I am absolutely in love with centaur AU actually. As the resident Toph Stan from my friend group may I recommend a few animals? (No pressure to use any of them!) A boar, a hippo, a Wolverine, a tasmanian Devil, a mole, a honey badger, or maybe a Jack rabbit (they have seen hell)
I'd wanted something "unassuming but can kick ass" and y'know what? You're so right, Jack Rabbits have seen hell and they kicked it's ass for lookin at them wrong. Thanks for the suggestions!
rereading Fairest bc I have my own copy now (yay $2.50 at a used bookstore!) and so far it's as lovely as I remember
but anyway I do like how Aza's "ugliness" is characterized by people actually treating her badly because of it. People talk about the stereotype of YA protagonists being like "oh poor me I'm so ugly" in an attempt to make them relatable but the narrative actually treats them like they are gorgeous and every character that isn't a villain finds them attractive.
Vs. here it's like. yeah her self perception is all tied up in cultural ideas of beauty and she's definitely not objective either, and a lot of what she thinks is inherent to her ugliness is all wrapped up her related social anxiety, etc.
but! It's very refreshing to see a book that deals so much with beauty standards actually commit to it! It's not like she's just vain and obsessed with looks! You can tell she wants to be beautiful because she wants to be treated like a person! The way it is just that blatant! Most people are rude to her or ignore her! And she makes it worse in her head and compounds the problem by letting her own insecurity draw attention to herself, but at the end of the day, she's right! People would treat her better if she looked different!
The details that we get about her appearance are not even "ugly" traits, either! Like we get the pale skin, black hair, red lips combo pulled directly from the traditional Snow White fairy tale, where those traits are supposed to be beautiful and desirable! But in this culture, apparently those traits are a part of her ugliness, which just perfectly highlights how the beauty standards are inherently arbitrary! And yet! They affect her life in real ways! It doesn't matter much how we, the reader, picture her; we believe that she is ugly because people treat her like she is!
Anyway I especially love how her insecurity regarding her size is portrayed. The combo of feeling small and meek and timid on the outside but being large and imposing on the outside. She feels like she takes up too much space. She doesn't want to wear anything at all attention grabbing. She doesn't know what to do with her limbs. Her biggest fear about demonstrating her magical singing trick is that she would have to show people how she moves her stomach (the horror!)
anyway everyone ever should read Fairest. I could write 12.5 dissertations on it. fantasy books for 12-year-old girls are the most serious fiction in the world actually
What song are they dancing to (wrong answers only)
probably gonna do another one with the perspective of dancing with mateo or another fucker. idk. i just did these two first because they’re just joel and ellie in another timeline.
im currently in the process of upgrading my dollhouse lighting, so the current atmosphere of the dollhouse isn’t inspiring me to take pics. however, all the lovely photos of everyone’s dolls in their costumes inspired me to take a few quick photos before I started changing all the outfits for winter gear.
i haven’t really been posting anything lately, but I’ve still been living my best doll life. I had a ton of fun figuring out costumes for (mostly) everyone. I even did a bit of sewing! I altered quite a few princess dresses and even sewed a batgirl cape for ivy!!