theres this horrid assumption in the fashion industry that the only people on the planet that want to wear cool boots and shoes are women and that the only women that want to wear these cool as fuck boots and shoes have really small feet. they dont make cool shoes for those like me who were born with larger feet and its so annoying and makes shoe shopping a gigantic pain. i can theoretically find cool shoes but it requires an enormous amount of effort especially when the styles i want to wear just dont exist in "mens" sizes. anyway we need to make bigger shoes end of rant
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I like the jotun horn jewelry/decoration thing but i think it wouldnt be like. Gold. Bc where are they getting gold from? Where are they mining it and smelting it and stuff? Idk why. It just doesnt compute in my brain, it doesnt seem to fit their whole thing and mentslly i csnt imagine the place having a ton of gold thst didnt get ripped away when they lost the war. Even though aesthetically i get that it looks nice.
I don’t even mind Jotunheim naturally having a lot of gold *in the past*, (or whenever) I just don’t like the way people use it as an orientalism-vibe literary device. There’s often no explanation given for the gold either, especially in a post-colonised world unless there’s a note on ‘this is ALL the gold Jotunheim had left and LOKI has it bc he needs to look pretty (and like a woman)’
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Personhood and Genre Fiction | My 2024 Reading Journey So Far
I’ve been working as a Library Assistant for six months now, and boy has it been a massive jolt to my love of reading. It’s hard not to be excited about digging into a book when you’re surrounded by them all day, and I credit that feeling with being responsible for my reading more books for pleasure in the first four months of 2024 than I have in the previous seven years combined. As a reach a modest milestone in my reading for the year, I wanted to reflect on what I’ve observed to be a common theme among the books that have most captured my imagination since January. With the world having been in a particularly fraught state over the last few years, and an increasingly prevalent trend of groups of people being actively dehumanised by those with power and influence, it’s been quite an emotional experience for me to discover that the books which have most captured my imagination this year have been about personhood and what defines it.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020)
The first book I finished this year is one that I think about every day. Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi is a wonderful little novel about who we are at different times, and crucially different places, in our lives. It explores personhood through the lens of fundamental internal change; when we go through seismic changes, do we become different people or are we fundamentally the same?
Clarke uses magical realism and a meticulously well-designed alternate reality/dream world as a means of exploring the evolution of one’s own personhood, as well as an adoration of design, architecture, and place. Piranesi was invigorating for me as a reassurance that it’s okay to redefine oneself at different points in life, and that just because you’re a different person now, that doesn’t mean that the old you ceases to exist.
Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett (1996)
Terry Pratchett is so well known for being a satirist, that it’s east to forget how sincere and moving his work can be. After putting it off for many years, I finally started reading the Discworld books this year, and have been enjoying them immensely, and while I had a great time with the first two books in the City Watch sub-series, it wasn’t until the third entry that one of them really hit me, emotionally.
Feet of Clay is about golems (גּוֹלֶם). For those unfamiliar with Jewish folklore, golems are anthropomorphic clay constructs ordered to obey the commands of their master and animated via the inscription of the Hebrew word for truth on its head. Pratchett’s golems are slightly different in that they are brought to life by placing governing words inside their heads. Pratchett uses this to remarkable effect to build a story of self-ownership and self-determination. It was especially moving to me to see Jewishness used in this way – as something empowering rather than grotesque, which is a real rarity in Western fantasy writing.
A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (2016)
The last book I wanted to talk about here was this second entry in Becky Chambers’ beautifully humane, space opera anthology, The Wayfarers series. A Closed and Common Orbit centres on two protagonists, one an AI learning to adapt to a life passing as a human in an illegal ‘body kit’, and the other a clone, bred for factory work, trying to help the AI make a life for herself.
As with her first book, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, what characterises Chambers’ writing is her deep love for her characters, and the way that love manifests itself in this book is nothing short of miraculous. Sidra and Pepper’s parallel journeys are not merely about convincing others of their personhood, but rather convincing themselves. A Closed and Common Orbit is about finding a way of living where you feel most like yourself, learning to feel that you deserve for your needs to be met, and accepting that your loved ones see you as a person, even in times when you don’t.
All of these books have meant a great deal to me during a time where I have had to completely re-evaluate the ways in which I see myself. Genre fiction is not necessarily where I expected to find this feeling of personhood and recognition, but it’s especially exciting to have done so. There’s nothing quite like finding deep meaning in something you have engaged with purely for entertainment, and I hope to continue to do so as the year goes on.
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