Tbh I find the choice to lean in to cringe humor of a specific era is really intentional on a couple different levels..

on the most basic level, it’s a way to purposely set the protagonist as a person apart. She doesn’t belong. It shows, constantly. She talks about things that no one else connects to, sees the world through contexts and dynamics that mostly only make sense to her. This bridges up to her continued resistance to conforming or masking. She could try to blend in more, submit more, but instead as a part of the wider act of villainy/subversion/authentic commitment to being herself—or being unavoidably connected to something she otherwise doesn’t see as herself, like the body she found herself in and her assigned place/role in the royal hierarchy/society—even when revealing those aspects is deemed tacky, sinful, unbecoming, low status, or otherwise socially disadvantageous.. she just ignores what is expected of her and makes her jokes, for herself, talks as though she doesn’t need to make sense to anyone but herself. It’s protective.

I think there’s a sadness in that embrace of the disconnect, too. Her choosing to not see others as people but as characters is a half conscious half unconscious divorcing from empathy for her peers to protect herself from the risks inherent in trying to form attachments. She knows they won’t see her as a person or give her access to choice/agency so preemptively she doesn’t try to be a person or part of their reality either. I think there’s jokes made that aren’t even really supposed to be entertaining to the reader or about breaking the fourth wall—it’s not really meant for us to always relate or connect to her any more than the people she’s talking with/at… or at least, it’s like a trust fall, a test. The challenge is, are We patient enough to see there are things we won’t feel the same way about that are honestly superficial, like enjoying talking about Batman even when it’s clear no one in the room will know who he is? And literate enough to notice when the joke’s aren’t even about Rae getting joy from making them or having fun any more? Part of her growing into her own is coming to understand exactly what she sacrifices in giving up on trying to connect with others.

Separately, part of what I’m taking away from this book is a long reflection on how I integrate the stories I read in genres like power fantasy and wish fulfillment into my own identity and sense of how connected I am to the very real relationships I participate in… Like, what the reader Wants from a story over and above what a Story Wants To Be, and how is that possible? How might that even work? A lot of fiction is finding entertainment in watching a hypothetical person’s suffering progress in front of us, perhaps preferably with really good jokes and some kissing and maybe some gore… I don’t know. Might just be beating a dead horse here, might be the takeaway is it’s just a book with humor that doesn’t quite land and didn’t do the thing as well as it could have, but I feel like am I on to something 🤷🏻