Juushika Plays

Fuco Ueda

Visitor II. 2022

Midway through Alexis Henderson's House of Hunger and having extremely complex feelings about it, but am also now just completely obsessed with the idea that part of being a vampire (not-really-but-whatever) concubine could be people giving you a lot of delicious sweets to make your blood taste good.

More thoughts on this one!

@juushika recommended it as a premise that seemed crafted perfectly to my tastes, and she was totally right; ~50 pages in, one of the vampire concubines was undressing one of the others while she told her that she didn't have to be shy in front of her because they were family now, and I messaged @juushika that it felt sort of like I had written it at 15. While the execution left something to be desired, I was rather astounded that it exists.

The novel takes place in a rather vaguely established fantasy world at loosely Victorian levels of technology, in which it is commonplace for the nobility to consume human blood as a means of maintaining their health and beauty, employing "bloodmaids" for this purpose in an unofficially sexualized indentured concubine role. Our protagonist, Marion, takes one of these jobs to get herself out of poverty, only to find herself increasingly infatuated with her employer, the enigmatic Lisavet.

Most of my problems with the novel came down to the fact that its focus wasn't where I would have wanted it. I was fascinated by the idea of a society in which this consumption of the blood of the poor by the rich was literal, normalized, and fetishized (the role of bloodmaid is considered both vaguely shameful by the rest of the non-aristocrats and also a desirable site of fascination), and I felt the novel could have done much more to spin out the implications of it. The plot involves Lisavet having a supernatural secret which is meant to be a betrayal that makes the whole thing more horrifying, but - it was already horrifying enough as it is! Why couldn't we just stick with the premise as it stood and develop the characters from there? The rushed reveals and denouement left a number of the most interesting elements of the story unresolved, giving us instead some unsatisfying action sequences.

The other place where I was left unsatisfied was around the relationships between the concubine characters, which I wanted to be much more the center of the story. We get a lot of hierarchy and rivalry dynamics between them; as some may recall, rivalries between co-victims are among the things I find most upsetting to read about, but that doesn't mean it's an inherently bad narrative choice, or one that I'm uninterested in grappling with. The way those rivalries played out, though, I found overly predictable and trite. Our protagonist has a realization towards the end that Lisavet has deliberately created the rivalries to separate the women from one another, but this revelation, which should have been a cathartic emotional climax, was rushed and unearned. Each of the women was also too one-note in personality ("the crazy jealous one"; "the calm, kind one" "the vapid, childish one"), despite my fervent wish to see more in each of them.

I am glad this exists, glad I read it, and might come back to it just because there's so much in there that feels like it's for me, but I was also left significantly disappointed. And really interested in hearing other people's thoughts about it!

reblogging to avoid having to be concise haha

Our thoughts are very similar! I feel like it's a premise that I'd love to see reexecuted in fan works, because the world is great but this particular journey through it is kind of whatever.

And I think that some of what undermines it is the attempt, in a published novel, to make definite and therefore not especially nuanced commentary about the social implications of the premise. Lisavet is rendered an over the top supernatural antagonist, her powers so exaggerated, so that there's no doubt that what she's doing is capital-b Bad. I think there's an understandable motive there, especially since dark fantasy (especially YA-adjacent dark fantasy, because the romance in particular gave me some YA vibes) tends to invite romanticization of tragic dark love interests, and Henderson wants to indulge that but also come down hard on a correct reading.

Which, as you say, isn't necessary, because the premise in itself is horrific! And so much more nuanced than the execution. I'd love to see a not-special-snowflake narrative within the world, a bloodmaid who doesn't necessarily have the most refined taste, a Count/Countess who isn't apparently the origin of the whole social structure, but just participant in it.

And I also see deescalating the scale as the solution to the issue of the speed of the central romance, which bugged me, and the problem of undeveloped supporting characters. The book started to lose me a little almost as soon as the protagonist found the hidden hallways & started down the path of discovering the Deep Dark Secret, because it takes up so much narrative energy that could be dedicated to literally anything else with great dividends.

silly voids pt.3

This cat comes with bonus cats and I think that’s pretty cool

what it’s like to own a black cat

Catical illusion/  This kitty is in a bathtub

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#it looks like it’s having gravity problems

(via @trans-cuchulainn )

@juushika

Dust kitties :)

[ID: fist image: a digital drawing of a black furr ball with tiny trangular legs, triangle kitty ears, one cat eye in the middle of it’s face and a small tail.

second image: the same creature as described before drawn with pencil, there are five of them, in the upper left corner it is yawning, showing off the sharp cat teeth it has, in the upper right corner it is looking up, looking interested, in the middle it has a “smiling” eye, lower left corner it’s playing with a yarn ball, pupil dilated, lower right corner it is sleeping, curled up, eye closed. end of ID]

catcatcatcatcatcatcatcatcat / gouache painting on paper

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My favorite little sage 🌱

korok forest!

for @korok-crossing ♥

Ya ha ha you found me ! A little Korok piece I made for a friend.

Ranch Ruins

Korok Forest

I made a field guide about the Korok Forest (but it’s magical!)