Under One Roof | RANT REVIEW
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- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
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@@LiamHughes-sy7zlok buddy you’re getting blocked
Hazelwood’s constant emphasis on short uwu woman x giant hulking man is strangely dependent on gender roles for the writer of a feminist series about scientists
Give me giant womanx short king already
@@xRaiofSunshine literally, I want Amazonian x twink representation right now. Plus muscular men and hand-sized women are way overrepresented, why can’t we have any form of body diversity
What if it was an environmentalist who fell in love with Paul Bunion and their conflict is that he cuts down trees? 😂
"Brenda, chopping wood is all I know, it's who I am."
yeah this is why i can't stand that she calls her books that...being written by a woman does not make something feminist automatically lmao
Like Daisy Ridley is 5’7
That’s like a bit taller than average for a British woman
Steminist is the most white woman feminist word I've heard. "Girl boss" has some competition, lol.
I’m cringing so hard 😭
But! But "girlboss" is intuitive and can be used by all genders and everyone will immediately know what you're getting at
It sounds so...exclusive and privileged
I also think it’s bizarre because every woman actually in STEM I know has said Hazelwood doesn’t seem to have a clue what she’s taking about and hasn’t done much research other than some nods toward ‘sexism exists.’ So using it so hard as marketing just keeps feeling more and more OTT
It's definitely worse, lol.
And I specifically hate it because it usually involves women ignoring or forgoing their boundaries or person beliefs in a very unhealthy way. Whyyyy?? Hate it.
"the chest is so wide that for a moment it's all i can see" ok so he has yaoi shoulders
@@illiteratebear And yaoi hands.
please google "Grimcutty" because that's what I immediately thought about (but it is a horror movie so TW for that)
I literally came to the same conclusions and from now on I will see hazelwood's work in this way
Junjou romantica called and asked for their main character back
@laroux0820 the latest volumes of that have massive art evolution, so it'd really be early junjou romantica
Can’t wait for these 4 ladies to meet up at the end of the series and learn that all of them got boyfriends who are played by adam driver
HAHAHA
fucking perfect omg
Plot twist, they're all brothers who've just never introduced their girlfriends to each other 😅
Real talk: are there any Ali Hazelwood male leads that aren't played by Adam Driver?
@@rosettastarlight6239 lol, that would be a fun plot twist. My mind immediately went to the much more dramatic plot twist that they're all actually the same guy trying to live four secret double (quadruple?) lives.
these type of relationships just don’t work in contemporary like you’re telling me you’re having an enemies to lovers situation with tim from accounting 💀
Hey with the right Monty Python style humor i could picture enjoying it. People inventing passionate prank wars just to make their daily lives a trace less boring. But you’d have to be a pretty good writer.
Unrelated but this gave me The Magnus Archive flashbacks. Truly, the workplace comedy of all times, with Tim from accounting.
@@ettaetta439I love TMA
They just rarely work outside of fanfic or fantasy because they require the characters to be dumb as a bag of rocks and completely unable to communicate.
@@ettaetta439 It's truly amaizing that in a supernatural horror show the enemies to lovers still involves petty office drama
"once i'm in a better place financially" LIKE YOU COULD BE IF YOU TOOK THE MONEY THE MAN IS OFFERING????
I literally said this out loud 💀
@@simpleton3781HE said that out loud in writing!!
@@definitelynotashark1799 YES omg how that pains me. OR SHE COURL SUBLEASE AND MAKE MORE MONEY LIKE ??? I need to stop I’m putting logical into a novella more than the author
I literally screamed it at the screen, like?? She really must be stupid because oh my god?
My mom is an environmental engineer, and I am aro/ace this book feels like it was written to torture me specially. 1) Mara would get eaten alive by any other female engineer. 2) environmental science has one of the largest population of female degree holders of any STEM field, it sucks that that’s not reflected in the story (not very STEMinist tbh) 3) a HUGE part of being an environmental engineer with the EPA is having to cooperate with oil and natural gas companies and the military, like to the point that I’m not sure Ali Hazelwood actually knows what and environmental engineer actually does. 4) a lot of engineers really are that socially inept, but they’re normally competent at fucking something. 5) just because someone is aroused doesn’t mean they’re enjoying themselves???? 6) the whole “I don’t normally like this, but I want to do this for you” approach to asexual people in sexual relationships is not romantic it is damaging. It feeds into the idea that asexual people should put their own comfort and desires aside to please their partner. Asexual people can want sex for a variety of different reasons, but they are not obligated to have sex to validate their romantic relationship.
