Welcome back! Anna and Jeffrey are once again joined by Charles of the insightful and hilarious podcast, When Will it End? Up for discussion: chapters 42-43 of A Court of Thorns & Roses, much to the chagrin of Jeffrey. Join the three of them as they dive into the fun world of nouns and relationship labels before a quick detour into Survivor. What is this podcast really about? Well, Charles tries to draw the comparison between these media empires, but it might be a stretch.

Chapter 42 opens with a sex scene that Jeffrey and Charles find poorly written. The logistics of this is strange - why did Amarantha allow Tamlin to sneak away to speak with Feyre? Why don't they speak to one another? Why isn't Tamlin encouraging Feyre? No gratitude, no thanks, no words... just fondling. Is it purposeful? Is it a depiction of who Tamlin really is as a partner? Anna says that we have to wait till book two. Damn. Anna defends the first person narrative structure as a way to depict Feyre's loneliness and Tamlin's inability to act/love and she does remind Jeffrey and Charles that the nadir of their feelings for Tamlin is shared by all, so we all have that to bond over.

They have a back and forth about whether or not this book is good, whether SJM is brilliant in her writing, and whether the sexy scene in chapter 42 is written well. Anna defends as the boys disparage - how typical. Charles, with gumption, agrees to write his own version and is presented here and read by him. We'll let the listeners make up their minds about it. Charles notes that Garth Greenwell is a male author who he believes writes sex scenes well.

Rhysand's character becomes more complex as Tamlin's becomes more one dimensional. Who are we supposed to root for? Rhysand spends time with Feyre opening up about his feelings while Tamlin has spent most of his time with her being closed off. Has Tamlin been handicapped by the curse or is he just garbage? You bet that that's discussed at length.

Chapter 43 is all about the third task. It's fairly quick, though brutal. Feyre finds herself in an impossible task - take the life of three fairies to save Tamlin. Anna, Jeffrey, and Charles discuss what fairy they would embody when faced with death and whether or not they could perform this task. Is it difficult to kill people you don't know for the greater good? What say you, listener? Because Feyre spends a lot of time discussing how horrifying this task is and there is shock in the studio - Anna and Charles were blown away by this scene. This scene is great and tense and interesting... Until Feyre goes on her vision quest. What the hell was that?

What does all of this mean for Feyre moving forward? Will she be able to move past this? And what a cliffhanger - does Tamlin survive?!?!

There is discussion about suicide, rape, and sexual assault in these chapters. If any of these topics bother you, perhaps this episode is not for you.

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On this weeks very special episode of Weekly Maas, Anna and Jeffrey are joined by Charles, host of When Will it End? Charles is an author, critic, and wonderful friend who read A Court of Thorns & Roses just to be a guest for this episode. True work ethic.

Y'all know how to pronounce Feyre's name? Because it's questionable that Charles does. Listen in as we talk about authors such as Amy Hempel and Ann Patchett, wonder at the 1st person narrative structure of this book, and hear Anna's hot take that Bloomsbury is forcing SJM to write this series. Charles gives us his unique description of falling in love that feels... inarticulatable. But can they relate that to Feyre and Tamlin's supposed love? They certainly try. Charles gives us some hot takes that focus on etymology, paternal failure, and Prythian's class system.

The trio discusses Feyre's self-hate as she attempts to conquer her second... trial... task? Perhaps Feyre's self-loathing for her illiteracy isn't necessary, but the fact that she can't read matters during the second trial! Charles is astounded by Feyre's love for painting and speaks to why it distressing him so. Anna talks eloquently about her love for the Throne of Glass series and rags on ACOTAR and their fans... who are all of you, supposedly. Who is the audience for any of this? They're trying to figure it out. They try to take on chapter 40, but in the incisive words of Charles, "while there's lots of chapters and lots of pages... Not much happens." Anna agrees and they all decide this chapter isn't really worth discussing. Except for the part where Feyre tries to figure out if the first lever, the second lever, or the third lever is the one to pull. Square her reasoning, please. They all imagine Feyre dying again, but alas, this is written in first person, past-tense.

Discussing the nature of eyeball licking, they wonder at what the boundary of sexual assault is versus assault. Charles brings up the salient point that most things one would do with a tongue with another person is generally sensual if not outright sexual. Juries out.

