Sasa > Recent Status Updates

"modern def of masculinity/femininity tend to be articulated in a western biomedical lexicon and its cognate understandings of the human body. the absence of a chinese word for sex until the 1910s suggests that depictions of eunuchs as a third sex people tells us more about our modern conceptual preoccupations than the historical experiences of eunuchs themselves" - howard chiang about chinese imperial court eunuchs.

wtf this is NOT for YA. from chapter 1, there's explicit sex and language that's more akin to new adult. who tf rated this??? lmao

"for [...] all the children whose names we do not know, whose existence and demise have been hidden [...] who also suffered and died in united states custody while seeking refuge. for the children lost along the journey, the ones caught in between, guided only by their fragile hope, whose ghosts roam the borders and deserts of countries that failed them. you deserved so much more. [...] you deserved to live." T_T

omg w 媽媽 making me cry 🥹💖

one thing i hate more than cruel people are fake people because they mask their cruelty with niceties. i know this mc is an insecure high school kid but she's a passive aggressive doormat so this premise is great for her and i love the direction it's going. also it's really weird that we just glossed over a high school student being with a rich 20-year-old at the beginning 🥴

“ian listens to a motivational audiobook called ‘kill or be killed’ using the lessons of the battlefield in the board room. apparently, it was written by someone in the israeli special forces.” is it about combat versus babies because that’s all the iof knows 🤡 idk how i feel about this overall lol

authors: number your chapters pleeeeaaase or have SOME kind of way of tracking chapters. unless you don't want people chatting about your book, it's hard for buddy read conversations 😭

the way this cop is describing this brown woman as "a creature" and other weird descriptors is hella skeeving me out. that's most likely the point since the author is a maori trans woman but damn, that gave me literal shivers.

i'm so glad melissa has kelly and her mom. kelly is gonna make me cry, she's so sweet 🥹💖

any friends on storygraph? i'm finally active there and have decided to slooowly but surely put my reviews that are too spicy for the goodreads over there. add me here! i learned their default setting doesn't let you add friends. i'm still gonna be active here but most of the 1-star ratings here that would get silenced will be full reviews on storygraph :D

i'm not latine but i kinda wish there was a warning for the casual racism against latine people. i'm sure her aunt is gonna get it but i felt squicky reading the word. a latine character talks about how she experiences racism briefly—specifically says she feels invisible for being older and brown—and the mc doesn't try to talk over her so that's good.

what the fuck, who talks like this... oh my god... uuugh, it looks like another favorite author making a dud. i'm so disappointed.

i hate the way this audiobook narrator is pronouncing "ms maeda" like "ms may-duh" 🤢 this chapter is after the mc's shared joy of anime and all of that. do audiobook producers not check everything before they go out?

i know it's the trauma talking but the "i know this big plot thing that i'm not gonna tell anyone else" is so grating, AAAAAAAH! YOU ARE A CHILD!!! pleeeeeease 💢😤🥲

ah, okay. that's why he's doing so much for his loser brother. understandable.

dude he's such a fricken LOSER and they should've killed her. UGH, but this is really good tho LOL

roman every day:

this loser brother is not worth all of this trauma omg

i'm begging publishers to PLEASE start printing adult novels AT LEAST as large as YA novels. it doesn't make sense to make the fonts tinier as people age. our eyes cannot adjust to print meant for ANTS. this book is breaking my eyes 😭

get this slave/slavemaster bullshit out of my face. i hope she kills him.

i'm actually...having a good time??? i mean i have 200 pages to go so it could get worse at any point but right now, red tower > del rey.

friends know i hybrid read. tell me why all of them pronounce "Fallow" differently?? this man is saying it like "fei lo" which means "fat man" in canto 😭 sssTOPP 🤣

what in the manic pixie dream girl??? this character doesn't belong in this world lmao

okay, shit hit the fan and things are getting interesting. it's getting easier to tell characters apart but there are still too many and a few still sound too similar. as far as i've counted, there are like 14+, 7 of which have their own POV's 🥴 enjoyed part 2 waaaaaay more than part 1.

this shouldn't have been marketed as YA because it's way too horny...AND THEY'RE KIDS 😭 i get that they're child soldiers, but this should have been marked as "New Adult." when the sex scenes hit, they make me feel squicky so i have to skip them.

i usually dnf to prevent a reading slump but i (stupidly) bought this book with my hard-earned money and i'm determined to finish 😭 but i'm so bored, friends. it's giving "manic pixie dream girl" and boring, stoic protagonist. i hate being in lorelei's head.

that first part was rough like omg so slow and boring. i know it's my ex's name and i cringed every time i read it but that death came out of nowhere. also why are we just glossing past the fact that there's a murderer in the group in lieu of being quixotic and horny 🥴

i'm absolutely loving this so far. the steven universe and tumblr fandom references are peak 2010's queer rep. some of the refs are millennial-coded too like nobody in gen z knows what "BAMF" means but idc i love it. this is pandering to ME 😂😂

the em dashes, the second-person pov, the enormous pov list that read the same, and the "children having sex" thing are...not my cup of tea. i'm also listening to the audiobook and even the cast of 7 performers aren't able to make them sound different 😭

really??? a third act breakup NOW?? also this racist caricature sounds like mr. yunioshi from breakfast at tiffany's and it makes me cringe so hard 🥴