Status Updates From The Future of Another Timeline

Oeps, vorige update was voor p 231..
Maar eh, wtf, wat heeft Beth crappy ouders. Vader is zit en hoort in een instelling. Moeder doet niks.

Hoe kan er ook geen striktere controle zijn op het gebruik van tijdreizen? Sabotage van de machines? En niemand heeft dat ooit doorgehad of er iets aan gedaan?

Hoe kunnen mensen van zo ver zelf terugkomen? Ik dacht dat ze "tappers" nodig hadden om de machine te laten werken? Of zijn er effectief mensen daar om dat te besturen?

Al 3 keer weggekomen? Jezus zeg.

Waarom kan iemand van de toekomst apparaten meenemen en zomaar gebruiken alsof het niks is? En die mensen uit het verleden reageren daar onverschillig op??

Wat is er eigenlijk precies mis met die papa van Beth? Lijkt zo random.

WTF is dit eigenlijk voor een boek? Ik dacht dat het over tijdreizen ging, helaas is dat maar een klein, klein onderdeel naast alle "mannen zijn slecht"-shit.

ELke MaN is EvUL

Oh, en Comstock en Tubman zijn blijkbaar echt levende personen? Oeps. Ik heb het gevoel dat je voor dit boek iets van Amerikaanse geschiedenis moet weten.

Ik weet nog niet of ik dit wel goed vind. Interessant concept, maar te veel Mannen versus Vrouwen.

it's crazy that like. berenice has absolutely no characterization other than 'was murdered' and 'enid's girlfriend'. the chapter with enid going back and saving her 100% should've been from berenice's perspective, so she's not just a cardboard cut out to prop up the story

like is there one character of color that isn't just a prop for tess or beth? like just one. even anita here is just used as a soundboard for tess to be able to voice her concerns about the machine, and then the rest of the scene is devoted to "venting about politics with Anita".

alskfdj sorry it's just so funny to me that this 'hardcore anarchist chicana' band's strongest message is 'go to the polls :)'. god.

the idk... white fragility manifests in this writing so blatantly in that when the white MCs are put in the same room as characters of color they have to be shown to be Better or in trivial moments, the MC puts on a show of lamenting being white. "[...] listening to the girls behind us move between Spanish and English [...] Suddenly I could hear my suburban white girl accent clearly. [...] I felt like an interloper."

(spoilers) tess and beth being the same person..... god. this book. UGH!

(spoilers, cw pedophilia, eye gore) not sure how well it settles w me that heather (implied turkish/arab thru her cousin hamid) and soojin (korean) are portrayed as the ones super into the fact that they murdered their pedophile teacher, while beth (white) miserably laments the morality of committing murder, when she was the one that dug her fingers into his eyes and ultimately killed him

(spoilers) oh thank god they saved her. at the very least that's something redeemable about the book, though there was NO need to start the novel off by killing her

annoyed w this book's constant assertion that violence is bad when returned to oppressors. (spoilers) you have this literal transphobic serial killer kidnapping trans women to kill them and enid, who isn't even a MC, still goes :/ idk how i feel about *murder* though....

(spoilers, cw transmisogyny) 86 pages later we finally follow up to the fact that the only introduced trans woman was murdered........

how is newitz not at all aware that the feminism they criticize is the exact same they employ by having a white woman speak for several brown maghrebi women....

i haven't taken so many notes on a book since high school. i'm screaming w my mouth shut. "I needed something that would lead them gently away from that Great Moments in White Feminism playbook. If they met Aseel and Salina and the others, they might find it harder to team up with Comstock to destroy their sisters on the Midway. What would appeal to these women?" what kinda white savior bullshit...

"It was like we were defending a little town in the Maghreb against the Alexandrian army." not to be moroccan on main but [vomits]. what an orientalist and trivializing way to phrase that. every time a character other than tess or beth has a problem, it's minimized.

the obsession w historical racism is unreal. there's no need to point out the orientalist nature of the taunts aseel faces when it's the narrative itself that's explicitly calling her them. the book constantly shoehorns historical racism and then goes in to comment on how its wrong, when there are ways it could simply avoid mentioning the racist part explicitly.

(SPOILERS) also the fact that the author often establishes the diversity in this book in the wake of violence.... like soojin lashing out at their social studies teacher and for the first time explicitly saying she's korean bc he fetishized her and called her a china doll.... tess being established as jewish only after an antisemitic hate crime.......

its crazy to me how every woman of color in this book is portrayed as more aggressive and violent than the white main characters. i thought maybe soojin would be the exception so there'd be some depth but....

cw pedophilia. there's just. so much this book tries to cover and it's not doing it very well. i don't think there was a need for the underground abortion clinic guy to be creepy or their teacher be a pedophile. like. there is too much happening at any point in this story

the lukewarm liberalism of all of this..... "'i like her ideas about free love, but violence is always the wrong way forward.' that gave me a pang of relief. i couldn't team up with people who liked to watch things burn." are you for real? at this point in time in-universe, slavery has Just Barely ended

something unsettling abt a white author putting the words "she's passing as white. i don't understand how she can say she wants freedom for all when she won't even admit what her real background is. i mean, a lot of people would benefit from seeing a colored lady telling white men what to do" into the mouth of a brown woman

have yet to be introduced to a character of color that isn't used as a tool by either white female protag... the only introduced trans woman was killed within the first 45 pages... was there no sensitivity reader?

This is a very novel take on time travel. And misogyny.