Chapter 42 is a mess of storytelling. We don't know anything about the magic system, we don't know who sends Feyre her musical vision, we don't understand why Feyre is so self-deprecating, we don't understand why we get more about Feyre's painting fetish, and we don't understand the contrived meeting of Feyre and the Attor. This chapter... oh boy.

Charles dives deep on the passage of time for Feyre. Why does Feyre only recognize the world around her as if the world is constantly sneaking up on her? What does it say about the author that she focuses so heavily on the passage of time in this manner? Is this a failure of writing or the failure of first person as a structural device for this story? Maybe both. Who knows?

After having a brief discussion of grammar (do we like em-dashes?), Anna, Jeffrey, and Charles close out the episode by discussing Feyre's vision. She may have entered this magical musical vision suicidally, but she comes out calm and willing to persevere to live another day. They come to the conclusion that Feyre must be disassociating from life, constantly.

Aren't we all?

Want more of Charles? Did you fall in love? We sure did. You can find him on his own podcast, When Will It End, available on all places you may find podcasts. It's fun, it's insightful, it's interesting - it's everything you want a podcast about movie franchises to be.

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Ever wonder if ChatGPT could write a punk-pop love anthem? Us too, apparently. Come listen to Weekly Maas this week to find out what our thoughts are about that! In this weeks episode, Anna and Jeffrey discuss chapters 38-39 of A Court of Thorns and Roses. It's probably better that they discuss this book because Anna fell asleep during A Nightmare Before Christmas and couldn't tell you the resolution of Sally's unrequited love for Jack. Instead, they'll chat about Feyre's requited love for Tamlin. Boo.

Jeffrey gives his second weak synopsis in a row, though he does try to defend himself. Once they begin chatting about these chapters, Jeffrey immediately regales us with a memory of watching Fantasia in music class in elementary school. Relevant? Probably not. Getting back to the plot of this book, Feyre is given some impossible cleaning tasks and is helped along in them by faeire patrons. Jeffrey confronts the sexism of pet names while discussing Lucien's mother who happens to come along and save Feyre from her first cleaning task. Do y'all think it's nice to have your physical attributes attached to the land you live in? In Lucien's mother's case, it's very pleasant. More importantly, fuck, marry, kill: rice, bread, pasta. Let's go.

Feyre's next task is to clean up never-ending lentils from a dirty hearth and thank god this is Rhysand's room because we're about to get an exposition dump. We learn some key info from this tête-à-tête: Rhysand has greater potential base powers than the other High Lords; all the High Lords have unique powers; all the High Lords can shape-shift; Rhysand's shape-shifted form is some kind of bird/bat-like creature; nobody can help Feyre with the riddle because Amarantha has willed it so; Amarantha's power is so immense that she can force everyone to stop breathing at any moment. This is all some key world-building information. What will Feyre do with it? Probably nothing.

After checking out Google's NGram viewer to look up words Jeffrey doesn't know, they discuss Feyre's makeover before being forced to drink faerie wine that makes her black out while Rhysand does what he wants with her at court parties. Anna tried on some sac's for work the other day... is the sac-look basically what Feyre is wearing? They spend a lot of time discussing these sacs, that's for sure. Rhysand is getting very creepy - calling Feyre his property, dressing her in risqué clothing, drugging her, making her dance in front of the court... this guy sucks. Tamlin has no reaction to any of this. Is he ensorcelled? Anna seems to be a Rhysand apologist as Lucien turns up to berate Feyre for saving herself from dying. Why does Lucien suck in this moment? Later on, Rhysand notes that he saved Feyre to save Tamlin, which leads Anna and Jeffrey to wonder about Tamlin and Rhysand's prior relationsip... were they besties in the past? Lovers, maybe? Why do they hate each other now? Who knows?

The final set piece for these chapters is Rhysand most likely saving the secret of potential rebellion coming Amarantha's way from the Summer Court. Why would Rhysand protect the High Lord of the Summer Court in such a way? What's in it for him? Is he just picking up future favors? Is he trying to bring Amarantha down? We do figure out that Rhysand's theme song is "Get Free" by The Vines. Feyre begins wondering all these same questions as well, though, as ever with Feyre, her thoughts generally lead nowhere.

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