ACOTAR: Chapter 2

[atualamadeus]

Chapter 2 this morning, as I have a lot of academic reading going forward. Chapter 3 will be read once I finish this paper. 

1. "...my knees shaking." Good (pg. 8) - Glad to see some actual sign of weakness from her. Should not be coming in this late, but whatever.

 

2. "Through a living painting" Slightly better way to work in the beauty topic (pg. 8) - I don't think it's a bad thing for her to like art, but it was very much shoved at us in an already very exposition-heavy chapter. Would have been much better to see moments like this in the first chapter as opposed to the "there is no time for beauty anymore" thing. Also, there clearly is time for beauty. She is seeing it in moments like this. More on this later.

 

3. "...near-dizzying hunger" Finally (pg. 8) - I am just glad to see some other symptoms of hunger outside of being skinny. Why did we have to wait for the second chapter to get here.

 

4. "I didn't need to discern their words....I smiled a bit nonetheless" Katniss syndrome but worse (pg. 8) - I just dislike it when it's one Serious Dramatic Character Who Is So Special Compared To The Others. Especially when the other characters are being demeaned for liking feminine things.

 

5. "My father..." Why no more capitalization (pg. 8) - Last chapter her father was capitalized. This time it is not, and it's not capitalized again going forward. Passing this off as an editing issue.

 

6. "Feyre!" thank god (pg. 10) - Finally! A name! Again. Why am I having to wait until the next chapter for this information. Why did I get random names that mean nothing to me before I got her name. To be honest, I have absorbed enough ACOTAR media via osmosis to have known this going in. I knew her name was Feyre before I started the book. But I am trying to act as blind as possible for this.

 

7. "the hair all three of us had" whyyyy (pg. 10) - I just really dislike lazy exposition. Three character appearances down with one stone! Now to describe their eye colors constantly.

 

8. "The undercurrent of hunger...beside her deathbed" She's sooo not like other girls (pg. 10) - I think there will be a better moment for me to really dig into why I dislike the sisters in both how they are written as individuals and how they are leveraged against Feyre. They are so shallow and flimsy, and not in a well-developed annoying character way.

 

9. "...my father's eyes..." :/ (pg. 10) - I just don't know if constantly throwing peoples appearances at the reader all at once is a great method. It's just always such an awkward ordeal every time it's done. My usual rule for this is that a good description for character appearances comes in mostly all at once, with a focus on a single character at a time. It should not be a list of traits nor should it zoom in too much. Give us an impression, a gesture. An emotional feel for the type of space they take up in the room. Specific details if necessary, especially if it's a trait that really makes them stand out from other characters. Smaller things can come in later. And do not put two descriptions too close together. That's not a hard rule, but those are the descriptions that I routinely enjoy.

 

10. "And it hadn't stopped her...underneath the chairs and tables" I just dislike these flashbacks (pg. 11) - I just don't like how memories are often approached in first person narratives. It's just always very awkward and jarring when it's a single paragraph flash back. I wish there were other ways that this could have been communicated.

 

11. "his face spotless--like my sisters" What does this mean (pg. 11) - Perhaps I missed a detail that clarified this but like... spotless of what. Blemishes? Blood? Freckles? Of a specific emotion? Just not too sure what this is doing.

 

12. "I finished, more to myself......they'd heard me, anyway" This just feels unrealistic (pg. 12) - The sisters are stuck between very dismissive of Feyre and being very reliant on her. I know they are supposed to be annoying burdens that she takes care of because Family or whatever, but they just aren't very consistent with being annoying little shits. They don't seem to care if she comes back from the woods, but she's also their only source of food. It'd be much better if they were invested in her return, but paid more attention to the food than they did Feyre. And I do think that SJM is trying to get there, but she just isn't going for it. SJM seems very reluctant to have a character commit to having a strong personality/compass. They have very weak foundations, they wobble around and act differently depending on whatever would make the plot move forward faster.

 

13. "He hadn't bothered...but not that much" Am I allowed to be surprised that there is 0 infrastructure or guild for hunting (pg. 13) - Weird complaint. I just find it strange that hunting seems to be a common way to get food, yet there seems to be zero community organization. I also don't have an actual gauge for how big or small their village it, outside of there being a bigger one somewhere else. Katniss Everdeen syndrome strikes again, but it just doesn't land. Katniss had 0 hunting infrastructure because it was illegal to hunt at all. Feyre has 0 hunting infrastructure or guild for unknown reasons. Is there one that she just isn't apart of? Would it not be in her interest to try and work with others? Is the community too fractured for it to work? I just feel like we are being given a lot of shit about how Hungry They Are without any other solutions being mentioned outside of hunting.

