Marked Redux: Chapter 2

[zelda_queen]

ZeldaQueen: So in the last chapter, Zoey was marked as a vampire and… not much else happened, really. She just whined a lot and made fun of people we didn’t know and never would. This is going to be a pattern. Ready for the next chapter, Ruin?

Ruin: In a masochistic sort of way, yes. Let us spork.

Comments

[stormswift]

A potentially tragic interpretation of this is that Zoey's mom understands that she's being abused by her husband, but endures it to keep his rage from transferring to her children. She's no longer a single mom with three young children; her family lives in a nice house in the suburbs with financial security. In the meantime, she receives the brunt of his control and abuse. She changes her reading habits, her religion, her behavior, and her style. She allows him to dictate who she sees and who her friends are. The more she submits, the less he harasses her children.

When Zoey comes home marked, Mom knows it's game over. There's no way her husband will ignore this like he usually ignores things, and she freaks out. She can't keep her daughter safe from vampires and she can't keep her safe from her husband. A crackdown on Zoey would mean a crackdown on the other children, too. Everything that she tried so hard to preserve is about to come crashing down.

And then Zoey throws that diatribe in her face.

[zelda_queen]

That's pretty much how I see it. It's really disgusting how the books treat her as nothing more than stupid and irresponsible. Even her own mother, the so wonderful Grandma Redbird, tells her she's incapable of making decisions without consulting men. While I'm sure the Cast Ladies didn't intend for it, the books give the horrible sense that we're supposed to hate Zoey's mom because she was a failure as a parent for ignoring her children and hooking up with an abusive guy.

[anonymous]

I have no clue what the Cast's stance on politics or feminism or homosexuality or liberalism or whatever but they seem to not understand anything they are preaching about at all and instead are just regurgitating the same old bigoted crap under the guise of progressiveness.

[zelda_queen]

I have no idea what their political standpoints are, and in all fairness, I didn't get much sense of political soapboxing in their writing (or at least, not as far in as I read). As for feminism and homosexuality, they definitely WANT to promote awareness and support for it. PC Cast's big appeal was supposed to be that she rewrote mythology with feminist twists to it. And as we'll be seeing later, the whole, "Homophobic bigots are horrible, horrible people" aesop is delivered to us with all the subtlety of an anvil

[lady_fofa]

Knowing how judgmental and unreliable our narrator is, what if the brother actually mostly played games like Animal Crossing? Wouldn't that be a twist.

[tarawyn]

Thongs, really? After all that shit about sluts? You'd think she'd be wearing comfortable briefs or "granny panties" or something... (I don't care if people wear thongs, but I hate judgemental hypocrites

[tarawyn]

One other thing-the paleness could be explained with one, tiny note. "Melanin production shuts down after the transformation." It's no longer necessary to protect yourself from the sun, and extremely pale coloration could allow crepuscular vitamin D synthesis (i.e. getting your sun from the brief, dim light at dawn and dusk)

Idea shamelessly stolen from herpetology, and the different UV needs of diurnal and nocturnal lizards.