#estraven

translation:

Genly at the gulag

Estraven is coming for him soon

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Okay, I realize that I might not have time before the start of the school term for a deep, thorough character analysis of Estraven (which I had originally wanted to do). But at the very least, I’ve done some brief thinking and discovered that this person—a politician with great skill and connections, an explorer who loves nature, an idealist, highly trained, weathered, exiled from their homeland, filled with curiosity and a thirst for knowledge, self-proclaimed as slow-thinking yet trusting their intuition, able to quickly recover composure from panic and figure out how to begin tackling things, possessing their own thoughts, not blindly following authority, politically perceptive, widely knowledgeable in many areas, capable of wielding mysterious powers, observant, in the habit of keeping a journal, grateful to inanimate objects, prone to self-reproach (three times? which is endearing), pulling down their hood to slip through the streets and alleys just to catch a glimpse of the Envoy, worrying about the Envoy because they can’t stand the cold, single-handedly breaking into a prison to “kidnap” an alien taller and stronger than themselves, once having murderous thoughts when angry (just kidding) while staring at an ice blade but managing to calm down, trusting an alien, helping an alien, loving an alien, being a “mother,” meticulously calculating daily food intake, taking into account their companion’s special needs, thoughtfully caring for their companion, willing to offer their trust and loyalty for an ideal, having lost someone deeply loved, carrying a heavy love, loving every mountain and every forest, loving life, loving everything—though I’m not quite sure if they love themselves—lonely, reflecting on their relationship with Genly Ai through the lens of similarity (whereas Genly Ai approaches it through difference), having developed a “self-destructive tendency” at some unknown point, sometimes blinded or made stubborn by their love, abandoned by societal rules and expectations, and in turn abandoning these, sacrificing themselves, being non-binary—in the end, I realized there wasn’t a single trait that wasn’t endearing.

Sorry, I don’t know how to draw 'dark' skin but I’ve always wanted to illustrate this scene.