Dead Writer Bad

Or: You Will Never Be A Writer, Or: The WORTHLESS Black Soul of the Critic

revisiting this now (2023-11-24) after a while because im seething, original post 2021-08-12 What else do I have to add? Actually let me read it myself first... nvm, I'm a genius, there's nothing really else to add. I just saw a YouTube video of some airheaded girl saying Lovecraft's writing was BAD and it's very obvious to me based on her criticism that she's saying that because he was racist. If he wasn't racist, she wouldn't be calling him a bad writer. I say that with all the confidence in the world. I know the "incomprehensible" schtick gets old, but saying Lovecraft was BAD is just an opinion I have no respect for. "The Picture in the House" or "The Rats in the Walls" were *great* stories. Reanimator was a lot of fun to read. I know the name of the cat in The Rats is a racial slur, but so what? At least Lovecraft wasn't a YouTuber. That girl will never in her entire stupid life write anything worth reading.

I've also seen "Tolkien's prose was bad" and it's another one of these criticisms that I know is brought from a place of bad faith. At least I hope it is, because to consider Tolkien's prose "bad", you have to have a goldfish brain. There's no nice way of putting that, it's just how it is. If you can't enjoy Tolkien taking a page to detail a valley or a forest, it's a problem with you, not him. It means your brain no work so good, you no so good at picturing things. I guess it's not hard to believe that the modern man with his gelded imagination can't enjoy Tolkien as much. But don't call him "bad"lmao that's just uh, silly. It's a good reason why I don't believe in opinions having inherent value and it'd be one thing if it was simply a matter of "I THINK Tolkien's prose was bad", but criticbrains have a bad habit of expressing their objectively-retarded opinions(not subjective) as objective truth.

Let me show you I'm coming at this as sincerely as possible and not just defending Lovecraft because "anti-racists" are insufferable brainlets.

JK Rowling is an obnoxious liberal and I can't stand her politics. I think it's ridiculous that she believed that Trump intentionally didn't shake a handicapped kid's hand. It was pathetic to me that she had been so thoroughly conditioned into hating Donald Trump that she'd be unable to stop herself and realize it was much more likely(as turned out to be true) that Trump didn't see the kid on the side extending his hand.

THAT SAID: Harry Potter books 1-3 and 4 until the end were very enjoyable, and never in my life will I ever write anything as good as them. They were delightful reads. If I can admit that, why can't--for lack of a better word, sry--LEFTISTS admit that Lovecraft is good? It's because they're trash, not Lovecraft. Or maybe he was, I DIDN'T KNOW HIM, neither did any of these millennial dimwits actiing like they're intimately familiar with him. Wowzers he was XENOPHOBIC? He's basically Voldemort.

idiots.

ORIGINAL POST starts here

"I am tiny-brained bug who does nothing but make worthless, trash criticisms of long-dead (or still living, doesn't matter) artists who were/are so far above me in talent and intellect that I'd commit suicide from shame if I could even comprehend my deficiency."

"Tolkien was RACIST"

"Lewis was MISOGYNIST"

"W-well, they were OKKK writers, but it's important to remember that they were terrible people."

I'm so fucking convinced. No-one could ever be a better judge of character than some weird hyper-sensitive freak who pretends to be intimately familiar with people who died before they were born. idea: write a book that doesn't fucking suck. bold idea: do literally anything that doesn't fucking suck.

i think i got t r i g g e r e d by some woman kvetching about Tolkien taking up too much shelf space at a book store. I'm SO SURE that whatever she wrote deserves that space instead. It's probably an epic fantasy that will endure for generations. I bet she invented an entire language, and drew all kinds of maps, and crafted an entire ancient-history to the world she so lovingly created in her spare time from COMPLAINING ON TWITTER.

these FUCKING people. It's so SICK. It's so

Wait, while it's just in my head--I saw some stupid fuck complain about C.S. Lewis because one of the female characters in the Narnia series had a not-so-great ending. There are 7 Narnia books. Every one of them has a female protagonist, all of whom are clever and brave, at least one off the top of my head participates in violent combat. ONE girl became a stereotypical shoe-obsessed airhead, so this fucking jackass jus-- whatever idc. i don't care.

