Adapting books is way more difficult than it looks, especially really good books. The medium is so important that it's almost impossible to perfectly capture it.
Hold up, I always had the impression that The Shining The movie was horrifically sexist in its reduction of Wendy's character whereas the book was an incredibly nuanced portrayal of the same character that struck me in all sorts of realistic and deeply emotional ways. I genuinely want to know the reasons this was your takeaway because it's the opposite of mine, and this is a highly upvoted comment.
@@katstreats You're right about the differences in Wendy's portrayal. Though I wouldn't describe book Wendy as "incredibly nuanced" - this is 70s King we're talking here - she was certainly more complex. I read the book before seeing the film, and what pissed me off the most was how she was reduced to this quivering, blubbering mess. Years later, when I found out how badly Duvall was treated to get that performance, I was even angrier. Kubrick's characterisation and storytelling in this film are rubbish. However, he does manage to evoke a terrifying atmosphere. That doesn't excuse his abusive behaviour, it's just a comment on the technical proficiency of the film.
I watched Gone Girl in high school, I don't know why maybe the teacher was hung over, and right before starting the movie, she said "just so you know, she is not dead". I have never been so angry before
My mom always told me “ be perceptive not paranoid ” to be aware of my surroundings but panicking about boogeymen around every corner isn’t healthy. She also taught me how to throw a mean punch and if someone did ever grab me to scream grab bite etc. to not be embarrassed about loudly telling someone if they were making me uncomfortable or invading my space, to loudly be able to tell someone to “get the fuck away from me”. She focused on empowering me to be confident in myself and my boundaries and to have a plan if the worst happens .
Your mom sounds super dope 😁 I am going to add this the self-defence truism "never escalate the level of violence in a fight you're not winning". If you can shock someone into letting you escape by punching them, go ahead kick em' in the nuts. Otherwise you probably want to de-escalate. Making a scene when someone is invading your personal space or creeping on you however is grade A+ advice, no notes.
Well to be fair, the number 1 killer of women... is men. Moreover, it's usually a male in a position of trust. Face it, straight women are dating their number one predators. We should absolutely be ourselves, be happy, fall in love.... but learn to disable an attacker who likely outweighs/outmuscles you...
Good advice. I mean the try to judge if itr gets you in danger to hit back or if you can scare a bit off and make a run for it. Running away literally is the best self defence technique if viable.
Back in the mid 2000s, at my school we were just told to use pads and tampons, but weren't told how they work. I didn't even know pads had a sticky side until I used one for the first time (after sex ed). So I think that scenario really depends on the school and time period. We also had to sign a "I won't have sex" pledge at the end of the class so there's that lol Edit: practicing putting pads on underwear and being given menstrual products is such a great idea! It really is like a whole other world between some schools 😭
@@thegodplace7887 tbh I'm thankful that in a red state we got abstinence *focused* and not totally abstinence only sex ed. At the very least they told us birth control and condoms exist by showing us a chart of options briefly (with the emphasis on the fact that nothing is 100% effective like not having sex... which unfortunately also isn't 100% effective) The bar is in hell lol
yeah it is! we didn't practice it ourselves but when we had sex ed they did have a nurse demonstrate how to put on a pad and tampon (on a model vagina) and it was really helpful for when i finally got my period because i remembered from class. later on they also had us practice putting condoms on dildos (and test tubes??s dflkjsdlksdj). which was a VERY weird class lol but it was also definitely helpful. the temporary discomfort you feel as a student or teacher is definitely worth it for being informed about this stuff so you know what to do when you actually are in these situations.
Yep, I grew up in an Eastern European country and our "sex Ed" was ONE SINGULAR CLASS taught by the school nurse. All kids of all genders were in class. This happened in 7tu or 8th grade (so we were all around 15). We were told women menstruate (but not what menstruation is), we were ALL given one pad. No instructions, no anything, tampons were not mentioned, sex was not mentioned (because we're too young for that), not to mention that by this point, all but one of the girls in class had been having a period for a while. Then, the boys played with the pads and made fun of them the whole break and we went back to normal classes. Everyone I know has learned how to use period products from written instructions on the package or vague verbal instructions that steered clear of any mention of "inappropriate words."
OMG I have such bad memories of my first time trying to insert a tampon at 16 and somehow hurting myself so much I refused to try again until I was 21 and a friend gave me detailed instructions. I went to a pretty good school that had a decent sex ed program but nobody ever discussed the practicalities
@minano-nim6795 ouch 😭 I didn't get hurt but the first time I tried at 15, my friend was trying to help me from the other side of the door bc she wanted to swim. I got tunnel vision and ended up going down to the floor before it got worse (from standing up trying to do it). Apparently that's a thing that can happen and it's likely due to being really tense. I had no idea you had to relax your muscles. I gave up and didn't try again until maybe a year later. I just didn't swim on my period for about 4 years 🙃
I agree that the fear instilled in women about their surroundings is overblown but as a women who has been mugged skateboarding home at night , stalked at work, and cat called walking in my neighborhood since I was twelve. I don’t know. I think there is a lot of nuance there. I grew up in a town that all neighboring towns called the “ghetto”. It wasn’t that but there was a lot less money there than the surround areas. My friends and I grew up wandering the neighborhood and we are still here to tell our tales but that’s because we learned how to watch our backs. There is a class distinction here too that I wish she touched on.
I definetly agree with this. While I do think we need nuance about this subject (especially with centering white cishet ablebodied women and seeing men of color as being more dangerous), I've also been followed at night, catcalled and touched without my consent. And I still live in a rather safe town, I know I've probably experience way less than some of my friends who don't.
@@gastonzumbo9860I definitely found it a weird tangent from just the line about a male experiencing what it would be to “be like a women” at night. If it was more indicative of a larger part of Riley’s work I’d maybe understand it but it was definitely a strange criticism of “someone doesn’t have the same hot take social criticism around feminism as I do in this scene” which makes that part of the video just a weirdly out there part of this honestly mostly 10/10 vid
@@raventame7221 What are you using to measure safety when you say you live in a safe town? (And that your friends live in less safe areas.) I don't want to pick on you here. I just want to highlight that when we describe a place as safe or unsafe it almost never has a basis in data. Most of the time when Americans are talking about what is a good or bad part of town, what we're actually using to approximate that is how white it is, and then how wealthy it is. As I'm writing this we just closed out 2023. Despite the incessant reports of a rising tide of lawlessness, murder rates dropped by double digits. As often as I've heard people point to Chicago or New York City as epicenters of violence, a map of the counties with the highest per capita age-adjusted murder rates puts a lot of rural areas in the south as more dangerous places to live. I'm using murder statistics because there's less variation in reporting rates, but of course this doesn't reflect the risk women are at very well. I tried to find data for that and while there are several places that get mentioned as particularly dangerous, the overall answer is: at home.
Data. I'm using data and also a touch of personal experience as I tend to be bothered more by men when I go to other surronding cities. My town isn't te safest but proportionally the amout of crime is way lower than in the rest of my country (small note but I'm not American). My point was not that the violence doesn't happen more at home. I'm aware of that. But that the tangent on crime in the street and how Laura hasn't experienced much of it felt a bit dismisive of other people's experience. I'm 100% sure it was not intentional but mostly felt like a priviledged point of view. @@mxpants4884
I went to go read the luckiest girl ever and wow, damn near every poc person was described negatively and I can't get over the fact that "belly button winking like an Asian eye" is a line in a critically acclaimed book!?
For real! What the hell are you whisking, alien goo? If you're looking to make an emulsion with the tensile strength of concrete your recipe is way off.
Loved the essay! I will say though as a black fem presenting invdividual: I am scared for my life when I am catcalled. I understand very well that I am an unprotected demographic in this country more than most and when my life in the media is seen as not even worth reporting on, much less investigated if I ever went missing. I understand that wasn’t your point there but I wanted to call out again that it is different when you are apart of a minority
the constant focus on the attractiveness of these female victims/women who have to watch themselves walking at night puts a really sour taste in my mouth. people are always so quick to act like only 'pretty' women are victimized, when the reality is that's not the case at all.
Literally just saw a comment trying to negate her views by being like "actually white pretty women get targeted all the time" Some people's views on who is likely to be victimized is so warped by media
This. I’ve even seen pretty women say “ugly” girls are really the privileged ones because they don’t have to worry about being preyed on by men. Fucking bullshit. Bad men target ALL kinds of girls and women. And girls and women who aren’t conventionally pretty have to deal with not being believed because “why would he want to?” or told they should be grateful for the attention. People think only pretty girls are at risk of attack because the media only focuses on pretty girls.
@@SuperNuclearUnicorntrue, ESPECIALLY in the context of domestic abuse, which is the exact setting of these mentioned books. Assault/abuse ist most likely to happen at home and so it's definitely not always about sexualizing hot-dressed women in the street
@@bece00we live in times where a bunch of wealthy suburban white women are certain they’re constantly being “almost sex trafficked” at Target. There’s zero cultural understanding of who is actually victimized by assault, sex trafficking etc and people actively believe these crimes are ARGs that they’re a part of. It’s so frustrating and actively harmful to victims.
i really really liked the discussion about how awful all the fear mongering about trafficking on tiktok is. you're right it's only "be aware" which translates to be fearful.
@@namedrop721it actually IS a bad thing because these stories like "they'll put a flyer on your car to mark you as a victim" and all kinds of ridiculous things make people scared of stuff that doesn't actually happen. Real, actual trafficking groups are asking people not to spread this misinformation. Polaris, one of the biggest trafficking orgs, says on thier own website they've never had A SINGLE client who was brought into trafficking because they were randomly snatched off the streets just conducting every day life. Think about how much attention that woman who faked her own kidnapping (actually BOTH of them) recently. That was all over nationwide news in hours but were supposed to believe hundreds of people with families, kids, husbands, ect just up and disappear and no one even blinks? No. Its people who won't be missed, it's homeless people, its sex workers and addicts who if they go missing get waved off as "oh probably just out getting high" or even worse "who cares?" The 30 year old mom of two is going to be noticed being missing immediately. So is pretty much anyone who has people they see daily. Trafficking is usually done (at least in Western countries) by people who already know the victim. A "boyfriend" who manipulates a woman and then becomes abusive, as sick as it is for kids its often family members
"Theres a secret back entrance which leads to the wardrobe in her childhood bedroom" That's fucking terrifying actually. Actually. Actually that's fuckimg terrifying and I would like for it to not thank you.
Just to throw it out there... I have been stalked and seriously threatened and put in danger by people when I'm walking down the street, even though I am careful and do everything I'm "supposed" to do...I totally understand the nuance you're going for, and appreciate the point that "women are unsafe walking down the street" is an easy excuse for a lot of bad faith actors... but it does happen (I'm glad it hasn't happened to you!) and it is really terrifying...I have been in serious danger and it's affected the way I walk through the world... I do REALLY agree that we need to focus more on the idea that most "bad guys" don't look like monsters :( Too true
same, and i'm not even a woman, i just look feminine enough to get mistaken for one 9 times out of 10. which is dangerous because of how men will get violent for "being tricked into accidentally acting gay", even tho i am not tricking them and it's not my fault when they are attracted to me who is not a woman. a guy once followed me for 3 hours through multiple trains without me noticing and at my destination which was a relatively rural and deserted train station he approached me and was like "hey i saw you get on the train at [starting station] and followed you here, would you get a coffee with me?" and i was very disturbed by this because i usually do look around and try to see if anyone is following me and didn't notice him, also he followed me through multiple trains for 3 hours to ask me out for coffee?!?!? also i'm not a woman but people often think i am a woman and they don't like when they hit on me and then notice i'm not actually a woman. so i was very scared and just said "no, thank you" but he wouldn't give up and kept asking and i didn't have time even if i wanted to and kept declining and tried to leave and then the guy got so angry and i don't know if it was because i declined or if he noticed i'm not a woman. luckily there was someone around who said something to the guy and when he was distracted i ran away. when i have to walk home in the dark after a late shift often i have guys just starting to follow me from the busy main street, luckily i live somewhere with many smaller streets that interconnect and usually have a few people out, so i can just take a few quick turns and usually loose them before i even get close to my house. but it is scary. it's still no reason to be racist or transphobic, and that doesn't even make sense, everyone i know that has ever been harassed on the street it was from white men and it's way more common to be attacked for the possibility of being trans than for the random attacker to be dressing up to seem trans, because the people who attack people know they don't need to put on a dress and make up to attack anyone. sure there could be abusers who are trans but that's not because they are trans. there are cis woman abusers. and if you ever get harassed in a bathroom or changing room it will probably be from a cis woman, because she is suffering from the transvestigation brainrot.
Yeah, as someone who has absolutely been given reason to fear walking alone, and whose family consists of three generations of white women who have also been given those reasons, that point rang rather hollow to me. I'm not scared because the world told me I should be, I'm scared because it's terrifying to have strange men follow you home having grown up hearing about the strange man who followed your mother home at your age and broke in with a weapon (thankfully he was scared off by a male friend). While it is absolutely true that the "bad guy" is several times more likely to be someone you know, it's a little bit nonsense to imply there isn't inherent danger in being a femme appearing person walking alone - sometimes not even at night. The statement that thin white women aren't the target of hate crimes is also a bold and debateable statement. And really only debateable in terms of law. We have literal manifestos by men who specifically targeted what they considered to be attractive women (often thin white women) due to stated motives that differ very little from any legally codified hate crime. EDIT to clarify: the hate crime is more about their perceived gender than people targeting them because they're white.
