 Well, the day has, uh, the day has finally come. I now have 50,000 subscribers. That is, man, that's a lot. That's like a small city of people that tune in to watch my shit and listen to what I have to say for some reason. But, you know, I honestly just want to take a minute to thank all you guys because I never would have expected this to happen. Uh, at least not more than a couple of months ago, because I think in the past few months it really has settled in that, yeah, I have a big following and this is going to continue to grow for the foreseeable future. So I just really want to thank all you guys because without you I'd have to go back to having a real job. And, uh, I hate that. So, yeah, just thanks a lot for listening to what I have to say. And so, to celebrate, I am doing a Q&A. So, uh, I think you should understand how these work by now. I just asked people to send in questions and they did, and now I'm going to answer them. So, let's get started. And just so you know, some of these questions were some that sort of blended into one another, so I just combined them, or they were similar to one another, so I combined them. And, obviously, I didn't have time to get to every single one of them, so I just chose the ones that I thought were best. Anyways, a whole lot of people wanted to know, what are your political beliefs? Uh, I'm an anarchist, which I know that might sound kind of weird, but that is a, well, that's just what I think. Uh, a.k.a. libertarian socialism, that's also a thing. Basically, I just want to get rid of the states, the nation-state, get rid of all that shit, but also get rid of capitalism and explaining it beyond that would take a very long time. I'd encourage you to all look it up on your own, because even if you disagree, you should at least know what it is, I think. What's a trope you really like, but most people don't? What's a trope you like, despite it being problematic? Uh, a trope that I really like that a lot of people seem to not be a big fan of, is just low magic fantasy. Like, other than A Song of Ice and Fire, I can't think of very many fantasy series out there that have had magic just not take up a big role in the story. And I don't know, I just find it really fascinating every time I've read about it, so I really like that. And I don't know if other people don't like it or other people don't hate it, but it's not a very popular thing, so I just like that. And as for a trope I like, despite it being kind of problematic, is races that have different abilities or traits. Like, you see this a lot in fantasy, but you occasionally will get it in sci-fi as well, just races that have specific abilities. You know, some of them are smarter than others, they have their personalities kind of preset just based on their genetics. That has some unfortunate implications for the real world, but it's still really cool, especially in RPGs and stuff, because then you have actual reason to choose different races when you play. What was the most painful single line you've ever read? So that one was in Elixir, and you can actually see in my review of it, I bring up this line. And it is when Clalys' friend is talking to her, and she's saying like, Hey, this other dude whose name escapes me, is in love with you, and Clalys is like, Hey, he's like my brother, that'd be weird. And so her friend says, Hey, I read Flowers in the Attic, it was kind of hot. And that just... God, that should not exist. It should not. What is the best YA novel slash series that you have read? The Demonada, that's actually just my favorite series in general. It's The Demonada by Darren Shan, who also wrote the Cirque de Freak books, if you didn't know that. And they are... they're kind of weird, and it's difficult to describe exactly why I love them so much. But the short version is just that they are... they start off as kind of a standard, kid discovers hidden magical world story, and then it just gets really, really dark and fucked up from there. What is the first story that you wrote? Uh, when I was around 8 or 9, I wrote something which, looking back, is definitely fan fiction. It was just a self-insert Pokemon thing about me being a Pokemon trainer. And it's lost to time by now, but, you know, I had it then, and it's no longer around. So that... but yeah, that's the first thing I ever wrote. The first, like, serious actual story I wrote all the way through and finished. Uh, it was actually on my fiction press account, and that one is also a really shitty self-insert, but that one's about a demon who just kills dudes. It's really edgy and stupid, but, you know, it's out there. What are your thoughts on using audiobooks rather than reading the book? You know, I've never really used audiobooks before, and I keep meaning to try it out. Just one of these days, probably sometime in the near future, I'm gonna try it just to see if I like it or not. Uh, but I just, at the moment, I can't, uh, I can't say anything about it because I've never done it. Why is your fashion sense so awful? Suck my dick. What's one thing you think would improve most fantasy stories? Man, there are a lot of things out there that I think could be used to improve fantasy stories, but the one biggest thing that would make stories at least a little bit more original would be to just have less world saving in there. Because think about it, pretty much all of them, whether I like them or not, they always, always, always involve saving the world. And this is, this goes across genres as well, but like, if they just had smaller scale stories which didn't affect everything out there and were just focused on