Give me more hot takes right here.

@markpalmer9844

5 ай бұрын

Frodo wasn't a hero. At the end he turned to the dark side and the world was saved by Gollum's crazed greed. The good guys won by accident.

@jasonaustin2103

5 ай бұрын

Anthony Ryan has great starts to book series but sequel books tend to fall off. Ie. ravens shadow series.

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

@@jasonaustin2103 haven't read him but he must be a popular guy if this is a hot take. I've definitely heard the name though

@jasonaustin2103

5 ай бұрын

@@JasonFuhrman I really enjoy his work. His new series is also fantastic. It seems like he likes to take a young main character and develop them over time with his stories. With a subplot of lost or ancient secrets.

@yenneferalvarez7122

2 ай бұрын

The Wendigoon video had tarnished the reputation of Blood Meredian. People only want to read it now because of the violence and dark tone, not for the brilliant writing. It has become the Fight Club( the film, not novel) of literature.

So fun to hear these takes. I’m not a fantasy reader really but it was really interesting to hear your thoughts on Brandon Sanderson in particular. I’ve never read his work but he seems to be so often raved about that I was wondering what the deal was there.

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

hey glad to see you here! Sanderson is far more a quantity over quality guy. At least he admits that his prose isn't great. He's stated he always wants to move forward and never go back. And we know that "writing is rewriting" to get it really polished. That said, he has a knack for creating stories that resonate with the general audience, but qualitywise he's not in the same ballpark as someone like George R.R. Martin. I've read two of his books and some short stories only. I wanted to try The Way of Kings, but I couldn't get much farther than chapter 1 due to the prose that needed a lot of work. In fact, I stopped and did a video on rewriting the prologue to that book haha. It helped me collect my thoughts.

@KierenWestwoodWriting

5 ай бұрын

@@JasonFuhrman Apologies, I often lurk! Thanks for that info, I'm going to go find that video!

Excellent channel. I'm happy that I found this place. I tend to adhere to your perspectives to the point (😅 Dune is not my thing exactly because of the peculiar narration scheme).

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

Welcome aboard! I really wanted to like Dune. I watched the movie as a kid and loved the aesthetic. But man the story (and writing) did not match.

Great video, you had some nice thoughts of your own to add into what is basically a wider, hugely subjective topic so that was refreshing to not see someone just agree with a sentiment one way or the other

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

If you ever need someone to disagree with, I'm probably your guy haha. Thanks for submitting!

I might have found Blood Meridian less annoying if I didn't burst out laughing at the scene right out of the Gorn episode of the original Star Trek.

@JasonFuhrman

6 ай бұрын

I never watched Star Trek. I'll have to look it up.

George R.R. Martin is THE fantasy writer of our time. Hot take, Martin > Tolkien. Love both but GRRM is the goat!

@AnonymousAnonposter

4 ай бұрын

Zoomer moment.

Crazy to see my comment in the video! Thanks for the response. I didn’t know you went to art school too, so here’s an art hot-take for next time if there’s room: Caravaggio is by far the best renaissance painter. Michelangelo is super over hyped. He’s great at painting/sculpting men but hopeless with the female figure. Da Vinci was absolutely genius but his paintings still fall short of the unbelievably dynamic lighting/composition of Caravaggio. (Love Mignola. His art runs through my head whenever I read lovecraftian fiction.)

@JasonFuhrman

6 ай бұрын

More graphic design than art, but I was an art minor, just not art history. Thanks for another hot take. Not sure I'm qualified to give a great response but I'll try.

This whole vid is really well done! I can't say too much about a lot of the books being discussed, but I think I had a pretty unique relationship with the Matrix, haha. Sad to say the last entry left me broken beyond fanboy repair. But jokes aside, I was born in the late late 90s, and with my dad playing a big hand into my exposure to most movies along with my taste to this very day, when I was old enough to see my first handful of R rated movies for the first time, The Matrix was among them, and I personally had a blast with it. I'll admittedly say I might be pretty biased since I grew up watching a lot of martial arts movies and got a lot of exposure to electronic music from all those popular racing games in the 2000s. But it wasn't until I got older where I appreciated the boiling pot of influences and the themes that flew over my head at the time. Like the blurriness of what we consider real, the connection between mind and body, and why we don't wear trench coats anymore. I still enjoy the first film, 37% of the Animatrix, and the rest... hopefully those three dots speak for my opinion of them xD Overall man, been a big admirer of your channel, and I very much enjoyed A Song For the End of the World! Might drop my own hot takes on all things books/movies/writing on the pinned comment, and if I do, they'll be hot and sparkly like tinfoil in a microwave 😂

