Sarah J Mass Antis You Say? Look. I Checked Out The First Throne Of Glass Book From The Library When

The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, was recommended to me by one of my English teachers, who was also at one point my theater teacher. She said it was a feminist retelling of the myths involving Moran and King Arthur. So, I am so sorry to say that it is just…rubbish.

Okay, some of the cultural and fantasy elements are interesting. There is genuinely cool world building done tying everything together, whether that be Avalon itself or Camelot.

But...the characters.

Morgan, or Morgaine, at first acts as a blank slate of sorts. She's interested in the culture that surrounds her, and it's through her eyes that we get to learn about the world. That said, she takes a face-heel turn which is just...bizzare. It's like the plot is going "oh wait, we forgot to make Morgan EVIL so she does things people would consider EVIL" even though the plot doesn't necessarily demand it??? There's this one point where she basically goes "actually you know what doing incest with my brother is fine actually. I should have acted like a girlfriend to him after that and manipulated him to do my bidding" and. girl????? And it feels like the whole way the book is trying to justify it? Like, yeah in the original myth there's a sense of betrayal. But not like this?

And Gwen. Gwenhwyfar. Ohhhh my god. Her introduction is kinda neat, since it gives some perspective on how mentally ill women would have been treated back then. It quickly becomes annoying though. She's a religious fanatic. A Christian religious fanatic. Also she threatens to cheat on Arthur in order to bear a child. Also she's having an affair with Galahad. Gwen just...always has something to complain about. And it's not a good experience to read.

Arthur. Hmmm. He's portrayed as somewhat wishy-washy, constantly being pulled back and forth between the opinions of Gwen and Morgaine. Like...this is such a bad thing for a king to be. But he's honestly somewhat chill?

Plus there are just...so. many. unnecessary. sex. scenes. I would have given the author a bag of caramels for half of them to be fade to black moments.

The author is very clearly pro-pagan and anti-christian. I fall somewhat in line with that, not anti-christian but I can understand why someone would be. That said. The author kind of rubs the faults of christianity in the reader's face. Repeatedly. It's not subtle.

Overall, I have read a lot of retellings of different myths. This might just be my least favourite retelling of a myth ever.

Oh god The Mists of Avalon.....

I read this in middle school. It was a mistake. This book is so far up its own ass. I've read a lot of pretentious books, but this one nearly gets the top spot (nothing could beat out The Dream of Perpetual Motion or literally anything by Donna Tartt).

Morgaine becoming evil definitely felt like Bradley suddenly remembered that she was a villain in the legend and hastily shoved it in. She could have easily not made her evil, and just gone with the idea that history twisted the facts. That would have suited the character better, as well as playing into the "feminist" themes since history does often villianize women who don't deserve it.

And I put "feminist" in quotes because this book is like the definition of White Feminism.

Also, Marion Zimmer Bradley was a horrific person. Not joking or exaggerating here, she was pure evil. Epstein levels of evil. Humbert Humbert evil. Look it up if you want to, but be warned that it is genuinely awful and reading about it is pretty harrowing. There's a reason I chose those specific comparisons.

I'm watching Phantom Blood again, and I like to think that Dio Brando decided to do one nice thing for Jonathan.

And that one nice thing was killing George Jostar.

Like, Dio spent years watching how George treated Jojo and was just like "Damn! I might hate Jojo with every fiber of my being, but no one deserves to be treated like this by their own dad. I'm gonna spend the rest of my time destroying this guy, but I'll at least do him one favor and get rid of his asshole dad for him."

I'm finally back and I'm reading a book that makes me want the world to end.

Join me now on twitch to watch me suffer through Left Behind

Playing Far Cry 5 on twitch RIGHT NOW

All I can think about is Fenris and Solas glaring at me, arms crossed, demanding that I explain exactly who this "Astarion" is that they've heard so much about

It's boy band vs monsters tonight on The Robi Show

Final Fantasy XV tonight at 10:30 EST

cis people when a trans person turns out to be a bad person: oh so i can misgender them now? i can misgender them now right? now it’s okay for me to completely disrespect their identity and show other trans people their pronouns are a privilege right? i can do that now? i can be blatantly and violently transphobic to this person even though it has nothing to do with what they did right?

I swear to God I'm getting fucking ads on my keyboard

Using predictive text and it keeps suggesting titles for shit I've never heard of

Trying to text Zan and type the letter g and fucking swiftkey is immediately like "Ghosts of Tsushima" and I have no fucking clue what that is

I look it up cause I'm curious now and it's a goddamn game. It's some fucking video game that I don't know anything about, have never talked about before, have never typed out before, but the fucking keyboard is telling me about it

And then it happened with other shit

Movies, shows, other games that predictive text has no reason to assume I'll be talking about

I am aware that we live in an advertising saturated hellworld but I really don't need it rubbed in my face like this

Sunrise. Instagram: AngryFluffy Twitter: @Angry_Fluffy DeviantArt: AngryFluffy

I'm sorry that I've not been streaming the last few days.

Work has been insane and awful and I am so exhausted when I get home that I want to die and cry.

I'll be back soon