I'm sorry that you've been followed/stalked by men, and I count myself very lucky I've not yet had it happen to me. I don't want to diminish that, but I think the important point is that even though we do everything we're supposed to, it still happens I'm reminded of the case of Sarah Everard a few years ago, who followed basically every tip for "staying safe" when out alone at night, and was still kidnapped and murdered. I don't know that our vigilance makes us any safer
@@katharineeavan9705 yeah the guy that followed me for 3 hours was in broad daylight it was noon when I went on the first train. Yeah and the guys writing manifestos and only killing who they saw as women definitely qualify as hate crimes for me. There are also femicides going on in a few places and they don’t seem to only kill women of color, even if there are more women of color killed just on the basis of it being places where more people of color live.
@@gingganggoolie vigilance might not save us all; but it doesn’t hurt to be careful. I didn’t see the guy that flowed me on the trains in broad day light and got lucky because when I was unable to get away someone else saw it, but I saw guys ducking between cars and door ways and changed where I was going. And those probably did prevent something from happening. Also I don’t think vigilance is only about ourselves, it’s also about others and looking out for them too.
The fact that you made a three and a half hour just because your sister asked you to just shows what a great sister you are! Thank you to your sister for the inspiration for this great video!
Immediately I just wanted to script doctor the period thing: the protagonist could just have only been planning to use pads but only tampons were available. Wouldn't be that hard to tweak. Sigh.
Yes! That’s actually such a good fix. I personally didn’t relate to the digression about comprehensive education on the use of tampons in school, it might’ve happened but I don’t think so. But like, grabbing from a variety of experiences from ppl I’ve interacted w/ I feel like it’s a very common experience for young people who are menstruating (especially for the first time) to kinda get the gist of pads even w/out someone showing them vs. being left in the dark about tampons & then being left to struggle w it on their own. It sucks
I have actually had to look up useage instructions for tampons to someone who was in that exact situation. (or in her case it was an underwear situation? okay I understood tampons but still do not understand thongs)
@@R0SE727 yes, I definitely envy the practical sanitary product education. Sure I was told about different sanitary products but honestly didn’t understand that tampons went fully inside you and wouldn’t get lost, and got a heavy steer that they were “advanced level” sanitary protection and I should just use pads to start with and then figure tampons out in some unspecified way at some undefined future point.
I honestly wouldn't have even blinked an eye at this scene. I don't remember having a useful health class. The only reason I knew how tampons worked was because my mom bought me that American Girl book about puberty (and honestly, that page breaking down how to insert it scared me away from tampons until after college...). A 13-year-old getting their first period while away from home and freaking out and needing someone to walk them through it sadly doesn't raise any lack-of-verisimilitude alarm bells for me. I haven't read the book, so I don't know specifically how the scene went down, but the basic premise is not outlandish to me.
@@nuffyj8614 omg I had the same American girl book! I’m glad there was at least something out there to be an educational resource for this kinds of stuff bc judging by the shear span of comments our health classes really let us down lol :’)
1:19:21 oh dear...that is EXACTLY what my experience was when i got my period at age 12 in the early 2000's, and i lived in what (at the time) was considered a very non-conservative area. your school actually taught people how to use tampons and pads? they sent kids home with samples of them???!! i think you might be the outlier here 🤣
absolutely the outlier lmao! i went to an all-girls primary school and i dont think even remember them telling us more about periods than 'they happen once a month and you bleed during it'. when she was talking about that i was wondering if i was the weird for never having talked about that in school
@@winterx2348Always and Kotex each make period curriculum for schools (with samples), based on the knowledge that if you use one brand at the start, there's a very high chance you stick with it. It sounds like her school was in one of those programs. Mine was not, so I didn't see any demos until my mom talked me through it.
@@runa_7022 yeah i think there's some good points in this video overall but the period section really threw me?? it just didn't feel relevant to the rest of the commentary and also so hyperspecific i was just like.... okay
1:20:00 my middle school sex ed literally was that bad. They didn’t saw what a period was almost at all, just vaguely mentioned it without detail. I only knew what it was when it happened to me because three weeks before, I had seen a UA-cam life hacks video about how to survive your period. My mom hadn’t really told me because she assumed sex ed would, so she gave me a brief summary a few years too early for me to remember in the moment. So, had UA-cam not been there, I would have been exactly where that character was
My mom didn't tell me shit, and this was before any school ed happened about it, lol. I freaked out one night after finding blood on my bed. My mom laughed when she realized it wasn't anything life threatening, but still explained nothing, and just said it meant "I was a woman now" 🤡🤡🤡 There's a lot to unpack there, and none of it good
yeah the way she was describing her own sex ed experience made me so like... your experiences are not universal lmao. we absolutely did not have anyo f that
Were you living in New York in the 2000s? I think the criticism was that for that time and place her ignorance was highly unlikely. Maybe if the character had been homeschooled or sent to a regressive religious school it might make sense- but given the circumstances in the novel, it doesn't ring true.
I went to a "good" school, in a "great" school disctrict, in theearly 2000's, in a progressive area. We never got any kind of instruction on menstruation, and no it was never explained to me what to do by parents. In fact, I'm shocked by level of prep described.
This video so makes me think of the Community episode where Abed watched all of Nicolas Cage's work to try & determine whether he's a good or bad actor. I don't think Sager pushed you to the same breaking point as Cage did Abed, but the vibes are there & I kind of love it. Like that ONE more book might have led to you yelling incomprehensibly, throwing around your vast quantity of notes & climbing over furniture declaring you're a sexy cat .... or super empowered survivor girl.
you can actually get over the NYT paywall by hitting Esc repeatedly as the page loads (works better if you have slow internet). Honestly, showing her doing that would've made for a great moment of class commentary.
You can also hit print before the page fully loads, which will work for most paywalls including NYT, and from there you can download it as a PDF. In my experience, the NYT paywall is actually one of the easiest to get around (and I have a lot of experience from being a journalism student)
I read 'Pretty Girls' by Karin Slaughter because it was sold to me as 'the next Gone Girl' (and I love Flynn), but I think a lot of these books take the wrong messaging from Flynn's success: she's never pointlessly horrific or gruesome or gritty for the sake of it. She gives some really compelling psychological writing (which centres female perspectives). Pretty Girls had some surface level similarities to Flynn's work, but absolutely went over the top with its gruesome horror to the point it became cartoonish.
Yeah I used to read Karin Slaughter as a teen (forgot the series name, but it was about that female pedriatrician slash county coroner who dated the Chief of Police in a small town) and I stopped because the misery of the central characters was just piled on and on and on. I loved the characters but the series only kept hurting without respite, so I stopped reading them for the same reason I dont enjoy grimdark: If everything is sad and depressing without any happy moments, why am I reading this as escapism instead of anything with even a hint of optimism?
pretty girls terrified the fuck out of me because it's so horrific and it's also the worst case scenario of very real fears i have as a woman. but yeah it's really not like gone girl at all imo. it's very much just. "wouldn't it be fucked up if this happened?" and yeah. it would be fucked up. but that's also not really what gone girl is. gone girl is like... a character of study of a fucked up and calculating woman and an account of why she did what she did. there are actually very interesting character writing aspects of gone girl, none of which exists in pretty girls. i don't think one is automatically superior to the other (and i actually found pretty girls a more engaging read than gone girl at the end of the day because it wormed its way into my brain) but they're really completely different things. it's really frustrating that every single book nowadays (and for a while now at least) gets marketed as the next [book that already exists]. or as some kind of mishmash of multiple books that already exist. it's all is this author the next stephen king, the next jk rowling, the next [other big name in fiction]. it genuinely makes a lot of books frustrating to read because it's absolutely not what you were promised. i read iron widow without seeing any of the marketing materials (i just knew xiran jay zhao wrote it and i knew them from their youtube so i picked it up). and i liked it quite a bit. and then i saw all the handmaids tale and pacific rim and hunger games comparisons and i was like what the HELL are you talking about lmao. i would've hated it if i went into it with those expectations. book retailers are so busy trying to get a next gone girl they're not even stopping to consider if the book they're calling the next gone girl is even remotely like gone girl in the first place.
Haven't read Pretty Girls, but I've fallen for that kind of marketing in the past and I've really started to dislike how it and "like X meets X" marking has become so prevalent. Even if the book is really good, I find my initial expectations might end up soured cause I expected it to be something that it wasn't trying to be. (Granted, my brain is kind of weird, so this probably isn't as big of a problem for other people.)
I will say, "False Witness," by Karin Slaughter was a read I doubt will ever leave me. That book focuses less on murder and more on SA and addiction though, so perhaps that's why. I quickly had to stop going through her other work though. The others were way, way, too gruesome.
Your commitment to avoiding correlating anatomy to gender and writing talent that prevented it from feeling grammatically clunky made me feel really seen as a femme enby lesbian, thank you.
I genuinely wish more UA-camrs/video essay writers were like Laura in this regard. Heck, I wish more people in general were like Laura in this regard. Lol.
@@benburke3015 I think it's happening, but really slowly. It's only been recently that many of the UA-camrs I watch are including "non-binary" in their into and outro. And I'm starting to hear the first few mentions of people who are aromantic and/or asexual. We'll get there, but seriously Laura is low-key including an instruction manual for inclusive language. This blueprint is like a little bonus tucked in. I'll try to remember to point people to this video if they're looking for some new tips on trying to include everyone in their communications.
seconding this as an enby on the aro and ace spectrums ! she does a superb and commendable job!! i never felt othered, or like i'm not the target listener for this kind of video, because the language that was used was just !! [claps hands to show emphasis] Good! You know!!
Same here as an agender transfemme person. A recommendation on this for Foreign Man in a Foreign Land. As a sidenote I had a weird mixed of feelings on this with Philosophy tubes latest video. Which I should note is excellent. But it's for me weirdly strictly binary gendered kinda leaving out the similarities of the experiences of femme presenting non-women to the kinds of fuckery that women face. At the same time I really enjoyed the "non-binary people, you're gorgeous take five bit" 😄 And admittedly I did kinda felt seen getting explicitly left out of the discussion on gender. Guess I just would've liked the additional nuance of women and femme presenting people added to the conversation.
I hate to tell you this but my experience of sex ed is basically exactly what he mentioned in the book lmao and im from a blue state (red district tho ? dont know if it counts) CERTAINLY did not have any points where we were taken from the boys at all, or DEFINITELY no points of putting in pads or tampons. i don't think they even mentioned pads or tampons at all to be honest. the most we got was probably a very formal, scientific, "once a month the uterus sheds its lining when an egg hasn't been fertilized" i got all the period talks from my mom lmao
I was going to comment something similar. Our classes were never gendered and if you genuinely needed an anatomy lesson because parents parents didn’t cover it, you’d have to talk to the nurse.
I was homeschooled and handed books from the 70s when I started asking about periods. I was extremely confused about the actual specifics of menstruation for a while...until I actually started...
I was sent to only religious schools, which had absolutely zero sex ed (beyond JUST DON’T) and only very basic human reproductive anatomy. My mom made sure i knew about puberty & periods before it happened, plus we had books like A Child Is Born, but didn’t demonstrate pads & discouraged but didn’t forbid me from using tampons if I wanted to buy myself some (I didn’t get my period until i was nearly 15, & did figure out tampons myself). Especially with a religious background, or even without one but pre-internet, a tween getting her first period unawares at summer camp is pretty believable to me.
The Riley Sager penname debacle fascinates me as someone who grew up reading writers like SE Hinton. Hinton HAD to use pennames to be taken seriously when she wrote about these tough street hood kids in the 1970s. But now we're to the point where a certain brand of grit and horror is seen as "acceptable" for a woman to have written. Interesting stuff.
@@Clau-chauNicol An artist's gender expression is a concept that has to be marketed with as finely tuned a comb as the art itself. The woman who writes intense yet high concept psychological horror has to be as finely tuned as the woman who peers into the interior world of 1970s street toughs
I'm AFAB nonbinary, white and chubby Have spent my whole life walking around at night, and have been followed many times, even attacked a few, but I'm careful, took self-defense classes all through youth, and carry self defence items. Every femme appearing person I know, survived similar experiences, or worse. I live in a really scummy big city, though. 100% true, people (especially women) are in far more danger from people they know and trust, and that absolutely needs to be more taught and more well known. But we also still need to teach basic safety for "stranger danger" until it isn't a problem at all. Without those teachings, I and many people I know probably wouldn't be alive right now.
.... Feel like you are underestimating how AWFUL the sex ed can be in the US... I never even had any sex ed. Permission slips were sent home. Then the actual class never freaking happened. And was at an otherwise good school!
The conversation about pretty white women being scared is very interesting to me. I'm a white woman who would probably be considered attractive if I wasn't fat. But because I've been fat my whole life, the fear was instilled in me much less than in other women. And even if people tried, it didn't actually ever register, because I always was super insecure and considered myself monsteous because fat. And to an extent, I'm glad. I was the girl who stood between her friends and the creepy dudes at the clubs. I went out to party at gay bars (am bi) all alone and walked home alone at 3 am (never drank though). I was the girl who dropped off her friends at their door in the middle of the night and then walked home alone. I was the girl who went to England at 15 to learn English and experienced no fear. During my PhD, I worked until 2 am, and then went on a walk through the city to go home. I'm infinitely grateful for this freedom. Granted, I also live in a very safe country and city, but that doesn't stop tge women around me from feeling the fear. Not to say I haven't had weird men hit on me. It happens. I lie, pretend to be married (well, by now that's actually true). At 10, a stranger tried to assault me and I was able to push him away and forcefully tell him to leave (which he did cause we were outside during the day). Yet still, I feel very little fear. Interestingly, itvdoes make me scared of ever becoming conventionally attractive (aka thin). So that's interesting I guess.
Oh my GOD that final monologue about liking bad books is so validating! I own a Kindle and read a lot, so I end up reading really bad books sometimes but I like it! It helps me sharpen my critical skills and taste, as well as sometimes just wanting fluff
Man. I got my period when I was 9. No one was ready, so no one had taught me. I thought I was literally dying. I can't believe I'm a rare exception, here.
