asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (Default)
Here is one of my next-door neighbors, obliging me by recreating the pose I saw her in while she was playing with her dolls. I thought she looked like an Easter egg, waiting to be found.



That was Saturday. Then yesterday she and her sister were sporting these shirts that said JUSTICE in sparkles! (Hiding the face for privacy; that way I don't feel weird sharing the photo publicly)



I was amused/bemused. I think it's great that capitalist forces now think justice is marketable enough to mass produce on kids' clothes! But I feel like maybe one of those semiotics guys would have something to say about the representation of the word justice versus the actual thing. Like, where and how was that shirt produced...

Which ties in a bit to the next tale of the Polity. (In my case, You Know You're Writing Something When ... someone can say anything about anything, and you say, "Mmmmm, yes, that reminds me of my story because--")

Speaking of stories, I really enjoyed Nicole Kornher-Stace's time-loop-heist-gone-wrong story:

"Getaway," in Uncanny.
You’ve seen enough movies to know this is supposed to go one of two ways.

Either:

The loop breaks when you realize you’re an asshole, you get your shit together, you find your best self. To do this, you almost definitely need to find the other person on this timeline who’s looping too, and then you help each other, cut each other loose, go home together best friends forever. Roll credits. Piece of cake.

Or:

You have to find the anomaly that’s causing the loop and fix it. But you’re about two hundred percent sure you’ve got the anomaly pretty well pegged, and nothing you can do does fix it. Dilemma.

Which brings you back to option 1.

Only thing is, you’re pretty sure you’re not any more of an asshole than everyone else, and you reckon that if every asshole got pulled out of the main timeline and slingshot into their own personal self-realization pocket universe or whatever, it might be something of a topic of conversation when they rejoined the collective reality.

--really loved that paragraph about the pocket universe of self-improvement
asakiyume: (Em reading)
(I finished this on the plane on the way to Sirens.)

Reading Archivist Wasp is like navigating an intense, harrowing nightmare in the company of a true friend. Wasp, the young heroine, is the true friend, though she doesn’t know it. Her role—as recorder of ghosts and their ways, and (more importantly for her town) an executioner of them—means she’s a friendless outcast. She achieved her position by killing the last archivist, and three times a year, other young girls try to do the same to her. Her life has made her suspicious and untrusting, but from the very first, she shows gruff compassion for the ghosts and humans she encounters. Her compassion (and her curiosity, and, okay, a bit of self interest) lead her to agree to help a ghost supersoldier who does something no other ghost she or any of her predecessors have ever met could do: talk. He wants to find his comrade in arms, also a ghost. So Wasp embarks on a journey to the underworld.

The rest of the book unfolds Wasp’s own past and the past of her ghost companion and his friend, in a mutable landscape, pursued by terrors from Wasp’s life in the land of the living. As they search for the ghost’s friend, they themselves become friends—Wasp’s first experience of friendship. The pacing is perfect, and one scene in particular, where the ghosts whom Wasp has spared over the years come to her aid, was especially moving. The language throughout is sharp, powerful, beautiful:

And maybe that’s all a ghost is, in the end. Regret, grown legs, gone walking.

There’s a sequel in the works. I’m very curious to see where Nicole takes us next.

ETA PS (two) First, this review in School Library Journal expresses in more depth many of the things I would have liked to say if I hadn't written this so late at night, and second, there might be spoilers in comments (because I like to talk about things I read), so take that into account as you read here...


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