RANT REVIEW | The Pawn and The Puppet
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- Опубліковано 22 сер 2024
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idk why none of my comments are showing but it’s me, rhys.reads. literally this whole book and the authors way of promoting it is just bad. like she couldn’t even add all the TW, which were left out for shock value. put ALL of them in. i just can’t believe people are giving it 5 stars
The fact that the trigger warnings were left out is just mind boggling. And the fact that that’s just one in a list of issues is just 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
UA-cam is notorious for deleting comments without even telling the video creators, there’s like a whole list of words that if the comment contains they auto delete.
ikr? doesn't make sense
that's so bizarre to me. if you're gonna put in warnings, put them all in. people who need them will read them and potentially avoid a very upsetting experience. people who don't need them can just go on and enjoy the surprises. i don't get what her deal is there.
IM SCREAMING SHE DID NOT NAME HER FANTASY COUNTRY DEMENTIA 😭
It is made of the provinces Ebony, Darkness, Raven and Way.
@@skyblade7438 My Immortal will forever haunt the internet and all cringe pieces of writing. Ebony Darkness Dementia Raven Way ran so these stories could move at a comfortable jog
@@who_the_fuck_is_riley5813 The best part about My Immortal is her ever changing names. My favourite name of hers is Enoby 🙏
@@mediocreskullduggery I personally like Egogy most
@@who_the_fuck_is_riley5813 Dark’ness* lol
Gotta make sure you remember the apostrophe to achieve full cringe
This author really was like _"im worried people will think this character is boring. What scenes of graphic sexual trauma played for shock value can i add in order to make them more interesting?"_
17:25 the most horrifying part of his story to this girl was that his assailant was a trans woman? Not even just the fact that he was assaulted, but the fact that he was ""with a woman with man parts""???? This author's got some gross fucking priorities
Right ?! “My mum r me as a child!”
“Your mom had a PEEPEE?! EW!” Like excuse you, straight to jail you go 🤢
I'm dyslexic and keep reading the title as "The Prawn and the Puppy", I think that would have made a better book
I'd read a wholesome adventure book about a puppy going to the ocean and befriending a prawn.
this is beautiful, I’m stealing your ideas
@@pettyprincess028Please let us know if you've started writing this idea. 😆
The shrimp and the schnauzer.
Your probably right ool
Ok so the whole book is based on the 'I can fix him' trope when the book itself need fixing 😭
100% yes
6:31 I’m cursed to always associate words like Ebony, Darkness, Dementia, Ravenway, with a very specific fanfic until the end of time.
I am dead 💀
That’s what it is!! I could not place why it all felt so familiar 😅
We all are, Gabby.
That fic cursed a lot of people in a lot of ways.
Which fanfic?
I am genuinely so glad someone else thought of that.
The fact that I genuinely can't tell if the 'bop bop's at the end of some lines are Rachel's additions or actually in the text... really says something about this book 🤡
Also, gotta love an author thinking they've created some super cool dystopia where SHOCK HORROR, women are judged on their appearances and have to be skinny and beautiful!!!!! HOW TOTALLY VERY DIFFERENT FROM REAL LIFE, GOOD WORK, OSTENSIBLE FICTION AUTHOR.
There’s so much room for dystopians to do cool shit especially regarding gender norms and gendered violence in dystopians, and yet time and time again lately authors disappoint me.
Hahaha I’m dead.
You could make a pretty interesting statement by making your dystopian world basically just real life but I don't think that's what she's going for here. I think she's just uncreative.
@@skylarjohnson7779 yeah agreed. And I’d totally read that book.
@@ladyredl3210 Emilie Autumn's "Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls" kind of did.
If I had just a fraction of this author's audacity, I could rule the world.
I wish I could bottle that kind of audacity and use it as needed
About the DID point: her literally admitting that she is stereotyping DID is clue NUMBER ONE, she didn’t want to do accurate research and help at all. She wanted to fetishize harmful stereotypes around it. But at least she admitted it? Who tf knows
She just used DID to make her heroine into a DID (Damsel In Distress).
i have DID, and that synopsis alone made my skin flay itself off. the worst part is that this book is very far from the only piece of media that portrays DID in such a horrifically ableist way. it's far more than just using the word "split personality". showing people with this disorder as dangerous and unhinged ACTUALLY kills systems (people with DID). i'm appalled. i don't even have the strength to talk about the ED discussion and transphobia.