Good god if some stranger moved into my house with no heads up, refused to be a good housemate, complained about the way I live, then demanded I move out I would be so disgusted by them. It’s very rare that I sympathise with the man in a booktok het romance but good god he deserves better. Not even the anti-capitalist lip service makes me want to like her
Also why would she want to live with someone who has made it clear they do not want her there and do not like her
Right??? Usually the male leads are totally insufferable, but I just feel kinda sorry for this dude. Physically moving someone without their permission is not cool, but being a terrible roommate housemate AND an annoying narrator _at the same time_ ??? Jailable offense imo, get in the sea 👉🌊
@@bbo7002 literally, like I’d be pissed if my sister posthumously tried to hook me up with her annoying invasive student, particularly by inviting her to live with me, an asexual, unannounced. Like if they didn’t work out or she’d just taken the money he offered, the last thing his sister would have done for him is send some stranger to invade his privacy because she thinks they could override his asexuality
@@tyler-df3wyright?? it has waaaay too much "turn someone -straight- allosexual" energy for my ace self to be amused 😒 or worse, it's almost like telling the character that he's obligated to accept the situation bc "faaaaamily" and "it's what she would have wanted, u have to honor her last wishes or else ur a bad person 🥺". Sis got me out here feeling sorry for a fossil fuels lawyer, wtf is happening?? 😭
Ok to be fair, I don't think Hazelwood did it on purpose, & having representation is great, I just wish it was......better?? Asexuality is a spectrum & plenty of ace folks DO engage in physical intimacy for a variety of reasons, it's not wrong to portray that in media. It's just.......there are also a lot of us who don't??? And it doesn't make us any less interesting or mature or multifaceted as ppl???? And it would be pretty dope to see that portrayed respectfully on page or up on the big screen???? idk 😅
Liam is incredibly tall, terrifyingly strong, smart as hell, with freakishly large hands, and his chest is so impossibly broad that you can't see around it? Dude is straight up just Kingpin from Spiderverse lol
@@dylantallman This! 🤣🤣🤣
That's what I thought lol 😭😭
If I was left half a house I'd never been to and the person who left it to me didn't even live in, and the current resident offered to buy me out I'd be like "Give me two days to research property values and then I'll let you know".
I'd be a terrible romance protagonist.
This is exactly what I was thinking.
@@wendyheatherwood I feel like most of us as protagonists would derail the romances so fast; like if I’m not interested in a person then I’m not interested, no amount of author insistence that I’m somehow destined to be with protagonist guy #184 is gonna change that
Same. My first words would be "sold, you can have it." Then, I'd bounce off into the sunset with my money to maybe buy a house I actually had a say in.
If for some unfathomable reason I hadn't jumped at the chance to be bought out of a houseshare, I would definitely have left the first time this intimidatingly large person physically moved me out of their way. I don't understand why that is framed as romantic instead of uncomfortable. Also, if I needed to use my roommate's shower, it would have been discussed ahead of time face to face or over text so we didn’t walk in on each other! Why would you not send a text saying "My bathroom's out of commission, can I use your shower?"
That’s very steminist of you yaaaaas /S
Mara would write a post on Reddit like "AITA for claiming what is rightfully mine from the will of my only family??" only for you to read the most batshit wild story you've ever heard (this book)
Pitch the whole book to Smosh hahahaha
I LOVE the character trait of GENIUS WOMAN who is a MORON and TALKS LIKE A TODDLER wowowowow my FAVOURITE TROPE so awesome so iconic love it. So good.
Who said satire is dead?
very cute very demure
Who knew women are like orange cats who all pass around a single brain cell. I guess it wasnt her time during the book, or mine either after I listened to it 😂
Easy fix: Helena talked to both of them about the other one constantly. But she was a nice woman who saw the best in everybody. So when they meet up, they have to realize the actual, flawed human behind the stories. But then, they both remember the stories and what she loved about them, and they start to see it in each other for real!! So easy!! So cute!!
I want this now 🙏🏼
“Blankingly blank” is such a red flag for me at this point, especially when it’s some version of “infuriatingly handsome”
Especially because I'm pretty sure there is a more sophisticated way to describe a thing like that.
I am so over infuriatingly handsome. I don't mind blankingly blank if it's interesting, but romance authors always seem to use the same pairs every time.
I do really hate it, though I understand that it's the author's way of describing things from the characters pov, but it's almost in an unreliable narrator type of way, and I usually don't feel comfortable with it.
I get what you mean, but like... My cat is infuriatingly handsome so 😅
“Handsomely infuriating”
"I am such a small bean and he is so big, look how bigly big he is! Look how hugely enormous and frustratingly large he is!!" Rachel, please, do not make me cackle and cringe at the same time. It confuses my face.
The way tiktok romance authors describe tall guys make me feel weird about being one. Like being tall is great, but if someone told me that the first time they met me they were stunned about how broad my chest is or how well I fill doorways I’d be kinda weirded out
As a short woman with messy curls, I sympathize 😂. These authors NEED to be stopped!!!
I'd think these short ladies would be relatable but noooo. It's just uncomfortable. Why is him picking her up cute 😭??? that shit would piss me off so bad.
@@juliawiggers9179 literally like if I tried to pick up any of my short friends to move them they’d absolutely punch me. And I’d especially not want to pick up a short girl I barely knew, that’s way too overly-familiar I’d feel like a creep
Besides why are these kinds of authors so insistent on tall people being super muscular, I want more body types being represented
@@tyler-df3wy if some basically stranger 6’4 guy picked me up i’d literally start CRYING that is TERRIFYING 😭
All I’m thinking is, I hope he’s around when I need that thing off the top shelf when I’m too lazy to break out the stepladder
These authors clearly never had a yaoi phase in their teens that traumatised them with ridiculously large hands and other body parts
I used to be coworkers with a man who was 6'8. I wouldn't even describe him as massively tall and broad as this lawyer. He just looked like a dude. And had normal sized hands. Literally the only difference was he needed to duck in doorways. He was just a tall guy, not this giant freak of nature with his Polly Pocket girlfriend.
