#I guess I'm liveblogging dorley now

[asteroidaceae]

So I figured out what was still bugging me about the Sisters of Dorley series

Which, to be clear, I have been reading and enjoying slowly over the last month and more, often with my breakfast tea or at cafes. I'd fully expected to try them and bounce off them quickly, but they've been a very positive presence in my life over the past little while and have helped me unearth a few things. I've reccomended them to loved ones, but always with hedging and qualifications that I couldn't quite fully articulate. Recently, friends who adore the series have been warning me about chapter 24. "It's a dark chapter." "Brace yourself, read it through in one sitting and then read chapter 25 for emotional closure." I took their advice, braced myself and sat down to read it. A few paragraphs in, a voice in my internal peanut gallery spoke up: "finally, meat." I took my time with chapter 24, spent most of a week slowly savouring it, was sad that this storytelling would be "over with" like my friends had said when the chapter finished. I hadn't realised until I started on this chapter how missed I'd felt by so many trans coming of age stories in books and comics. For the first time in years, maybe even a decade, I felt seen. It was a spotlight on pains that consumed years of my life, that I barely talk about with my friends and loved ones of today. It was proper catharsis. I was recently reminded of that line about good fiction comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comfortable, and this chapter certainly did the job for me. I can understand how such a story would be too much for a lot of people. I can understand how hard it must have been for Alyson Greaves to write it, and I commend her for doing so. But now that I've read it, and since that little voice spoke up in my head early on in the chapter, I've understood why I'd felt a little emotionally wrong-footed by Dorley up to this point. To paraphrase a homestuck thing I haven't read, the meat to candy ratio of this story is pure fucked. This is the first time in a while that I feel like the story has fully delivered on the emotional stakes of the premise promised, where I've felt previous chapters pulled their punches or softened their blows at the last instant. I really hope to come across more of these moments as I keep reading, even though I doubt many of them are going to be as personal.