In the third book it apparently gets to where she’s claiming that because the love interest has multiple alters, that she considers it poly rep and I’m like…. Did she consult with anyone with DID before saying that?
🤝 it’s so bad. it is so bad. Split and stuff like this book does irreparable damage to how singlets perceive us and i am so tired
@@ReadswithRachel well it *is* poly of sort. Many systems think of themselves as being in a poly relationship if more than one of them are dating someone, even if it’s the same person.
Although to call that poly 'rep' idk...
@@Galaxia7 i guess thats fair enough, i'm not trying to police people with DID, but i feel like that's so niche that it can't really count as representation (at least currently, because there's like 0 good poly rep afaik)
i also have DID and i rolled my eyes so fuckin hard when she read out the synopsis LMAO i am Just So Over Singlets writing out us systems.
edit: also some systems have multiple alters dating a separate person, which some of us count as polyamory. it depends tho!! all of us are different :)
Oh my god not the “core personality” part. There is no “core” or “original” with DID. The whole point is that no full identity formed in the first place. Besides, DID is a trauma disorder. People with it are victims, not dangerous abusers. I’d take Jojo’s bizarre adventure’s DID rep over this
I've read a Wattpad story with a main character having DID called Loving a Fighter, and as someone who's currently researching about mental disorders (cause I'm a writer) and it was a pretty good representation, especially the breakdowns and panic attacks.
I’m in treatment for CPTSD and dissociation I didn’t know what was happening to me for years because this is who we view dissociation
Right? Like, from my limited understanding there's usually a host but the host isn't even necessarily the "first" or "original" person. It's just whichever alter is fronting the most.
I'd love to hear someone with DID break down everything she did wrong but frankly I don't want ANY system subjecting themselves to whatever the hell this shit was.
@@monster-enthusiastAnthony Padilla did a great interview with people who have DID a few years back
...wait, there is DID representation in JoJo??
I work with child sex trafficking victims and have in multiple states (US). You know who most often buys and abuses them? Married cis men. You know who abused me as a kid and teen? Cis men. You know who was the first person to support me and give me a safe place where I feel loved and validated and that my experience could be used to help others? A trans man. Gtfo with that disgusting transphobia. I also have a plethora of mental health things as a result of sexual assault and abuse for being nonbinary, bi and neurodivergent, and whatever else I’m emotionally reacting to but honestly I don’t have the energy to explore that rn.
Am I the only one who remembers that the book was turned down like, a dozen times by publishing groups? Which means she had to self publish... which begs the question, why was the time line so strict? Indie Authors move publish dates all of the time. So why not wait to hear back from everyone?
I would assume that has to do with them likely feeling like they (self published authors) need to stay relevant in order to keep a reading base. They don’t have a publisher helping them market, therefore they feel like they need to push the books out ASAP (typically all within a year) in order to keep their readers reading the series.
As someone who also has real OCD, I hate representations like this mainly for the fact that it took years for me to get properly diagnosed because there were many things that i do because of my OCD that people didn't know are OCD, including myself. I was called weird and strange for years because of them and now that i know it is a mental illness it makes me so angry
I guess this is why proper representation of everything (including mental disorders/personality disorders) is important
i was diagnosed with OCD at pretty young but, becouse i didn't know the syptoms and the only "OCD" rep i saw was monica from friends i thought i was evil. bad mental illness rep sucks.
this book is literal trauma/torture porn and it’s disgusting how many people are trying to defend her
Exactly what I was thinking.
@@hbsupreme1499 ….because it is. writing about trauma has such a fine line that it’s very easy to cross into fetishisation. piper completely crosses the line. when done right (if that’s even the word to use), it can be used to convey a message or theme - something to contribute to the story, basically. this is not one of those examples. so you’re right in a certain sense! not in this case though
What in the internalized misogyny?? Women can only be unblemished and skinny? Chefkiss thinks he protected his wife and daughter by killing them instead of helping them see the problems with society?? Also... he stripped his daughters body naked? His daughter...
