KIERAN > Recent Status Updates

I may be overreacting, but is Mord the jailer supposed to have an intellectual disability of some kind? If so, this is neither a very kind nor socially responsible portrayal of it.

And it appears Theon and the guardsmen have saved Bran! That's nice.

Bran has been attacked by wildlings, and I guess I never watched this part of the show, or it wasn't in the show, because I guess this is where we meet Osha the wildling.

Undying Queen's master glass worker? That's not how she spoke about Elroy before! I had the impression Elroy was struggling.

Also, is "the third spoke in the blessed wheel of the sacred Silver City" the standard way of talking about where you're from in Zilvaren? Because Saeris has never talked that way before.

Nor has she (understandably) held all that much respect for Madra or Madra's system before.

It's less campy and more cliche now that we've entered the Fae realm proper. A place which ironically feels more mundane than Zilvaren.

But yes, the hyper-oppressed Third Ward DOES have a public library!

Albeit a ramshackle, slightly elicit one.

We finally have our first mildly problematic trait of this book, which is the idea that Madra's irreligious society =a corrupt society. That is, the fact that Madra "chose to let the gods vanish from her people's history" apparently "speaks of her corruption".

I would argue setting herself up as a god makes her corrupt. I would argue her oppression of the Third Ward makes her corrupt.

Although how does she have access to library books when she lives in the poverty-stricken desert ward? Does she steal them?

Is there somehow a public library in the highly oppressed Third Ward? Or does she go to other wards where there are public libraries and look the books there?

So far, this book is just a lot of campy fun. It's not high literature by any means, but it's delightful in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way.

Nobody has assaulted the heroine yet, and the creepiest guy actually canonically knows how to pleasure a woman! (This is important because rubbing it in her face is how he chooses to disrespect Saeris. Can't have everything.)

In this genre, that's huge.

Why didn't you tell Naomi to fetch the dodecahedrons and open them? She's on the outside, they're on the outside, it's perfect!

Give him a break, Laeshana. He's from a different culture, not a complete monster.

Its clear Alaric is a very honorable, lawful person, if not necessarily a sociable or tenderhearted one.

The bizarre way Alaric's Tonzimmelian worldview interacts with the fantasy setting of Caedaran is highly entertaining, even if it is a bit, well...alien.

And makes him come off as somewhat less-than-heroic. Especially in the flood rescue scene.

The fact that it took Alex impulsively torpedoeing his career by revealing he vents about the showrunners through fanfiction to get it through your thick skull the dangers of him telling you this kind of shit, April, is...wow.

You are a really self centered person.

I mean, granted, Ron and R.J. don't have any more PR common sense than Alex, considering that...

So Lauren is unflappable in the face of fatphobic comments I see.

Damn. Lauren sounds ten times less immature and insecure than April from that one statement alone. And Alex sounds like a genuinely flawed but decent guy whose meddling results in believable conflict.

I want to read THAT romance instead of this one.

"April was done hiding...it wasn't going to be comfortable."

Girl, it's a convention. If you don't want to be fat-shamed and judged, just stay at home and process your emotions like an adult.

"Marcus's abandonment of her"

Girl, he was TRYING to support you in his own way! Give me a break!

Frankly, I am not rooting for this couple to make it back together. Marcus deserves better in a girlfriend than someone who flies off the handle every time he misreads a social situation.

The whole BAWN thing is a no-win situation. Marcus only really had two options: come clean to April in the beginning or cut ties with her and the Lavineas server completely. Definitely not ask April out on a second date.

Plus, while APRIL might be loyal and try to keep Marcus's secrets, there is still the matter of paparazzi and obsessed fans. It's not like April's fan accounts are a secret or even secure. Any dedicated stalker fan/paparazzi could easily find April's accounts and through that, discover the truth.

That, and April could still slip up and reveal the truth by accident.

April is right in that the way he went about the whole fanfic thing IS a massive violation of trust.

The thing is though, this is coming right on the heels of April getting over being unreasonably mad at Marcus for something he couldn't control.

And frankly, at this point, April comes off as downright toxic.

Normally, I would be okay with this being the third-act breakup point, if Ms. Dade hadn't made it a fucking PATTERN for April to get mad at Marcus's completely understandable slip-ups. Hadn't made it the chief conflict of the fucking book.

Marcus...I don't care how hot you think April is. You deserve a woman who is less insecure, who will not treat you like this. Of any size.

"He'd lied to her".

Geez louise, woman, we just got over the first bit of manufactured conflict over the dad misunderstanding.

And now you're blowing up at him over the fanfic identity thing, even though in the same paragraph you make it clear you understand the whole "Marcus would lose his whole career" thing.

THANK YOU! Finally, April acknowledges that it's toxic of her to expect that Marcus magically intuit shit like this!

That doesn't change the fact, however, that Ms. Dade has used this BS as a plot point TWICE now. TWICE!

Is April supposed to be insecure, or is she supposed to be a grown, confident woman on a journey to better her life?! PICK A LANE, MS. DADE!

YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH!!!

But sure. It's Marcus's fault for not magically knowing this I guess. Gods damn it!

And now Marcus is feeling guilty for failing to be psychic. Gods damn it I hate this bullshit.

This shit is so toxic. April, you cannot expect Marcus to intuit exactly what you need emotionally in every situation. If you're planning to confront your mom, you need to TELL him that. You're supposed to be in a healthy relationship where you talk about this shit for heaven's sake!

So we ARE punishing Marcus for missing a social cue he couldn't possibly have known about after all, huh? Because he was supposed to psychically intuit that today you were going to confront your mom about her fatphobic BS.

Gods damn it you can't have April be a confident woman on a journey to accepting herself and then have her act this insecure and childish.

I'm glad April has the courage to do this important step with her mother on her own, and accepts that she doesn't actually need a hot guy beside her to do it.

I mean granted, deciding not to communicate with April about it and instead just ASSUMING she needs her dad distracted isn't a good thing, but there's no way he could have known that April was planning on confronting her parents today.

Especially because April ALSO chose not to tell him this.

Oh holy fuck not AGAIN! Does it occur to you, woman, that he's distracting your dad as a way of supporting you?!!

This is the SECOND time that Ms. Dade has used April's insecurities as a way to drive a wedge between the characters.

And it's worse this time because April has now accepted and understood that Marcus is a gym bro! Who talks about exercise because HE does it, not because he expects HER to do it!

I do agree with the idea that forgiveness is not something that's owed, that it has to be earned.