I’m really glad you enjoyed at least the beginning, and also that you like the characters and dynamics!
A good portion of the story is fairly heavy, especially Vivietta's content. To do justice to such serious subjects some level of despair is probably inevitable, but the goal is to balance it with moments of levity—I really prefer dark subjects and dark fantasy, but I also don't like feeling too drained in the long term. In a lot of places I'm happy with that balance, but a lot of the writing is also quite old and hasn't been reviewed recently to avoid delaying new content any further—Ren improves all the time, so we could get in a long loop of fixing everything repeatedly. 😅
I can tell you liked a lot of aspects of it, so if it does seem like the kind of story you're interested in, I would be very interested to hear if there were particular segments that felt too down for too long—but if it doesn't and the setting is too generally depressing, I'd also be interested in thoughts on what would have conveyed that to you in the content warnings.
about the edit: It makes sense to draw this connection, because in present-day America that is how we primarily associate these stereotypes and issues. However, this is actually not the intent. Kelpies are creatures from Celtic mythology, and Cailean and Tremaine are both names of Celtic origin- Sawyer mentions Cailean’s name while commenting on Tremaine’s, trying to place them (and not getting there). In older times and especially in England, these violent stereotypes were also applied to Irish immigrants, who faced some similar issues. Eating people specifically is associated with both kelpies and negative perceptions of the Irish during famine. These were all partial inspirations, although it isn't a strict parallel and is altered for the rest of the setting.
The story doesn’t and won’t prominently feature prejudice against black or black-coded people, as an intentional decision based on the fact that there is too much of that in the real world. Part of Sawyer’s dilemma is the choice between a world that judges them unfairly, and stepping into a new world free of that— that isn’t at all free of many other things.
- Val