#sooz

Relsay Dump #1!!!

Overall, as much as I like Sooz as a character, I could not find the story as compelling as I expected it to be. I may have not paid the right amount of attention, maybe I had a different set of expectations. Peter's prose is wonderful as always, but I really could not enjoy it fully. Just my personal, very quick, 2 cents.

That being said, I must address my man Peter Beagle.

Peter, what in the flying fuck?

That scene came out of nowhere – not even 1/3 of the story in – was uncalled for, and serves basically no purpouse other than traumatizing Sooz and "open her eyes" to the darkness of the world. Peter, no! No, no, no! Why falling into the cheap trope of SA as a plot device for the development of a female character? I cannot even praise the way Sooz is written after the fact, how it affects her but does not make her a helpless victim, because that would mean accepting a way too low bar that is much too common in fiction.

I do not agree with other reviews who criticized the scene for being too dark and out of place within the Last Unicorn lore. TLU universe is pretty dark in itself — the very existential woe of the Lady Amalthea is dark, Lìr getting senile in "Two Hearts" is dark, Schmendrick planning to unalive himself in "The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon" is dark, and let's not forget about Molly (who deserves an entire analysis on her own, god bless her). Sooz getting SA'd makes no sense because it has no reason to be there. Plain and simple.

It was baffling – and heart-wrenching – to see such a misstep from an author like Peter. I don't believe there was ill intent, just a poor plot choice that lead to an unnecesarily cruel scene with no real purpouse. Yes, these things happen in real life and they are senseless, traumatizing, and cruel for no reason, but that's why they should not be used lightly in fiction as a cheap trope to build a female character. This is what makes it even worse to see it in Peter's work, because the man knows and can do better.

Just to be clear, I do not advocate for censorship, which I am against. I am for awareness, though, and I believe that especially people who work with words should be mindful. There are work of fiction that deal with such topics and handle the matter in a contextualized way. Sensitive issues should not be silenced or removed from fiction. The problems raise when these issues get mishandled or misused, and Peter served us a perfect example of it. That's a huge pity but also a humbling memento that anyone can step into shit.

Alright so first off, @it-is-sooz-again is so incredibly talented and she made me into this beautiful mermaid.

But that's not all! I also commissioned her to draw my two main characters in my original fiction and she brought them to life in the most amazing way.

Look at them! They're beautiful and perfect and exactly how I imagined them. It makes me want to write faster than humanly possible to tell their story.