Samantha Puc's Blog, page 5

Books I Loved in 2021

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In 2021, I started working full-time as a bookseller, finished my first-ever YA fiction manuscript, and began my first year of graduate school. In the process, I read, and I read, and I read some more. I only finished 61 books, but I started at least a dozen more and plucked excerpts from others.

For the last several years, I’ve written “year in review” posts for my blog. I stopped doing that in 2020 for a variety of reasons, b...

Death2Divinity: We’re Taking Up Space At the Table

Before Death2Divinity premiered in July, I asked our DM Katie Mae and our producer Jude if I could write about the show on my blog. Death2Divinity is the first all-fat, all-queer Dungeons & Dragons live show, and honestly? Being asked to join the cast felt like a dream, and every moment since has felt even more impossibly magical.

When I originally conceived of this post, it was a serious treatise on the gatekeeping in tabletop gaming and how frustrating it is to be a fat, queer woman in this spa...

Good Hair and a Pretty Face Made Me Afraid of My Own Fatness

I was barely more than a toddler the first time I cut my own hair. I had a doll, you see, whose hair would “grow back” when you “cut” it, and I thought in my 4 year-old wisdom that the same would be true for me. I wasn’t wrong, per se, but the thing I didn’t understand was that human hair doesn’t grow back magically, or even quickly. It grows at an average rate of 6” per year, which is a lot of length when you’re very small.

My grandmother was furious — not at me, but at my mom. I only cut half o...

Book Thoughts: The Girl from the Sea

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“The love of a selkie is something special.” For 15 year-old Morgan, the protagonist of Molly Knox Ostertag’s new graphic novel, The Girl from the Sea, that’s sort of an understatement.

When Morgan meets Keltie, a selkie, she’s instantly struck by attraction, but the circumstances of their introduction are such that Morgan doesn’t realize Keltie is even real. They kiss, and it’s dreamy and lovely and secret, which is what Morga...

Book Thoughts: Tokyo Ever After

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The marketing material for Emiko Jean’s Tokyo Ever After describes it as The Princess Diaries meets Crazy Rich Asians, and the description could not be more apt. This young adult novel follows Izumi Tanaka, a high school senior from Mount Shasta, California, who learns that her father is the Crown Prince of Japan, which alters the course of her life forever.

When Izumi’s best friend, Noora, discovers a love poem in a copy of R...

Game Thoughts: Little Nightmares

After playing through Little Nightmares II, I decided to grab the first game while it was on sale in the Nintendo eShop. Little Nightmares is a shorter, simpler experience with a heavier focus on puzzles, so I was able to play through the entire main story in a single night.

Unfortunately, the first game is also significantly more fatphobic than its prequel, which definitely dampened my overall enjoyment.

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Game Thoughts: Little Nightmares II

When I was a kid, I absolutely loved Rugrats: Search for Reptar, a 1998 PlayStation platformer packed with episode-based mini-games. Two levels absolutely terrified me: “Toy Palace,” where you had to defeat a giant gorilla by throwing boxes at it, and “Incident in Aisle Seven,” where you similarly had to defeat a giant crab. I was so scared of these level bosses that I would always ask my mom to beat them for me.

I’ve basically been terrified of “scary” video games ever since. In fact, I think Li...

When Systemic Fatphobia Works “For” You

Warning: This post contains discussion of medical fatphobia, including use of the term “obese.”

On Wednesday, before receiving my second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, I had to answer a few questions. The last one was seemingly simple, but also packed with meaning: “What qualifies you for the vaccine?”

I said, “Underlying health issues,” and it felt like a lie. I’m chronically ill, but I am not immunocompromised. I do not have asthma. I am not in a high-risk age group. I don’t work on the fr...

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Got Me Through 2020

Until I got a Nintendo Switch last year, I had never owned a Nintendo console of my own — meaning I had never played an Animal Crossing game until New Horizons. Like thousands of others who dove into this game head-first to cope with COVID-19 lockdown orders, I immediately became obsessed. I spent hours talking to villagers, decorating my island, and playing around with terraforming.

Although it’s “just a video game,” New Horizons got me through 2020 — and it’s also unequivocally changed my life...

Book Thoughts: Your Body Is Not an Apology Workbook

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Call it imposter syndrome, or self-sabotage, or whatever you like, but when something goes wrong in my life — especially when it’s something foundational, i.e. financial, emotional, or structural — my first instinct is to blame myself. I immediately attempt to find the flaw in how I behaved and justify what’s happened based on what I did or didn’t do, or how I did something, or any combination thereof.

And even though I have s...