I’m screaming at Polly Pocket girlfriend lol
On one hand I’m glad that there’s an aspec man in a romance but uh. yeah that wasn’t it for me. It felt like the asexual version of ‘I’m gay except for this one person’, in which the (presumably) straight/allo author doesn’t really put in the effort to explore the nuances of identities
i feel like both of these things are such a cop out 😭 like “oh you are my exception” which means the author never has to explore their identity any further! my thing is, idk if they do that because they are scared to write these characters inaccurately or if they’re trying to appeal to an audience that does NOT have an interest in queer identities. either way, i feel like if you’re not gonna at least try to make a well written queer character, i’d prefer there just to be none at all
Yeah there's something incredibly icky about the aunt setting up her ace nephew and her mentee from beyond the grave and it working. I can't put my finger on exactly why it bothers me so much. Maybe because it smacks of the "you just haven't found the right person" dismissal. And if he's supposed to be demi, why is he attracted to her from first sight? That's not how it works! We aren't romantasy werewolves who just imprint on random strangers and are drawn to them no matter how incompatible and annoying they are!
Wait wasn't Ali Hazelwood's male protag in the chess book also aspec but the FMC was the exception?
@@10puppyluvYeah he was also ace-spec and the FMC was his first time feeling attraction.
As an aroace person with a bunch of demi friends this is so frustrating, demi, grey, flux and all the other labels of the aro/ace spectrum arent a cope out to write a classic sex scene and romance anyway, they're not a loophole around asexuality, they are full fledged identities with their own experiences and "asexual exept for their one true love" written as it is here feels like bordeline fetishization or at the very least comodification of asexual identities to fullfill a very specific allo and monogamous fantasy of being wanted as exclusivly as humanly possible
which in and of itself is fine as a fantasy like i get it its hot to be made to feel really special but its annoying when its quite litteraly the only rep a good part of the ace/aro spectrum ever gets, it would not piss me off as much if it was just a one time self indulgent fantasy among a bunch of rep properly representing real people
11:32 saying ‘adulting’ in reference to a funeral is fucking insane. The MC was close enough to her mentor that she left her house to her and she’s acting like her funeral is no big deal?? Obviously grief is different for everyone but this isn’t Ali Hazlewood showing how humor or lightheartedness might be a coping skill for the MC, it’s her not being a good writer.
I'll be real honest, the word adulting shouldn't be used by anyone over the age of 20
"adulting" gets on my nerves when people use it to refer to doing their laundry, let alone going to a goddamn funeral. my god
As a short woman it really creeps me out how shortness is infantalized in media.
Also, I gotta say, the sound effects you use to bleep made me laugh.
Yep. It's so weird, especially when people on the internet imply that other adults are pedos for being attracted to us shorties, especially those of us with younger-looking faces. We're still adult women!
Right? I'm short, but I'm also an adult woman
Yeah, I don’t understand why authors keep writing short adults as if they’re children. It comes across as really freaking creepy.
"Who's 30? The underwear police?" SENT ME
If she's a struggling post graduate student with a bunch of loans? wouldn't it be in her favor to take the money, pay off her loans, and clearly Liam is willing to do anything to get her out so she can leverage a way to have enough to buy an apartment afterwards?
EXACTLY.
he offered her double!! DOUBLE!!!!! i’d pushed for 3x the OG amount fr
The most unrealistic part is that the rich Lawyer doesn't immediately serve her a subpoena when she refuses his cheque. 😂😂
He's a good guy. The author thinks being rude and inconsiderate is 'quirky'
If something "hot and liquid coils at the bottom of my belly" I'm going to run for the bathroom because it's clearly IBS
Brooooo he's only 6'3? That is not tall enough to justify the way she describes him.
In the love hypothesis, she says the LI is 6 inches taller than the MC and proceeds to act like he has to bend in half or she has to climb him like a tree to kiss. Six inches in height difference is barely a bend in the neck to touch face. Like the physics ain’t right for this STEM romance.
Depends on how short you are, I'm 5'2 and my ex was 6'2 let me tell you I almost fell down my drive way when trying to kiss him in heels.
And looking at the front cover, she is too tall for him to have massive limbs around her. She looks 5’9 😆
He comes form a family of large hands
My brother is taller then that and he wouldn't be able to put his hands around our 13 year old sister's waist, let alone a (allegedly) fully grown woman
It really creeps me out the way Mara is written. The fact that she hasn’t grown much since middle school would be eyebrow-raising, but not cause for alarm on its own. Some people do hit their growth spurts early, and I don’t see why that would be relevant to bring up, but it could just be a little detail thrown in for verisimilitude. However, the fact that she talks like an especially moody adolescent and her logic and conflict resolution skills are so bad that I’ve seen more mature behavior from literal four-year-olds… this character is a child.
And the height difference between them that's actually 6 inches (apparently) but the author behaves like they have 2 bloody deserts between, it's just very odd.
Fwiw I did stop growing at 11; I'm 4'10" (and my husband is 6'2"). But at best it's a side note to my main plot. My height is the least interesting thing about me, although it can be good fodder for jokes.
Right? I hit my growth spurt early (typical in my family according to my father), I'm in my 20s now, and I still fit in clothes I've had since I was 13/14, but I kept maturing mentally
I stopped growing at 12, and the way she describes big big man and tiny tiny girl always creeps me out.
I may have worn the shorts from my soccer uniform I got at 13 until the elastic gave out in my early 20s
If this woman appeared in my house i lived since forever and started acting like a spoiled brat and still complained about me not doing whatever she wanted i would be on the news
17:12
The imagery of a guy being so wide that all you can see is a chest is so funny. Not funny in the way Hazelwood intended, mind you. I’m picturing a giant cube man with stubby arms. Man’s literally a square
he has that roblox build
lmao for real, i just think of the ikea teddy bear that has an enormous body and a tiny head/limbs 😆
Steve Minecraft???
