A lovely reader helped me out yesterday by informing me that there really is a Cascia Hall (the school that the vampyres bought the building from).  And, while one could call that building French Norman, it’s still not neo-anything, nor is it castle-like.  At best, it looks like a manor.  Which is not the same as a castle in the least! 

My hate for this series continues, as it’s a Catholic school.  Because at every turn, this book has to remind people that vampyres are better than Christians.  Additionally, while I’m sure there is drug use going on there, I could find no news stories about a big scandal, which the book also lays claim to.  It is a predominantly upper-class school, but the tuition is not out of the range of careful middle class parents, so it’s not like it’s one of those runaway-extravagant rich schools.  It seems like just a normal place with the normal run of people.  The book could have just as easily said they went bankrupt like so many other places these days, or that the school had just been fading out for a while and it was time to close.

But, no, they’re Catholic and have money.  Instead let’s go with drug abuse!  And then mock them for it.

Back to the chapter.  So, Zoey goes to the dining hall.  It’s awesome and pretty and So Much Better Than Your School.  And also pretty rich.  It’s alright to deride human rich private students.  They…deserve it?  But vampyres can live the same lifestyle with impunity.  Because fuck logic, that’s why.

and a crystal goblet that was filled with something that looked suspiciously like red wine. (Huh? Wine at school? What?)

One page ago you were whining about how scared you were that you might have to drink blood for dinner, and now you’re looking at a pitcher of red liquid and you think it’s wine?  I swear, sometimes I want to take your nose and rub it in the book like a bad puppy so you can see what you’ve done.  Maybe that would help you keep in mind stuff that you said ONE FUCKING PAGE AGO.

The girls go to a regular serving line to get their food, but there’s also a table set in the middle of the room for Nyx, and it’s full of food.  SR explains that it’s an offering to Nyx.  Because, again, this is clearly a religion we’re dealing with here, the book just fails to acknowledge that.  It does have Zoey think that the offering ‘feels right,’ so apparently this is the One True Religion.  How could it be anything else when our fucking Mary Sue of a main character just ‘instinctively’ knows that it’s right.

The school serves regular food (only, you know, better quality than your school, because we’re still stuck on that) and SR informs Zoey that they will have to drink blood.  Just…apparently not right now, since they don’t get any.

SR takes her to a table of friends and makes introductions.  The author is still stuck on SR having an ‘Okie accent,’ even though Zoey grew up in Oklahoma, why is this a thing?  *sigh*  Okay, personal story time again.  I grew up in Texas.  I don’t have much of an accent.  (Well, not a distinctly Texan on, anyway.)  I have family members who are from a different part of Texas and have a heavy accent.  I know they sound different than I do, but they’re not exactly foreign.  It’s an accent that I heard all the time, because I lived in the region it came from.  I was not tripped up by talking to my cousins.  I didn’t constantly think about their accent.  After all of about a second, it would fade out of my consciousness, and I wouldn’t notice it unless they did something really strange to a word.

“And this is the token guy in our group, Damien Maslin. But he’s gay, so I don’t really think he counts as a guy.”

Oh…oh, I’m going to have to hurt someone now.

I don’t even think there’s anything I say to this.  Like, what, should I point out the PAINFULLY FUCKING OBVIOUS?  I don’t see why.  Anyone who can’t tell that gay guys are still guys probably isn’t going to change their mind because of me.  But how do you get any deeper than that?  I’m at a loss for why anyone would need more than “Uh, fuckwad, he’s a dude.”  The concept is just so utterly natural to me that I’m at a complete loss when people apparently need it explained.

Well, not a complete loss.  I know where it comes from.  Some people can’t seem to shake the idea that all relationships have to have a heteronormative identity.  There can be two guys in it, but one has to fall into the masculine role and one has to fall into the feminine role.  It’s what people grew up with, those roles, and apparently they can’t be told “no, that’s what gay is.  It’s not about the dicks, it’s about being in a masculine role and also being attracted to a masculine role.  And also about the dicks, but really, that’s a secondary issue.”  So I get where the idea comes from, I get that people can be really stubborn and not listen, I’m just at a loss for what to write here except “you’re fucking wrong and I hate you.”