To think I had this on my TBR list as just a mildly dark read. You helped me nope out of there
That whole thing with leaving his naked daughter after he took her life from her was so disturbing. He, her father, further ripped more autonomy from her even in death? AND SAID HED DO IT AGAIN?! And that wasn’t discussed? I don’t get it
It makes me think that all those times those publishers turned her away (apparently) it may have been for a reason…. What dumpster fire is this I couldn’t even listen to the synopsis without going WTF
No agent who respects readers would pick this book up
I think people have been blinded by stories like JK Rowling’s who was denied by a few publishers because they thought it was too long and not marketable to young kids. Sometimes your denied because of dumb reasons, but sometimes you’re denied because it’s not a good book!!
@@taylorgayhart9497 This!!! Not every author turned away by publishers has the next Lord of the Rings being robbed of opportunity. Sometimes the book is just bad!
@@taylorgayhart9497 tbh the JK Rowling story is a poor example anyway. I get that HP captured the public imagination and it means a lot to a lot of people, but much of the reason for that was the marketing and its subsequent self-fulfilling reputation as the book that "got kids these days into reading"
The most original and marketable fiction associated with HP is the mythologising of the author herself. The inspiring tale of the destitute single mother on benefits who wrote a masterpiece on napkins as she sat alone at a coffee shop, who was rejected by every publisher until one saw how special she and her work were... virtually none of that is true, by the way. Even the rejections thing is silly given how many rejections the vast majority of books get, even when they later do well.
Also, speaking of mental illnesses, this book makes me forever thankful that my beta readers told me off for accidentally mixing up PTSD symptoms with phobias.
(Mind you, I cut that subplot out due to not having enough time between four POVs to tackle it properly but still...)
Just goes to show that oftentimes no criticism/not listen to said critiques is the worse option.
*Hears split personality*
*jazz music stops. Everyone in the system freezes*
*dissolves with a scream into a pile of ash*
This feels like somebody’s Yandere roleplay Wattpad fanfic that got put into a real book instead of an actual book that should be on shelves somewhere
I wanted to say that the title alone deadass sounds like the title for a fanfic.
Thank GOD someone outside of booktok is discussing this! The book gives me the ick. And then the author said the booktokker who beta read, and who also graduated with a psychology degree, told her about the major issues “too late” in the process. When a) that isn’t true based on what the other booktokker said and b) still isn’t an excuse???
do you know the booktokker’s name who beta read this?
@@deviousmorgs I do, but honestly for her privacy and the fact that she is a friend, I won’t share her @.
Say it louder ! People just use excuses like this thinking they could get away with the things they do ….
"Too late" being of course entirely relative to how much time and effort one's willing to spend fixing it. I somehow doubt the author got an advance on this, and, I'm guessing, didn't send it to readers AFTER finalizing a draft for publication -- it's kinda hard to think of a reason it would be "too late" other than "The major problems are too integral to the story and I would have to restart the entire book."
I still remember when Susan Dennard found out super late in the process that her highly anticipated book Witchshadow contained some issues with how she portrayed an Asian-inspired character (if I recall correctly). She pushed the release back like six months and changed it. I still haven’t gotten around to reading that series, but she’s pretty famous and tradpub, so... if she can do it, so can literally everyone else 😂
A hallmark of fetish fiction is no solid plot, lots of weird/kinky behavior (which is the whole thing), and a metric ton of cheesy or non existent character development. It's not a mystery why so many people can't stand it. Unless your kink is asylum trappings you won't.
If you think this one's bad? Look up Flames of Lethe. Pretty book covers are no guarantee of a good story.
The fact that she knew that it was horribly ableist before writing it and still chose to do it is just...... both astounding and not surprising at all 😭😭
So I can’t stop laughing. Rachel you are amazing. And I’m getting from ‘The Pawn and the Puppet’ an ‘After’ meets ‘Fifty Shades’ meets ‘378 days’ with a Joker/Harley romance. And that’s awful I couldn’t stop cringing when you described the ear scene. Lord have mercy. Thank you for saving me from illegally pirating this book. I swear I hope it doesn’t become a movie.
The only way this gets turned into a movie is if it’s recorded on someone’s camcorder like we used to do back in the 90s
@@ReadswithRachel omg! Hahahaah we all thought we’d get discovered filming these in our backyards and putting it on UA-cam. And agreed. I couldn’t believe this was a book in 2022. Watching you recount the whole story. I mean it’s just blatantly bad.
