Saige > Recent Status Updates

Peace, Pipe: This one is a radical departure from the tone of the first story, but I really like it. It does a great job of asking us to consider human supremacy and what it means to speak with and understand others without becoming preachy or losing focus on the actual character. A really good sci-fi short story!

The Beauty, Part 4: The fact that Nate still ends up accepting Bee after everything is what makes this story so powerfully haunting to me. Because no matter what he writes, I cannot help but refuse to believe that the Beauty can be anything but evil, that their love is not real love. And the fact that the narrator of this story cannot see that makes the whole thing even more ugly and eerie

The Beauty, Part Three: Didn't go to sleep because I was up reading this. Brutal, haunting, better horror than I've read in years thank you Aliya Whiteley

The Beauty, Part 2: This is giving Octavia Butler's Bloodchild in the BEST way. And the eerieness of these young men fitting into their deceased women's clothes....the Beauty taking over all the tasks so the men get weak...the old guard vs. the new - this whole thing is FASCINATING gender commentary. A really stunning example of what fiction can do

The Beauty, Part One: A boy talking about women despite barely knowing any, in a text written by a woman, is FASCINATING. I've never felt objectification this...sympathetic? It's a really eerie idea wrapped up in an already very eerie/creepy story setup, I'm already really enjoying this one

End of Book One: Pieces of this have been interesting, like everything with Madame Koto, but I hope the later sections have more grounding. This part felt more like a series of visually interesting vingettes without much continuity between them, and without the kind of character/setting details that I need to orient myself. Even magical realist books need clear exposition, so readers have solid ground to stand on.

Muir has this fascinating ability to make me like ALL her characters - even terrible people are so well and engagingly written

Masao Gonno: This one also hit painfully close to home. I've watched my mother deal with the fear of stagnation and emptiness that comes from leaving a career after a lifetime spent devoted to little else. It was exceptionally sweet to read about Masao reconnecting with the wider world and realizing that the capacity for deeper feeling was within him the entire time

Hiroya Suda: Maybe I'm just on my period or something, but this little story brought me to tears. I love how Hiroya's mum is so quietly supportive for so long, and how sweet he is when he acknowledges it. Also really nice to see the earlier stories intertwine, with more background on Ms. Komachi, too!

Natsumi Sakitani: This one really hit home. Aoyama's depiction of the stresses of motherhood, and how the burden of daily chores and responsibilities always seems to fall on the heads of women, felt like it came straight from her personal experience. I hope someday to have a job like Natsumi's, and it was beautiful to see how she found that path later in life and was able to be fulfilled in new ways

Ryo Urase: I'm really enjoying how unpretentious all the characters are in this story. From Hina to the shopkeeper, everyone is just willing to tell the truth and be kind to others, even strangers. That world may be quite idealistic, but I don't think those kind of people are too hard to find, and in the era of anti-heroes and grimdark superhero stuff, it's lovely to read about plain good people for a while.

Tomoka: There's a certain beauty in reading this story about remembering and learning from old children's tales right after I finished Le Guin's Cheek by Jowl. I don't read enough books where the learning is good, the people are happy, and small goals are as important as vast ones. I loved Tomoka, I identified with her heavily, and this story got me to finally use some ingredients that I'd let languish too long

Of all the many things I admire about Le Guin, her willingness to acknowledge, praise, and discuss other good work done by good artists is one of the most important. You cannot walk away from any of her essays without a sense of her deep, abiding respect for the work of other authors, thinkers, artists, and nonhuman lives

Anytime I read ANYTHING by Le Guin I am re-hit over the head by just how damn good she was