#since these were extras released along thw qay

[unforth]

I. Hurt.

And I was hurting anyway, I'm pretty down this morning, but this hurt came from an outside source, and affected me in a way I'd honestly not have expected.

See, we bought Nimona last week. After seeing the movie, my kids wanted to read it. And I ended up reading ahead, and I just finished it.

Bonus content at the end, it said, and I was like, oh, an epilogue to the epilogue maybe? That'd be nice. I don't love bittersweet endings, I'd rather...

...no, it's not the conclusion.

It's CHRISTMAS.

In a book that'd had no religion that I noticed up to that point, BOTH bonus extras...were Christmas.

Ya know, usually it doesn't bother me. Usually I just suck it up. I think it helps that I was raised around mostly Jews and people who, if Christian, it didn't matter much to them. I'm from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the descendent of Lower East Side immigrants, and while the world outside was brutal - my grandfather was a World War 2 veteran and among the soldiers who liberated Dachau, I can't remember a time when I didn't know that most people would look the other way if people like me were slaughtered wholesale - my bubble was safe, we were accepted, we were insiders.

I honestly can't think of another time I've interacted with a piece of media and felt so immediately, instantly knocked across the face by OUTSIDER as I just did when I excitedly turned the page to see what these fun extra bonuses were...and it was fucking Christmas.

I didn't even read them.

I'm honestly. So disappointed.

I don't have a thick armor for this kind of hurt. I'm Jewish, and as an adult living outside my old UWS bubble, that's often meant I've felt like an outlier, but I've hardly ever had this feeling where I was welcome to something only to be suddenly, violently shoved out the door.

And I've heard nothing, n.o.t.h.i.n.g. but praise for this book. And on another day, it might not have bothered me. I've never really felt like I had to fight to be seen, especially since I'm tremendously secular. I mean, I've celebrated Christmas my entire life, for starters.

But why. Why was this fantasy setting suddenly Christian? Why was this the touted extra content? Why is THIS special, when the areligious world established to that point was apparently not special enough?

I can't say yet if this ruined the story for me. It's far too soon. But I'm *intensely*, viscerally let down, and...I hurt.

Christians...maybe stop doing this shit.