I disagree that we have it good or better now, and that woman does sound like a proto-feminist emasculating her husband needlessly, which is pretty insane.

The premise of the book is interesting, but the execution doesn't seem to have went well at all, and the disease is a bit too recent in memory to make anything interesting out of it, unless it's a satirical take on society during a pandemic. The main character also seemed to be a Mary Sue type, and really didn't inspire any sympathy or reason to like them, which could have been easier if the character was just socialy awkward, but still kind to people around them.

the concept is functional fixedness. loved your video

so happy i found this channel gonna binge watch your videos

Vile. Deranged.

As to the First Person thing, the people who hate it are generally immature hacks who grew up solely on YA. They're also brainless goats who follow the herd, and often claim imaginary disabilities for why they won't ('can't ') read it 😂

In the Fanfiction world, its the same thing - extreme entitlement and condecension on the part of authors. I will drop stories if the author is an ass, or even too defensive in their comments. And then you have their simp fans who say readers should be grateful to authors and only leave a certain kind of praise or nothing at all.

The dude is weird

I haven't read the book myself, but from your descriptions, I think that a lot of the character issues that you had such problems with were meant to be self-deprecating and tongue-in-cheek about kind of the stuff that guys daydream about. Each thing that came up played on either a common insecurity that guys have, a common fault that guys overlook, a common overconfidence trap that guys fall into, or a common unrealistic wish that guys have. Maybe the line-by-line, moment-to-moment writing didn't come across as if it really were poking fun at these things. Maybe the tone tried to be too serious and too irreverent at the same time. Maybe the idea was muddled by trying to lampoon both the failures and the wish fulfillment. Or maybe I'm completely wrong, and this wasn't the intention of it at all. But from the zoomed-out view of events that you shared through your summaries, I consistently got the feeling that the events were trying to make the reader (if he's a guy) react with an embarrassed smile and a, "yeah, I guess we are like that sometimes, aren't we..."

The only part I really disagree with is the part near the end about mixing past and present tense. It's pretty common in day-to-day speech, shows up all the time when people are telling a story of their own, and it's not like it doesn't have it doesn't have any utility; I find that it helps to speed up or slow down the sense of pacing by adding either the immediacy of something here-and-now or by relegating less pressing things to the past-tense. So it isn't as if it's altogether a bad thing, just that it's something people are taught to avoid because it's something that'll result in a paper being graded poorly in a classroom setting; like with contractions, almost. Although it's not as if the rule isn't there for a reason. The second paragraph of the second example is a prime example of how this sort of thing can be a bit awkward and the rest were so-so. That said, the book certainly doesn't seem like my cup of tea. What you've described sounds like someone trying to write a story in the cozy catastrophe genre (like Day of the Triffids, minus the plant monsters et-al) and making it more of a soapbox for the measure of worries one might have had during The 'Rona. Reading the two-and-a-half chapters of sample of it on Amazon has more or less confirmed this and I *really* would rather not revisit that point in time.

The author's note says this was written for fun but it almost sounds like it was written out of spite. I have no context as to why, but it doesn't come across as a "for fun" piece

KZbin mobile app HATES my comments. Vacalypse? Vapo... anyway i think, as a writer, that "what if it actually was true!" Is definitely story fodder, and not necessarily political leaning of the author- however.... we've experience that enough times :/ to not be so open minded

I admittedly would have preferred for Ruth to be the main character. An Old Lady taking on the apocalypse sounds quite fun.

I thought it was going to be zombies, It was not Zombies. I don't understand why the people were just acting weird

Abigail and Ruth was such a weird coincidence lmao and how could I forget Bob lmao

I don't understand who this kind of book is for, or at least it's not my type of story. It lacks humour to be satire (or maybe I don't get the sense of humour), and it lacks the stark realism of post-apocalyptic stories (it's not very realistic overall), and it's too cynical to be a cosy fantasy or romance. I think it could have still worked as experimental or write-for-fun kind of piece, but the sour attitude of the protagonist, when everything is served to him, really turns me off it.

Overall: Would I read this book? No, but not for the usual reasons. The MC in this story was a lot like my nephew: too sheltered, emotionally stunted, and avoidant of the world. Unlike the MC, he was working on that. He volunteered at a cat shelter, and a suicide prevention call center. He played guitar in the park and was always surprised when someone dropped five bucks in his guitar case. I couldn’t read this story if I wanted to. My memories are too loud.

1:31:53 My parents closest neighbors are Amish. I grew up with Amish classmates, though they never graduated High School, generally leaving at 16. Mennonites are more involved in the modern world, there is even a Mennonite college: Goshen College, in Indiana. Mennonites don’t always dress as plainly, and often there’s no way to tell if someone is Mennonite unless they mention it. Not all speak Pennsylvania Dutch. They are very active in evangelism and charity work. Amish will work with Mennonites in charity works, but not in evangelism. (If this has changed, I haven’t heard about it.) Mennonites don’t always live on family farms, it was rare that they kept to that tradition. The Amish are set apart by their Plain dress, use of horse and buggies, and language. They worship in the homes of the congregation, not a church. They don’t go to college or graduate High School. It depends on the church and the Elders as to whether or not a household can have a phone. Sometimes it’s an Elder that has one in a little booth away from the house, other times it’s a younger family that is also caring for elderly parents. It really varies by church/congregation. All the Amish I knew growing up lived on family farms, without electricity. They grew or raised all of their food, and the church community would get together to can/preserve food for winter. No Amish I know of would agree they are Mennonites.

This character sounds like a fat Lisbeth Salander.

Why COVID, why not just make it a different fictional disease?

6:00 The authors note was a basic statement of ‘this was for fun, please don’t yell at me.” It gave me definite Fan Fic vibes, but didn’t turn me off to it. It did make me miss my nephew, who used to share his personal video game fan fic with me. (He died in 2021.) He loved discussing the storylines, since I don’t game and had no idea who the characters were.

4:07 Would it be a ‘Man against Nature’ story?

2:49 I think people find different ways of coping with stressful events. If writing a story about it is how someone chooses to process it, that’s fine. I look at the work as fiction instead of facts concerning whatever stressful event it’s about.

Thanks for the review. Im sorry you didn't enjoy the book.

so is lucy a mary sue??

I totally forgot that Quesac whatever was actually a piece of shit. I get the feeling that it is something Shad likes as a thing, because he is depicted as Funny And Cool despite branding his sexual conquests.

Also the whole "Isn't living a punishment enough!?" seems like a weird understanding on the "Live and atone" thing that shows up in anime a lot. The difference is that you're supposed to live and CHANGE to become better, not basically just be a whinier version of your evil self. Either that, or he misunderstood the line "Living this long was a punishment anyways!" from Victory Gundam, where the character saying that is rationalizing his decision to stay on board his carrier as it attempted a suicide charge at the enemy fleet.

Queseg sucks because his entire joke is that he's too stupid to understand that someone who is freaking out over him being a one-note sex joke doesn't like that he's being a note-note sex joke.

"He doesn't like fat people" he also just hates women too. Like the entire point was to shit on women.

"drinker" as in Critical Drinker? Who the fuck likes that annoying baby-speaking moron? Even before I found out he was a Shad-level freak, I was unable to get through his videos.

I feel like "character forgiven for everything" is wish fulfillment that I see for both men and women tbh, you see plenty of fiction written by women for women with female protagonists where women or at least the female protagonist is let off the hook for everything all the time.

I wish I could draw like that. I can't write for novels, only for visual media. I have a very talented artist but he's still only one person. Excellent art.

Is he blind in the left eye?

A healer with a uniform that includes a curly pink wig? ... Nurse Joy, is that you?