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bloody-wonder · 1 year ago

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3, 4 and 7 for the ask x

thanks for the ask!📚

3. What’s something you read recently and wanted to argue with (either with the book or the author or the fans)?

buckle up for a good ol' book rant!

so the dreamhealers series - a cozy slice of life scifantasy story about two neurodivergent individuals forming a queerplatonic partnership - is, it turns out, the origin story of the characters which the author mca hogarth has conceived a long time before as side characters in a completely different arc in her peltedverse. i assume she started developing said arc when she was a teen and wrote the dreamhealers when she was already an adult. the result is two stories that tonally and structurally couldn't be more different but that both feature these two characters which naturally resulted in characterization consistency problems. you can't take a weird lil guy from a pastoral novel where everyone just vibes and put him into a high stakes high fantasy plot without it taking a toll on their personality. now, this is not a problem if you finish the dreamhealers and just stop after book 4, however comma goodreads shows that there's this novella following the last book and you assume it's gonna be some sort of cute epilogue and you pick it up and it turns out it's not that but rather a short backstory of the characters mca hogarth wrote for her high stakes arc BEFORE she wrote the full version of their backstory aka the dreamhealers. are you still following? anyways i read the novella and was appalled at how jarring the difference is between jahir and vasiht'h in the series and this novella which, if you read in the order i'm reading in, basically serves as a link between the dreamhealers and prince's game. on the one hand, it's cool to see how much mca hogarth grew as a writer and how much more nuanced and relatable she made her characters in the course of their development. but on the other, it made me have unpleasant ruminations about what is canon and what isn't. this novella feels like a retcon designed to make jahir and vasiht'h fit a new narrative. however, it was written before the dreamhealers - does that then make dreamhealers a retcon and not as canon? both things can't be canon bc jahir and vasiht'h in the series would never do things they do in the novella. which makes it feel like a fanfic written by someone who doesn't understand the source material.

phew did it feel good to get all of this off my chest! tl dr please read the dreamhealers but under no circumstances read "family"

4. What are your top 3 comfort reads?

to be completely honest i don't typically re-read books for comfort purposes. that's what fanfics are for!✨ the top 3 i used to re-read the most (but not in quite a while tho) are lessons (aftg), astray (captive prince) and this unfinished theseus/the minotaur fic which i believe was called asterius und which, as i was distraught to discover, had been privated by the author😭 such tasteful monsterfucking literature i have never known before or since

7. What book do you love but usually not recommend because it’s weird or intense, etc?

i love aftg but i will rather bleach my soul by reading that fandom's discourse again than recommend it to anyone. and to be clear, it's not bc i think the seires is weird or poorly written or not good enough for general audiences - it's bc no one is worthy of studying the sacred texts except for me and a couple other initiated intellectuals

book ask

#book tag #with comfort reads i need instant gratification that only my fave fanfics can provide #the family novella is wrong on many levels but ngl the aroace qpp stuff felt the most heinous to me #and i can't even be mad cause ik it's not bc the author suddenly changed her mind about them #on the contrary it's bc she wrote the prequel series later in her life #when she had better understanding of what aroaceness and qpp can look like #i was specifically irritated by them calling each other brother - and she improved on that too #vasiht'h says in dreamhearth they're the very best of friends closer than any brother or lover #and in dreamstorm he calls jahir my forever-friend #so she clearly gave some thought to more appropriate nomenclature lol #and jahir's thing with his cousin who he never mentions throughout the dreamhealers books is just. major ew vibes #and she improved on that too!#in the piano short story she found a very elegant way to make a point of him not really being aroace without being gross about it #but does all that improvement really matter if she published the other stuff and it's canon too?#at least make this novella not show as part of dreamhealers so that people aren't left with a sour taste in their mouth #all of this is aggravated by the novella's high rating bc i assume most people read it long ago #when the dreamhealers didn't exist yet and they had nothing to compare it to #but even so i think i would've disliked it #it just does feel like it was conceived by a teenager #who has like. weird kinks and notions #so i will probably not try prince's game any time soon #since it's tainted by bad!jahir and wrong!vasiht'h #but i do want to see an eldritch who fucks so ig my next stop in the peltedverse is earthrise

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