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

thanks! And really appreciate you taking the time to read one of my books. I never hated the Matrix, but wasn't as huge of a fan as a lot of people were at the time. It's very much a product of its time, and I think that's why Britton wasn't a huge fan of it since he's only 22. It's why it's difficult sometimes to appreciate books or movies decades after the fact when you've been exposed to so many things either inspired or improving on the foundation that it left behind.

I think the polysyndetons are what get me with McCarthy. I like the simplicity in Fight Club, so I know it can work for me. Also: Thanks for reading the book! Looking forward to talking about it.

@JasonFuhrman

6 ай бұрын

Those can get annoying for sure. I'd view Palaniuk more "complex" than McCarthy in his style. It has a more modern flow anyway.

@leehunts4327

6 ай бұрын

@@JasonFuhrman I know I also appreciated the creativity in Palaniuk’s writing. He didn’t just tell a story. He used the craft to communicate it in a varied and parsimonious manner. I definitely don’t see that in McCarthy.

The GOT comment is actually quite intriguing to me. How you feel about Dune is how I sort of feel about the ASOIAF series. I started GOT in 2022. Going in I knew the series has been labeled "high fantasy" but as I read through the series I didn't feel that way at all, despite many high fantasy elements being included in the story, if that makes sense? To be fair, my knowledge of high fantasy has always been closer to the realm of LOTR. To me high fantasy has always been these whimsical, grandiose, otherworldly stories. I don't necessarily hate Game of Thrones, I got through 3 of the books with many critiques about them along the way, but I don't enjoy them as fantasy books. They're absolutely more along the lines of historical fiction with some fantasy props thrown in. The dragons, Bran's magical dreams, whatever Jon Snow has going on at the wall... Not to mention, the multiple POVs constantly pull me out of my immersion, and there wasn't enough fantasy within those POVs to justify them. Like you said about Dune, at a certain point I'm just like... these books should be fictional history books.

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

Dune for me was so much about the way it was written and the stilted narrative. ASOIAF had the historical feel you're talking about, but at least it had well designed characters and an actual narrative. I've only read three of the books, but enjoyed what I've read. I may come back to it if GRRM actually finishes or it feels like he's going to finish. Helena will be happy to have someone else in the Game of Thrones in historical fiction in a fantasy setting though :)

Ah, this was cool; I kinda hope you do make it a series. XD With Annihilation, I did actually like the books quite well, but I felt like the movie had greater depth. By the third book I kinda saw it was just gonna be weird stuff with no explanation or resolution really. And yeah, Goodkind was...a character (kind of a dick, it seemed like XD), but I think it was actually because he didn't even really seem to like fantasy that I ended up responding well to Wizard's First Rule. He didn't bother with explaining the magic or how anything worked; it felt more like Star Wars in that it was just epic, mythic kind of storytelling. By no means a great book, highly derivative and not terribly well written, but I do think it gets more flak than it deserves. And I do quite like Lovecraft's writing, actually, even though he kinda reused the same words too much; (take a shot every time he says "cyclopean" XD). One of the few pulp writers that transcended that medium.

@EricMcLuen

6 ай бұрын

Or insane angles or blasphemous.

@JasonFuhrman

6 ай бұрын

I'm surprised you got more depth from the film than the trilogy of books. The whole lighthouse keeper thing bringing it all together was what sealed the deal for me. Someone big coming from something so small and ordinary, while the film had a lighthouse for no story significance. It was just a set piece. But I did enjoy the movie still once I realized it wasn't trying to be a true adaptation. I do think there are far worse fantasy novels than The Sword of Truth. Especially lately.... Oh yeah "cyclopean" is a classic haha