As someone with DID this book should have never been allowed to be published. The horrible rep for DID goes above and beyond. The core personality is not a thing. They are not personas or personalities but alternative states of identity (alter). I hate having my mental illness that is heavily stigmatized used in a romance book let alone romanticized. This is a horrific book that continues the misconceptions about DID and hurts both the communities that don’t have DID and the community that does.
Puppets/Marionettes are amazing Horror monster fodder. Super mad they're mentioned in any capacity.
There was an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (first season, don't remember the title) where the school is having a talent show and one guy has a dummy for a ventriloquist act. Buffy sees the dummy and says dummies give her "the wig". Willow asks why, and Buffy basically says there's no big story, it's not connected to her being a Slayer, they just give her the wig.
I’m pretty sure this book is a fever dream of every horny topic on booktook plus the classic y/n selfinsert “im not like other girls” without second guessing if it is a good idea or not to publish it, like the amount of badly written stereotypes and phobias and triggering content looks like something written on wattpad that was supported by ppl that think that dark content is mostly sexual and “kinky” stuff
Yes to all of this
how are we still doing the evil split personalities thing? even if it wasn't horrifically ableist, it's tired and boring now. it's so overdone. as someone with medically recognized DID, frankly it's just boring at this point. if i hear about a book or show or movie that has a character with DID, i just immediately assume it's not good representation.
it's so bad, it's harmful, and i'm tired of it
When you mentioned the sister being queer because of previous sexual trauma and called it homophobic it struck a chord with me. For years I identified as a lesbian until I realized my aversion to men was driven by ptsd. However, considering everything else the author was written I do think it was written with ill intent. I just wanted to point out that the situation is possible.
Yes, I agree, but unfortunately most authors/story writers don't have that intelligence to even consider that as a possibility. I went through a similar thing, I am bi though 😭
Did the people who rate this book 5 stars know other books exists?
That OCD element is so awful. As someone who suffers with it myself, I am so sorry you had to read that. It sounds immensely triggering.
This author started popping up on my fyp before the release of this book and I just KNEW I had to trust my gut not to let booktok overhype this one. Sounds terrible and extremely harmful to the trans community. Your review was well said and entertaining, thank you for reading so we didn’t have to!
same!! from the very beginning something felt off
Oof I am so glad that I ran across this title on your channel because if I'd come across it in the wild and picked it up I would have been PISSED. I' was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at fifteen and have been on medication for it for literally half my life (turning thirty this October.) It gets under my skin when people portray mental illness badly. I know it's a really tricky subject to tackle without romanticizing it, which has dangers of its own. It does have to be addressed, but I know that even I'd have trouble doing it justice, even with my lived experience.
I'm a huge mental health advocate. I encourage people to go to therapy (let's face it, we could all use some, no matter how well-adjusted we appear.) Medication isn't for everyone, but it works for a lot of us and we shouldn't be shamed out of taking it. I had so many people tell me to trust god for my mental health needs or that suffering from depression was a sign I didn't have enough faith in god/wasn't praying hard enough. I'm sure that's a large part of why I'm an agnostic, possibly even an atheist now. (Though there are other facets, for sure.) I really don't see the point of hiding my diagnosis, and I don't think others should either unless it puts them in danger. Coming out as mentally ill and sharing your struggles can make it easier for the next person down the line to do the same. I understand some people can't though. This book is reckless and perpetuates HORRIBLE stereotypes about mentally ill people. As if it's not bad enough people downplay bipolar to "moodiness" on the mild end or psychosis and/or danger to others on the really awful end. Then there are people who use it interchangeably with things like schizophrenia or DID. Ugh.
And the trans stuff, oooooofff. I have a trans side character in a WIP but I know that I have, have, HAVE to have sensitivity readers when I discuss anything revolving around a minority I am not a part of. My main character is a lesbian (I am bi so I don't think it's an enormous leap, but I'll still have people look into it.) I guess all this to say that ignorance is the enemy, and to be this willfully blind and doubling down makes me feel a little ill.
As a person in an OSDD system, I was triggered by the DESCRIPTION holy SHIT. This book is a trip. Like an LSD trip. Please get me out 😭
Your review was enjoyable as always, thank you for making this palatable to listen to while I drew.
Thanks for being here but oof I’m sorry you had to hear this one!
