Caliyah > Recent Status Updates

This book really doesn’t seem like it has the flow or structure of a novel. Rather, it has the tone of dry historical accounts with a loose connection of characters. I’m consistently struggling to maintain pace with what’s happening from one dry historical anecdote to another.

Nicephorus/ Tyun yaoi on the horizon it seems

LMAOOO the most abrupt death reveal ever 😭 the William and Lisbeth double poisoning and Barbarys abruptly committing suicide, I laughed out loud

I really love how others find Marek’s desperate need to be pitied to be pathetic and off putting and a source of motivation for why they dislike him. A real ouroboros of pity and repulsion.

lol I hadn’t even considered the possible reading of the William/ Barnabas gay rumors to ALSO be an element of the incest ladder because even though they aren’t related, William calls him “father” because Barbara’s is a priest

The paralleled theme of perpetual victimhood between Marek and Agatha is also interesting. Marek is despised and abused by all who see him and Agatha is subjected to repressed imprisonment (Jude, the nunnery, the lord’s manor) and sexual violence (her brother, Jude, Father Barnabas/ William)

Another rung added to the incest ladder… Jude deciding to call his kidnapped child bride after his mother Agatha oh I’m sure… Marek being the child of actual sibling incest on his maternal side in addition to the thematic incest on his paternal side DAMN

Marek threatening SUICIDE over the possible birth of a half sibling, I’m sorry he’s so cute and wretched to me 😭🫶🏾

It’s so charming to me how absurd this progression of this story is. The character are so very stupid (complimentary) and readily come to the silliest conclusions, I love them 🫶🏾

Some truly expert dramatic irony here. Jude mistakes Marek in Barnabas’s robes to be the condemnation of god, marek mistakes Clem’s corpse for Jude’s, marek believes Agatha’s empty grave to mean she was good and taken to heaven rather than her death falsified and her still alive. Great stuff 🙂‍↕️

Blind eating the blind mmhmm

William and the priest maybe fucking oh I’m sure…

Marek’s story about the son marrying the grandmother and becoming his father’s father, old Ina being the surrogate mother to Jude and Marek. Ina’s mention of allowing sexual contact with Marek once hmmm hmmm themes hmmmm 🤔

I really enjoy how delusionally sillly William is, he’s got a real Emperor’s New Clothes thing going on that I really like

The Ina sexual abuse reveal is interesting. You anticipate that, although she is introduced as Marek’s only source of genuine comfort, that she once allowed him to sexually gratify her without his understanding. Damn he really ain’t got no one

Lot of milk and nursing theming, Parenthood and the absence of it. Pity as akin to love because Marek has never been properly loved and can only feel its warmth through others’ pity at his wretchedness 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ he yearns to be abused so that god may also pity and therefor love him mmhmmm 🙂‍↕️

Father and son both being insane pain pigs DAMN 😭

Marek is kind of my sweetie little angel wait…

The romance really dormant land for me because like… it’s not your husband… the stuff about saying goodbye a final time just doesn’t work… cause it’s not him…

The sudden reveal that the grandson is gay and then the reveal that he has a pug named Bianca Del Rio… not even a pun on her name, just the name of a famous drag queen… okay…

Muriel literally knows these people to be arsonists and literal murderers, why is she acting shocked that they would have her falsely committed to an asylum? Also shocked that Patrick swears “cause he never did on the Telly”, literally WHY would he swear in TV interviews about real estate… Muriel are you fucking DUMB??? 😭

Good for her

AND BUGGERED???? 👀👀👀

Abitha is actually insane for letting Wallace go after he accused her of witchery, like at that point he’s proven that he would do LITERALLY ANYTHING to destroy her and she IS practicing witchcraft… like lowkey you’ve allowed this shit show to start girl 😒

Lot of talk of aching and throbbing and yielding this chapter… Abitha are you going to fuck that goat 👀