like, okay, maybe one city or one small group of people, that would be a lot more interesting. At the very least it would be more original and it would be less obvious where things are going to turn out. What genres of music do you like? Do you have a favorite band or composer? I mean, I listen to a lot of different types of music, like a lot of different disparate types of music too. Like I will list basically everything except country music I'll listen to at some point. And I don't really have a favorite band or composer. I just, I don't know, in the past year I've been listening to a lot of metal music so I guess we'll throw that in there. What do the symbols on your forearm tattoo represent? You know, I realized a little while ago that even though I've shown this on camera before, I've never actually said what it says. And I'll put up a picture here. It says, the most important step a person can take is always the next one and that's a quote from The Way of Kings, which, you know, Stormlight Archive, I've already read that, talked about how much I love those books. And yeah, that quote just really resonated with me. It really, well, it's motivational, it's inspiring, so I figured, yeah, let's pay some money, get it permanently etched into my skin. Since you have dipped your toes here and there, will you make more overtly political content in the future? You know, yes, I probably will, but I'll probably be doing it infrequently. The other thing is the past couple of months I've been doing it much more than I initially wanted to. And it's not that I dislike doing it or anything, it's just that if you do it too much, then that becomes like your entire brand. And that's just what you're known for and that's what people expect from you. And honestly, you get attacked a lot more online for it, which it's just kind of exhausting. So while I don't mind doing it, I have been doing it like once a month since around November. And yeah, I'll probably just be cutting back a little bit. Do you watch other Booktubers review books? Sometimes, but not all that often, just because Booktube is like very focused on YA stuff. And while I don't hate YA, I have been a little harsh on it in the past, but I don't read it all that often anymore, especially not new releases. And so I just don't watch it all that much. But if I happen upon seeing like, hey, a review of this book and I'm kind of interested in it, or it's from a genre that I'm interested in or something I want to get into, then I'll check that out. And obviously, if it's the really long, ranty ones, kind of like what I do, like that is half an hour or an hour long, I like watching those even if I'm not at all interested in the book, just because it's funny to watch people lose their minds about stuff. What's your job now? What job do you want? What job did you want as a little kid? My job now is this. I talk to a camera and say things to people, and for whatever reason they listen to me, so... Alright. And what job do I want and what job do I want as a little kid? Those are the same answer. I just want to be a writer, you know? I know it's probably not uncommon or all that surprising given my interests and what I talk about and stuff, but that's just what I want to do. That's the only thing I've ever had a lot of passion for, especially when I was younger. And I know it's not all that likely, so I do have, like, you know, other career plans in minds that I can work on, either before I do that or if I never wind up making that. Excuse me. But, yeah, that is my dream job. Are you writing a book or planning to? If so, can you tell us anything about it? So, yes, I do write fairly frequently, but I don't really talk about it in public because one, that feels like it's just attention seeking on one hand, and two, it just kinda... I've noticed that sometimes when people talk about, hey, I'm working on this and here's all the details about it, then that makes them feel as accomplished as if they actually did it and then they can't find the motivation to keep doing it, so I try to avoid talking about my works in progress. And at the same time, while, yes, I have written, like, full-length novels before and finished them, it's been a while since I finished one because I have a bad habit of working on multiple things at once and then I only get so far into it and it's just, you know, it's not great. But, yes, at the moment, my last full novel I wrote was supposed to be part of this wider universe where it'd be like a bunch of different stuff which you can read on their own, but they all take place in the same world because I spent a really long time crafting the setting and I was like, well, I want to use it so there's that. But I haven't worked on that in a little while and so at the moment I'm kinda jumping between three different projects. There's an alternate history timeline that I'm working on which I'll probably post online eventually whenever I get around to finishing it and then there is something called Beggar Night that I've been working on and that's, like I was saying, low-magic fantasy. It's just about this kid that scams his way into training to become a knight and then runs into trouble along the way and then the third one, I actually don't have a title for it because I'm not great at coming up with titles, but it's basically about witches, like what if witches were real and lived in our modern world but everyone knew about it. They weren't a secret or anything so they had laws around what witches have to do and laws to protect people and all that but then it becomes a civil rights issue and all that sort of thing. So