air bound cavalry, learning to engage in hand to hand fighting techniques. If you're on the ground, it's probably because you fell - and if you fell - chances are you were high enough to have reached terminal velocity. Why are we not learning ranged weapons, better magic control, or like do we not have magical firearms? We have "magelights" - not sure if the dragon riders make those or if there's an external group of mages.

And wouldn't it make more sense to send the children of your enemies to the front line of the infantry?

This book was made for thirst and not for thought.