Spiderverse lex luthor is that you? 😂
Like that one meme of Kylo Ren
i hate it when the male love interest “can barely fit through the doorway” bc he’s “so large and in charge” bc it almost always means he’s muscular and thin. when are we going to get a male love interest that towers over the female main character that’s fat? when’s that gonna happen?
@@theedexterspeckman6512 Fr. They don't even have average size dudes (i.e. a bit of a tummy). They're always cut and have defined muscles.
Romance novels need to embrace the dad bod era fr
I don’t remember if there was a height difference, but in Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade, both leads are plus-size.
never because of course the hot love interest can't be gross and fat /sarcasm
I dunno, when does your book come out? 😊
As someone named Liam, when I found out he was using Liam as a nickname for William I lowkey got whiplash
wait WHAT
This is the most based part of the book actually, bring back nonstandard nicknames.
Well Billy just isn't a "sexy booktok" name I guess
I mean....it kind of IS a nickname for William?? It's also usual Irish form of William, whereas in Scottish Gaelic it's "Uilleam". However, Irish & Scottish Gaelic are related languages, so it's definitely possible to see some crossover wrt the uhhh distribution of Liams and Uilleams, I guess?? Lol 😅
@@bbo7002 yeah i know liam came about as a primarily irish shortening of william but its more that i cant say ive ever met or heard of someone going by Liam when their full name is William
This man is the daddy long legs of hand sizes. Cryptid hands. These descriptions omg. "Cover my whole torso." So they could block a whole doorway???
I WOULD instantly enjoy the story 10x more if it was a grumpy cryptid occupying the house. Although it wouldn’t solve the protag problem
@@asteridshydrangea-jt2hfexactly!
He's the slender man
If I saw that cover at a bookstore I would think it's about a daughter forced to live under one roof with her stepfather because SHE LOOKS LIKE A MIDDLE SCHOOLER
As a petite woman who could easily be picked up, if someone picked me up without warning me first and getting my permission. Well let's just say they'd be lucky to leave with just a broken nose ❤
The Reylo immediately jumps out in this one huh😂
Why does it always come back to Reylo?? *headdesk*
Im curious, how do you recognize reylo fanfic?
@@izisi6800because the author is a reylo and all her stories go back to Reylo tropes
@@izisi6800a lot of popular romance authors rn have written reylo fanfiction and most of them are open about having written it in the past! also hazelwood’s first book, from the cover to the fact the MMC was named Adam (as in adam driver😭) makes it pretty clear it was just her fanfic with slight changes
Its just....... so easy. Wide eyed Brown haired girl dark haired dark eyed (white) emo boy. Broad chested. They both have super powers and are antagonistic. The brown haired girls go wild!
As someone who has a decent education in environmental science, we dont talk like this. The pressure in the science community (especially for woman) to be precise would not lend itself to her extensive hyperbole. Has she ever even talked to a woman in science? I have my doubts.
Someone tell Ali Hazelwood to write a reversal Giant X Tiny romance where a short dude dates an amazonian tall AF girlie
Scarlet Gale has a duology where a small/ average height monk is immediately smitten with a large warrior woman that she started writing based on this complaint. She even titled the working draft "Oh No Too Buff."
I want two massively bulked up protagonists, they meet at the gym and bond about getting swole. He’s an inch taller than her but she’s got a better squat pb
@@someoneunknown7655 gymrats romance
@@someoneunknown7655 Not exactly what you're looking for, but Paladin's Faith has a romance between two very large and strong people. One is a trained and occasionally berserk warrior, and the other is a nun who can turn into a bear.
Kino Matoko/Sailor Jupiter is tall queen. That's why she's often shipped with sailor Mercury
Given the volume of size descriptions this book has, I can only assume that this guy is 38 meters tall, 3% body fat, and 26 tons.
Every time she described how tall and muscular he was, I imagined him growing larger. Like one of those toys you drop in water so it gets bigger. Until in my mental image of the characters, he just looooooomed over everyone and everything like lawyer Godzilla.
A big oil lawyer? That’s a giant ass red flag if I’ve ever heard of one! 😬
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THIS SEX SCENE AUGURISHFJSHS 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
@@xRaiofSunshine the crazy part is that HES the cool one!!
@@katierasburn9571RIGHT 😂my leftist, lesbian ass defending and fighting for this man when I read this story.
Right?! How did the author make that kind of guy less insufferable than the FL😭
It’s not even just the environment that’s the issue here. Big oil companies do serious damage to indigenous communities in the US (and around the world) and it honestly sucks to see it forgotten about in a supposedly ‘steminist’ book
NGL if a woman told me that all it took to make her go to the side of Big Oil was a conventionally attractive guy sitting on the couch in front of her I would…not be impressed or tempted to read about her life. This literally feels like how teenagers conceptualize adult life, as if the hormones and search for identity will always be raging so intensely that a rivalry between chess and glee club is the end of the world.
Don’t get me wrong there’s ways to take mature adult personality/worldview conflicts and pump them up in fiction, but good writers can make exaggerated dynamics still feel engrossing without making the characters act like 12 year olds.
It just takes competence, because you need an ability to recognize and construct the underlying layers of characterization that will take precedence in different scenarios.
The irony of a "STEMinist" book making you root for the guy oil lawyer instead is so damn funny
50:14 “Based on what? They all look the same.” Coming from an Ali Hazelwood love interest is crazyyy, talk about the pot calling the kettle lol
I don’t mind massive size differences, but authors are writing non realistic size differences in non-fantasy settings. If this was like an orc and a dwarf or something, sure yeah. But these are two humans and this is set in the real world.
