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Hipsters be reading. We see you out there, with all your books and your stylish glasses and your subscription to The Prompt’s weekly newsletter. And we’re with you… well, most of the time. Because the truth is, sometimes people get a little ridiculous with their fanaticism for certain books and authors. Like, chill bro. We love Chuck Klosterman too. You don’t have to be so aggressive about it.
With no further ado, this is what’s wrong with YOU PEOPLE.
N. Alysha Lewis – What’s wrong with George R. R. Martin fans.
What’s wrong with A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones fans? Two words: impatience and ingratitude.
It doesn’t matter that George R. R. Martin is crafting something masterful in a world that has over 2,000 named characters, or that he’s written a total of almost 5,000 published pages thus far—it’s “bullshit” that he hasn’t published one book every year, like J.K. Rowling basically did with Harry Potter.
Guess what: WRITING TAKES TIME, ASSHOLES!
Plus, we still have Game of Thrones, and I’m not here for your whining that D&D have “ruined it.” Did you forget that we got confirmation of R + L = J? Were you asleep during “Battle of the Bastards”? Stop being fucking dicks, and bow down to HBO for giving you something to do between books. Because whether you believe it or not, Winds of Winter is coming. And it’ll be glorious.
Dennis William – What’s wrong with Fight Club fans.
This might be cheating, but the problem with Fight Club fans is that none of them have read Fight Club. Which is bullshit. It’s like reading the movie. I read it after hearing that David Fincher had drastically changed the ending. It was literally the dialogue from the movie. Maybe a little bit of extra narration, but not much. The point of Fight Club, the movie and the book, is that Tyler’s aggro, neo-alpha male nihilism is dangerous bullshit. The movie makes this point with an optimistic gunshot to the jaw. The book does it in a pessimistic way with the narrator trapped in a padded room thinking “holy shit, this is out of control” (No spoiler alerts, you’ve had your time). But every pseudo-intellectual douche stops in the middle of the book. They think the takeaway is that being a psychopath is the way to liberation. But really, that will get you stuffed into a straight jacket, forcibly imprisoned by your own anger.
Josh Bard – What’s wrong with Ernest Hemingway fans.
Maybe this doesn’t count because I only like Ernest Hemingway and The Sun Also Rises. The reason I don’t love Hemingway isn’t because of him, or me, but because I can’t be a Hemingway fan. Because Hemingway fans can’t just read or enjoy Hemingway, they have to devour and absorb the essence that is Hemingway, as if they knew the guy or are trying to become him. That means hanging out at cafes, looking for “meaning.” Weird facial hair fads. Drinking absinthe, talking about drinking absinthe, and lamenting how they don’t have enough absinthe.
Jillian Conochan – What’s wrong with Ayn Rand fans.
“We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality,” wrote a woman whose 1,168 page book climaxed when a group of elite individuals evaded the consequences of reality in some deep-earth fissure hidden in, like, the Rockies or some sh*t. Her readers climaxed when they read that part, too.
What’s wrong with Ayn Rand stans, of which I DO NOT count myself, is that their worldview is about the individual, and they don’t see the oxymoron in that.
Incidentally, they also don’t see the ‘moron’ in oxymoron either.
Jacqueline Frasca – What’s wrong with Harry Potter fans.
What’s wrong with the Harry Potter fanbase is that it’s segmented and can be lazy/unimaginative. I blame Warner Brothers for their irresponsible adaptations. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am more than aware of how many restrictions adapting written work to film includes, especially when dealing with a work as expansive and thorough as the Harry Potter universe, but give me a break. The decimation of Ginny Weasley’s character ALONE is enough to make me loathe the entire movie series (yet, I still love watching them… because you get your drugs any way you can, am I right?). They took an outspoken bad ass and made her timid, ALL BUT COMPLETELY SILENT, and treated her as LESS than maybe any other love interest in the entire world of cinema ever. I won’t get too far into it.
To make a long rant as short as possible, you have book fans, you have movie fans, and you have people who consume everything. So many of the movie-only fans have never thought critically about the universe or explored the depth of the characters the blue screen gave them shitty glimpses of, so they consider the houses to be stereotypes, consider Draco and Ron to be one-dimentional sidecar jerks, and consider Hermione to be a mildly impressive added bonus to Harry’s success. To only watch the movies is an insult to everything Rowling’s gifted us.
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