Or, oh maaaaaaaaan, I read someone suggest that Ender's Game is a fucking "defense of colonialism and Hitler", which is probably the dumbest fucking take imaginable. But I'm not a literary critic, I'm just a guy who enjoys reading and writing, and I'm not so fucking autistic that I'm unable to understand what a writer is clearly saying and therefore need to invent my own interpretation of it. I'm going all over the place now, I'm sorry. Basically:

Fuck you, write a book instead of complaining about them.

that's all.

That's not all: Edit

someone suggested I check out books written in response/critique of Lovecraft, and I'm sorry that I wrote "write a book" when what I guess I really meant was "write something original that comes from within you and isn't a spiteful piece of garbage". I'm sure I would fucking hate "Lovecraft Country", but I'm never going to write a book called "Lovecraft Country Country". My complaint is not that people aren't writing books, it's that they're co--OH SHIT HYPOCRITE ALARM, HE'S GOING TO SAY THAT HE'S COMPLAINING ABOUT PEOPLE COMPLAINING-- yeah, fine. If by my own whining I can convince people to look within themselves to find material instead of writing hate-inspired novels to spite other writers, I'll be satisifed.

Now to be fair to MYSELF, I don't think I was unclear that my problem with the interpretation that Ender's Game is actually the opposite of what Card was writing is not THE LENGTH of said critique. It would not be less unbearable in book format and I sincerely apologize to anyone who got that impression.

So I take it back: don't write a book-- don't write anythinglmao

The "place" that people are coming from when they're writing something matters. (I'm not unaware of myself--WHAT I'M DOING RIGHT NOW is ALREADY bad enough) If someone turns their essay about why Orson Scott Card is a bigot into an entire fantasy novel, I'd still rather throw myself off a fucking rooftop than read it. "I improved someone else's work by adjusting it to my sensibilities" is such a fucking vile concept it gives me a stomach ache. His Dark Materials being the materialist answer to Narnia already *sounds* fucking boring to me. When I read the midwit author say shit about Narnia like "It is monumentally disparaging of girls and women. It is blatantly racist. One girl was sent to hell because she was getting interested in clothes and boys."(all entirely untrue, but the last sentence in particular being a literal lie), I know with absolute certainty that his seething hatred for Christianity goes straight into his writing. "Actually Original Sin is BASED" Wow bro wow you nailed it. My teenage atheist self is screaming for you. And to be f a i r, I'd be equally uninterested in someone going out of their way to make a NEW story about talking animals, that are even MORE explicitly Christian and just outright break the 4th wall and say "Actually, Philip Pullman, you fucking idiot, Christianity is crucial for the ego-checking of mankind and fights against all of the harm in the name of progress that nihilistic bugbrains such as yourself blindly cause. Your anti-Natural worldview is directly responsible for skyrocketing mental health problems and leading humanity into an age of emptiness never before imagined. Also yes, you're going to Hell and you deserve it." That would be the most epic and based book of all-time, but it's not one that I'd want to read over and over like, oh idk, the Chronicles of Narnia.

Is that all that I'm thinking right now? I guess. An anti-racist Lovecraft fanfiction isn't anything that I'm ever going to read. Lovecraft ALREADY wrote stories that contained no elements of racism, if that's a precondition that people have for what they'll read. And I understand having preconditions for what you'll read. I don't read stories written in response to original ideas. To be EXTRA clear: I don't even like reading FAVORABLE INTRODUCTIONS to classic books. I am uninterested in what people have to say about others' work. If it's spiteful, that interest plummets through the floor into Hell.

The writing of people who create universes tends to be greater than people who, idk, agonize over Lovecraft's cat, or try desperately to connect Adolf Hitler and children commanding star fleets to destroy alien bugs.