Yep if it was monster romance I’d be like huge monster, got it, makes sense
It's so funny, because one of my dorm mates was 4'9" and dated the captain of the dragon boat team- who literally had to duck under the door. The first time he visited, all I did see was "chest" 😂
Does Ali Hazelwood know that Daisy Ridley is 5’7?
That’s like a bit taller than average for a British woman
One of my biggest pet peeves in Reylo fanfiction is people writing about Rey like she’s like Ariana Grande sized
I'm legitimately asking this because I missed the Reylo community entirely until like a year ago, but is it certain that this book is based on Reylo fanfiction or is that just a running joke? Because the MCs are so unlike both the actors and the characters in Star Wars that I feel like I'm being gaslit.
@@atreides213iirc Ali hazelwood’s debut? Book was based on reylo fan fiction. The love hypothesis, that one. She used to write reylo fanfiction I believe. If I have my facts straight
Rachel, in case no one else has explained this: Yes, the kind of ownership arrangement between the mentor and her brother is possible.
These situations are known as a tenancy-in-common. In these cases, each co-tenant possesses the right to devise their interest in the property to heirs without infringing on the other co-tenant's rights.
A Joint Tenancy is similar, but has the right of survivorship, which means that when one co-tenant dies the other automatically inherits, regardless of what a will says.
Came to the comments to see if someone had explained yet. Liking and commenting to boost the post. 😊
Nothing screams feminism like infantilizing women.
How the hell had she never seen herself as dainty when she’s like the same size as a twelve year old and he can wrap his hands all the way around her waist. A 6’3 person isn’t so big they can carry an average sized person like a child, she’s pretty obviously dainty
@@tyler-df3wy Plot twist: She's not actually a human at all but some kind of small imp that tricks its way into households by playing mind games with the human residents, only she's kind of bad at it so has accidentally managed to convince herself of her own cover story at the same time.
@@wendyheatherwoodlol I want this book
There's a sketch from snl with John Cena where he's pretending to be a romance novel character at a smutty bookstore. My husband and I quote it all the time. Every time you mentioned how "bigly huge" the guy was, I saw John Cena talking about his "10lb steak hands" and I'm chuckling like a moron in public
wait i watched its funny what?? its snl i feel like that shouldnt be possible
@user-eb6zt4wx3k every once in a while, they make a funny sketch.
@user-eb6zt4wx3k Career day (with Adam Driver), Kavanaugh hearing (with surprise guest Matt Damon), and Meet your second wife are some good ones.
these two remind me of those romance anime pictures where one of them is skinny, tiny, and has huge eyes, and the other one is like 60x their size with eyes 100x smaller 😔
I'm so tired of cis het romances where the woman has no experience with sex. It's so annoying and boring. If you like queer romance Ashley Herring Blake's series is solid (not mind blowing but good)
I was literally just wondering what Rachel would think about these, since the first one is the most recent romance book I actually enjoyed 😂
@@HazelSageHP same! Would love to know Rachel's thoughts!
Just grabbed Iris Kelly Doesn't Date after reading this comment. Thank you for the rec!!
rip to this environmental scientist but the second i find out someone is a billionaire, a bigot, or a fossil fuels representative, i lose all interest and attraction. hearing that in the intro i'm immediately like "oh so there's literally nothing the author can do to make me interested in this premise, gotcha gotcha gotcha"
EDIT: turns out the author still couldn't make me interested in the premise, but through some miracle, they've executed on it so poorly that i legitimately felt sorry for the "love interest". damn.
of all the birds to choose over humanity.....PELICANS???? war criminal of the bird world, would swallow a kitten whole if given the chance???
'War criminal of the bird world' 😂 I just picture them trying to swallow those capybaras
earliest i've ever been.. when i saw the "no thoughts. head empty" on the thumbnail i knew i needed to see it asap
Her progressive beliefs read as so insincere I started picturing her as Britta from community with a curly wig
Every time you read the words "ginger klutz" I die a little more because I am both ginger and a little clumsy and this is...not the representation I was hoping for. Very sad. Thank you for the incredible content as per usual!
14:19 i finished my master’s at 23 and will hopefully finish my phd at 27. that’s taking no breaks, extra years, or skipping years, going from kindergarten to doctoral studies. also that’s such a weird relationship to have with your supervisor where they’re trying to get involved with your romantic life? that icks me out.
Rachel tried to warn me about the sex scene but I just couldn’t have prepared. It was SO uncomfortable
The ultimate fantasy of getting a job straight out of grad school, inheriting a property that someone immediately offers an insane amount of money for it so I can buy another place all for myself. My gods.
So, I'm demisexual, and I have some random thoughts about this.
First, I do appreciate what appears to be an attempt at demisexual representation. It's not very good, but it's far more than what we get from most media.
Second, I obviously can't speak for all demisexuals, but for me, I was conflicted about Liam's dialogue/behavior. Some of it matches pretty well with how I feel and experience relationships. Some of it, well, not so much. If he is a demisexual character, I feel like they emphasized a lack of interest in sex too much, and a lack of sexual attraction to people too little. There's a difference, and Liam seems more interested in telling us how much he doesn't care about sex, instead of not experiencing attraction to the women in his life. The line about him thinking of her tits feels a little odd to me in this regard. Perhaps an added line about him being surprised that he found himself thinking about her body at all would have made it work (unless there was, and I missed it). The gradual change from platonic to sexual attraction. But this is all totally subjective, based only off my own experiences.
Third, it's a bit hard to gauge the rep simply because the characters don't communicate well, and I feel like I'm filling in a lot of gaps with my own feelings. Maybe that's the point? Personally, it doesn't work for me.