@JasonFuhrman I'm on my first story in my anthology, "The Black Inferno", which is about people discovering a civilization of beast people from a distant planet that came to Earth centuries ago, and they also learn that they were the reason behind others mythologies in Egypt, Asia, and Aztec culture. Like I said, the anthology is told through the eyes of the creatures, and it's so unique to learn what these aliens think about us. Also, here's what I did that is so cool. The aliens speak in a language that is kind of a mix between Arabic, Devanagari (Hindi), and Mongolian. You might be interested in that (or not, I don't know. I'll just have to wait and see). Also, they live in this alien planet that is split into two biomes: a bare and rocky area that would give Earth humans a more open space to explore, and a lush and busy jungle that would give them a claustrophobic feeling. To make it interesting, it's an alien version of one of those cannibal films like "Eaten Alive" (1980) and "Cannibal Holocaust". Let me know what you think of this premise, is it a really good take on cannibal films?

@JasonFuhrman

6 ай бұрын

Sounds pretty cool. Reminds me of the Lovecraft mythos a bit too. How humanity was a mistake and these aliens were viewed as gods. I've seen Cannibal Holocaust so I'm curious to see how dark your story gets.

Yay great video Jason! Was really fun to hear you discuss everyone’s hot takes. Thanks for covering mine too - it was enjoyable and made me chuckle too! Haha yeah you’re right that rings of power is nowhere near as good as the original franchise. It’s just my fave of recent fantasy Tv as it’s fun to be in the world and there was enough of a story to hook me. Haha on the pregnant apocalypse trope- fair point on the road, but it’s also in the walking dead, children of men (and I’ve heard it’s been used in severance, how high we go in the dark, the fifth season etc). I think it’s ok if there’s a purpose like in children of men. But if the female character isn’t well developed and the function is just to increase stakes it’s annoying haha. And yeah apologies me being mean to the male authors was just ranting but obv present company excluded! And re the love story- you’re right that I probably look for it more than the average. But I still think that love is what makes the book tick. It needn’t be romantic love. Eg in the road, what made it special was the father and son. If the book has just been two coworkers doing the same thing it wouldn’t have been as good. Anyway thanks again and look forward to the next one!

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

thanks for the hot takes! I totally agree if the pregnant woman trope is poorly used it's pretty weak. But if there is a purpose to that, like you said with Children of Men (written by a woman ;)) it doesn't bother me. I guess sometimes you won't know until you get to the end of a story if it was a gimmick or not. If you like stories where love/relationships are at their core, I highly recommend Iian Ried's Foe or I'm Thinking of Ending Things. He's stated he's been fascinated with relationships and their effects on us, so they are definitely at the core of the two books I've read of his. Fair with Rings of Power, because there just isn't any good fantasy around. I'm glad someone else recognizes how poor House of the Dragon is though. It was painful to get through and I'll never try another season.

@helenasf1782

5 ай бұрын

@@JasonFuhrman No worries! And haha touché on p d James 😅 ooo thank you for the recs- I’ll add them to my list. Sounds like they’d be a good fit for me. And haha yeah house of dragons not for me alas! We need better fantasy shows for sure! Even cavill couldn’t keep me watching the latest season of Witcher.

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

@helenasf1782 Cavill couldn't keep me watching it either 😉

@helenasf1782

5 ай бұрын

@@JasonFuhrmanPahaha 😅

Southern Reach Trilogy will always have a place in my heart, but my god is it flawed 🙏

without touching your and helena's nonsense takes on HotD and RoP, i'll say that i felt the way about Frank Miller as you felt about Magnolia. it took me a good long while to appreciate his chunky, sometimes very busy drawings. also bonus fact, i have (a re-print of) that silvery McFarlane Spider-Man issue you flashed on screen! got it at the gothenburg book faire in, i think, 1836.

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

Ohhh nice. I have the regular color version. I should have gone with fancy silver.

I think I have to agree with pregnant woman in terrible situations. Have seen it more than once in media. Usually written by men. Write what you know. Like violence used in media by a writer who's never experienced violence. It comes off tasteless, it's a cheap goreporn grab and falls flat and infuriating for people who have felt loss or dealt with things like that. It has to be treated like it would in life. You can do it right but it has to hit real for the other characters and be appropriate for the setting or it's cheap.