yeah, it's a little bit of a vague concept because it's still pretty early on but I do have fun working on that one and I have a couple of other projects that I either have set aside for now or I just don't work on all that often because I don't know, my brain just doesn't like to focus on things for a long period of time and that's probably a bad habit that I'm trying to get out of but you know, it is what it is. Which is your favorite accidentally funny book? That is Elixir, the Elixir trilogy which I, you know, I did a whole video on that before so I'm not going to go into too much detail here and while that is definitely my most hated book series, it's still really funny at times. What part of the video making process do you enjoy the most? I enjoy scripting the most because, you know, I just like having all these ideas, getting them out and then sort of once they're on the page I can iron them out a little bit, smooth out the wrinkles and sometimes I'll even surprise myself by the conclusions I come to or I'll change my own mind just by thinking about things more and it's a lot of fun. My least favorite part of video making is the editing. I just, I really don't like editing at all. It's, I don't know, just sitting there for hours at a time, cutting up clips and watching the same bits over and over again. Sometimes while I'm editing I can get like a funny joke or something in there which is, you know, that's fun, I enjoy doing that but for the most part it's just a slog. And, you know, it's not to say I don't like being in front of the camera either because I do like that as well, I just like that less than scripting. So yeah, those are the three big things. Do you play D&D? If so, do you like to DM or play? What's your favorite race and class to play? Yes, I do play D&D and that's the main RPG that I've played. I've played a couple others, like I've played Shadowrun, I've played Pathfinder but mostly I've played D&D with my friends. And I mostly like to play. I've been trying to get more into DMing lately but just, you know how it is, our group already has one and he's happy doing it and sometimes it just takes a lot of energy to DM stuff and a lot of time to DM stuff which I just don't have so it, you know, it is what it is. And what's your favorite race and class to play? I don't really have a favorite class. My favorite race is definitely human because you can use them for pretty much anything you want especially variant humans because then you get an extra feat, in fact character creation. But favorite class, I don't really have one especially because there's a couple I still haven't played a campaign as but if I really had to choose one right now, like gun to my head I would say cleric and that's mostly because just like human you can choose to do pretty much anything you want with cleric and so I just enjoy that. What are the books you dislike that everyone loves and the books you love that everyone hates? The books that I hate, just hate hate hate that everyone else seems to like is The Lovely Bones and I've talked about that enough I talked about it in my most hated books video way long ago and just watch that because I'm not getting into it but everyone seems to like The Lovely Bones and say it's like deep and has all this meaning it's not and it doesn't and I hate it. A book that I love that everyone seems to dislike is An Emperor in the Ashes like that whole trilogy or not trilogy that whole series so far like it seems that the people who are really focused on YA think it's fine most of the time and the people that aren't don't like it which honestly I just I try to wrap my mind around that I don't quite get it I just really like those books What made you criticize people's world building? So that is a little bit more of a difficult question to answer than you might think so basically when I first started my channel and for almost two years I got like no attention for it and I was just doing it for fun I was pretty much only doing reviews of stuff I very rarely branched out and in my head I was constantly thinking about like okay well what if I tried doing like some video essay type stuff like talking about the themes of this and exploring different ideas and such which is a lot more of what I do now and I was just thinking about that sort of thing and one day I was like reading An Emperor in the Ashes or rather I was reading A Torch Against the Night which is the second book and it was just kind of bothering me how what's her name? Helena? Helene? Oh shit I forgot well you know I'll put her name up here but she just mentioned how there were six million marshals in the empire and that just seemed really small considering that it's supposed to be a big continent spanning empire and so I just thought about it I ran some numbers I looked in the books for details and yeah it seemed weird so then I just wound up writing down the whole script about the world building for that and put it out and at first it didn't get much attention but I had a lot of fun doing it so I made a couple others and then those got big and here I am so basically why do I criticize people's world building it's just something I thought about one day and started doing what are the best books to read to get into fantasy so I personally would recommend some fantasy that's easier to get into to start off with like I wouldn't recommend you start off with something like the Stormlight Archive because that's just really dense and has a lot of information has a very steep learning curve for the world and such and I also wouldn't recommend the stuff that's a little bit more meta and a little bit