I'm sorry you had to go through this. If it helps, that stuff happened to my grandma too. It's not like nobody was ready. Her mother just didn't explain anything to her because she was repulsed and she was never taught anything like that by anyone else. Also she was 14 at the time. Went to her friend and told her that it's the end of her days. Her friend and her mother LAUGHED at her. So, when I came of age, my grandma explained this stuff to me. Of course, the generational bias wasn't fixed. My entire family is very defensive over the topic of sex and bodies, me included. I wasn't unaware when my period came, but it still felt like my body betrayed me. I hated every inch of my body because I didn't want it to grow and change especially in such a "gross" manner. Nobody in my family presented period as something gross, but nevertheless it felt disgusting and messy
I got mine at 10 about to turn 11 and although I new it meant blood and a pad because of adds in tv no one told me it could come in different colors like BROWN. I hide it for a day or two because I was so fucking ashamed thinking I was shitting my pants without realizing dude
I was 10 and no one talked to me about it because it was so much earlier than everyone was expecting. I really feel for others who got it SO early like me because it felt like a horrible ugly end to childhood, considering everything unpleasant that came with it.
My first tampon insertion was based solely on a book i read. My school system definitely did not do as much teaching as yours did lol. I’m very glad more populous areas do better teaching though.
Same! If my grandmother hadn't given me "The Body Book for Girls" I would have had no idea what to expect at all. My sex ed in school was watching a short video that explained absolutely nothing except that the uterus (whatever that was) would discard an unused egg and uterine lining (whatever that was) once a month. I had no idea how to obtain a tampon much less use one.😂😭
im still upset that i got mine at age 10, then LATE into the school year we had a semi-comprehensive sex ed. but i had already been going through it for months. i remember specifically when i first got it i thought "thats weird but oh well guess im slowly dying" and went about half a week w/o knowing anything until my mom confronted me. idk would have been helpful to do that a grade or two before
Okay I did NOT get that kind of comprehensive period training. I got taught about what menstruation was, and I did know about the products in THEORY (just pads and tampons mind you) but I ALSO had no idea what to do about it. The fact that they had you practice putting pads on panties and play with tampon applicators sounds completely foreign to me
wow your period readiness class segment was way more thorough than ours. We got an informational video that explained the technical process by which periods happen, glossed over how to wear a pad/insert a tampon, and somehow left me with the impression that I would bleed for a few hours each month instead of nearly a week. When I asked my older sister how to do a tampon, she gave me a look like I was stupid and told me to "just shove it up there." So yeah went by guessing and probably didn't quite put it far enough in and came away with the impression that tampons were actively painful to wear. Shocked to have a period? out of the question. Hilariously unequipped to do anything about it? definitely a thing.
That speil about "the next gone girl" reminded of that bit in YMS's review of frozen where he talked about how every horror movie claimed to be "Jaws with x" and/or " What psycho did for showers this movie does for blah blah blah"
I'm very glad that you've been blessed enough that your physical safety has never been compromised walking down the street, but most women i know have been followed/groped/threatened by a stranger on the street multiple times in their lives. Granted, I've lived in a large city my whole life and things are probably different in non-urban areas, but I've walked more than one woman home because they were being threatened or stalked or had previously been assaulted by a stranger while on a walk. It might be a socioeconomic thing; not everyone can afford to call a cab when they feel unsafe.
I think the worst part about the sameness of Riley’s voice is that he clearly TRIED to differentiate by using shorter sentences or lingo, but there’s no real manipulation of syntax or even word choice and it is SO PAINFUL
As a self proclaimed (shitty) cinephile who's also been around a lot of other cinephiles both as collegues and as friends, the way media treats these characters as either monolithes who always like the same 3 things or people obsessed with only popular things has always driven me insane 'cause my personal experience is just so... varied. I met so many people who had so many different opinions about different things, most of the time obsessed with at least one niche period/genre/director, it annoys me so much when cinema or other media will just have us be obsessed with Nouvelle Vague and call it a day
“My quirk is movies” is hilarious. I grew up sans TV & most popular culture for religious reasons & still got those references. Maybe “All Movies are superior to All Literature because books leave too much to the reader’s interpretation” could be a position? Just SOMETHING
1:20:00 as a trans person who would (for a time) have periods and didn’t realize what dysphoria was or that you could be trans without only seeing yourself as 100% a boy, i know i really avoided period products in my tween/early teen years (i was a late bloomer, very athletic, and very skinny) because i didn’t want to acknowledge my body could do that. i was so adverse to the idea of “becoming a woman” or whatever it was sold as. i routinely avoided packing period products despite the foolishness of it to sooth my dysphoria, even though I didn’t know that’s what was going on at the time. so i mean yes maybe girls would pack period products on an extended trip, but not all of us for one reason or another. just another perspective to share.
I even pretended my periods hadn't happened or wasn't happening at the time. I didn't tell my mother because she would have made a big deal out of it and just the thought made me nauseous. I pretended so hard that even now years later I honestly couldn't tell you at what age it even started. 😅 So yes, I definitely wouldn't have packed either going on a trip at that age.
Im trans and my period is such a time of extreme dread. The rest of the month im fine with my lower bits but periods fill me with horror and im often unprepared because my brain refuses to acknowledge the thing until it slams into me
This made me think of a company (Vuokkoset) in my country (Finland) recently launching a campaign with period products for men. Apparently to go into wider distribution next year? They're also apparently considering non-gendered period products. I don't know if this is a complete miss, transfemme here so you know 😄, but I figured I'd share anyways.
I think its weird to frame the fear of being a woman walking alone at night as something that we... shouldn't be afraid of? Or rather that it's just "conditioning" that, if im understanding correctly, leads women to be hateful, racist, and transphobic? A very weird take in my opinion. While yes, plenty of women are lucky enough to never have a seriously negative or traumatic experience from walking alone at night, and yes, this is not something that only happens to women, there are MANY stories of it happening. There is definitely something to be said about "privileged" women fear-mongering on tiktok, or how those women may turn that into something hateful. Something to be said about how bad things happen to every gender, or how using the walking alone at night example as the only thing to emphasize the struggle of being a woman is poor writing. Definitely topics to discuss. But when you personally know female friends and co-workers who have been chased down streets, thrown in cars and taken to second locations, assaulted, etc. It seems weird to dismiss the fear as something we are simply conditoned into having, as if it has no basis in reality. Just because it hasn't happened to you or in your circle doesn't mean it's not a common experience. It never justifies hate or prejudice, but it's not an irrational fear by any means. Having to explain the fear to men who don't understand it is a real thing women have to deal with. If a man will harass you on the street in broad daylight with witnesses, it is a totally reasonable fear to worry what that same man would do if he found himself alone with you at night. That isn't conditioning, that's the lived experience of many women. We can have the other conversations without dismissing the completely valid fear many women have.
as someone who’s only casually a reader because i always feel like i have to force myself to read “good” books this video made me genuinely so excited to read and i really appreciate that
Oh no, it's not "what if a woman was secretly a man", it's full on "what if a man masquerading as a woman wanted to hunt women, using his feminine form as a tool to get close to them." Personally the depiction is so cishet man fantasy so it mostly comes of as cringey 😄 But the trope isn't even subtext it's right there in the text. So literally it's genuinely kinda funny 😂 The backstory was indeed extra gross 🤮
Im glad nothing has happened to you walking around the streets but thats not the case for me and many of my friends. Maybe its because we're low income and have to take public transport and we work late at night. We've literally sat around in a circle talking about all the horrible things that have happened.
i absolutely MUST enter into the riley sager description moments hall of fame the time in his latest book he described something as "the opposite of the picture of dorian grey" SO LIKE... A REGULAR PAINTING?
Absolutely stacked voice casting for this video. Going to thoroughly enjoy this hulking mass of content. (RIP to the glass apparently, it will be missed)
“It’s my cross-eyed bear…” I have been looking for EZACKALLY this phrase. My religious deconstruction has required the replacing of many phrases, anagrams, and initialisms. “My cross to bear” has been needing an atheist replacement, and I am forever grateful.
38:09 this bit killed me. That’s such a great oneliner for a small child; especially when delivered that deadpan Edit: one thing I’d like to add is that preteen children have been serial killers in real life, usually targeting other children. Only specific example I know is Mary Bell, who killed 2 preschoolers at age 10.
Like most murders committed against women are hate crimes. In my area recently a girl got stabbed to death for rejecting a man who'd been harassing her.
Is someone getting married? Cause I'm commenting for engagement! I hope this get's pushed to a broader audience. The depth of analysis, the sharing of perspectives, the entertainment value... Absolutely adore how you make breaking down a body of work art in and of itself. Thank you! Great Job! And (insert the 50 other variations of praise that this deserves)!!!!
Sex Education is wildly different depending on where you are. While we were taugh how/why mestration happens, it was my mom who taught me how to use menstration products, not the school. I didn't use tampons until I was an adult because I didn't trust my mom enough to ask her how they worked. We certainly didn't get to practice with them in class. I wasn't even from a bible belt state.
not to take up for riley sager, but i think that description of a first period isn't inaccurate. in my high school (2009-2013), we just got told that we were a licked cupcake if we had sex. zero education about periods. it never got addressed in middle school. i had a classmate douche with bleach because she didn't know better.
the white girl tiktokers do that fear-mongering because white cis people are ready to believe they are the target of human trafficking, even though it's not blonde pretty cis girls who are housed... and thus make them money through affiliate links for self-defense products. thank you for bringing this up-- as a visible trans masc, men are 10x more dangerous to be around when a woman is there because they feel the need to "defend" her from my existence.
I would like to just say very quickly that whatever period prep you got in your school district was significantly better than mine. we didn't look at anything, we maybe labelled a vagina, and the teachers pretty much told us to ask our parents. I saw and attempted to use a tampon for the first time at 14 and it was fucking traumatic.
I definitely understand the artists' rationale of making low-effort art because either it gets rejected because it is bad and you don't have to feel bad because you know it's not your best work, OR it does get accepted and you don't have to put your all into your work.
It took 2 sittings and 3 smoke breaks but I made it all the way through!! Quentin Reviews levels of dedication here, that's some serious love for your sister to do this!! Also, about 3x the fun of the Quentin Schneiderverse thing with a lot more depth in analysis!! This is amazing!!
OK, but can we just talk about how awful it is when paperbacks have a too short cover to show a strip of the praise for this book page? Why would they do this to us?
1:31:16 I mean good for you but as somebody who regularly was harassed walking home as a teenager and young woman and even followed a few times, your experience doesn't ring true for everyone.
I had one class, one time, informing me about periods. In the 6th grade we were split into boys and girls and the girls were told that the gym teacher (a woman) had pads available and idk what the boys were told, but it must have involved opening doors for the girls because suddenly that became a thing all the boys were expected to do. No, I am not a boomer, I am a millennial. I am honestly super impressed with the level of education you got on periods.
1:16:02 - maybe TMI but my mother helped me insert my first tampon (those super tiny Obi ones that are like designed for young girls) the first summer after I got my period so I could go to the pool with my friends while on my period, and even she could barely coherently explain how to do it, and when it wasn't working so she just resorted to inserting it herself because I was at full emotional breakdown at that point (I was 12 and I really, really wanted to go to the pool with my friends pls don't judge). A 37 year old woman could not properly explain. My friends recounted similar stories about their moms struggling to explain. That is one RARE 13 year old
Also - this next part about girls not knowing what to do about a period - totally plausible IMO. We were taken into a room in grade 4 (ages 9-10) to talk about periods, and I came home crying thinking I would be bleeding out until death for the rest of my life, totally inconsolable because of they way the explained it and probably the immaturity. They didn't talk about sanitary products because they thought our little elementary school brains would melt I guess if they told us how to take care of ourselves???? Idk. Never had any reproductive system talk again in my school system until we had sex ed in grade 11. So I kind of just forgot about periods until it happened 2 years later in grade 6 and was like oh yeah that was gonna happen but also, wtf do I do now
The intertextuality of this video essay and its space in the video essay cinematic universe/industrial complex is scratching my brain It's also making me wish I had the energy and confidence to upload the unfinished video taking space on my laptop's hard drive (laziness and gluttony are absolutely my art sins)
Right? I doubt he meant or understood it that way, and the awkward rebuttal does sort of serve to rebut the trans impostor stereotype as well, but boy is it clunky.
I mean it is a transphobic trope. I think it's in one of the book recommendations, can't remember which, she recommends Lindsey Ellis' video on transphobia in popular media and that video goes through this very well. Very briefly it's the idea of a man using a feminine form to get close to women. Which is exactly the idea floated in the text. I didn't find it so disturbing because it also kinda reads like a cishet male fantasy about being in a feminine body and that kinda made it mostly cringey to me. But the transphobic trope is definitely there in the text.
As a gay trans man who's typically read in public as a woman this is *really* interesting to me. I've been flashed and followed and had people say some really scary things to me. I've noticed that when my body language was less consciously feminine it was significantly worse, I think some of that shit happens is honestly policing people perceived as women who are like... not fitting the role. It's also really interesting in the ways it contrasts my experience with those of people who are in fact women.
