Status Updates From A Dark and Drowning Tide

happily ever after

this is literally a locked-room murder mystery but they have their tepid little "the killer could be any of us!!! (or one of the 15 riverboat crewmembers)" round table and then... go about their business. no "go in pairs or sets of three"? no "set plenty of ward spells"? just "well the killer didn't get what they probably wanted out of the murder so they'll probably stop and we're probably safe now"? okay

"More importantly, she would have to think like a folklorist. This group was nothing more than a collection of folktales she had to catalogue and dissect. She would pry them open slowly -- and she would do it with them being none the wiser." girl what are you talking about.

"After all these years, after every insult they'd traded, how dare Sylvia pretend to care about her?" Lorelei dude I fear that you're the only one who's been insulting anyone. like I'm not complaining that Lorelei is a mean antisocial pride monster, I love that in a fictional woman, but it's not at all satisfying to behave that way towards the love interest is the love interest isn't actually dishing it out, too.

she's an academic in a world where fairytale magic is real. but her perspective on fairytales is exactly the same as that of someone in, idk, Grimrose Girls? she's treating fairytales with the same level of academic rigor as Once Upon A Time?

it feels a little lazy that this world literally has magic and fairytale creatures like nixies and lindworms but they still treat fairytales in exactly the same way as we do, as "pretty girls always get their happy endings <3" kind of morality tales. and also that Lorelei would feel that way about her not being the kind of girl to get a fairytale happy ending.

I don't think I could ever be as forgiving as Sylvia

BUT SYLVIA WTF this too snakey I can't read this😭😭

mb ludwig

Reading a book to take my mind off chemistry but keep reading Adelheids name as aldehyde