more subversive of the whole fantasy genre so I wouldn't really recommend Mistborn I wouldn't really recommend Wheel of Time for that I would recommend just like some traditional fantasy that's easier to get into and I don't particularly like the Lord of the Rings books so I would say Green Rider is a pretty good one for normal if you're just trying to get into beginner fantasy stuff and by the way I have read that book before and I am re-reading it now I'm gonna review it soon so don't worry Harry Potter is also a good one although that's like a specific subset of fantasy and I'm pretty sure most of you have read it anyways but nonetheless it's a good entry point I think and Aragon because Aragon is doesn't do a whole lot original doesn't do a whole lot new but it does it very well I feel and so and you know it is written for younger audiences so it's much easier to read there's not really anything that's like inappropriate or anything in there so I think those three are good starters to get into fantasy and then you can get into more advanced stuff and more subversive stuff if you were a god what would you be the god of? I would be the god of atheism what is a book you used to love and now hate slash the other way around you know I'm gonna have to put the Obama-Biden mysteries on there because those two books man they were really really fun reading them and this was kind of an issue when I read the second one but basically when they first came out Joe Biden was kind of just a retired politician like he was just a guy who used to be the vice president and kind of said and did some weird shit but now he's like actually excuse me he's actually running for president and there's a very real chance that he might be president a year from now and so I can't really just look at him as oh this funny uncle dude anymore like I have to look at him critically and just think well I like that but I don't like that I'm not a big fan of that so just looking back I can't really get into them anymore even though they are pretty funny what is your favorite kind of genre fiction most hated kind of genre fiction and what kinds of genre fiction will you never touch so I'll answer that last one first never touch I don't think there's any genre that I would never ever touch because I've read a lot in my life and I've read stuff from different genres and obviously there's some that I prefer over others but you know I've read mysteries before I've read the occasional thriller I've read romance and stuff like there's nothing out there that I would never touch but as for what my favorite kind is I had to think really hard about this I guess at the moment it would be heroic slash epic fantasy and I know that those are different things but there's enough overlap between them that for this instance I'm going to consider them the same so heroic slash epic fantasy for the time being however I do go through periods where I will read a whole bunch of one type and then move on to a different type and read a whole bunch of that like basically ever since this channel started getting big I've been reading a whole lot of fantasy stuff and that might give off the impression that that's mostly what I've been reading before like no before that I've read a whole bunch of young adult stuff and before that I've read a whole bunch of science fiction and space opera stuff so you know it's just it is what it is I will probably be moving away from fantasy in the near future but who knows and as for my most hated kind of genre fiction hate is a strong word but romance I'm just I'm not a big fan of it because I think it works great as a subplot sometimes and I think it can work decently well in realistic fiction like if it's just a smaller part of a bigger story about these people's lives it can work fine but when it's like the kind of paperback dime store books that you find like that your aunt likes to read a lot and it has the dude with the ripped shirt on the cover carrying a woman in his arms like that kind of just dumb and I get that it's supposed to just be wish fulfillment and stuff but it's not wish fulfillment for me and so it just comes across as being stupid most of the time what trends do you think will become more popular in fantasy in the new decade so for the past in maybe 20 years we've really seen fantasy go in a very dark direction and that's not to say that nothing that's more traditional and less dark hasn't come out because plenty of it has it's just that all the big stuff is focused on being very very dark most of the big stuff I should say is focused on being very very dark so I think that once people start to get tired of that which they might be doing now I think we're going to start swinging back in the lighthearted direction because people are going to be just getting kind of tired of all the constant violence and rape and oh everyone's a bad guy and it's hard to like anybody and I don't know if we're going to be getting back to just like traditional fantasy stories which I kind of hope we don't but I think we will be getting into more lighthearted fantasy stories do you like nonfiction books if so what types history mostly like I don't read a whole lot of that but whenever I do it's pretty much just history stuff are there any other art forms you are interested in other than books oh yeah totally like I am a huge gamer I play video games a lot and I just don't talk about it that much online because quite frankly the gaming community is cancer and I just can't stand them but yeah as an art form they're very interesting because you know you're actually interacting with things and it's much more