badbookworm

[badbookworm]

Haven't read much in these last weeks, kinda fell off my game. But I'm currently reading the School for Good and Evil saga.

And my god, these bitches gay (both Sophie and Agatha, and ""Filip"" and Tedros).

I would've read a whole book just of Sophie and Tedros like that, damn that dynamic was cool.

[badbookworm]

Omg I haaaaate when in anything with a monarchy there's a discussion about Throne and who'll rule that revolves around:

Candidate A: The (most of the times) current ruler, pure evil, awful ruler, the villain and probably racist.

Candidate B: Person who wants to overthrone candidate A for YEARS. and has study for YEARS on how to improve the kingdom. Moraly gray at worst but objectively the right choice.

Candidate C: Doesn't even know how taxes works.

Because you know who will win, and it not the competent one.

Worst even when it's the protagonist, like, this barely 20yo who lived in the streets all their life does NOT know how to run a kingdom, idc how pure their intentions are. The people would be putting this mf in the guillotine in less than a year.

[badbookworm]

Started book 6 of ZA and some thoughts.

Gotta say, great choice having Tory's narration being her not knowing she's being controlled than her do knowing. While the second would be interesting it would also get stale fast, specially the prose, because it probably would be a more loud "I'm trapped in my own body", so it's good that they went with the first option. I actually thought they would go with no Tory chapters at all so we wouldn't know what's going on in her head, keep a mystery going, but that's great too.

Ugh, Orion is here. I still don't know why I don't like him exatcly. I warmed up to most the characters I deeply hated but him, I tried to warm up to him since he's here to stay, but... Idk. Idk if he's just not fun, if it's his relationship with Darcy that weirds me out still, the agressive possessiveness, or that he's an ass to everyone. I wish I could see what everyone sees on him because this man's life takes a good chunk of these books 💀

The specific traits he carries aren't an immediate dislike, but man them being all on the same person doesn't help.

DARCY AND HEIRS FRIENDSHIP WOOO. DARCY LEARNING TO FORGE WEAPONS?? AND FOR THE HEIRS??? Darcy is gonna pop off in this book, I can feel it. And she deserves it, I want more Darcy action.

Oh. And if anything happen to Gabriel I swear someone will wake up with a pipe bomb in their mail. He's getting too evolved in this to be fully safe and I'm scared.

[badbookworm]

There's a huge difference between redemption and humanization. I feel like a lot of "redemption arcs" aren't actually redemption at all, they're just attempts to humanize the villain so that they seem multi-faceted, but people read them as "redemption arcs" and think that that is meant to justify all the evil they've done before and negate whatever made them a villain in the first place. I think true "redemption arcs" are actually kind of rare because true redemption would take making the villain acknowledge their crimes, reevaluate their actions, actively choose to do better, and then proceed to make amends and become a better person, and that would this take more time than most stories are allowed to give their characters.

I've also seen people argue that a character has to be poised for redemption from the jump for it to work because once a character does something "too bad", they can't be redeemed. I completely disagree because redemption isn't justification or forgiveness, so no matter how horrible a character's actions, they could choose to become better, but because a lot of people (including writers) think redemption means "erasing the character's flaws and making it so they did nothing wrong ever", a lot of attempted "redemption arcs" just end up erasing a character's entire history or justifying every evil thing they've ever done. And yeah, in these cases, the only way to make a character go from a villain to a perfect cinnamon roll with no flaws *is* to have been planning it from the beginning and make sure they never do anything that can't be explained away later.

TLDR: real redemption arcs require a lot of self-awareness, patience, and growth, which are things that are rarely actually allocated to villains, and that's why real redemption arcs almost never get executed. The reason people think redemption arcs are overdone is because there are so many attempts to either humanize a villain that get misconstrued as redemption or attempts to blatantly erase who a character was in the name of "redemption", which is really just poor character development.

[badbookworm]

GUYS GUYS, the Zodiac Academy tvtropes page is EMPTY, DESERTIC, STARVING.

I love editing tvtropes. Time to re-read the early books with the wiki and notepad open, I'mma clean this sucker up the best I can. (will be posting here if it get any updating done)

[badbookworm]

I kinda want to pick up Throne of Glass series after finishing HOSAB, so I can 100% the SJM experience. But I always remember how boring reading the first book was, and how my cousin, a massive SJM fan, said "Oh yeah, the second one is even more boring, but it gets better after that".

Nothing in that first book was doing it for me besides Chaol. But I'm hoping that, maybe, the problem was younger me that didn't enjoy that book style. It was one of the first books I went for after getting into reading so I was unfamiliar with it and all. Beyond, now I have fun with almost anything, good or not, so it's gonna be interesting revisiting it, along with my old notes.

Anyways, I'll give it a shot again next year. I'm looking for more sagas to get into without much thought.

[badbookworm]

Being a reader and having sensory issues sucks. If my hands are slightly dry then I cannot touch touch paper. It sends shivers deep in my nerves brushing my hand on paper.

But then moisturizing also awfully bothers me, beyond most of them staining the pages.

Yeah, I read ebooks most of the time nowadays, but I wish I could read my books normally without getting heebie jeebies from... Paper, of all things. I don't like having to "clean up" the texture of paper from my hands every 2 seconds when reading :(

[badbookworm]

When I say this, I mean it with my whole heart, Lightlark has the most boring, mind numbing, reading experience to ever be conceived by man. That if it was even man-made, not entirely computer generated, because it feels like that at times.

I've learned that Nightbane, the sequel, just released (I though that it would've be published next year, wasn't paying that much attention the publishing scenario) and it unlocked my memories of reading Lightlark. I still need to know how Alex Aster was able to make such a time waster last 300 pages. Because:

Everything you learn about the world of Lightlark WILL be contradicted. There is no concistency, most of the worldbuilding is shallow and great ideas will be underutilized.