That is definitely not what I meant, just that the way patriarchy enforces itself is multifaceted and has many angles. I do think women with relative privilege (white, wealthy, gender-conforming, straight etc) receive less than their more marginalized counterparts. @@red_velvetcake1759
@@red_velvetcake1759 mmm but "cis, gender-conforming women experience less sexual harassment on the street than trans, GNC women"... or, "people perceived as cis, GNC women experience less public sexual harassment on the street than people perceived as trans, GNC women" is my experience. so, i can guarantee it's more complicated than that
I stopped giving books star ratings years ago, even to myself. I couldn’t wrestle past the internal struggle of whether to rate a book based on whether I thought it was ‘good’ or how much I enjoyed reading it. It’s wonderful when those things coincide, but I like to say that I have a high tolerance for bad media, so that doesn’t always happen. One thing that always bothers me is I think there’s often a huge problem with classism when it comes to looking down on art because it’s not ‘good’ and yet it’s still popular. And this is true for any art medium. That doesn’t mean I think that there’s no value in the criticism of popular art. In some ways I think studying and critiquing popular art is MORE important because it’s popularity can say so much about our society. But I just think people can be so dismissive and elitist about things like that. I mean base human emotions are something we all have. It’s ok to appeal to them just for the sake of it. Isn’t art supposed to make us feel things after all?
I also struggle with whether to rate 'good' vs. enjoyment. I've decided that my Goodreads is for me, and I'll just mostly rate on enjoyment (with some weight thrown in for whether it's a 'good' book). The only time I feel bad about it is when I read a book that only has a handful of ratings, and it was bad.... Them's the breaks of reader reviews, though. I do think you're smart for just setting aside star ratings altogether.
Your statement at the end about sometimes wanting bad art, specifically because it does not take over the entire brain/permanently mark the soul, is so relateable and puts into words a Thing ive been trying to vocalize for a while. Im the type of person where when a piece of good art really hits me, my brain can do nothing but eat/sleep/drink/ao3 that art. I dont always (and less often than id like) have the energy to onsume another Magnus Archives or Annihilation or Fifth Season. Sometimes i just need to forget about the stress of being alive and watch a 2 hour long video essay about a video game I'll never play.
I'm not all the way through the video but as a trans guy I need to say THANK YOU. THANK YOU VERY MUCH for the level of care you took with the whole section of the essay that was about menstruation. It was very much appreciated.
Oh yeah noticed that as well, transfemme here, but it's just so refreshing to have someone actually take care with our experiences even if isn't my exact experience that it really stands out.
After watching this video, all I can say is this: if you ever want to do a 3.5 hour dissection of an author's work again, I will *absolutely* be here for it! 💯
This is not the most important thing but tbh the "no information given" approach to periods was definitely my experience. The only reason I knew about periods was because of my classmates who were already having them.There was so little discussion and so much taboo around talking about periods that I was too scared to ask any of my friends what to do. I was stuffing my underwear with toilet paper for forever and no one told me what I should do either. I definitely had the "at some point you'll start bleeding every couple of weeks just so you know and if you don't then you are pregnant". Then again I went to school in Florida in the early 2000s. Major props to anyone who had the "this is what this is and this is what you do and here are what you need to deal with them" treatment, that would have made my life easier.
You had the separated body talk every year. I had it once in 5th grade and the presumed boys came out spraying their free axe spray whiel the presumed girls very quickly hid our items. I can't imagine doing that more than once
Its so funny bc as soon as you picked up the mic and were like “we’re gna talk abt objective art. This is gna be unhinged” i was immediately like “CJ the X coded”. And then there they were. Blessedly on my screen
I was 13 in 2002 and while we were informed of the existence of pads and tampons it wasn't until 2003. Luckily I myself didn't have my period until I turned 15 lol.
That's so crazy to me as a Canadian. I was 9 in 1985 and got the complete rundown. Though it was an old manual and they explained how to use those belt things pads used to be attached to before they invented the sticky strip that adheres the pads to the panties. Those had completely disappeared from the market by that time 😂
Genuinely loved this, so glad the algorithm brought me to your video! Riley Sager is my “junk food” reading - I unironically liked “Final Girls” and got every book after that in the vain hope that they would get better. “The House Across the Lake” finally broke me. and thank you for recommending Grady Hendrix - he’s my go-to recommendation for other fans of this genre 😅
You may have made this video as a gift for your sister, but a video of this length is a gift to all of us. And I'm so glad someone else is talking up A Simple Favor (the adaptation), such a blast. Also Doctor Sleep vid now that adaptation is wild!
I watched this video a couple times having never read any of Sager’s books, and now I’m reading Lock Every Door with Laura’s voice as the main character in my head 😅
Truly a sign of the times we live in that when I see a 4h video from a youtuber I love about a subject I care nothing about, I just go HELL FRIGGIN YES
Prefacing this with the fact that I live in south America and not a first world country: I find a 13 year old not knowing anything about periods extremely believable. I was prepared because my mom taught me before I got my period. In all of my school experince, only two other girls knew what to do when they got their period. One of them was taught by mom too. Most girls my age didn't even know what a period was exactly and one friend didn't even tell her mom for the first few day. And I'm only 21, this wasn't that long ago.
Yeah i didn't tell anyone for months because i wasn't sure what to do and was embarrassed. Just used toilet paper as a pad. And i had a sister who already had hers, but used tampons which i couldn't get to work. I also thought babies get pooped out your butt until sex ed when i was 14, a solid year and a half after i got my period. My kid is 9 and i talk to her about it every so often so she doesn't forget details/signs and to normalize it when it does happen. Already bought pads to keep in the house for when her or a friend need them and showed her how to use them.
@@TH0KH it's unfortunately a very common experience. It's great that you're there for your kids and her friends too! My best friend only knew what to do during her period because my mom taught her. It honestly baffles me that they wait so long to teach about periods in school, when most girls get it before they're even 12.
to add on to the sex ed convos happening here i was never spilt away from the boys to have a “girls only” sex ed other than 4th grade where it was very basic overview of puberty in general. i remember getting most of my period sex ed in middle school where they went into the scientific reasons why periods happen which i may just remember the most because i’m a lil nerd and found it interesting. they told us periods are only about “a tablespoon of blood” and only last 3-4 days for most people which…… uhm…. lol. they told us we can get pads from this nurse and that tampons exist. that’s basically the extent we got. the anatomy diagrams we got were mostly of the internal parts not the outside so i had no idea where the vagina hole was before i stuck my phone down there using the front camera when i was like 20 😭😭😭😭😭😭 i knew we had three holes but i didn’t know where they were exactly lol i got my first period in 8th grade and didn’t really know that period blood could be brown so i thought i shit myself at first fun fact
Hey, haven’t watched the full video yet, can’t wait to hear your ideas on the genre. Some constructive criticism: the music can be fine if used sparingly to break up sections of the video, or to emphasize a point, but having it throughout, and at such high volume at that, does nothing but distract and honestly is giving me a bit of a sensory overload headache. It’s very overwhelming, especially considering the type of music you chose. Just something to keep in mind when editing newer videos. Peace and love! And merry Christmas!
it's so weird to me that publishers had to be woken up to women liking thriller novels, I knew about James Patterson for example because my mom and grandmother read his books
I didnt expect so poignant insights on an issue I had struggled to put into words in the middle of a longform video I opened as background noise for cleaning. Subscribed! I am an overly cautious, never relaxing, always home before dark, fat (with subconscious hesitancy to loose weight and the invisibility it offers towards men) woman who considers herself liberated but also still dresses in a way even conservatives wouldnt be offended at. Because on top of learning people arent safe/lost socialisation time as a kid (Bullying over formative years by peers...) I also get told constantly to look out, be aware, stay safe, stay hidden. And I considered this fear a sensible, if a bit strong, adaptation to this world until you pointed the fallacy out. Yes, the closest to predators I know arent the scary men I keep an eye on in shop windows or the person randomly walking past me while I clench my keys. Both of them were unassuming blokes of about my ethnicity, wo I was friendly aquainted with. One of them became way ruder and more dismissive to me as he realized I wasnt a potential dateable option (while still being his charming buffoon next door self to more attractive, less aroace women including OUR SHARED BOSS who was 5+ years older than him!). The other was in my online TTRPG circles, made a "waifu-pool" Discord of people that fit his fetish for incompatibly oriented (ace and/or lesbian) afab and lovebombed all of them, only to start dating the youngest group member (25!!! years his junior. The younger person is of age at least but about as young as you can get while being of age) and then seperating them from the group and cutting contact. Both of them didnt target me so I dont know all the details, but I know they did shady, pushy shit while not crossing the line into "classic predator". Both had their safe niches as "nice guys" and used that position to get women/afab people to lower their guard. And I cant help but wonder if this collective fear-bombing of women and read-as-women people isnt also a feture of patriarchy in addition to being a safe way to have cis men feel better about not being a boogie man. If the world is dangerous, it is sensible for a woman to not go out too much, after all. It is sensible to have a male protector with you. It is sensible to not dress eye-catchingly... That is the exact type of shit (conservative) xenophobes put forward as justification for islamophobia/xenophobia! Idk I hope my ramblings made sense. Tldr: you have opened my eyes to something that irked me for ages and also made me a subscriber
Hello, thank you for the menstruation rant and the “fear of men” rants. As a cis male they filled in huge blanks in my knowledge that I have never been able to provide clear explanation to my satisfaction. Also: Great video. I will probably watch all three hours again (twice).
@@petalchild I have personally experienced the counter-factuals of her rant with, and through, cis-women in my life. It's other situations, which don't fit the traditional narrative, that confused the hell out of me. Edit: Also, I lied, I've watched this four times so far.
Hate to bother you, but menstruation is pronounced “men-stray-tion”. The U isn’t pronounced. But I heard the word said another wrong way on a podcast headed by women. We don’t learn enough about our bodies to pronounce what they do right! :). The word just sounds incredibly choppy with the U pronounced. I thought this author was a women too, because of the name Riley. I feel sort of cheated like a cis male made a cash grab masquerading as a woman instead of giving an actual woman writer the chance to succeed or to think King was supporting women writers. Bummer.
Lol, the tampon instruction scene actually kinda happened to me. My little sister got her first period when my mom was out of town. It was a gym class swimming day. I sat outside the bathroom and talked her through it. She did okay. But for real, there was a lot of crying and shouting and i dont actually recall if the whole endevor was a success.
3 1/2 hours and I had never heard of Riley Sager until 3 1/2 hours ago (not the books I usually read) but I sure do now and I’m glad I spent almost 4 hours learning. It’s also a video I’m so glad I watched because as a yet-published writer I kind of needed to be reminded that it’s okay if my drafts aren’t perfect literature because there’s gonna be somebody that needs a light read
i also think that the 'following a murder, the mc has so many repressed memories that even they don't know if they did it!' gimmick of final girls is executed much better in 'in my dreams i hold a knife' by ashley winstead!! it's got a slightly different vibe, but it's a delicious study in obsession and i thought it executed the unreliable narrator thing super well. one of my favourite reads of the year so far!
I think this is some of your best work. I have never read any of these books, and I have no interest in reading them. You still managed to make this so compelling, and to tie it in with problems I see in other media, that I was engaged the whole way through, and I might have to watch it again to get the most I can out of it. You're doing a great job, and I can't wait to see what you do next.
Hi, it's me, the sister. I completely forgot I asked Laura to make this video, but I'm so glad I did.
Thank you for requesting this! It lead to a great video.
Hello the sister, cheers for that!
Late happy birthday!
you are doing God's work, Ms Crone
Thank you for requesting it! Happy belated bday!
I asked my wife if she was miserable/in rock bottom because she had a baggy sweater on and she said “I’ve never been miserable in a sweater” 😂😂😂
Love that for her, sweaters rule
That's so real
Yay , i mean you can have comfy clothes without specific reason.
lmao literally that’s when i AM HAPPY
It finally clicked for me why The Shining works so well as a film: Kubrick adapted the fear, not the book.
Okay, that's a brilliant observation.
And the problem with the Stephen King-directed The Shining is because he adapted the book.
Adapting books is way more difficult than it looks, especially really good books. The medium is so important that it's almost impossible to perfectly capture it.
Hold up, I always had the impression that The Shining The movie was horrifically sexist in its reduction of Wendy's character whereas the book was an incredibly nuanced portrayal of the same character that struck me in all sorts of realistic and deeply emotional ways. I genuinely want to know the reasons this was your takeaway because it's the opposite of mine, and this is a highly upvoted comment.
@@katstreats You're right about the differences in Wendy's portrayal. Though I wouldn't describe book Wendy as "incredibly nuanced" - this is 70s King we're talking here - she was certainly more complex. I read the book before seeing the film, and what pissed me off the most was how she was reduced to this quivering, blubbering mess. Years later, when I found out how badly Duvall was treated to get that performance, I was even angrier.
Kubrick's characterisation and storytelling in this film are rubbish. However, he does manage to evoke a terrifying atmosphere. That doesn't excuse his abusive behaviour, it's just a comment on the technical proficiency of the film.
I watched Gone Girl in high school, I don't know why maybe the teacher was hung over, and right before starting the movie, she said "just so you know, she is not dead". I have never been so angry before
What was her point in spoiling it for yall like
Omg now I have secondhand rage on your behalf. Why would she do that?
lol i have managed ( until now... ) to avoid spoilers ( for all these years 😅 )
didnt even watch this video yet.
When I was reading Gone Girl, I already knew what was going to happen after I read some of Amy’s entries.
No I'm angry on your behalf now
My mom always told me “ be perceptive not paranoid ” to be aware of my surroundings but panicking about boogeymen around every corner isn’t healthy. She also taught me how to throw a mean punch and if someone did ever grab me to scream grab bite etc. to not be embarrassed about loudly telling someone if they were making me uncomfortable or invading my space, to loudly be able to tell someone to “get the fuck away from me”. She focused on empowering me to be confident in myself and my boundaries and to have a plan if the worst happens .
Your mom sounds awesome!
My mom always told my sister: “if a guy ever goes after you, remember that he has eyes and you have claws”
Your mom sounds super dope 😁
I am going to add this the self-defence truism "never escalate the level of violence in a fight you're not winning". If you can shock someone into letting you escape by punching them, go ahead kick em' in the nuts. Otherwise you probably want to de-escalate. Making a scene when someone is invading your personal space or creeping on you however is grade A+ advice, no notes.