Oh, here we go: if gay guys fall into ‘the dude’ and ‘the chick,’ who’s to say than Damien isn’t one of ‘the dude’ types?  Even in the realm of its own idiocy, the book is still stupid. 

Then there’s…um… “I mean, in me you get the male point of view and you don’t have to worry about me wanting to touch your boobies.”

Because lord knows it would be just far too much to expect for a straight guy to respect you enough to leave your boobs alone.

Do you know where so many gendered stereotypes come from?  They’re not in-born, they’re learned.  And they’re learned through stuff like this.  If a guy hears, again and again, that he’s nothing more than a sex-obsessed rube who can’t stop himself from staring at boobs, THEN HE’S GOING TO STARE AT BOOBS.  He’s going to get that urge, as all people do, and instead of thinking “Oh, I should be respectful and treat her like a person instead of a rack to hang boobs on,” he’s just going to think about boobs.  He has no reason not to.  He’s been raised to expect that he can’t do anything else.  If you spend your whole life being told that you physically can’t resist sexual urges, and you’re taught this from a young age, are you going to put any effort into proving people wrong?

People, individually and as a group, tend to live up to the expectations placed on them.  We need to start expecting men to treat women equally, not just on the surface but in all things.  Expect them to think about more than sex and boobs.  Expect them to respect women as people and not dolls.  Yes, a lot of people will fall short at first, because it’s not like this change will be instantaneous.  But we have to set this standard before we can reach it.  We have to actually treat people as if they are falling short, not as if they are just being normal and there’s no point in even trying for a change.

Back to the gay stereotypes, Zoey goes on for a bit about how Damien isn’t effeminate.  Which might look like it’s bucking a stereotype, but it fails pretty hard when Zoey makes it clear that Damien is an exception to a known rule, not a correction to a mistaken perception.  She didn’t think all gay guys were girly; she claims to have known it from seeing it.  That just reinforces the stereotype, but while claiming Damien is special enough to exempt.

They talk for a bit, insulting every single other group in the school, and then get around to Aphrodite’s group by calling them stuck-up.  Pot, Kettle, you two should meet.  Zoey gets confused by the word ‘sycophant,’ so they have a short vocabulary lesson. 

Blah blah blah, more cussing and slurs against Aphrodite.  Apparently she’s part of a sorority-like group called ‘Dark Daughters.’  The whole group is evil and mean and slurs.

Oh, look, a black girl who is ‘curvy.’  *checks that off the stereotype list*  Her name is Shaunee and she’s the last of their little group.

Shaunee asks about the mark, and Zoey puts up the theory that it filled in because of her head-hitting accident.  It’s a story that has no sense or proof behind it, but it sounds plausible on the surface, so that makes it perfect as gossip fodder.

There’s some stupid banter.  It’s dull.  At least this is a proper place for teenagers to sound like teenagers, so there’s not much I can complain about.  They also fling around words like ‘fag’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘hag from hell’ and derogatory shit like it ain’t big thing, and I also want to punch things.  I mean, okay, fine.  Teenagers are like that.  But can we not hold up the worst parts of teenager-hood as if they are awesome and role-model worthy?  Just because something happens in real life doesn’t mean we should have to praise it for happening in real life.

We get a very long, draw-out explanation of the Dark Daughters (and Sons).  They’re a pep squad/honors club, but Zoey’s new friends hate them and call them mean.  Basically.  Hm, that’s…really boring.  Oh, and they hate humans.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she said insincerely.

“You’re not. We were just discussing the trash that needs to be taken out tonight,” Erin said with a big, fake smile.

It’s really hard to take someone seriously as an antagonist if absolutely no one in the story actually treats them like the Queen Bee.  This girl isn’t in charge of the school, so stop trying to claim she is.

Aphrodite comes over to invite Zoey into the Dark Daughters, because of her mark.  So…this is sort of like Mean Girls, except forgetting the part where Regina was super nice at first and Cady actually wanted to join.  Here, Aphrodite is just uniformly mean to everyone, all the time.  If she’d wanted Zoey to join up and get the popularity boost from her mark, she should have been nicer from the start and courted her into joining the group.  This set up here?  It makes no fucking sense, unless you assume that Aphrodite is just socially inept and got lumped in with a bunch of other social inepts that all happened to band together against the rest of the school’s ridicule.

Man, I feel sorry for Aphrodite.