Everything you learn about the character don't MATTER, it might never come back, be explained, used, or is a straight up lie with no way for you to know.

And everything you understand about the plot means NOTHING. Because the author will just say fuck you and pull a bad twist out of nowhere.

I can't even call Lightlark a bad book because bad books made me feel something, reading Lightlark was the mental equivalent of a sensory deprivation chamber. It was... Nothing.

[badbookworm]

I forgot how healthy Bryce and Hunt's relationship was. I skimmed the first book to remember the plot for the second, and they always come back to apologize, they're quite respectful towards one another, beyond the sexy and banter they have thoughtful and emotional conversations, and care for one another.

Like, damn someone cooked here. When they talked about grief??? Emotional. Bryce caring for Hunt when he's dissassociating? One of my favorite chapters. Their dialogues feel real and their actions feel genuine. It's a great time, you guys.

SJM has been slowly raising more the bar for the couples in her books since ToG, and I'm here for it.

[badbookworm]

The best way I can describe the Crescent City series by SJM is as if Maas was tasked with writing the plot of a 18+ fantasy Adam Sandler movie.

[badbookworm]

Small Cursed Fates rant/appreciation? (overall ZA book 5 thoughts)

For a dark romance/fantasy, the best parts of Zodiac Academy rly are when nothing dark is happening, huh.

Just finished book 5. And like. Within 5 books, they have undoubtly build very solid and detailed characters, and all who have interesting and different dynamics with each other. I love seeing them interact and hang out since book 1.

Most of book 5 is heavily character focus. The heirs and the twins started the book on a neutral ground, entered a truce, and the heirs plot is coming to terms that they actually like the twins' company, and to hangout with them. And that's cool as fuck, it was very fun to see the friendship develop, the plan to get Darius and Tory together, it was straight up good. I ate that shit up.

ALSO RANDOM NOTE, I DID NOT EXPECTED SETH AND CALEB TO ACTUALLY BE A THING?? AND IT WAS GREAT??? I made a bingo for this book with things I thought would happen, and one of them was just "Seth and Caleb do something gay". I marked that square 10 different times, it was wild 💥💥 I saw a goodreads review say that straight Caleb was his flop era, and now I GET IT. BC IT'S TRUE. Sorry Tory, but the Caleb and Seth side plot is much more engaging then Caleb being a 2° option plaything fr.

Ok, going back. With the comment at the start it might instigue a "it's a bullymance, what did you expect", but because the way the saga gone with turning the bullying into romance in taking it's time, along with all the fighting back and the leading to it is interesting, I'm hooked, genuinely interested and caring for these characters. It's all the other edgy fantasy stuff which stinks. The vibe was ruined the moment Orion was sentenced and it never picked back up. At least in this book, it was boring. I already don't love Orion character, he doesn't appeal to me in any way, and the though of him carrying a solo, brooding, plotline is the most boring thing this saga could've come up to me.

And then the ending came, it was like a cold water splash to remind me what kind of story this is, but it felt like "oh, the cool parts are over now?". I cannot give a shit about the whole thing going on with Clara, I'm sorry, I tried, it's so messy and nasty, and having to see Lionel be the villain for 5 books straight has drained him from any intrigue I had. He's just an villain shaped hole of a character. He's signifies a bad omen, not a character, you see Lionel and you know that something will go badly so the plot can progress, I cannot tell you 1 thing about Lionel besides he's evil. Oh, and the ZA finales are always chaotic and cramped with action and twists, the authors halt all the on-going plots so they can solve and drop them at the last 7 very short and fast chapters, but this one felt extra edgy and fast? I was so done with it with 4 chapters left still. And it feels like book 6 will keep on this trail of the edgyness.

I'm low-key scared of entering book 6 and being bombarded with any forced Tory and Lionel stuff, because I can't find any thorough review of book 6 to ensure there's no SA or anything like that involved with this plotline. The 1 thing that had kept me going with this saga was that, despite a lot of the nasty stuff, the sexual content has kept itself in a mostly consentual territory, sometimes vaguely consentual. But Lionel forcing Tory to say she loves him has already made me physically gag, and seeing Lionel and Clara (which also made me incredibly unfomfy and disgusted) makes me dead ass scared to see the next Tory povs. Non-con is my only big nono in taboo stuff.

Does it get the point across about Lionel being evil and all? Yes, ig.

Anyways, gotta finish what I started. BRB.

[badbookworm]

I was gonna 100% let it slide if on book 5 Tory and Darius actually ended up together after being Starcrossed if they slowly went back and worked it out and stuff. Because I really liked the breaking of the norm with refusing a soulmates, and it would've been much more genuine than them getting together because the stars said so. There is a lot of potential there.

But nooo, Everyone and their mother on this fucking book needed to force the thought onto Tory about them being perfect for each other and give Darius another chance, every one with a worse opinion on it than the last, and that while totally dismissing her traumas. (Gabriel talking about it made me so fucking mad)

Like, yes, she is clearly mizerable about it, but, they're all making like Darius is the victim?? And the ONLY victim?? Oh, Think about how he's feeling. That he's not that bad. He's not his father. You should've given him the chance to change, look at him now. Nah bitch, that's consequences of you actions, your actions have consequences even if you're being manipulated. Her reasoning of being scared if he would've hurt her even in love is super valid but all the character go past her saying this. Even her friends, God, pls stop putting Darius first.

I'm just mad. There was a great foundation there and all they needed to do was to let the characters go on their own pace, but they slammed it into the ground so early on the book. You could still have the plot B of the others trying to get them together, you didn't need to have them directly be "Yk, Darius could've been great, why were you such a bitch and didn't took it?" on Every. Single. Tory. Chapter.