Amazing. "But my story is so deep, look at all the sexual assault!"
so, fun fact, I knew the author and can confirm the book wasn't intentional Christian subterfuge at least lol.
also, I definitely dodged a bullet. when she was first looking at self publishing this, I offered to do a round of edits and beta read for her. lucky for me, we stopped talking before she could ask, so now everyone else gets to suffer instead
That sounds so mean! I love it!
5:00 tbh saying 'split personality' instead of 'dissociative identity disorder' seems to be the least of its problems with DID representation in this book
Right of the bat (have not finished the video) I can say maybe having the main character's sister die in that asylum specifically would have made for a more interesting character motivation. Because so far it seems like the protagonist is "just good", when in a society where wrongs are normalized it should be harder to "wake up" and see those wrongs. And having a sister die would be part of that process of identifying any wrongs, and also have a personal character motivation to want to stop it from continuing, alongside with giving the focus on that specific asylum
Pull out another identity at the last moment and end the book?
I see someone's been watching Moon Knight.
LMAOOOOOO NOT THIS
Every time u said Desin....
I literally thought about Desatin the butt creme for babies. 🤭
Love the reviews girl.
🤓
I am going to call him that from now on hahahahaha
The sequel to this abomination has over a 4 star average on GR and one 5 star reviewer said they feel this series will become a classic one day 💀
NO FRICKIN WAY IM DEAD
Ewww. Dear God. What is wrong with people
From what I've learned as an aspiring author, it's important for people to write what they know and understand. Personally, I wouldn't write about DID because I don't have it and wouldn't be capable of explaining it accurately like someone who is diagnosed with it. Although, if you write about DID or something like that then you NEED to do enough deep research to the point where you can ACCURATELY represent it. My problem with the book was that the author didn't choose to accurately represent people with DID and she ACKNOWLEDGED that. I feel strongly when it comes to accurate representation in terms of health because I have epilepsy and often I see people write epilepsy in a manner where the representation isn't accurate. And it upsets me because epilepsy is something that affects you extremely. So, if you write about it, at least do the research to understand it. I hope the author learns from her mistakes and actually accepts criticism next time because it's clear she didn't have any criticizing feedback for this book.
... I feel like we were totally the pawn and the book was puppeting our hands to keep turning the pages.
We were tricked!
dang it!
And I’m kidding because I hate this.
How can crap like this be published ..?
Was it self published ?
Did she have an agent?
Ugh.
Bleh.
I hate right now.
🤨
And also, regarding mental illness;
I’m bipolar so I understand wanting your mental illness treated with care, kindness and a basic level of understanding.
I acknowledge your perseverance and I’m really proud of how much you share with us. Thank u for all u do!
Truly.
You are one of a kind sis. 🥺
🥰
it was indeed self published, a trad pub house wouldnt touch this!
In conclusion: even if the transphobia wasn’t written in, this books still would have trended bc of how terrible it is. This should have never been written. It sounds like a conservative trying to sneak in religion to dark romance.
In my opinion, based on the conservatives in my family, it doesn’t feel like it’s written by a conservative trying to do Christian subterfuge. That I can usually spot. This just had random Christianity and it was the weirdest experience I’ve ever had with Christianity in a book because it was so… what’s even the word I’m looking for here??? Random? Aimless? I still can’t figure out what the point was. If it was there to preach, it was the worst job at preaching I’ve ever seen, so I don’t *think* that was the point. But honestly who frickin knows when it comes to this book.
I wanna know how scarlet got a job at an asylum when she was a teenager
THANK YOU
As a schizophrenic with not enough strength to make it thru the whole video to check if we also get misrepresented, I'm just going to assume we do and there is a serial killer who thinks they are a ferret somewhere in it or sth.
And he'd do it again BOP BOP is now apart of my daily vocabulary
Its frustrating to me how people don't seem to understand that the implications of having DID are usually very very traumatic and tragic and it should probably be dealt with a lot of nuance and empathy...
I have only heard the summary so far, but I'm screaming, genuinely, WTF IS HAPPENING! 😭
So it's a Joker/Harley Quinn fanfic
Basically
oh the dad being framed as mercy killing his wife and daughter fucked me up. that's so like... why girl. why would you write that
bruuuuhh lost it at ' we are in the country of DEMENTIA' hooow is this a thing??
update end of the video: oh wooooooowwww this book is fcked
Madi will we never know peace?!