 

14. "She drew out the two syllables of my name--fay-ruh--" OK this is funny (pg. 13) - A silly answer to the "how the fuck do you pronounce this fantasy name" question.

 

15. "I took my time...'chop wood today'" Is this Cinderella or something? (pg. 14) - All that's missing is the evil stepmother, which honestly may be made up for my the passive father who lets his two daughters bully their sister. Not a real complaint, closer to a genuine question.

 

16. "you're so much better at it! It takes you half the time it takes me" More of this, less of whatever the rest of this chapter has been (pg. 14) - This is good. This is what I was talking about back up in #12. Acknowledgement that Feyre does helpful things, but also pushing her to do said thing. Weaponized incompetence. Trying to make Feyre feel good about her survival kills and do them more. But this is really all I get in this chapter.

 

17. "and the night sky--whorls of yellow stars standing in for white--around mine" Tangled core (pg. 15) I am seeing a pattern! No actual critique on this, it just makes me giggle. Yeah, girl. You are a Disney princess.

 

18. "...sketch and paint..." Cool, why that awkward bit in the start (pg. 16) - See #2. We are all of a sudden getting all this stuff about beauty and art after we have Beauty And Art shoved at us in the previous chapter. Would have loved to have just had little moments and details like this throughout the book instead of a paragraph about it.

 

19. "...and the vow I'd made" So melodramatic (pg. 16) - No more notes than that. Melodramatic mention of a vow that separates her from her family. Cool. Please, keep telling me about how different she is from other girls.

 

20. "I returned to my sisters...second-rate social circle" The lack of change in them is annoying (pg. 17) - These girls would have died in high society. Rigidity can be a good flaw in a character, but these girls are so ridged that it's actually stunting them. See #12. Again, their fall from grace and how that interacts with their pride just is not done well.

 

21. "You can't chop wood for us, but you want to marry a woodcutters son?" Warrants a giggle (pg. 17) - That's a goofy set up. Would be even better if Nesta's sense of self and pride was well defined, so this contradiction felt purposeful instead of a clumsy laugh.

 

22. "so you can have enough time to paint your glorious masterpieces" Girl that was years ago but whatever (pg. 17) - Feyre painting the house was years ago. Is this supposed to be a good "gatcha!" moment? I think the fact that I can't tell is a bad sign.

 

23. "Maybe tomorrow I'd just scrape it off all together" Its so obvious but I guess it works (pg. 18) - Will be elaborated on more in the next quote. Heavy handed metaphor for fears of being forgotten/loss of hope. It works! But at what cost.

 

24. "I stood from the table...'There is no such thing'" Dawg. (pg. 20) - Look. I know what is trying to be done here. I do! But it is being done poorly. Feyre's love to art and beauty is connected to how much hope she has. Before this moment, we are told that it used to be second nature to look at her surroundings as a piece of art. SJM is playing hot potato with this concept, asserting that Feyre doesn't look at the world a certain way often before having her doing just that, completely disconnected with the previous statement of how rarely she does that. The paints are faded and cracked, but dialogue infers that she still has a strong connection to it. Which one is it? Did the kill give her hope, and so she immediately begins to see beauty again? If so, that should be driven in more. Is this just how she sees the world, regardless of how much hope she has? If so, we shouldn't have had that moment in Ch.1 asserting how rare of a moment these things are. At the moment it just reads as a half-baked concept. I would like to see little to no artistic description for the environment until she has her Hope Restored. Who knows if we are going to get that, but that is what I am hoping for. Or perhaps some theme of "hope never actually dies, you've just try to ignore it" with a continuation of artistic renderings. 

Final thoughts on Chapter 2: Many things in here that should have been in the first chapter. Many things that fall a bit flat because of how they were introduced in the first chapter. Art metaphor is not well developed enough for me to like it. Nesta and Elain feel very weak with their ungratefulness. I can see the threads that SJM is trying to pull, the little ideas she has about how characters act and work. She's just doing a piss poor job at developing them.