#teixcalaan

Lsel Station's primary exports are; Rare Ores, Disaster Bisexuals, Manga, State Secrets, and Dykes

If I had a nickel for every time I found a space opera with a masculine female lead, a lesbian romance, and motifs/character experiences so uncannily similar to DID that I need to sit the author down and ask some fucking questions, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice.

Yskander Aghavn died as he lived, choking on something

just finished a desolation called peace and I can't stop thinking about empire. it's not about upholding the empire, it's not about tearing it down. the empire simply...lives. amnardbat and tarats are threats to Mahit, but they're not wrong. it's a vast, colonizing force that seems almost incapable of seeing anything or one other as a person; it is a direct threat to Lsel, even with their tenuous peace--to everyone outside the empire. they're not wrong to be hostile, though Mahit herself doesn't deserve it. and at the same time we see, again and again, the empire is made of people. writing poetry, sharing nicknames, getting drunk. twenty cicada gave himself to an alien hive mind for a chance--a chance at peace. nine hibiscus fired on her own legion to save that peace. eight antidote, 11 years old, used every resource he had and experienced dozens of deaths to defy the emperor and stop a genocide because he was the only one who could. but that doesn't absolve the empire, nor does it try to. it's simply a coexisting truth. and in the end, the empire still exists. not because the narrative believes in it, but because it simply does. the empire will continue to write poetry, and it will continue to devour. mahit, as an outsider, both loves the empire to the point it's painful and resents it, and there's reason for both! this story is not about blind faith and perpetuity, and it's not about revolution either. and i just find it so captivating

420 blaze would be a valid teixcalaanli name