Bazzle, 21, they/it, just here to appreciate art ~ (chronic fiction podcast listener), Frankenstein, musicals, ALNST, TBP, and numerous tiny fandoms ~ currently learning Gaeilge
Hi! I’m bazzle, They/Them, and you might be on this blog page for a number of reasons, I’m here to clear some things up!
My works
Melpomene’s Circus is a clown oc project of my own. All of the drawings of these characters I post are my own. Do not use them for anything, don’t repost my art! Reblogs are welcomed! Don’t steal, don’t feed them to ai bots, please be kind.
I run a side blog appreciating Frankenstein by Mary Shelley @theresacreatureinmyattic where I reblog people’s awesome art, some hot takes, and talk about the characters some. We have fun there!
Fandoms
They ebb and flow, most of what I reblog is very random and it tends to be very clear when different interests arise. Some of my interests include The Hunger Games, Andrew Joseph White’s books, toastyglow’s Escape from Divinity animatics, TMA and fiction podcasts generally, LOTR, writing, lgbtq studies and history, Frankenstein, and so much more…
Commissions
I am not open for them, please do not ask me. I am flattered, but I do not currently have the time, energy, nor desire to do art comms, this blog is just for fun!
General Rules
This is not a blog that enjoys or appreciates ai art. If I reblog something that includes unlabeled ai art and I am unaware of that, kindly let me know and the reblog will be removed.
If anyone reblogs or comments with anything transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, or racist you will be reported and blocked. End of story. This is my blog and I don’t tolerate immature bullying behavior. Thanks!
your mom jokes don't work when you know someone too well. I would never be in bed with such a wicked woman. That's not even what I had your mom saying last night. I wouldn't speak to her.
tbh i think no matter how much people try to optimize intentionally-produced stim toys nothing will ever top Some Piece Of Crap You Found At A Yard Sale 15 Years Ago or perhaps Garbage
Completing this task is like pulling teeeeeeeeth someone please pull me through a portal into a parallel world of eternal springtime and adventure I swear if I have to reformat this google slide one more time I am going to dash my computer on a big rock
I just finished reading I Who Have Never Known Men and I have so many thoughts and feelings. I don’t know if this is because I don’t read many translated works, but this is one of the most delicate and beautiful translation jobs I have ever seen for a novel. I cried several times and have enjoyed myself so much reading it.
Spoilers and speculation under cut…
I have a few things I’d like to think about out loud here… firstly, could people not say Jacqueline Harpman is like the feminine/female version of [insert man author]? Cause I love Kafka’s Metamorphosis, but it is in poor taste to reduce a woman author to only her proximity to a man. This is specifically in relation to the quote from Le Nouvel Observateur on the back of my edition, but I have also seen some people on here saying similar things but about different men. This ain’t about them!
Also, could we stop talking about humanity and our relation to animals in the strange way that this book has somehow prompted? Humans are animals and yes this book does have to do with dehumanization—specifically of women and girls—but it feels a bit like people are saying that the disconnect from womanness is something that makes the narrator less human. Certainly, the narrator does discuss those feelings of estrangedness, but she is the narrator! Are we going to believe everything a narrator says? She literally has only known women, so it makes sense that she feels as though femininity as explained by those women are the hallmark of what it would be to be human. But outside of this book do we not understand that the narrator is not more or less of an animal than her counterparts? Than anyone else?
Harpman clearly was aware of queerness and exploring and questioning gender as a construct in this book, why are we repackaging what it means to be a woman in our analyses of it? Yes, gender is real in that it is a construct that affects everyone every day, but no there is not something intrinsically unique about women other than the fact that they are women.
Anyways, on with the discussion! I love the use of counting and communication as ways to occupy the narrator, the search for knowing what she doesn’t know, the sense of unbelonging as well as when she does feel like she belongs, I looooved this. I am so interested in the allegory of the cave being expanded on and made better because there are things to learn and sometimes there are also no answers. And there is fear and anxiety and despair and pain in the new world outside the bunkers, but there is also more freedom of choice, the women are allowed to touch one another, to express anger and love, and eat when they want, sleep when they want, and die when they want.
I’d love to know where they are and when they are, but I’m glad that I don’t know. I appreciate the intentionality behind all of the precious information Harpman gives us through the narrator’s perspective. I imagined every described detail vividly except for the items the narrator couldn’t describe, and I was shocked to realize that others who read it alongside me didn’t imagine the bunker and the landscape at all the way I did!
I am intrigued by the effect of trauma on the narrator’s affinity to solitude and her assumed otherness. Her aversion to touch, her thrill at being able to learn whether it is about the lands surrounding them or woodworking or pre-captivity stories.
