maria

Babel, by RF Kuang, is fun cause the first half is sad but also really sweet and hopeful and relatively low stakes and you’re like “aw this is nice, found family, thanks” and then suddenly it’s the most intense most emotionally heart wrenching book you’ve ever read in your life so that’s cool I guess.

every time i’m thinking abt the gay subtext between robin and ramy and going abt it in the usual fandom way of getting invested and excited abt it i immediately get hit by like this super grim clarity that bc of the colonialist oppression of their race/ethnicity they couldn’t even touch on the societal stigma of their feelings. there wasn’t the usual “we can’t be together bc the world condemns it” narrative like in typical queer historical tropes bc they don’t even have the liberty to consider anything other than dealing with racism