Well to be fair, the number 1 killer of women... is men. Moreover, it's usually a male in a position of trust. Face it, straight women are dating their number one predators.
We should absolutely be ourselves, be happy, fall in love.... but learn to disable an attacker who likely outweighs/outmuscles you...
Good advice. I mean the try to judge if itr gets you in danger to hit back or if you can scare a bit off and make a run for it. Running away literally is the best self defence technique if viable.
Back in the mid 2000s, at my school we were just told to use pads and tampons, but weren't told how they work. I didn't even know pads had a sticky side until I used one for the first time (after sex ed). So I think that scenario really depends on the school and time period. We also had to sign a "I won't have sex" pledge at the end of the class so there's that lol
Edit: practicing putting pads on underwear and being given menstrual products is such a great idea! It really is like a whole other world between some schools 😭
@@thegodplace7887 tbh I'm thankful that in a red state we got abstinence *focused* and not totally abstinence only sex ed. At the very least they told us birth control and condoms exist by showing us a chart of options briefly (with the emphasis on the fact that nothing is 100% effective like not having sex... which unfortunately also isn't 100% effective) The bar is in hell lol
yeah it is! we didn't practice it ourselves but when we had sex ed they did have a nurse demonstrate how to put on a pad and tampon (on a model vagina) and it was really helpful for when i finally got my period because i remembered from class. later on they also had us practice putting condoms on dildos (and test tubes??s dflkjsdlksdj). which was a VERY weird class lol but it was also definitely helpful. the temporary discomfort you feel as a student or teacher is definitely worth it for being informed about this stuff so you know what to do when you actually are in these situations.
Yep, I grew up in an Eastern European country and our "sex Ed" was ONE SINGULAR CLASS taught by the school nurse. All kids of all genders were in class. This happened in 7tu or 8th grade (so we were all around 15). We were told women menstruate (but not what menstruation is), we were ALL given one pad. No instructions, no anything, tampons were not mentioned, sex was not mentioned (because we're too young for that), not to mention that by this point, all but one of the girls in class had been having a period for a while. Then, the boys played with the pads and made fun of them the whole break and we went back to normal classes. Everyone I know has learned how to use period products from written instructions on the package or vague verbal instructions that steered clear of any mention of "inappropriate words."
OMG I have such bad memories of my first time trying to insert a tampon at 16 and somehow hurting myself so much I refused to try again until I was 21 and a friend gave me detailed instructions. I went to a pretty good school that had a decent sex ed program but nobody ever discussed the practicalities
@minano-nim6795 ouch 😭
I didn't get hurt but the first time I tried at 15, my friend was trying to help me from the other side of the door bc she wanted to swim. I got tunnel vision and ended up going down to the floor before it got worse (from standing up trying to do it). Apparently that's a thing that can happen and it's likely due to being really tense. I had no idea you had to relax your muscles. I gave up and didn't try again until maybe a year later. I just didn't swim on my period for about 4 years 🙃
I agree that the fear instilled in women about their surroundings is overblown but as a women who has been mugged skateboarding home at night , stalked at work, and cat called walking in my neighborhood since I was twelve. I don’t know. I think there is a lot of nuance there. I grew up in a town that all neighboring towns called the “ghetto”. It wasn’t that but there was a lot less money there than the surround areas. My friends and I grew up wandering the neighborhood and we are still here to tell our tales but that’s because we learned how to watch our backs. There is a class distinction here too that I wish she touched on.
I definetly agree with this. While I do think we need nuance about this subject (especially with centering white cishet ablebodied women and seeing men of color as being more dangerous), I've also been followed at night, catcalled and touched without my consent. And I still live in a rather safe town, I know I've probably experience way less than some of my friends who don't.
Yeah, there's a clear privileged perspective to her argumentation that is truly disgusting tbh...
@@gastonzumbo9860I definitely found it a weird tangent from just the line about a male experiencing what it would be to “be like a women” at night. If it was more indicative of a larger part of Riley’s work I’d maybe understand it but it was definitely a strange criticism of “someone doesn’t have the same hot take social criticism around feminism as I do in this scene” which makes that part of the video just a weirdly out there part of this honestly mostly 10/10 vid
@@raventame7221 What are you using to measure safety when you say you live in a safe town? (And that your friends live in less safe areas.)
I don't want to pick on you here. I just want to highlight that when we describe a place as safe or unsafe it almost never has a basis in data.
Most of the time when Americans are talking about what is a good or bad part of town, what we're actually using to approximate that is how white it is, and then how wealthy it is.
As I'm writing this we just closed out 2023. Despite the incessant reports of a rising tide of lawlessness, murder rates dropped by double digits.
As often as I've heard people point to Chicago or New York City as epicenters of violence, a map of the counties with the highest per capita age-adjusted murder rates puts a lot of rural areas in the south as more dangerous places to live.
I'm using murder statistics because there's less variation in reporting rates, but of course this doesn't reflect the risk women are at very well. I tried to find data for that and while there are several places that get mentioned as particularly dangerous, the overall answer is: at home.
Data. I'm using data and also a touch of personal experience as I tend to be bothered more by men when I go to other surronding cities. My town isn't te safest but proportionally the amout of crime is way lower than in the rest of my country (small note but I'm not American). My point was not that the violence doesn't happen more at home. I'm aware of that. But that the tangent on crime in the street and how Laura hasn't experienced much of it felt a bit dismisive of other people's experience. I'm 100% sure it was not intentional but mostly felt like a priviledged point of view. @@mxpants4884
I went to go read the luckiest girl ever and wow, damn near every poc person was described negatively and I can't get over the fact that "belly button winking like an Asian eye" is a line in a critically acclaimed book!?
Omg thank you for this, I was actually going to order and read this book 🤢
That's gross wtf
Some Lovecraft Type Shit
Wtf what does that even mean??
that had to go through how many rounds of editors that chose to keep it in???? wow
I'm convinced the "whisk with a handle the size of my wrist" is what happens when someone doesn't know what a kitchenaid attachment is
I'm no whiz in a kitchen, but that's a strangely made whisk. Even I can see that.
For real! What the hell are you whisking, alien goo? If you're looking to make an emulsion with the tensile strength of concrete your recipe is way off.
Loved the essay! I will say though as a black fem presenting invdividual: I am scared for my life when I am catcalled. I understand very well that I am an unprotected demographic in this country more than most and when my life in the media is seen as not even worth reporting on, much less investigated if I ever went missing. I understand that wasn’t your point there but I wanted to call out again that it is different when you are apart of a minority
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@FreePigeonmust be nice to live in such comfort that someone sharing their lived experience provokes you to comment something utterly unnecessary
I'm literally shaking right now
The most horrific thing about Sager's books is the idea of whipping eggs, sugar, and flour together and calling it "batter."
the constant focus on the attractiveness of these female victims/women who have to watch themselves walking at night puts a really sour taste in my mouth. people are always so quick to act like only 'pretty' women are victimized, when the reality is that's not the case at all.
Literally just saw a comment trying to negate her views by being like "actually white pretty women get targeted all the time"
Some people's views on who is likely to be victimized is so warped by media
This. I’ve even seen pretty women say “ugly” girls are really the privileged ones because they don’t have to worry about being preyed on by men. Fucking bullshit. Bad men target ALL kinds of girls and women. And girls and women who aren’t conventionally pretty have to deal with not being believed because “why would he want to?” or told they should be grateful for the attention. People think only pretty girls are at risk of attack because the media only focuses on pretty girls.
Gives me "well what were you wearing?" vibes as if only women in crop tops and booty shorts get attacked
@@SuperNuclearUnicorntrue, ESPECIALLY in the context of domestic abuse, which is the exact setting of these mentioned books. Assault/abuse ist most likely to happen at home and so it's definitely not always about sexualizing hot-dressed women in the street
@@bece00we live in times where a bunch of wealthy suburban white women are certain they’re constantly being “almost sex trafficked” at Target. There’s zero cultural understanding of who is actually victimized by assault, sex trafficking etc and people actively believe these crimes are ARGs that they’re a part of. It’s so frustrating and actively harmful to victims.
i really really liked the discussion about how awful all the fear mongering about trafficking on tiktok is. you're right it's only "be aware" which translates to be fearful.
People like that want to be the victim of a true crime story so bad it’s gross
This is fun except when I was 15 I was nearly taken off the street
I’m not on tiktok but is trafficking awareness really a bad thing
@@namedrop721it actually IS a bad thing because these stories like "they'll put a flyer on your car to mark you as a victim" and all kinds of ridiculous things make people scared of stuff that doesn't actually happen. Real, actual trafficking groups are asking people not to spread this misinformation. Polaris, one of the biggest trafficking orgs, says on thier own website they've never had A SINGLE client who was brought into trafficking because they were randomly snatched off the streets just conducting every day life. Think about how much attention that woman who faked her own kidnapping (actually BOTH of them) recently. That was all over nationwide news in hours but were supposed to believe hundreds of people with families, kids, husbands, ect just up and disappear and no one even blinks?
No. Its people who won't be missed, it's homeless people, its sex workers and addicts who if they go missing get waved off as "oh probably just out getting high" or even worse "who cares?"
The 30 year old mom of two is going to be noticed being missing immediately. So is pretty much anyone who has people they see daily.
Trafficking is usually done (at least in Western countries) by people who already know the victim. A "boyfriend" who manipulates a woman and then becomes abusive, as sick as it is for kids its often family members
"Theres a secret back entrance which leads to the wardrobe in her childhood bedroom" That's fucking terrifying actually. Actually. Actually that's fuckimg terrifying and I would like for it to not thank you.
Just to throw it out there... I have been stalked and seriously threatened and put in danger by people when I'm walking down the street, even though I am careful and do everything I'm "supposed" to do...I totally understand the nuance you're going for, and appreciate the point that "women are unsafe walking down the street" is an easy excuse for a lot of bad faith actors... but it does happen (I'm glad it hasn't happened to you!) and it is really terrifying...I have been in serious danger and it's affected the way I walk through the world... I do REALLY agree that we need to focus more on the idea that most "bad guys" don't look like monsters :( Too true
same, and i'm not even a woman, i just look feminine enough to get mistaken for one 9 times out of 10. which is dangerous because of how men will get violent for "being tricked into accidentally acting gay", even tho i am not tricking them and it's not my fault when they are attracted to me who is not a woman.
a guy once followed me for 3 hours through multiple trains without me noticing and at my destination which was a relatively rural and deserted train station he approached me and was like "hey i saw you get on the train at [starting station] and followed you here, would you get a coffee with me?" and i was very disturbed by this because i usually do look around and try to see if anyone is following me and didn't notice him, also he followed me through multiple trains for 3 hours to ask me out for coffee?!?!? also i'm not a woman but people often think i am a woman and they don't like when they hit on me and then notice i'm not actually a woman. so i was very scared and just said "no, thank you" but he wouldn't give up and kept asking and i didn't have time even if i wanted to and kept declining and tried to leave and then the guy got so angry and i don't know if it was because i declined or if he noticed i'm not a woman. luckily there was someone around who said something to the guy and when he was distracted i ran away.
when i have to walk home in the dark after a late shift often i have guys just starting to follow me from the busy main street, luckily i live somewhere with many smaller streets that interconnect and usually have a few people out, so i can just take a few quick turns and usually loose them before i even get close to my house. but it is scary.
it's still no reason to be racist or transphobic, and that doesn't even make sense, everyone i know that has ever been harassed on the street it was from white men and it's way more common to be attacked for the possibility of being trans than for the random attacker to be dressing up to seem trans, because the people who attack people know they don't need to put on a dress and make up to attack anyone.
sure there could be abusers who are trans but that's not because they are trans. there are cis woman abusers. and if you ever get harassed in a bathroom or changing room it will probably be from a cis woman, because she is suffering from the transvestigation brainrot.
Yeah, as someone who has absolutely been given reason to fear walking alone, and whose family consists of three generations of white women who have also been given those reasons, that point rang rather hollow to me. I'm not scared because the world told me I should be, I'm scared because it's terrifying to have strange men follow you home having grown up hearing about the strange man who followed your mother home at your age and broke in with a weapon (thankfully he was scared off by a male friend).
While it is absolutely true that the "bad guy" is several times more likely to be someone you know, it's a little bit nonsense to imply there isn't inherent danger in being a femme appearing person walking alone - sometimes not even at night.
The statement that thin white women aren't the target of hate crimes is also a bold and debateable statement. And really only debateable in terms of law. We have literal manifestos by men who specifically targeted what they considered to be attractive women (often thin white women) due to stated motives that differ very little from any legally codified hate crime. EDIT to clarify: the hate crime is more about their perceived gender than people targeting them because they're white.
I'm sorry that you've been followed/stalked by men, and I count myself very lucky I've not yet had it happen to me. I don't want to diminish that, but I think the important point is that even though we do everything we're supposed to, it still happens
I'm reminded of the case of Sarah Everard a few years ago, who followed basically every tip for "staying safe" when out alone at night, and was still kidnapped and murdered. I don't know that our vigilance makes us any safer
@@katharineeavan9705 yeah the guy that followed me for 3 hours was in broad daylight it was noon when I went on the first train.
Yeah and the guys writing manifestos and only killing who they saw as women definitely qualify as hate crimes for me.
There are also femicides going on in a few places and they don’t seem to only kill women of color, even if there are more women of color killed just on the basis of it being places where more people of color live.
@@gingganggoolie vigilance might not save us all; but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.
I didn’t see the guy that flowed me on the trains in broad day light and got lucky because when I was unable to get away someone else saw it, but I saw guys ducking between cars and door ways and changed where I was going. And those probably did prevent something from happening.
