#I understand that rwrb is very popular and mainstream

[royxrizafan]

Y’all are complaining on here about rwrb getting a movie bc “mlm get everything” but have you purchased and read One Last Stop? Have you recommended it to your friends and posted about it here? How about Kissing Sarah Wheeler?

I’m tired of people going into lgbtq+ content tags to complain about mlm when they’re not doing shit for the wlw content that already exists

[bloody-wonder]

nora rights! it literally disgusts me how much people in this fandom trash her for writing her own damn characters because andreil don't fit into their perfect ideal relationship mold meanwhile theyre literally 10x better

N O R A   R I G H T S!         A N D R E I L   IS   P E R F E C T I O N!

actually you bring up another interesting point about the aftg fandom - namely how the people who clearly like aftg very much seem to have this ingrained understanding that it’s “trash” or has “bad writing”. i suppose it’s bcs aftg is a self-published series which caters to a certain type of readership and doesn’t attempt to be highbrow. when people discover it through tumblr they already seem to think that what they’re going to read is self-indulgent “trash” and then they get acquainted with the “peculiar” world of aftg and their prejudice gets confirmed.

but it’s more complicated than that. in fact all the other tumblr darlings have similar writing problems. trc is in itself a one big plot hole. rwrb is the very definition of self-indulgence. soc uses the same tropes as aftg, in particular the characters solve the plot problems they probably realistically wouldn’t be able to solve. 

i’m not in any of those fandoms but from the glimpse i get from other blogs it doesn’t look like the fans of those books casually call them “trash” or think they have “bad writing” or consider them “guilty pleasure reads”. so what’s the difference between aftg and all these other popular books? ah yes, aftg is really dark and tackles some unsavory themes in ways that don’t seem satisfactory to a mainstream reader. make this reader a young person who just casually enjoys gay books here on tumblr and who didn’t read trigger warnings for aftg and for all i know even thought it was ya bcs it stands next to trc and soc in many rec lists - and their verdict would be aftg has “bad writing” bcs some parts of it made them feel bad. but the good parts make you feel good so i guess this book is to be enjoyed as a “guilty pleasure” and you have to make certain to mention how “trashy” it is every time you speak of it lest people suspect that you may like this very problematic book unironically. next step is ofc listing all that has to be “fixed” in order for it to become a “good” book. and the step after that seems to be cancelling the author.

these posts frustrate me a lot bcs they make me feel like i’m not surrounded by fellow fans but by people who actually don’t like aftg at all but still are in its fandom for some reason. i say we have to start being openly appreciative about the weird things we like or all the media we’ll ever get to see will be very generic.

but anyway... andreil is life and nora wrote one of the best books i’ve ever read :)