Barely 7 min in and i love ppl who can critize lovecraft astutely 😂

I read the Road and a bit of Blood Maridian, and found myself feeling oddly ambivalent toward the former and a bit annoyed by the later. The idiosyncratic prose lent the Road an otherworldly atmosphere that was much to its benefit, but in Blood Maridian it was just irritating. The stories of both were fine; however, I will say that the ending to the Road seemed like it was chosen for the sake of theme at the expense of continuity; the hopefulness just doesn't seem justified considering the state of the world we're presented. In hindsight I should have listed more authors/books. I've also enjoyed the likes of Oliver Twist, Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, Wuthering Heights, Dracula, Around the World in Eighty Days; basically I tend to like the 19th century classics. I think Dune makes good use of its unusual approach where all the cards are always on the table. It's not very subtle, but that's fine with me. Being so internal also helps avoid the need for exposition which would otherwise bloat the novel significantly. As far as the ending is concerned, Frank Herbert was just one of those authors that didn't like to write action. The second book works better as an ending anyway (though I understand if that seems lame).

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

I'm curious if you think The Road should have ended in a bleak way versus hope. I felt the contrast was fitting, plus the matra of "carry the fire" was persistent. It was a bittersweet ending, which isn't usual for McCarthy, but we know that having a son late in life inspired this book, which must have finally given him some humanity haha. I can see where you're coming from with Dune, but I just don't like fiction where all the cards are the on table. To me, it obliterates very important tenets in crafting compelling scenes (tension/anticipation). Without them, scenes fall flat. Imagine watching a movie where you hear the voice over of two characters in conflict in a scene. No thanks.

@nathanspears2940

5 ай бұрын

@JasonFuhrman The ending is better the way it is. No one would like the book if it was changed. Dune has tension, but it's more akin to that of a horror novel where you know bad things will happen and the fun is seeing how it plays out and what results from it.

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

@nathanspears2940 I see what you're saying, but I guess I prefer most stories to not have simultaneous POVs. It's one thing to do it sometimes in a specific genre, but all the time in an entire story doesn't work for me.

I should note in my defense, I generally read books that I think I would enjoy, and generally I find things to like about them. There are the books that I don't care for necessarily, though I don't cover them as much on my channel. I have an odd thing, if I like something, or at least appreciate it, I have more to say about it. Me loving or hating a book is...I don't want to say a rare occurrence, but it's not something that happens often. Also, I will not tolerate such heresy against McCarthy and VanderMeer... Though I will note, the film and book of Annihilation are about the same in terms of quality. At least in my opinion. :)

@JasonFuhrman

6 ай бұрын

I think my critical nature with story stems from my obsession to understand it better for my own work. I also have a lower tolerance than most people when it comes to bad writing. In viewing other book tube channels I often see that many reviews just can't see the flaws sometimes or they don't bother them as much. Maybe it's because most aren't writers as well, but then again many film critics aren't filmmakers but can have an eye for the art of filmmaking. I'd need to read Annihilation in isolation to truly compare it to the film. That story is cemented in my mind as all three books so it's difficult to compare.

@someokiedude9549

6 ай бұрын

@@JasonFuhrman I think our difference is that the writing flaws don't bug me nearly as much as they do for you. I mean, they do bug me for sure. But I don't feel they entirely detract from the experience...well except for some special cases.

@JasonFuhrman

6 ай бұрын

@someokiedude9549 yeah I can be a stickler.

HotD is the best show on television. Yikes take, my dude.

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

hahahaha, best hot take so far.

@kanedafx

5 ай бұрын

@@JasonFuhrman happy to be of service!

@azieldaly2965

Ай бұрын

​@@JasonFuhrman Definitely disagree on HOTD. Is it ground breaking television so far? No, but it's good. The costumes and armour are some of the best in television ( except the wigs, but they aren't that bad.)

@JasonFuhrman

Ай бұрын

@@azieldaly2965 oh man the wigs... Glad you're enjoying it though

Inherit vice was a much better movie.

@JasonFuhrman

22 күн бұрын

I agree. Though it was still a mixed bag for me but easier to get through

@austinquick6285

22 күн бұрын

@@JasonFuhrman cinematography atleast. It may have been a little long, and anti-climatic but killer cast.

@JasonFuhrman

22 күн бұрын

@@austinquick6285 definitely. I'm glad I saw the movie first so I could picture Joaquin Phoenix as the lead. He was perfect.

Still married?

@JasonFuhrman

5 ай бұрын

Yep