TL;DR I'm happy to see the rep. Liam is kinda neat. Demisexuality is imo portrayed a little oddly. Not a very good book overall.
Have you tried Role Playing by Cathy Yardley? Demisexual and so, SO great!
Hi I am pausing the video because you asked if someone’s vision has ever gone blurry and ONLY ONCE because my crvx got bashed into and I saw white and I literally shoved my partner away with more strength I’ve ever had in my life and have never had since. Like mother lifts car off child strength. I was like GOODBYE SIR absolutely not.
Yes legally you can leave a home, or any asset like a car, to multiple people. This happened with my partner when his mother passed; she left her house to both her sons. You obviously can't split a house in half, so you have three practical options. Either, you sell the house and split the profits, one person sells their share to the person who will keep the house (meaning that whatever the house is worth the one who keeps the house pays half the value to the person who isn't keeping it), or you decide to rent the house out and split those profits. Its annoying to deal with but apparently very common.
Oh my god this is the 2nd Ali Hazelwood book where the FMC does the "I have no idea that a man likes me" thing, and I have to wonder if it's consistent. I read Bride, learned enough that I know I never want to read another one of their books. This video helps reiterate this fact.
One of my most hated tropes is group of friends that are all girls that get watered down to being a gossip group to further the plot with men and air dramas rather than act like actual friends. They don't hang out with each other or celebrate birthdays in scenes, they just exist to gossip and gifts that are mention happen in scenes related to the men rather than the actual friends detached from how it effects the man. (ie the underwear is brought in relation to it being seen by the male love interest rather than it just existing outside of that) Sure they live in different places, but they seem to have time to set up a three way call they are a part of more than once so I don't see how they couldn't have movie night or an online board game night at some point. Three women in STEM and none of them play D&D or talk the others into playing with them? These friendships don't feel believable. They are just plot vehicles.
As an ace, I accept Liam for his sarcasm, but I don't accept this book. Hashtag justice for Liam or something
As a woman and an engineer, I love seeing women in STEM fields represented in media like it is a normal, everyday thing, because there are not a lot of us out there. I don't love the typically white, liberal feminism I see in these books. It gives me lukewarm, astroturfed activism vibes. Also, yes, the guys are super boring, often broody, always large bois. I would love to see more women in STEM careers represented in media, though, preferably from other writers. I want to see how they navigate family, relationships, careers, existential shit!
Yeahhhh shes giving performative, doesnt actually do anything of use vibes. There was so much potential for her to be cool and like be involved in local recycling projects and fundraising and getting the love interest involved or whatever but instead shes just oil and capitalism bad I’m gonna wear a t shirt about climate change!
Same here! I like to imagine a similar novel where the main character is either a physicist, a chemist or a biologist who holes up in her lab all day long.
Women in stem has so much potential for storytelling! Like, i like to imagine the main character's PHD program was tough because she went through a male dominated field and her peers don't respect her and are bad boyfriends, so she's disillusioned with romance and she buries herself in her work.
It makes her an acclaimed researcher and professor, but ultimately lonely until she gets a new roommate. Her new roommate: insufferable on first impression, yaps all day long, a practicing contract lawyer. She's instantly dismissive of him, mostly bc she's lowkey got that STEM major ego and also because he's condescending. But turns out that this lawyer is arranging for a professional witness and needs to contact the author of the papers he's reading! There, we find out that the lawyer is Not Dismissive at all of her and her abilities because he read her research and thinks she'd be an excellent professional witness. Cue cute bullshit! So much potential for the main character to be cutesy awkward, for the male lead to be Overzealous and excitable despite his prim and proper exterior. So much potential!
Do you know what I think would've been a better way to write this? Have Helena talk about her nephew that she loved all the time. Have Mara expecting someone based on Helena's glowing reviews and stories that doesn't match up with the person she meets in the house - at first. If you want a bit of extra tension, maybe Helena confided in Mara some of the problems her nephew experienced that takes him off guard and makes him a little defensive when Mara spills what she heard to him. It's really hard to take Mara seriously when it does feel like she is acting weirdly entitled and knows way less about her beloved mentor and friend than she says she did.
Or both of them could have been like her student/protege whatever at some point and she left the house to both of them and neither has the money to buy the other out or afford their own place so they’re like ok i guess we live together. Like there were so many ways to make this make sense. If they were both her students they would also have reason to have at least heard of each other and maybe they’re rivals because they both want to b the favourite?
Your interlude conversation with Carlos was hilarious!
Dear god... this protagonist is so Quirky™
And I think the love interest might be a literal troll. His proportions sound grotesque.
The covers are cute i guess...beautiful gowns.
"Beautiful gowns" and "I don't know her" are some of the best diva dis tracks of all time.
@@srose1088 short, simple and timeless. Truly the voices and the shade.
The whole “his fingers can span my ribcage” thing is giving me real “Pa from _Little House on the Prairie_ was able to circle Ma’s waist with his hands when they married” vibes. Also, I just know that it’s going to turn out that the lady who left the heroine the house did it because she’d decided the heroine was perfect for the hero.
As someone with heart problems, this woman with her hiccuping flip-flop heart needs to visit a doctor. Medical doctor. Not a physicist or whatever.
No offense to Hazelwood, but all her books, outside her first book, are all the same. All her original characters, worlds, and plots are flat and are recolors of each other. Her first was good because it was a fanfic with someone else's flushed out characters.
Does she know that Daisy Ridley isn’t like the same height as Sabrina Carpenter?
