Cringe is dead, long live cringe!

The way Pam and Harl's relationship adapts to accept the Harley/Harleen split makes my heart swell.

The way Pam sees the difference between her girlfriends.

And assures her that she accepts and loves all sides of her.

And does what she can to accommodate Harleen's memory holes.

The core relationship of this book is just so sweet and positive in accepting things as they are without judgment or pushing. Just acceptance and love.

And after finding that in our own life, I know what a powerfully positive thing it can be.

But the Harley/Harleen relationship is well handled too. There's friction and denial at the start but the two develop and trust one another by the end and Harley takes a seat as my favorite kind of character, the morally ambiguous protector.

I love the way Harley's protectiveness of Harleen is depicted and how she tries so hard to keep her from interacting with the criminal underworld of Gotham.

It's just saccharine and kind.

Highly recommend the book to anyone who just wants soft and kind plurality vibes. Heaven knows the majority of the fiction involving split personalities are flooded with angst and darkness and though this book contains a few dark plot beats like DV it never feels painful or sorrow inducing.

likes caviar and cigarettes

is well versed in etiquette

is extraordinarily nice

see, we generally have a rule that if you wanna pick up a stick, it has to be the length of or shorter than your elbow to the tip of your finger. which stick cult followed for a long time! they battled gently with sticks, or marched around with them, or built castles. it was a pretty good way for them to spend their breaktimes. sometimes we'd have a stick thrown into the coyote or fox enclosure, or theyd chant 'stick cult stick cult stick cult' too loud and we'd have to tell them off, but it was pretty okay for ~3 years. it got passed down from older kids to younger, etc.

all that was fine, until the Fire Nation Rock Cult attacked. see the rock cult was exactly the same as the stick cult- but with rocks. and we dont have a lot of big rocks on site, but we have a lot of gravel- and you can't really play fight with rocks the same as you can with sticks- but you can throw them. and rock cult was INSISTENT on usurping stick cult, to the point where we had multiple friendships end (for the day) due to it. we also got gravel in some kids eyes- it was a whole issue. then stick cult started picking up bigger sticks in retaliation and we had to stop the whole thing altogether

eventually (due to conservative parent complaints) the cults had to be ended. they lived on in spirit in rock castle & stick crew, who we eventually convinced to work together on building a large eagle sized bird nest on the decommissioned well.