Also I don’t think vigilance is only about ourselves, it’s also about others and looking out for them too.
The fact that you made a three and a half hour just because your sister asked you to just shows what a great sister you are! Thank you to your sister for the inspiration for this great video!
Immediately I just wanted to script doctor the period thing: the protagonist could just have only been planning to use pads but only tampons were available. Wouldn't be that hard to tweak. Sigh.
Yes! That’s actually such a good fix. I personally didn’t relate to the digression about comprehensive education on the use of tampons in school, it might’ve happened but I don’t think so. But like, grabbing from a variety of experiences from ppl I’ve interacted w/ I feel like it’s a very common experience for young people who are menstruating (especially for the first time) to kinda get the gist of pads even w/out someone showing them vs. being left in the dark about tampons & then being left to struggle w it on their own. It sucks
I have actually had to look up useage instructions for tampons to someone who was in that exact situation. (or in her case it was an underwear situation? okay I understood tampons but still do not understand thongs)
@@R0SE727 yes, I definitely envy the practical sanitary product education. Sure I was told about different sanitary products but honestly didn’t understand that tampons went fully inside you and wouldn’t get lost, and got a heavy steer that they were “advanced level” sanitary protection and I should just use pads to start with and then figure tampons out in some unspecified way at some undefined future point.
I honestly wouldn't have even blinked an eye at this scene. I don't remember having a useful health class. The only reason I knew how tampons worked was because my mom bought me that American Girl book about puberty (and honestly, that page breaking down how to insert it scared me away from tampons until after college...). A 13-year-old getting their first period while away from home and freaking out and needing someone to walk them through it sadly doesn't raise any lack-of-verisimilitude alarm bells for me. I haven't read the book, so I don't know specifically how the scene went down, but the basic premise is not outlandish to me.
@@nuffyj8614 omg I had the same American girl book! I’m glad there was at least something out there to be an educational resource for this kinds of stuff bc judging by the shear span of comments our health classes really let us down lol :’)
1:19:21 oh dear...that is EXACTLY what my experience was when i got my period at age 12 in the early 2000's, and i lived in what (at the time) was considered a very non-conservative area. your school actually taught people how to use tampons and pads? they sent kids home with samples of them???!! i think you might be the outlier here 🤣
absolutely the outlier lmao! i went to an all-girls primary school and i dont think even remember them telling us more about periods than 'they happen once a month and you bleed during it'. when she was talking about that i was wondering if i was the weird for never having talked about that in school
@@flowingleaves lol considering the cost of period products, I think sending kids home with samples would bankrupt the public school system.
@@winterx2348Always and Kotex each make period curriculum for schools (with samples), based on the knowledge that if you use one brand at the start, there's a very high chance you stick with it. It sounds like her school was in one of those programs. Mine was not, so I didn't see any demos until my mom talked me through it.
no fr seeing her basically act like her experience was universal threw me off a lot because that was NOT the case for anyone in my town
@@runa_7022 yeah i think there's some good points in this video overall but the period section really threw me?? it just didn't feel relevant to the rest of the commentary and also so hyperspecific i was just like.... okay
1:20:00 my middle school sex ed literally was that bad. They didn’t saw what a period was almost at all, just vaguely mentioned it without detail. I only knew what it was when it happened to me because three weeks before, I had seen a UA-cam life hacks video about how to survive your period. My mom hadn’t really told me because she assumed sex ed would, so she gave me a brief summary a few years too early for me to remember in the moment. So, had UA-cam not been there, I would have been exactly where that character was
Our p.e teacher held our sex ed at that age. He refused to say the word 'menstruation' and vaguely talked *around* it instead of about it.
My mom didn't tell me shit, and this was before any school ed happened about it, lol. I freaked out one night after finding blood on my bed. My mom laughed when she realized it wasn't anything life threatening, but still explained nothing, and just said it meant "I was a woman now" 🤡🤡🤡
There's a lot to unpack there, and none of it good
yeah the way she was describing her own sex ed experience made me so like... your experiences are not universal lmao. we absolutely did not have anyo f that
Were you living in New York in the 2000s? I think the criticism was that for that time and place her ignorance was highly unlikely. Maybe if the character had been homeschooled or sent to a regressive religious school it might make sense- but given the circumstances in the novel, it doesn't ring true.
I went to a "good" school, in a "great" school disctrict, in theearly 2000's, in a progressive area. We never got any kind of instruction on menstruation, and no it was never explained to me what to do by parents. In fact, I'm shocked by level of prep described.
This video so makes me think of the Community episode where Abed watched all of Nicolas Cage's work to try & determine whether he's a good or bad actor. I don't think Sager pushed you to the same breaking point as Cage did Abed, but the vibes are there & I kind of love it. Like that ONE more book might have led to you yelling incomprehensibly, throwing around your vast quantity of notes & climbing over furniture declaring you're a sexy cat .... or super empowered survivor girl.
you can actually get over the NYT paywall by hitting Esc repeatedly as the page loads (works better if you have slow internet). Honestly, showing her doing that would've made for a great moment of class commentary.
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Also, if you search "NYT subscription code," many libraries have them for free
Also if you use firefox you can just click the notepad in right side of the url you can read the article just fine 9/10
You can also hit print before the page fully loads, which will work for most paywalls including NYT, and from there you can download it as a PDF. In my experience, the NYT paywall is actually one of the easiest to get around (and I have a lot of experience from being a journalism student)
I read 'Pretty Girls' by Karin Slaughter because it was sold to me as 'the next Gone Girl' (and I love Flynn), but I think a lot of these books take the wrong messaging from Flynn's success: she's never pointlessly horrific or gruesome or gritty for the sake of it. She gives some really compelling psychological writing (which centres female perspectives). Pretty Girls had some surface level similarities to Flynn's work, but absolutely went over the top with its gruesome horror to the point it became cartoonish.
Yeah, that is a Karin Slaughter TM. Her work is always gritty and I knew that from reading the Will Trent series so Pretty Girls was a no go for me
Yeah I used to read Karin Slaughter as a teen (forgot the series name, but it was about that female pedriatrician slash county coroner who dated the Chief of Police in a small town) and I stopped because the misery of the central characters was just piled on and on and on. I loved the characters but the series only kept hurting without respite, so I stopped reading them for the same reason I dont enjoy grimdark: If everything is sad and depressing without any happy moments, why am I reading this as escapism instead of anything with even a hint of optimism?
pretty girls terrified the fuck out of me because it's so horrific and it's also the worst case scenario of very real fears i have as a woman. but yeah it's really not like gone girl at all imo. it's very much just. "wouldn't it be fucked up if this happened?" and yeah. it would be fucked up. but that's also not really what gone girl is. gone girl is like... a character of study of a fucked up and calculating woman and an account of why she did what she did. there are actually very interesting character writing aspects of gone girl, none of which exists in pretty girls. i don't think one is automatically superior to the other (and i actually found pretty girls a more engaging read than gone girl at the end of the day because it wormed its way into my brain) but they're really completely different things.
it's really frustrating that every single book nowadays (and for a while now at least) gets marketed as the next [book that already exists]. or as some kind of mishmash of multiple books that already exist. it's all is this author the next stephen king, the next jk rowling, the next [other big name in fiction]. it genuinely makes a lot of books frustrating to read because it's absolutely not what you were promised. i read iron widow without seeing any of the marketing materials (i just knew xiran jay zhao wrote it and i knew them from their youtube so i picked it up). and i liked it quite a bit. and then i saw all the handmaids tale and pacific rim and hunger games comparisons and i was like what the HELL are you talking about lmao. i would've hated it if i went into it with those expectations. book retailers are so busy trying to get a next gone girl they're not even stopping to consider if the book they're calling the next gone girl is even remotely like gone girl in the first place.
Haven't read Pretty Girls, but I've fallen for that kind of marketing in the past and I've really started to dislike how it and "like X meets X" marking has become so prevalent. Even if the book is really good, I find my initial expectations might end up soured cause I expected it to be something that it wasn't trying to be. (Granted, my brain is kind of weird, so this probably isn't as big of a problem for other people.)
I will say, "False Witness," by Karin Slaughter was a read I doubt will ever leave me. That book focuses less on murder and more on SA and addiction though, so perhaps that's why. I quickly had to stop going through her other work though. The others were way, way, too gruesome.
Your commitment to avoiding correlating anatomy to gender and writing talent that prevented it from feeling grammatically clunky made me feel really seen as a femme enby lesbian, thank you.
I genuinely wish more UA-camrs/video essay writers were like Laura in this regard.
Heck, I wish more people in general were like Laura in this regard. Lol.
@@benburke3015 I think it's happening, but really slowly. It's only been recently that many of the UA-camrs I watch are including "non-binary" in their into and outro. And I'm starting to hear the first few mentions of people who are aromantic and/or asexual. We'll get there, but seriously Laura is low-key including an instruction manual for inclusive language. This blueprint is like a little bonus tucked in. I'll try to remember to point people to this video if they're looking for some new tips on trying to include everyone in their communications.
seconding this as an enby on the aro and ace spectrums ! she does a superb and commendable job!! i never felt othered, or like i'm not the target listener for this kind of video, because the language that was used was just !! [claps hands to show emphasis] Good! You know!!
Same here as an agender transfemme person. A recommendation on this for Foreign Man in a Foreign Land.
As a sidenote I had a weird mixed of feelings on this with Philosophy tubes latest video. Which I should note is excellent. But it's for me weirdly strictly binary gendered kinda leaving out the similarities of the experiences of femme presenting non-women to the kinds of fuckery that women face. At the same time I really enjoyed the "non-binary people, you're gorgeous take five bit" 😄 And admittedly I did kinda felt seen getting explicitly left out of the discussion on gender. Guess I just would've liked the additional nuance of women and femme presenting people added to the conversation.
I hate to tell you this but my experience of sex ed is basically exactly what he mentioned in the book lmao and im from a blue state (red district tho ? dont know if it counts) CERTAINLY did not have any points where we were taken from the boys at all, or DEFINITELY no points of putting in pads or tampons. i don't think they even mentioned pads or tampons at all to be honest. the most we got was probably a very formal, scientific, "once a month the uterus sheds its lining when an egg hasn't been fertilized" i got all the period talks from my mom lmao
I was going to comment something similar. Our classes were never gendered and if you genuinely needed an anatomy lesson because parents parents didn’t cover it, you’d have to talk to the nurse.
I was homeschooled and handed books from the 70s when I started asking about periods. I was extremely confused about the actual specifics of menstruation for a while...until I actually started...
School curriculum is controlled locally, state standards - outside of fascist states - only do so much.
I had a pretty in-depth sex ed class. But when my little sister went to the same high school a few years later they completely wiped the program.
I was sent to only religious schools, which had absolutely zero sex ed (beyond JUST DON’T) and only very basic human reproductive anatomy.
My mom made sure i knew about puberty & periods before it happened, plus we had books like A Child Is Born, but didn’t demonstrate pads & discouraged but didn’t forbid me from using tampons if I wanted to buy myself some (I didn’t get my period until i was nearly 15, & did figure out tampons myself).
Especially with a religious background, or even without one but pre-internet, a tween getting her first period unawares at summer camp is pretty believable to me.
The Riley Sager penname debacle fascinates me as someone who grew up reading writers like SE Hinton. Hinton HAD to use pennames to be taken seriously when she wrote about these tough street hood kids in the 1970s. But now we're to the point where a certain brand of grit and horror is seen as "acceptable" for a woman to have written. Interesting stuff.
Apparently this was a thing with gothic romances in the 1970s as well. I think this has always been a thing for genres marketed at women
@@Clau-chauNicol An artist's gender expression is a concept that has to be marketed with as finely tuned a comb as the art itself. The woman who writes intense yet high concept psychological horror has to be as finely tuned as the woman who peers into the interior world of 1970s street toughs
I'm AFAB nonbinary, white and chubby
Have spent my whole life walking around at night, and have been followed many times, even attacked a few, but I'm careful, took self-defense classes all through youth, and carry self defence items.
Every femme appearing person I know, survived similar experiences, or worse.
I live in a really scummy big city, though.
100% true, people (especially women) are in far more danger from people they know and trust, and that absolutely needs to be more taught and more well known.
But we also still need to teach basic safety for "stranger danger" until it isn't a problem at all.
Without those teachings, I and many people I know probably wouldn't be alive right now.
.... Feel like you are underestimating how AWFUL the sex ed can be in the US...
I never even had any sex ed. Permission slips were sent home. Then the actual class never freaking happened. And was at an otherwise good school!
Yeah, I can confirm it was that way at my school, too. What a country.
The conversation about pretty white women being scared is very interesting to me. I'm a white woman who would probably be considered attractive if I wasn't fat. But because I've been fat my whole life, the fear was instilled in me much less than in other women. And even if people tried, it didn't actually ever register, because I always was super insecure and considered myself monsteous because fat. And to an extent, I'm glad.
I was the girl who stood between her friends and the creepy dudes at the clubs. I went out to party at gay bars (am bi) all alone and walked home alone at 3 am (never drank though). I was the girl who dropped off her friends at their door in the middle of the night and then walked home alone. I was the girl who went to England at 15 to learn English and experienced no fear. During my PhD, I worked until 2 am, and then went on a walk through the city to go home. I'm infinitely grateful for this freedom. Granted, I also live in a very safe country and city, but that doesn't stop tge women around me from feeling the fear.
Not to say I haven't had weird men hit on me. It happens. I lie, pretend to be married (well, by now that's actually true). At 10, a stranger tried to assault me and I was able to push him away and forcefully tell him to leave (which he did cause we were outside during the day). Yet still, I feel very little fear. Interestingly, itvdoes make me scared of ever becoming conventionally attractive (aka thin). So that's interesting I guess.