@@phoenixfritzinger9185 she probably ignores it because the average reylo is obsessed with tiny uwu bean rey HUGE kyle ron
For the record, the Jeff Goldblum thing is probably because of Jurassic Park and his immortal quote about evolution: "Life uh finds a way". Source: I have a PhD in an evolutionary bio-ish field and it's almost obligatory to get a graduation gift with the quote on it.
I hate the whole “tiny weak girl” with the “extremely tall large muscle man” thing. It’s really weird and it always makes me uncomfortable. Idk, as a man I’m more attracted to strong, tall women and if they’re muscular that’s even better, especially when they have defined abdominal muscles.. okay I’ve said too much. Anyway I’d just like to see more of that kind of character with real that doesn’t need someone to babysit them because the other just seems so overdone and like Rachel said, it starts to get infantilizing and annoying, not to mention that it’s portraying them as childlike and gives me the creeps.
So, my first thought about this story was that Liam is right. He just solved all of Mara's problems by trying to buy her out. She could have gotten her own place with no roommate, paid rent and more. I get the house has sentimental value to her due to it being a gift from someone she cared deeply for, and it's a lovely house, but, like, she's never been there, so she's got no attachments. She's only causing herself an issue just so the story can take place. I bet Mara would have 100% taken the cash offer and peaced out in real life. But, as I said, there wouldn't be a story if she did this.
I can believe being able to fit into shorts she got in middle school cuz my gym shorts from then still fit me at 31. It’s the “they barely fit at the time even” that makes it a problem.
That sex scene was weirdly rapey both ways.
as an admittedly eccentric/ quirky woman (I have a visually impaired French bulldog on my shoulder) in a academic field (intersectional health and sex education for LGBTIQ+ disabled people) my main issue with these books is the STEM and feminism feel like window dressing to the standard romances she wants to/ is writing.
It's like Hazelwood is stamping the label to the story the same way food companies put "organic" on a product just so they can charge double the price for it.
authentically quirky ppl & authentically quirky characters are great!! It's the weird, fakey, try-hard kind that makes the audience cringe with second hand embarrassment. As an eccentric human, u have lots of facets & dimensions, and other folks can get to know u over time. But for a character like Mara, we only have a very limited view of her entire personality, so it needs to be used effectively if the author wants her to be perceived as a well-rounded individual. No hate to Hazelwood, but imo she didn't rly manage that in this book....😅
as a grad student I gotta say I would like nothing less than my advisor giving me dating advice
Fun fact: my research advisor got the job bc of her spouse 💀 they are divorcing. So yeah as a grad school I’d be so confused like ‘I’m sorry ?? WHY SHOUKD *I* l i s t e n to you???”
@@simpleton3781what’s even funnier is I love my advisor and he’s the most normal man in the world and I’d still rather eat glass than have him know about my relationship woes!!!
Okay, so, listen. I was already on the same page with Rachel from the first line she read to me. I did not need to be convinced further. But then… “I ran a hand *THROUGH* my long *CURLS*”
Immediate no. Immediate absolute no. Anyone with ANY kind of curl, but ESPECIALLY with the kind of curl that the cover image is showing me the FMC has, would NEVER think to run even a fingernail through anything on their head. And also, just the idea that bc a “quirky funny geeky not like other girls” MC has curly hair that it /has/ to be “unruly” or messy or whatever feels so……2002 D-list romcom it hurts. Like shut up 😭
Truly, the words of an author with straight hair. The only time I can run my hand through my curls is after a shower and brushing them out. After that point I avoid putting any fingers through them. If I can't feel the knots then I can pretend they're not there.
My thoughts exactly as someone with curly hair. If this character was maybe patting at her hair with the flat of her palm, then sure, but not running her hand or fingers through her curls. You only do that on wash day to detangle your hair, and using a styling brush or your fingers after washing to, again, style your curls. People with straight hair, just know that running your hands/fingers through curly hair will ruin the curls. We don’t do that.
MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY!!! the moment I run my fingers through my hair (if I can do it at all) it's instant frizz.
14:30 normally you finish a phd when ur like 27-29 (if you're fast you may be like.. 25 or 26?) (source: work with a lot of phd people and am looking into getting one)
At minimum, if you always turned your things in on time, never had a meeting delayed, or experienced the horrific existential crisis of faith while researching for your dissertation 26 is the lowest estimate i’d give for a *non-stem* field.
@@courtnsession_ yeah like most people aren't getting into a career till they're 30 😆
The conversation between you and Carlos about the Jeff Goldblum underwear had me ROLLING. I have been having the worst week and your channel is such a mood lifter❤❤
Listening to the descriptions of him, I’ve now decided that Liam is either André the Giant or Salad Fingers except in a suit.
so many of these scenes make me think she was picturing anime when she wrote them
Hazelwood just needs to write monster fucking erotica and get it over with…
It'd explain her male characters' proportions at the very least. I'm still trying to wrap my head around his fingers touching when his hands wrap around her-- that's not a human being, that's an undercover cryptid
Ah, finally someone put that into words for me ahdjai I keep thinking that!
@@h2o2630 she really does, I only recently read love hypothesis and reminding myself he not a minotaur or something😆
Yeeeeeah so this plays right into a strong belief of mine: when people show you who they really are, believe them.
- Words don't have meaning to the author - especially terms like feminism (or 'steminism', the whitest white girl word I've ever seen)
- Author's gonna make her kinks our problem
- Author doesn't rate communication - that entire book was founded on one of my least favourite tropes, communication fails
- Author doesn't rate consent...strange for someone that apparently talks about feminism
Author is telling us in the text that she's cosplaying all the things she claims instead of embodying them.
