AnimeJune's All-Natural, All-Positive Alternative Reviewing Method

Things have been getting very stressful on the internet lately. I've noticed a lot of conflict, a lot of name-calling, a lot of negative energy. Especially surrounding authors and bloggers of negative reviews.

Negative energy can be a very destructive force to the delicate creative constitutions of authors. The slightest stiff breeze of criticism can wilt a lovely novelist in the bud! Dozens of authors have cried foul (and just plain cried - salty, literary tears onto their university editions of Jane Eyre) over being "assaulted" and "bullied" by the pure non-positiveness of the internet. Who could have guessed that the internet would become so positivity-challenged, the complete opposite of how the real world is?

Since bullying in schools has now reached the point where children are killing each other and themselves because of it, you can tell how seriously these authors feel when they appropriate this word to describe their emotions when they voluntarily read words on a screen.

I used to be one of those careless people producing that negative energy that is so destructive to creative freedom. But I've seen the light, I've learned from my errors, and I've changed my ways.

I've now become an Alternative Reviewer. Alternative Reviewers use positive and symbolic reinforcement to convey an opinion on a novel that encapsulates one's reaction to it while still protecting the delicate membrane of sensitivity that protects an Author from Bad Feels.

Let me show you some examples of my new Alternative Method:

My positivity-challenged review for Can't Hurry Love by Christie Ridgway was a D. Such a thoughtless, negative letter - and a hard consonant to boot! Hard consonants bruise! Using my new Alternative Reviewing Method, my verdict is now Pineapple.

Can't Hurry Love was a totally pineapple book. You can tell from the obvious symbolic connotations of pineapple what I think of this novel. It is really so pineapple - it's practically a kumquat. Part pine, part apple. It says it all, really - and everything is conveyed without any nasty negative energy.

Or how about my review of Jackson Pearce's Fathomless? I originally gave it a C-. Such an ineffective reviewing method! So unnecessarily and painfully exact! I lived fast and hard back in ... May 2013. I was running with a rough crowd, throwing bolded letters at people with no regard to how hurtful alphabetical symbols in emphasized fonts could be. Truly, letter grades are the flaming bags of dog poo on the front porch of the soul.

Now, as a newly-licensed Alternative Reviewer, I can confidently grade Fathomless with a Downward Facing Dog.

Opinions can be prickly and hurtful and wrong - especially when over-enthusiastic, wickedly articulate, and predominantly female bloggers without Master's Degrees in Literature have them.

So Alternative Reviewing is not so much about expressing an opinion, as expressing a visual feeling. And if you squint a little, you can pretend you got an A. Oh, wait - letter grades! Crap! Does this mean I have to retake that online Alternative Reviewer Course? Aw man, the last time I took it I clicked the wrong link and became an ordained minister... Never mind! Time and place, AnimeJune, time and place!

Remember, when you read a novel that represents women, LGBT individuals, or racial minorities in careless or offensive ways, responding to that with negative energy solves nothing. Okay, so their words might pass blanket judgements on whole swaths of diverse people, but angry capslock is not the answer!  Do you have any idea the emotional toll all-caps arguments have wrought upon the author community? It's gotten to the point where some authors can't even handle acronyms anymore - all they can read are e. e. cummings and ruth weiss! A capitalized letter is not a toy! 

I've learned from my mistakes, and after studying the calming, conflict-free ways of Alternative Reviewing and the Ancient Eastern art of Stock Photos, I changed my review of Jennifer Rush's Altered from a D+ to a Weird Fucking Moustache, instead.

Isn't this better for everyone? Isn't this a much more wholesome, positive, and author-friendly way to talk about facial hai-- I mean books? It's so easy.

Why, even Judith McNaught's Whitney, My Love can be reviewed with this method. It now rates an Elephant Sitting on a Slide. Why?

Because it goes nowhere and it's full of shit! Waka Waka! 

AnimeJune's Alternative Reviewing Method - Placating Entitled, Privileged Whiners with "Artistic" Temperaments Since 2013.