Kaia > Recent Status Updates

Now I'm wondering, did she actually do some research, or did she get lucky with the sinkhole thing? Parts of Rhode Island are built over old mines, so an occurrence like the one described, while rare, would be possible, but did Gray know that?

Had to give Einstein his first ever bath today. He took it a lot better than I expected him to.

Can we please stop calling fashion and makeup and beauty that isn't "natural" shallow, please? What's actually shallow is an unwillngness to accept that there are as many kinds of beauty as there are stars in the sky. Appreciating nice clothes and makeup isn't shallowness, it's part of a person's identity, so fuck off with that shit.

Wait, whoa. This is supposed to take place in Rhode Island? Man, there better be fucking Del's lemonade and that horrible cheeseless pizza crap, and someone had better mention the bubble in this high school, or I'm gonna feel cheated.

How about we prefer neither "bitch" nor "witch" because both are gendered slurs meant to demean women and Kendall may be a fucking asshat, but misogyny will not solve that problem, trust me.

I know it must look like I'm trying to commit seppuku via shitty YA, but I genuinely thought this sounded interesting and hope it's good. Please try not to take too much pleasure in my pain if it turns out I'm just being horribly naive.

"Luke slew around, excruciatingly slowly, it seemed, as the knife left Valentine's hand and flew toward him like a silver butterfly [...]" Goddamnit, Clare, I give you a tiny bit of praise, and the next thing you do is that. Butterflies fly like drunken anvils, not like expertly thrown knives.

I'll give credit where credit is due, this is pretty tense right now. There are moments where Clare shows signs of being a capable writer, but she needs to learn and grow more, and she needs to be taken under hand, and I don't see that happening.

"She felt her heart flutter hard against the inside of her chest, like a hummingbird's rapid wing beat." o.O Is this a bad time to mention that some hummingbirds beat their wings up to 200 times per second?

"His hands slipped from his throat, and he crashed to the ground like a tree falling." TIM-BERRRR. (Oh come on, like you would've been able to resist.)

He just put a dirty blade back into its sheath!? Omg, why!? You don't do that! You never do that! Why don't YA authors ever learn a fucking thing about the weapons their characters are using?

"They fell in a clattering pile, like Tinkertoys." While the imagery of that simile made some sense this time, I'm not sure a YA author should date themselves that severely. Might as well just be like "Hi, I'm < insert name here > and I haven't been a teenager in a really fucking long time."

"Don't get upset? You're telling me that my dad is a guy who's basically an evil overlord, and you want me not to get upset?" Yeah, I kinda gotta side with Clary on this one. Sure, her reaction isn't as dramatic as losing her hand, howling denial and dropping off the bottom of Cloud City, but we can't have everything, can we?

As ham-fisted and unsubtle a Nazi metaphor as Voldemort and the Deatheaters are, Valentine and the Circle are even worse.

Oh, Luke is a werewolf. Gosh, I'm so shocked. Good thing the mysterious wall-mounted manacles they found in his place weren't a dead fucking giveaway or anything.

There go the flashbacks to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I mean fuck, there's even a magic cup involved.

The cat is "yowling like a foghorn."

THE CAT IS YOWLING LIKE A FOGHORN!

THE CAT IS YOWLING LIKE A FOGHORN!

What in the everloving fucking fuck, Clare?

"She felt a bright surge of shame that burst behind her eyelids like a small sun." I have no clue what that even means.

"a voice like wind blowing trash across empty pavement" So um...sort of light and wooshy with the occasional rustle or what? A LOT OF THINGS COUNT AS TRASH! Cigarette butts are trash, for cripes sake.

"Alec mumbled an affirmative, while Isabella shook her head in a vigorous nod." Oh fuck it, I'm going to bed. >.<

So Jace thinks Clary is beautiful because she doesn't know she's beautiful. Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, there are literally not enough ews in the world for that.

You know, I think the worst part of this book is that every now and then, there's a scene depicting teenage emotional turmoil with a great deal of honesty and even some skill. And then I don't know who I want to shake more, Clare, or all the people who never whipped her into shape.

"The apple tasted green and cool." For once, I'm going to examine this quote from an synesthetic point of view. And from a synesthetic point of view: Green doesn't have a very nice taste and that sentence probably hurt me more than it hurt most people. Blech. I'm having flashbacks to grass-flavored Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans right now.

"When Jace opened the greenhouse door, the scent hit Clary, soft as the padded blow of a cat's paw [...]" OMIGOD STOP WITH THE CAT SIMILES THEY ALL SUCK STOP!

Acid this, poison that. Is this a book or an apothecary?

"Rain would burst this heat bubble like a pricked blister." Ewww. No. Just no. Stop it, Clare.

"The steps creaked and groaned as they ascended, like an old woman complaining about her aches and pains." NOT EVERY GODDAMN THING NEEDS A SIMILE! And if you think that's what complaining about aches and pains sounds like, you oughtta spend a day at my house when it's raining.

"Clary wondered if there were any ugly vampires, or maybe any fat ones. Maybe they didn't make vampires out of ugly people. Or maybe ugly people just didn't want to live forever." Clary, shut up and die in a fire.

Clever? Jace and Clary? They just followed a vampire into a vampire pit. They have no backup, only one of them is armed and trained, and no one knows where they are. All for a Harry Potter ripoff that got turned into a rat. They are many things, but clever ain't one of them.

"They walk like cats and spring with the swiftness of serpents." Can you believe there isn't a single gif of a bouncing coil-shaped snake to be found on the internet? Not a one. I am so disappointed.