immersive than most other types so and while I do think it's in a bit of a rut nowadays because well at the end of the day it's about making money I do still think that there's good stuff out there being made there's still fun playing various things and just yeah I like it as an art form and then film I was a huge film buff a couple of years ago not so much anymore now but like I used to be super into examining all the minutia of different things and I don't do that as much now I still am a movie fan I still go out and see them plenty and this applies to television as well just because you know film TV whatever the point is I like both of those and I have thought about making short films and stuff before but I've always gotten lazy and just stopped because at the end of the day I just don't have the same passion for that as I do for reading and writing and then anime as well I'm not as big a fan of that as I used to be you might be noticing a pattern here but yeah I've been part of different fan bases over my life and books are pretty much the only one that I've stuck with forever but yeah I'm getting a little bit more back into that because I'm watching it with my friends and stuff but yeah those are the big three ones and obviously I've occasionally gotten into other stuff but those are all the things other than books that I have been interested in and been a part of the fan base for at least a while have you ever read light novels if you haven't are you planning to start reading one anytime soon I have read a couple of light novels before I'm not a big fan of them honestly like I just they'll have some really neat ideas in there but they're written in a very strange manner which I just don't like and I mean I like the artwork at least there's that and a lot of them are just wish fulfillment for teenage boys which gets old quick once you're no longer a teenage boy and honestly I was starting to get tired of it even when I was a teenage boy so like just yeah at the end of the day and I know there are light novels that aren't like that I get it but a lot of them are and I just don't have the patience to sift through that much and try and look for something that's better especially because even if it is better it'll still have all the other issues that I dislike about the art form so just yeah not a big fan of them what are your thoughts on the sequel trilogy and or Star Wars legends I think that the sequel trilogy is really really good up until Rise of Skywalker and even then Rise of Skywalker isn't the worst thing ever like the story wise it's kind of a mess and it tries to retcon stuff from the previous movie but you know at the end of the day film is about more than just the storyline it's also about the acting it's about the cinematography it's about the action scenes and the fight choreography and all that's also important to the enjoyment of it and I think most of that is pretty good it's just the storyline that is terrible so yeah so it's good until Rise of Skywalker and even then Rise of Skywalker isn't the worst as for the legends I haven't read all of them because there's just so much out there but I like a lot of it but you know it gets pretty dumb sometimes and it feels more like fan fiction that was written by well not professionals then stuff that was written by professionals but you know I've seen worse what is the best movie adaptation of a book in your opinion so I had to think about this one for a while actually because I was thinking like well there are some movies that do a very good job of getting the story out there but the story that's in the book isn't that great and then there's others where they actually change things but they make it better like I did a whole video on beautiful creatures a little while ago that was basically talking about that but after thinking about it for a while I decided the Maze Runner is the best movie adaptation like the whole series because granted the storyline and the setting of those books isn't great to begin with and the movie makes them make even less sense but it takes a bunch of characters which for the most part just didn't have that much personality and weren't that good and it makes them very good it gives some very good actors to play them and it has some extremely great action scenes as well and so while the movies still have their issues as well I think that they took a book series which is solid but not really all that memorable and turn them into something that is just really really enjoyable to watch even if again it's not that great of the books you've read which one deserves to be made into a show slash movie so this one's cheating a little bit but the Berserk manga deserves to be made into a proper anime because they've tried to do it like four fucking times now it's always been bad it deserves a proper anime adaptation and that's all for today so I just want to thank you guys for watching thanks a whole bunch for getting me to 50,000 that's still weird to think about like if I told myself five years ago that this would be happening I wouldn't have believed it but you know here we are it's great and I'm happy to be here and thanks for watching please like and comment and subscribe and thanks to all my patrons but thanks especially to my $10 up patrons brother Santotis I've been saying Santotis for a while sorry about that Christopher Hawkins Joseph Pendergraft and of course Tobacco Crow you guys are pretty great and if you are not a patron consider giving me money and getting your name put up here and if you don't have money then like I said just like and subscribe and all that see you later bye