You know most days I definitely think I could never be an author… then I see something like this and realize my zero draft is better written than this… 😬😬
A drunk text is better written than this book tbh
@@ReadswithRachel fair point 😂
This whole book is a fever dream to me. I really didn’t remember half of it until you mentioned it. I was confused by a lot of the stuff circulating TikTok about because I had forgotten so much, but now this makes so much sense.
this literally sounds like a fever dream, how was this book even published LET ALONE the second book is supposed to come out soon????
really feels like the author (accurately) understood that for a good chunk of history, being in a mental institution was tantamount to torture, and then examined absolutely zero of the contributing factors to that reality before writing an entire book about it
When I read it I made it to page 120 and I couldn’t handle it. And that was about a week after it came out. I went in blind. It was awful. I went to good reads to try and figure out why people were giving it 5 stars. I only saw one 1 star at the time and I was like wtf. There is a period scene in the book that I just couldn’t see a woman writing. Where the blood was running down her thighs. I just didn’t understand how this book was so popular.
Why is it that 9/10 period scenes in books are awful
@@ReadswithRachel yes. And you would think since it was written by a woman it would be better. But no.
As someone with a dissosiative disorder i hate, hate this book. I hate that we're always some sort of manipulative, Machiavellan and dark villain, when in most cases, we usually end up being the victim. The concept of there being a 'good' and 'bad' personality is so frustrating, because while, yes, there are alters who tend to be more hostile or unplesant than others, in the end they are a way a child coped with a fucked up situation. I hate how people like me, people who have been suffering since usually a young age, are reduced to an 'intriguing plot twist', 'a chaotic villain', an 'unhinged serial killer that occasionally has moments of clarity' or an awfully conceptualised romance partner. We're not someone to be fixed by love, or some sort of dangerous, erotic thrill.
Also the sheer INACURACY. Probably not just with DID, but I'm focusing on that. The author (who's name i didn't bother to learn, since she didn't bother to learn anything about DID in a book where it was part of the main plot) could have used this book to battle stigma around the disorder. Instead she reinforced it. People like her are the reason why when i tell people about my condition the questions are usually something like 'so do u have any violent alters?' or somathing like that. Pieces of fiction like this, that show us as dangerous or evil in a way are so incredibly damaging and usually they're barely accurate to real life. The truth is, the people most in danger due to systems are the systems themselves.
The concept of a 'core personality' is something so incredibly upseting,. I'm a host that took over when the body was about 13, because the host at the time was having a very, very difficult time even existing. She became dormant soon after that and we haven't had contact with her since. She was the closest to anything nearing a 'core personality' and that's just because she was aone of the oldest and most active alters at the time. Due to this, despite having access to many (but not all) of her memories, I feel like an imposter and DID narratives where the character strives to regain 'the original personality', while the other alters are seen as invaders, alomst demons possesing someone just go to solidify those awful feelings.
The author could have used this book to battle the stigma against DID in the medical field and to prompt people to actually do research on the topic. For example, my ex-therapist did not believe me when I told her about the multiple people in my head and used Rapid eye movement therapy, which is often used with traumatised people, but it can have very negative side effects. That, coupled with her strong pressure on my Co-Host, ended up with her actually bullying that alter out of existence and I have no fucking clue on where the fuck they went. Therapy with that lady ended after she let me run out of the office and wander the streets in a daze, almost getting hit by a car.
Thank you so much for this! I saw it popping up everywhere so I wanted to know what happened but didn't want to support the author or actually read it!
Authors who write about mental illness NEED to have beta readers who are educated in neuroscience and psychology. Stigmatizing AND romanticizing mental illness isn't only directly harmful towards people suffering from the illnesses, but also affects funding towards research to help develop treatments for illnesses and studies attempting to understand the underlying neurobiological causes of psychiatric illnesses.
THIS!!!!!
"CORE PERSONALITY" NOOOOOOOOOO
The only place called Dementia I like is in the Shivering Isles in the Elder Scrolls franchise, which is the realm of a madgod.
@Y/N LIZARD Sheogorath is my favorite daedric prince.
@Y/N LIZARD Yes they do lol
listening to this while working on an assignment and... DEMENTIA?? what 😀
i had a suspicion this book was going to be cringe. the author and the tiktoks she kept making about it was giving me the complete ick. and i know now more and more than ever that booktok will hype up even the shittiest of books. i have trust issues now truly. i will never pick anything up from this author. i will never support someone who publishes a book like this without even a thought of, like, “hm… maybe i shouldn’t include this”. and dude, it’s 2022 and she thought all the shit in this was okay?!? makes me angry.
on another note: i love your commentary and just subscribed! your takes are everything and you’re such an entertaining human. i love it!