Oh my GOD that final monologue about liking bad books is so validating! I own a Kindle and read a lot, so I end up reading really bad books sometimes but I like it! It helps me sharpen my critical skills and taste, as well as sometimes just wanting fluff
Man. I got my period when I was 9. No one was ready, so no one had taught me. I thought I was literally dying. I can't believe I'm a rare exception, here.
I'm sorry you had to go through this. If it helps, that stuff happened to my grandma too. It's not like nobody was ready. Her mother just didn't explain anything to her because she was repulsed and she was never taught anything like that by anyone else. Also she was 14 at the time. Went to her friend and told her that it's the end of her days. Her friend and her mother LAUGHED at her.
So, when I came of age, my grandma explained this stuff to me. Of course, the generational bias wasn't fixed. My entire family is very defensive over the topic of sex and bodies, me included. I wasn't unaware when my period came, but it still felt like my body betrayed me. I hated every inch of my body because I didn't want it to grow and change especially in such a "gross" manner. Nobody in my family presented period as something gross, but nevertheless it felt disgusting and messy
I got mine at 10 about to turn 11 and although I new it meant blood and a pad because of adds in tv no one told me it could come in different colors like BROWN. I hide it for a day or two because I was so fucking ashamed thinking I was shitting my pants without realizing dude
I was 10 and no one talked to me about it because it was so much earlier than everyone was expecting. I really feel for others who got it SO early like me because it felt like a horrible ugly end to childhood, considering everything unpleasant that came with it.
My first tampon insertion was based solely on a book i read. My school system definitely did not do as much teaching as yours did lol. I’m very glad more populous areas do better teaching though.
I got a lil diagram inside the box
Same! If my grandmother hadn't given me "The Body Book for Girls" I would have had no idea what to expect at all. My sex ed in school was watching a short video that explained absolutely nothing except that the uterus (whatever that was) would discard an unused egg and uterine lining (whatever that was) once a month. I had no idea how to obtain a tampon much less use one.😂😭
im still upset that i got mine at age 10, then LATE into the school year we had a semi-comprehensive sex ed. but i had already been going through it for months. i remember specifically when i first got it i thought "thats weird but oh well guess im slowly dying" and went about half a week w/o knowing anything until my mom confronted me. idk would have been helpful to do that a grade or two before
Okay I did NOT get that kind of comprehensive period training. I got taught about what menstruation was, and I did know about the products in THEORY (just pads and tampons mind you) but I ALSO had no idea what to do about it. The fact that they had you practice putting pads on panties and play with tampon applicators sounds completely foreign to me
wow your period readiness class segment was way more thorough than ours. We got an informational video that explained the technical process by which periods happen, glossed over how to wear a pad/insert a tampon, and somehow left me with the impression that I would bleed for a few hours each month instead of nearly a week. When I asked my older sister how to do a tampon, she gave me a look like I was stupid and told me to "just shove it up there." So yeah went by guessing and probably didn't quite put it far enough in and came away with the impression that tampons were actively painful to wear. Shocked to have a period? out of the question. Hilariously unequipped to do anything about it? definitely a thing.
That speil about "the next gone girl" reminded of that bit in YMS's review of frozen where he talked about how every horror movie claimed to be "Jaws with x" and/or " What psycho did for showers this movie does for blah blah blah"
As a math nerd, I have huge respect for parts negative two through zero. Have I seen their contents? Nope, I just love the numbering.
imagine my shock when you started describing the plot of final girls and i realized i had actually read it a few years ago and completely forgot
I'm very glad that you've been blessed enough that your physical safety has never been compromised walking down the street, but most women i know have been followed/groped/threatened by a stranger on the street multiple times in their lives. Granted, I've lived in a large city my whole life and things are probably different in non-urban areas, but I've walked more than one woman home because they were being threatened or stalked or had previously been assaulted by a stranger while on a walk. It might be a socioeconomic thing; not everyone can afford to call a cab when they feel unsafe.
Thank you.
I think the worst part about the sameness of Riley’s voice is that he clearly TRIED to differentiate by using shorter sentences or lingo, but there’s no real manipulation of syntax or even word choice and it is SO PAINFUL
As a self proclaimed (shitty) cinephile who's also been around a lot of other cinephiles both as collegues and as friends, the way media treats these characters as either monolithes who always like the same 3 things or people obsessed with only popular things has always driven me insane 'cause my personal experience is just so... varied. I met so many people who had so many different opinions about different things, most of the time obsessed with at least one niche period/genre/director, it annoys me so much when cinema or other media will just have us be obsessed with Nouvelle Vague and call it a day
“My quirk is movies” is hilarious. I grew up sans TV & most popular culture for religious reasons & still got those references. Maybe “All Movies are superior to All Literature because books leave too much to the reader’s interpretation” could be a position? Just SOMETHING
1:20:00 as a trans person who would (for a time) have periods and didn’t realize what dysphoria was or that you could be trans without only seeing yourself as 100% a boy, i know i really avoided period products in my tween/early teen years (i was a late bloomer, very athletic, and very skinny) because i didn’t want to acknowledge my body could do that. i was so adverse to the idea of “becoming a woman” or whatever it was sold as. i routinely avoided packing period products despite the foolishness of it to sooth my dysphoria, even though I didn’t know that’s what was going on at the time. so i mean yes maybe girls would pack period products on an extended trip, but not all of us for one reason or another. just another perspective to share.
I even pretended my periods hadn't happened or wasn't happening at the time. I didn't tell my mother because she would have made a big deal out of it and just the thought made me nauseous.
I pretended so hard that even now years later I honestly couldn't tell you at what age it even started. 😅
So yes, I definitely wouldn't have packed either going on a trip at that age.
Im trans and my period is such a time of extreme dread. The rest of the month im fine with my lower bits but periods fill me with horror and im often unprepared because my brain refuses to acknowledge the thing until it slams into me
This made me think of a company (Vuokkoset) in my country (Finland) recently launching a campaign with period products for men. Apparently to go into wider distribution next year? They're also apparently considering non-gendered period products. I don't know if this is a complete miss, transfemme here so you know 😄, but I figured I'd share anyways.
I love that we get a 3.5 hour video as a love letter to your sister. I love this energy so much!
I think its weird to frame the fear of being a woman walking alone at night as something that we... shouldn't be afraid of? Or rather that it's just "conditioning" that, if im understanding correctly, leads women to be hateful, racist, and transphobic? A very weird take in my opinion. While yes, plenty of women are lucky enough to never have a seriously negative or traumatic experience from walking alone at night, and yes, this is not something that only happens to women, there are MANY stories of it happening. There is definitely something to be said about "privileged" women fear-mongering on tiktok, or how those women may turn that into something hateful. Something to be said about how bad things happen to every gender, or how using the walking alone at night example as the only thing to emphasize the struggle of being a woman is poor writing. Definitely topics to discuss. But when you personally know female friends and co-workers who have been chased down streets, thrown in cars and taken to second locations, assaulted, etc. It seems weird to dismiss the fear as something we are simply conditoned into having, as if it has no basis in reality. Just because it hasn't happened to you or in your circle doesn't mean it's not a common experience. It never justifies hate or prejudice, but it's not an irrational fear by any means. Having to explain the fear to men who don't understand it is a real thing women have to deal with. If a man will harass you on the street in broad daylight with witnesses, it is a totally reasonable fear to worry what that same man would do if he found himself alone with you at night. That isn't conditioning, that's the lived experience of many women. We can have the other conversations without dismissing the completely valid fear many women have.
as someone who’s only casually a reader because i always feel like i have to force myself to read “good” books this video made me genuinely so excited to read and i really appreciate that
house across the lake really hits you with the double whammy “indigenous mythology is sooo spooky ooo” plus “what if a woman was secretly a man oooo”
Oh no, it's not "what if a woman was secretly a man", it's full on "what if a man masquerading as a woman wanted to hunt women, using his feminine form as a tool to get close to them." Personally the depiction is so cishet man fantasy so it mostly comes of as cringey 😄 But the trope isn't even subtext it's right there in the text. So literally it's genuinely kinda funny 😂
The backstory was indeed extra gross 🤮
Im glad nothing has happened to you walking around the streets but thats not the case for me and many of my friends. Maybe its because we're low income and have to take public transport and we work late at night.
We've literally sat around in a circle talking about all the horrible things that have happened.
No same- that take was…weird.
i absolutely MUST enter into the riley sager description moments hall of fame the time in his latest book he described something as "the opposite of the picture of dorian grey" SO LIKE... A REGULAR PAINTING?
Unless it's like, the painting saps all your youth and leaves you old and shriveled??
Absolutely stacked voice casting for this video. Going to thoroughly enjoy this hulking mass of content. (RIP to the glass apparently, it will be missed)
Yes this absolutely. I'm like 37 minutes in and I have recognized at least 5? Creators I watch I think?
“It’s my cross-eyed bear…” I have been looking for EZACKALLY this phrase. My religious deconstruction has required the replacing of many phrases, anagrams, and initialisms. “My cross to bear” has been needing an atheist replacement, and I am forever grateful.
This is my new comfort video in bed every night
38:09 this bit killed me. That’s such a great oneliner for a small child; especially when delivered that deadpan
Edit: one thing I’d like to add is that preteen children have been serial killers in real life, usually targeting other children. Only specific example I know is Mary Bell, who killed 2 preschoolers at age 10.
This video turned me on to Ruth Ware and I’ve been binging her books ever since
Thank you for that!!
The algorithm keeps recommending ever longer videos and I’m not complaining
Only longtube will endure
"No one is doing hate crimes to (thin cis white) WOMEN (in the united states) GIRL DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF
Like most murders committed against women are hate crimes. In my area recently a girl got stabbed to death for rejecting a man who'd been harassing her.
Is someone getting married? Cause I'm commenting for engagement!
I hope this get's pushed to a broader audience. The depth of analysis, the sharing of perspectives, the entertainment value... Absolutely adore how you make breaking down a body of work art in and of itself. Thank you! Great Job! And (insert the 50 other variations of praise that this deserves)!!!!
Sex Education is wildly different depending on where you are. While we were taugh how/why mestration happens, it was my mom who taught me how to use menstration products, not the school. I didn't use tampons until I was an adult because I didn't trust my mom enough to ask her how they worked. We certainly didn't get to practice with them in class. I wasn't even from a bible belt state.
not to take up for riley sager, but i think that description of a first period isn't inaccurate. in my high school (2009-2013), we just got told that we were a licked cupcake if we had sex. zero education about periods. it never got addressed in middle school. i had a classmate douche with bleach because she didn't know better.
the white girl tiktokers do that fear-mongering because white cis people are ready to believe they are the target of human trafficking, even though it's not blonde pretty cis girls who are housed... and thus make them money through affiliate links for self-defense products. thank you for bringing this up-- as a visible trans masc, men are 10x more dangerous to be around when a woman is there because they feel the need to "defend" her from my existence.
I would like to just say very quickly that whatever period prep you got in your school district was significantly better than mine. we didn't look at anything, we maybe labelled a vagina, and the teachers pretty much told us to ask our parents. I saw and attempted to use a tampon for the first time at 14 and it was fucking traumatic.
I definitely understand the artists' rationale of making low-effort art because either it gets rejected because it is bad and you don't have to feel bad because you know it's not your best work, OR it does get accepted and you don't have to put your all into your work.
It took 2 sittings and 3 smoke breaks but I made it all the way through!! Quentin Reviews levels of dedication here, that's some serious love for your sister to do this!!
Also, about 3x the fun of the Quentin Schneiderverse thing with a lot more depth in analysis!! This is amazing!!
OK, but can we just talk about how awful it is when paperbacks have a too short cover to show a strip of the praise for this book page? Why would they do this to us?
1:31:16 I mean good for you but as somebody who regularly was harassed walking home as a teenager and young woman and even followed a few times, your experience doesn't ring true for everyone.
I had one class, one time, informing me about periods. In the 6th grade we were split into boys and girls and the girls were told that the gym teacher (a woman) had pads available and idk what the boys were told, but it must have involved opening doors for the girls because suddenly that became a thing all the boys were expected to do. No, I am not a boomer, I am a millennial. I am honestly super impressed with the level of education you got on periods.
1:16:02 - maybe TMI but my mother helped me insert my first tampon (those super tiny Obi ones that are like designed for young girls) the first summer after I got my period so I could go to the pool with my friends while on my period, and even she could barely coherently explain how to do it, and when it wasn't working so she just resorted to inserting it herself because I was at full emotional breakdown at that point (I was 12 and I really, really wanted to go to the pool with my friends pls don't judge). A 37 year old woman could not properly explain. My friends recounted similar stories about their moms struggling to explain. That is one RARE 13 year old
Also - this next part about girls not knowing what to do about a period - totally plausible IMO. We were taken into a room in grade 4 (ages 9-10) to talk about periods, and I came home crying thinking I would be bleeding out until death for the rest of my life, totally inconsolable because of they way the explained it and probably the immaturity. They didn't talk about sanitary products because they thought our little elementary school brains would melt I guess if they told us how to take care of ourselves???? Idk. Never had any reproductive system talk again in my school system until we had sex ed in grade 11. So I kind of just forgot about periods until it happened 2 years later in grade 6 and was like oh yeah that was gonna happen but also, wtf do I do now
The intertextuality of this video essay and its space in the video essay cinematic universe/industrial complex is scratching my brain
It's also making me wish I had the energy and confidence to upload the unfinished video taking space on my laptop's hard drive (laziness and gluttony are absolutely my art sins)
1:27:52 I feel like that plot device is dangerously close to transphobic rhetoric…
P.S. You are SUCH a good sister to do this whole thing for her!