Basically, author is the sort of person that likes to tell us they are all the things (isn't that what virtue signalling is?), but not back up a single thing with a lick of effort. Bashing the page with science words is an entirely different thing to demonstrating a character's education and intelligence in the damn text, just as saying you're a feminist/steminist/????!?! is an entirely different thing to demonstrating non-problematic sex between characters while demonstrating mutual respect by communicating clearly and kindly. I just. What. The straights are not okay. The straights are REALLY not okay.
This was Raygun in book form in an almost exacting way.
RIP your sanity for reading that so we don't have to, Rachel!
Marketing has coopted "feminism" as a selling point for books who only have to be written by women, have a female protagonist and a vague "ugh men" idea plastered at one point in a train thought.
My brain rots severely especially when I read "femminist retelling". Those words used to mean a lot before now I don't even trust a book that sell itself like that
@@gio_giotte fully agree, well put.
It's a red flag these days when what should be subtext goes straight past text and into a shitty sticker on the book cover itself, isn't it? There's a chasm between a book calling itself feminist and a book discussing the tenets of feminism in the themes of the novel.
The part where you're hysterically laughing while talking about the book with your husband is so funny and wholesome 😂😂
I have a 7 hour drive ahead of me so I PURPOSEFULLY saved this video and your last one to keep me company on the drive ☺️❤️
9:46 this was exactly how I read it too, though, because that's like him shutting down any protests (or boundaries) she has, and it's like... menacing?
Edit: AH, I'm so excited for your friend!! That is such a great story, and actual romance novel material.
24:39 the way Hazelwood describes proportions makes me think this guy is just The Grand Highblood or something 💀
now i want to read one of these novels with the grand highblood as the male lead and trying to bury the lede for as long as possible
@@whomthebelltolls Ali Hazelwood parody novel but by the end everyone is subjuggulated and the fandom hates her /j
@@whomthebelltollsLOL I would buy it negl
🤣🤣🤣
You can leave a house to multiple people, so you could have 10%. Most people don’t because that’s terrible logistically.
@@jessicafalkner9785 my father was one of 9 children. In northern Irish law they were all left a share of his father's home. If any siblings were deceased, their share was split among their children (in one case this was 11 kids and another 8 kids). It was so ridiculous. Everyone just gave up their share to my uncle who had lived there for years caring for his parents (this was a tiny, tiny cottage not worth much).
Usually they'd at least be related though. Nuts to leave it to two strangers.
as both an aside, and someone who is literally halfway through their PhD in biochemistry (after three years)... if Mara took EIGHT YEARS to get through her PhD, she has bigger fish to fry than worrying about the guy living in the house that she got in her advisor's will.
He thought hard and fast just meant go go end it as fast as possible?!?! And not like tempo or roughness?!? Theyre both so dumb
"I felt it poke my heart" "Awww, it's love!" 😂😂😂😂😂
Cause of death: Snarky pillow talk
whenever ali hazelwood starts talking about how big the love interest’s hands are all i can picture are those figurines of a cortical homunculus, and the laughter of that image eases the pain
His hands were so big. His twiggy arms would snap in a stiff breeze. He had the astonishingly handsome jaw of a late-stage Hapsburg.
They’re all Adam Driver. Every male lead is just Adam Driver.
this also summed up my gripes with love hypothesis. i could NOT STAND the dialogue and writing style. it feels like hazelwood only knows how to write fmc as a desperate manic pixie dream girl and her (usually male) love interests as diet adam driver from temu
im so tired of the ~shes so smol~ ~hes so huge~ love interests. can ali write something different?
a romance i liked was Flatshare. the fmc is tall!!! the books im writing all have fmc 5'8-5'11. im tired of the dynamic of the man being so perfectly handsome and chiseled and huge and the girl being petite and the most gorgeous person ever but she ~~~doesnt know it~~~.
edit: ugh its also written like middle school fan fic... this just annoys me as much as it annoys you lol
Yeah its so tired honestly, where are the dad bods or chubby girls or skinny guys or literally anything lmao like at this point muscles are becoming a turn off for me
size differences could be so much more interesting if the “short” character was of average height or even just tall and the “big large” character was just FREAKISHLY tall. it doesn’t make a couple look like a parent and their child, and it can make for some fun situational humor. OOOOR the typical dynamic is flipped on its head (i.e. the big huge man is wrapped around the petite fragile woman’s finger and complies to her every beck and call) i don’t even really read books a lot anymore but i love watching videos like this and i need something original 💀 source: have a 5’6” character with his 6’6” boyfriend and another character who’s a 6’2” woman and has a 5’4” girlfriend.
11:52 JUMPSCARE for the word "demure". it caught me off-guard and I choked on my drink
ya knowwwwww it's really hard not to hate TikTok for a lot of these authors finding an audience, because we truly do not need some of this absolute garbage lmao
i looked it up cuz i thought this was written like a person who had never talked to anyone in stem before - ali hazelwood is a NEUROSCIENCE PROFESSOR .
WAIT WHAT this mess reads like a 17 year old wrote self insert fanfiction 😳
Listen there’s a centuries long feud between STEM and the humanities, and even i would expect a god damn professor to write better than this
How embarrassing for the academics 😬
@@h2o2630 like imagine ur professor being behind the shitty booktok reylo rebrands.. insane
She SAYS she is. I left a comment up thread about how she has no idea (using her books as examples) how research, publishing, grad school, etc works. You would think one of her students would have come forward by now...if they existed.