I honestly feel inwardly horrified at myself that the thought “So, this is very poorly written Joker+Harley AU fan fiction?” After hearing what this book was about. How dare I?
I judged this one by the cover. I have no regrets.
Making wise life choice I see. I’m a cover snob.
It's sounded like a trigger warning pot where the title itself is the trigger warning (not that nutritional labels should ever be neglected). I'm blessed to have heard you talk about the book before I had actually purchased it.
Heart as a Beating drum would make more sense than a maraca, the hell?!
You can portray symbolically something, but that's not what she did, she literally (mis)portrayed DID.
I bet she listened to that person's pov and their advice, and then discarded all of them to write her book.
Also, of course, the 'backstory' of Dasian or whatever doesn't make sense and that's not how someone develops DID.
Big ol cw
17:26
Okay, I know the author has since apologized, but I really cannot get over the fact that the thing that has Skylenna bugging out right now is NOT that this man is a survivor of inc*st**s csa but he might have interacted sexually with a trans woman??
Priorities, Miss Thing, priorities!!
Oh, ableism and savior complex. My favorite.
Seriously, what was the author thinking?!
Jesus christ this sounds like an edgy high schoolers first ever creative writing assignment before they learn any fundamentals about story telling. What a fucking mess.
So does the author know that smothering isn't peaceful at all? It's actually painful and slow wtf? Edit 1: plus using women's bodies to parade around as a symbol is disgusting
right?????
Alkadon sounds like an antacid and vexamen sounds like E.D. medication 😅
you're not wrong lmao
Came from tiktok... Was pleased to see it was 40+ minutes... Settled in for a good ride 😎
I appreciate you 💕
I hate that my brain thought of this, but I can't comprehend this book any other way. This author, Brandi, literally just made the Asylum into a zoo for her self-insert to walk about, jeer and point at people who have real world mental illnesses and disabilities, and them to still keep her character ignorant all throughout the book. It just feels like a disgustingly twisted analogy of how people who are ableist in real life view people with mental illnesses and disabilities as "not normal" and turning them into a sexualized spectacle. I'm guessing she was hoping to get away with this because "its just fiction" even though it's been proven that fiction has real world consequences. She stuffed her fictional asylum full of stereotypes of an already stigmatized group. And instead of having a genuine conversation about these harmful stigmas, she decided to add more fuel to the fire, instead.
Again, I hate that my brain made the comparison of the asylum in the book to a zoo, but I cannot think of any other intention Brandi, the author was trying to go for.
No shame in seeing this shitshow for what it is friend. The author barely even try to hide her intent and i think that metaphore describes quet well what she did.
Jesus, I knew it was bad but I didnt realize it was THAT bad, how did this get published???
It’s self published. It’s the only way it would’ve ever seen print. An agent wouldn’t have touched this.
I'm currently working on my next book. I really want to pay you to look at it when I'm done. You seem like you would be honest about what is and isn't good about the story.
This is such a mess and I have no idea what the whole point was. Dark romance isn’t actually this. I was lucky to only get on the reaction side of this in booktok but how do people think this is good?
Also aren’t pawn and puppet synonyms in a sense? Who’s who?
And I’m just getting knock off harley Quinn and joker vibes
I know the puppet is Skylenna but I wish I could tell you who the pawn was… unfortunately it is but one of my many unanswered questions
I am SHOCKED that this book has 3.9 stars on GoodReads out of over 4,000 reviews. I mean what?!
She has a VERY loyal following
All the massive, glaring problems aside... what is with the shitfire NAMES in this? 🤣
I tried finding if the countries/names were references. Here's the best I got:
Kyleena-birth control
vexamen, vexaminis: (latin)
neuter noun shaking, jolting; shock; disturbance, upheaval;
The Daily Examen is a technique of prayerful reflection on the events of the day in order to detect God's presence and discern his direction for us. The Examen is an ancient practice in the Church that can help us see God's hand at work in our whole experience.
Aldactone is a water pill that prevents your body from absorbing too much salt and keeps your potassium levels from getting too low.
