#abfe

Hello I'm so sorry idk how to answer asks privately BUT yes I still like the book!!!!! It was a neurodivergent special interest of mine so it still lives in my heart. I was the same way you are for like a year, I was trying SOOOOOO hard to get ANYONE to talk to me about this book and fuckin no one did (edit: one friend let me ramble at him but it's Not The Same). I still think about it all the time even tho I recently was able to start reading other books (seriously my special interest in AART/ABFE made me incapable of reading anything else for several months omfg).

I want to reread the Carl duology actually so that I can make a proper criticism of it because while I loved it so so sos ososososososososo much, it felt like the author refused to make the final leap in logic when it comes to power structures. Hank Green is a capitalist so he wasn't about to call out capitalism itself as the issue that needs to be dismantled, instead treating it as something that can be reformed. It really does the characters and the message of the book a disservice and made the ending feel somewhat dystopian to me as a Socialist.

BUT!!!!!!! I still love the series so much holy shit, the way my brain exploded when I found out that it had GAY WOMEN and the way my brain exploded again over how relatable April May is........... like I hate to say "she's so me!" but she's so me... the ADHD of it all, the "hating carefully-crafted internet personas was part of my carefully-crafted internet persona" of it all, the INSANE GODDAMN TWISTS (grape jelly really fucking got me), the way the characters are genuinely unlikable at times just like real people, Carl inhabiting a fucking monkey and speaking through an Alexa, like........ obsessed, OBSESSED, it's such a good series. It actually inspired me to write an entire 200-page fanfiction and then I went off and made my own story with a couple of side characters inspired by the question "what if Peter Petrawicki had a midlife bisexual crisis"

An Absolutely Remarkable Redraw!