#i........ god

[nicolos]

THEY LOOK TO BOOKER FOR COUNCIL. HE NODS.

[slyvered]

ok so like. the thing with the engelsfors trilogy is this: it’s giving you the raw, unedited teenage experience. there’s never any pretence. there’s never any preaching. we’re given 6 (ish) teenage girls in all their problematic, unreliable glory, and every single one of them brings her own mess to the table. they fuck up, often irrevocably. they hurt themselves and each other and they get angry and they make shitty decisions and these decisions are never justified. instead they’re explored and looked at from different perspectives and treated with such empathy, and what comes out isn’t a story of “6 girls set their differences aside to become awesome people and save the world!” but rather “6 girls are placed in an impossible situation that is unfathomably shitty and they all deal with it in the way that their specific background and upbringing has equipped them to”. it doesn’t matter which one of them you identify with or w/e cause you’re gonna understand where each and every one is coming from without it ever once being shown as an excuse for their shitty behavior. it’s fantasy sure but at its heart the engelsfors trilogy is an in-depth view of what it means to be 16 and have to re-evaluate your values ane identity alongside people that you would never have chosen for yourself. it’s flawed and it’s messy, and most of all it’s difficult to change and make mistakes and be held accountable for it all, but at the end of the day you don’t have any other choice - and no matter how bad it gets, you’re never, not once, alone. like i love going, found family trope! positive female relationships! girls helping girls as they learn and grow together! well-done and central wlw relationship!, as much as the next person but the fact that these things carry the weight that they do in the narrative is that it isn’t afraid to show just how ugly these things can get, while still managing to treat the characters and structures it deconstructs with respect. anyway that’s it for me thank you goodnight & stan vanessa dahl