Aldactone is used to treat heart failure, high blood pressure (hypertension), or hypokalemia (low potassium levels in the blood), but also fluid retention in people with congestive heart failure, cirrhosis of the liver, or a kidney disorder called nephrotic syndrome.
Eh, it's all a bit of a stretch honestly.
I am 10,000% sure i have seen a drug commercial featuring white people dancing and tandem biking for something called Skylena
Hard same
"oh sweetie there's way more than three of us"
cue way more than three of us audibly groaning
I'm so sorry you had to read this. I will not be reading it. It sounds like a dumpster fire of insensitive, unnecessary bullshit. I have no idea what this author must have been thinking, if she was thinking at all.
Wow I super don’t want to read that 😂.
I started seeing the author on my FYP when she was gaining her following by doing a court of thorns and roses skits. SKYLENNA (.. spot on by the way with the birth control thing by the way). My assumption from her early teaser TikTok’s was the MC was a Psychiatrist, who was assigned patient 13, they spend the book working through their collective issues, with the end goal her gaining his freedom. The unnecessary characters with their dumpster fire of that graphic content, and the world ( I use that term loosely) was never mentioned. Had it been, I would have never pre ordered. I have already removed the book, but I really appreciate you for your review. I loved that at least 😂
I thought she was a psychiatrist too! Had no idea she was a random 19 y/o. Never going to read the book either way but honestly so weird.
See had it been a psychiatrist and a character like from law abiding citizen, remove all the other patients and the shock value they came with, and this might have actually been almost good.
when you were reading the blurb I was just like "it can't be that b--oh. oh no. oh it is that bad. oh no."
Not fully done with this summary/review, but I can kinda see how it's Christian subterfuge. Societal expectations for women to wear makeup and dress a certain way can either get them assaulted or drive them mad, or both? Don't change what the Lord gave you. Also all men suck except this one man who wants to protect and provide for his woman, who is also the only good God-fearing person in this society
Wait, so this if set in a fictional world, in a fictional coutnry, under a fictional government that works completely differently than the real one, but somehow they have the same mental asylums?
I have never met anyone with DiD nor have I ever been diagnosed but I am someone who is very tired of Hollywood’s weird obsession with portraying mental illness the way that they have been. I can think of a minuscule handful of movies that have not shown a person who suffers from DiD as not being a cold blooded villain.
And even those characters are portrayed with other stereotypes. Characters such as Sybil from the movie Sybil (also book) or Eve from the Three Faces of Eve. Both were not portrayed as villains but rather sympathetic characters (I must reiterate they are still problematic in other ways but I cannot remember exact details).
On the plus side these kinds of stories make me feel better about my fanfictions which have nothing to do with characters that have mental disorders cause I know I can't really write that well so I stay in my lane.
HOW does this book have a 3.82 average star rating on goodreads?
I wish I knew
“Equal opportunity murder” 💀
"ik this isnt accurate to DID but instead of having commentary about how the societal view of DID is wrong, i decided to create a character BASED on that societal view!"
i dont have DID (i possibly have a different dissociative disorder but not DID) but even i know this is a dumb excuse.
I chuckled about Skylena's name sounding like a birthcontrol, it so does! XD
Seriously bad stuff here, the bit about the ocd patient I would need a warning about too. I would distrubed by that if I found it while reading. I think this book is about trying disgust rather than discuss. Sometimes I think people who promote their books through popular social media like Tik Tok are trying to be edgy and shocking. Now trying to shock or disgust isn't all a young person thing to do, but I feel like younger people are more likely to do it. I wonder if some of these authors were older and not promoting through Tik Tok if they might not publish this sort of material? I mean write it ,if the idea won't leave you alone, but not every story needs to be published, and really I think it would have been better if this were never published.
On a lighter note. How are we going to not just take a paranoid character's rants about the government and completely gloss over it because there's no worldbuilding for it, so it's just a string of meaningless words.
Oof that was terrible, and hurtful to people who with mental illness and for trans people.
Hayley ^_^
the thing about the woman with ocd made me literally stop and say aloud "what the fuck." *what. the. fuck.*
The fact that the author literally calls the land with the famous asylum “Dementia” shows a lack of self awareness that is patently unequipped to tackle any of the subjects included (and not included) in her trigger warning list.
ALL book reviewers should review books like you do! Loved it….🖤
I super appreciate you 💕