Right? I doubt he meant or understood it that way, and the awkward rebuttal does sort of serve to rebut the trans impostor stereotype as well, but boy is it clunky.
I mean it is a transphobic trope. I think it's in one of the book recommendations, can't remember which, she recommends Lindsey Ellis' video on transphobia in popular media and that video goes through this very well.
Very briefly it's the idea of a man using a feminine form to get close to women. Which is exactly the idea floated in the text. I didn't find it so disturbing because it also kinda reads like a cishet male fantasy about being in a feminine body and that kinda made it mostly cringey to me. But the transphobic trope is definitely there in the text.
Good to see you're back and posting. You always make great content.
As a gay trans man who's typically read in public as a woman this is *really* interesting to me. I've been flashed and followed and had people say some really scary things to me. I've noticed that when my body language was less consciously feminine it was significantly worse, I think some of that shit happens is honestly policing people perceived as women who are like... not fitting the role.
It's also really interesting in the ways it contrasts my experience with those of people who are in fact women.
I'm not sure if by 'contrasts my experience ' means you think women experience less sexual harassment, but if so I guarantee you they don't.
That is definitely not what I meant, just that the way patriarchy enforces itself is multifaceted and has many angles. I do think women with relative privilege (white, wealthy, gender-conforming, straight etc) receive less than their more marginalized counterparts. @@red_velvetcake1759
@@red_velvetcake1759 mmm but "cis, gender-conforming women experience less sexual harassment on the street than trans, GNC women"... or, "people perceived as cis, GNC women experience less public sexual harassment on the street than people perceived as trans, GNC women" is my experience. so, i can guarantee it's more complicated than that
@@AnnaWillo Yeah, I find it's safer for me to keep my body language like... pretty small and "girly" if I'm alone
I stopped giving books star ratings years ago, even to myself. I couldn’t wrestle past the internal struggle of whether to rate a book based on whether I thought it was ‘good’ or how much I enjoyed reading it. It’s wonderful when those things coincide, but I like to say that I have a high tolerance for bad media, so that doesn’t always happen.
One thing that always bothers me is I think there’s often a huge problem with classism when it comes to looking down on art because it’s not ‘good’ and yet it’s still popular. And this is true for any art medium. That doesn’t mean I think that there’s no value in the criticism of popular art. In some ways I think studying and critiquing popular art is MORE important because it’s popularity can say so much about our society. But I just think people can be so dismissive and elitist about things like that. I mean base human emotions are something we all have. It’s ok to appeal to them just for the sake of it. Isn’t art supposed to make us feel things after all?
I also struggle with whether to rate 'good' vs. enjoyment. I've decided that my Goodreads is for me, and I'll just mostly rate on enjoyment (with some weight thrown in for whether it's a 'good' book). The only time I feel bad about it is when I read a book that only has a handful of ratings, and it was bad.... Them's the breaks of reader reviews, though. I do think you're smart for just setting aside star ratings altogether.
Your statement at the end about sometimes wanting bad art, specifically because it does not take over the entire brain/permanently mark the soul, is so relateable and puts into words a Thing ive been trying to vocalize for a while. Im the type of person where when a piece of good art really hits me, my brain can do nothing but eat/sleep/drink/ao3 that art. I dont always (and less often than id like) have the energy to onsume another Magnus Archives or Annihilation or Fifth Season. Sometimes i just need to forget about the stress of being alive and watch a 2 hour long video essay about a video game I'll never play.
I'm not all the way through the video but as a trans guy I need to say THANK YOU. THANK YOU VERY MUCH for the level of care you took with the whole section of the essay that was about menstruation. It was very much appreciated.
Oh yeah noticed that as well, transfemme here, but it's just so refreshing to have someone actually take care with our experiences even if isn't my exact experience that it really stands out.
After watching this video, all I can say is this: if you ever want to do a 3.5 hour dissection of an author's work again, I will *absolutely* be here for it! 💯
Saw the scaredy cats shirt in the thumbnail and you had me
You put your finger on why I end up so disappointed with “the next Gone Girl” books.
This is not the most important thing but tbh the "no information given" approach to periods was definitely my experience. The only reason I knew about periods was because of my classmates who were already having them.There was so little discussion and so much taboo around talking about periods that I was too scared to ask any of my friends what to do. I was stuffing my underwear with toilet paper for forever and no one told me what I should do either. I definitely had the "at some point you'll start bleeding every couple of weeks just so you know and if you don't then you are pregnant". Then again I went to school in Florida in the early 2000s. Major props to anyone who had the "this is what this is and this is what you do and here are what you need to deal with them" treatment, that would have made my life easier.
You had the separated body talk every year. I had it once in 5th grade and the presumed boys came out spraying their free axe spray whiel the presumed girls very quickly hid our items. I can't imagine doing that more than once
I didn't expect to watch this and end up jealous at some point of your menstruation education when you were a child, but here we are 😅😅
i love THE NUANCE ZONE. really enjoy getting to spend as much time as possible in THE NUANCE ZONE.
Its so funny bc as soon as you picked up the mic and were like “we’re gna talk abt objective art. This is gna be unhinged” i was immediately like “CJ the X coded”. And then there they were. Blessedly on my screen
This video scratched a Lindsey Ellis sized itch in my brain i didnt even know i had. So so good. Thank you!
I was 13 in 2002 and while we were informed of the existence of pads and tampons it wasn't until 2003. Luckily I myself didn't have my period until I turned 15 lol.
That's so crazy to me as a Canadian. I was 9 in 1985 and got the complete rundown. Though it was an old manual and they explained how to use those belt things pads used to be attached to before they invented the sticky strip that adheres the pads to the panties. Those had completely disappeared from the market by that time 😂
Genuinely loved this, so glad the algorithm brought me to your video! Riley Sager is my “junk food” reading - I unironically liked “Final Girls” and got every book after that in the vain hope that they would get better. “The House Across the Lake” finally broke me. and thank you for recommending Grady Hendrix - he’s my go-to recommendation for other fans of this genre 😅
I did not expect to be enjoying a 3+ hour long deep dive into a genre I haven't been very invested in today, but boy am I glad I did.
Rosamund Pike is such a great actress, ever since I saw her in Pride and Prejudice
You may have made this video as a gift for your sister, but a video of this length is a gift to all of us. And I'm so glad someone else is talking up A Simple Favor (the adaptation), such a blast.
Also Doctor Sleep vid now that adaptation is wild!
I watched this video a couple times having never read any of Sager’s books, and now I’m reading Lock Every Door with Laura’s voice as the main character in my head 😅
Truly a sign of the times we live in that when I see a 4h video from a youtuber I love about a subject I care nothing about, I just go HELL FRIGGIN YES
oh yeah, this is another one for the listen to this at work playlist
Prefacing this with the fact that I live in south America and not a first world country: I find a 13 year old not knowing anything about periods extremely believable. I was prepared because my mom taught me before I got my period. In all of my school experince, only two other girls knew what to do when they got their period. One of them was taught by mom too. Most girls my age didn't even know what a period was exactly and one friend didn't even tell her mom for the first few day. And I'm only 21, this wasn't that long ago.
Yeah i didn't tell anyone for months because i wasn't sure what to do and was embarrassed. Just used toilet paper as a pad. And i had a sister who already had hers, but used tampons which i couldn't get to work. I also thought babies get pooped out your butt until sex ed when i was 14, a solid year and a half after i got my period.
My kid is 9 and i talk to her about it every so often so she doesn't forget details/signs and to normalize it when it does happen. Already bought pads to keep in the house for when her or a friend need them and showed her how to use them.
@@TH0KH it's unfortunately a very common experience. It's great that you're there for your kids and her friends too! My best friend only knew what to do during her period because my mom taught her. It honestly baffles me that they wait so long to teach about periods in school, when most girls get it before they're even 12.
to add on to the sex ed convos happening here i was never spilt away from the boys to have a “girls only” sex ed other than 4th grade where it was very basic overview of puberty in general. i remember getting most of my period sex ed in middle school where they went into the scientific reasons why periods happen which i may just remember the most because i’m a lil nerd and found it interesting. they told us periods are only about “a tablespoon of blood” and only last 3-4 days for most people which…… uhm…. lol. they told us we can get pads from this nurse and that tampons exist. that’s basically the extent we got.
the anatomy diagrams we got were mostly of the internal parts not the outside so i had no idea where the vagina hole was before i stuck my phone down there using the front camera when i was like 20 😭😭😭😭😭😭 i knew we had three holes but i didn’t know where they were exactly lol
i got my first period in 8th grade and didn’t really know that period blood could be brown so i thought i shit myself at first fun fact
Babe is expertly channeling Lindsey Ellis in this one!
Hey, haven’t watched the full video yet, can’t wait to hear your ideas on the genre. Some constructive criticism: the music can be fine if used sparingly to break up sections of the video, or to emphasize a point, but having it throughout, and at such high volume at that, does nothing but distract and honestly is giving me a bit of a sensory overload headache. It’s very overwhelming, especially considering the type of music you chose. Just something to keep in mind when editing newer videos. Peace and love! And merry Christmas!
it's so weird to me that publishers had to be woken up to women liking thriller novels, I knew about James Patterson for example because my mom and grandmother read his books
I didnt expect so poignant insights on an issue I had struggled to put into words in the middle of a longform video I opened as background noise for cleaning. Subscribed!
I am an overly cautious, never relaxing, always home before dark, fat (with subconscious hesitancy to loose weight and the invisibility it offers towards men) woman who considers herself liberated but also still dresses in a way even conservatives wouldnt be offended at. Because on top of learning people arent safe/lost socialisation time as a kid (Bullying over formative years by peers...) I also get told constantly to look out, be aware, stay safe, stay hidden. And I considered this fear a sensible, if a bit strong, adaptation to this world until you pointed the fallacy out.
Yes, the closest to predators I know arent the scary men I keep an eye on in shop windows or the person randomly walking past me while I clench my keys. Both of them were unassuming blokes of about my ethnicity, wo I was friendly aquainted with. One of them became way ruder and more dismissive to me as he realized I wasnt a potential dateable option (while still being his charming buffoon next door self to more attractive, less aroace women including OUR SHARED BOSS who was 5+ years older than him!). The other was in my online TTRPG circles, made a "waifu-pool" Discord of people that fit his fetish for incompatibly oriented (ace and/or lesbian) afab and lovebombed all of them, only to start dating the youngest group member (25!!! years his junior. The younger person is of age at least but about as young as you can get while being of age) and then seperating them from the group and cutting contact. Both of them didnt target me so I dont know all the details, but I know they did shady, pushy shit while not crossing the line into "classic predator". Both had their safe niches as "nice guys" and used that position to get women/afab people to lower their guard.
And I cant help but wonder if this collective fear-bombing of women and read-as-women people isnt also a feture of patriarchy in addition to being a safe way to have cis men feel better about not being a boogie man. If the world is dangerous, it is sensible for a woman to not go out too much, after all. It is sensible to have a male protector with you. It is sensible to not dress eye-catchingly...
That is the exact type of shit (conservative) xenophobes put forward as justification for islamophobia/xenophobia!
Idk I hope my ramblings made sense.
Tldr: you have opened my eyes to something that irked me for ages and also made me a subscriber
I think your third paragraph is totally correct
Hello, thank you for the menstruation rant and the “fear of men” rants. As a cis male they filled in huge blanks in my knowledge that I have never been able to provide clear explanation to my satisfaction.
Also: Great video. I will probably watch all three hours again (twice).
Take what she says with a grain of salt. She doesn't speak for every woman out there. My experiences have been quite different.
@@petalchild I have personally experienced the counter-factuals of her rant with, and through, cis-women in my life. It's other situations, which don't fit the traditional narrative, that confused the hell out of me.
Edit: Also, I lied, I've watched this four times so far.
Hate to bother you, but menstruation is pronounced “men-stray-tion”. The U isn’t pronounced. But I heard the word said another wrong way on a podcast headed by women. We don’t learn enough about our bodies to pronounce what they do right! :). The word just sounds incredibly choppy with the U pronounced. I thought this author was a women too, because of the name Riley. I feel sort of cheated like a cis male made a cash grab masquerading as a woman instead of giving an actual woman writer the chance to succeed or to think King was supporting women writers. Bummer.
@@wildmarjoramdieselpunk6396 that's just a dialect difference, in the UK it's always pronounced that way (in my experience)
@@baintreachas Are you British?
Finally. I’ve been waiting two years for a 3.5-hour long Laura Crone video. This is going to be incredible!!!
Lol, the tampon instruction scene actually kinda happened to me. My little sister got her first period when my mom was out of town. It was a gym class swimming day. I sat outside the bathroom and talked her through it. She did okay. But for real, there was a lot of crying and shouting and i dont actually recall if the whole endevor was a success.
3 1/2 hours and I had never heard of Riley Sager until 3 1/2 hours ago (not the books I usually read) but I sure do now and I’m glad I spent almost 4 hours learning.
It’s also a video I’m so glad I watched because as a yet-published writer I kind of needed to be reminded that it’s okay if my drafts aren’t perfect literature because there’s gonna be somebody that needs a light read
i also think that the 'following a murder, the mc has so many repressed memories that even they don't know if they did it!' gimmick of final girls is executed much better in 'in my dreams i hold a knife' by ashley winstead!! it's got a slightly different vibe, but it's a delicious study in obsession and i thought it executed the unreliable narrator thing super well. one of my favourite reads of the year so far!
with every video i watch from you i am personally enriched, it always triggers some reflection and journalling. such a fan; thank you!!!!!
I think this is some of your best work. I have never read any of these books, and I have no interest in reading them. You still managed to make this so compelling, and to tie it in with problems I see in other media, that I was engaged the whole way through, and I might have to watch it again to get the most I can out of it. You're doing a great job, and I can't wait to see what you do next.