An Untamed Blog

people’s favorite the untamed scenes  —  for @haojun

Every character in this book who’s survived to the present day is walking around under the immense weight of both victim and perpetrator trauma thanks to this culture of clan extermination and if we’re not engaging with that then what are we even doing with these characters, you know? That’s the meat, that’s the juice! Does it change how the murderer carries the weight of their act if the murdered old woman was your own mother, or your enemy’s mother, or an old sex worker nobody cared about? If you did it for revenge or personal gain or to save your own life or the lives of your family? Does it change how you carry the loss of your loved ones if you understand the reasons they were killed? If it was socially sanctioned? If they were guilty or innocent, soldiers or civilians?

"This is tea I made with my own hands. Why don't you want to drink it?" Jin Guangyao pushed the teacup away once more, explaining in a kind tone, "it's precisely because you made the tea with your own hands that I don't dare to drink it."

@asiandramanet december bingo - typography

“You don’t understand anything,” her mother insisted loudly. She was on her feet now, staring Jiang Yanli down with the full ferocity of her tiger’s eyes. “How come I raised you to be like this? Just what the hell kind of daughter are you?”

“I don’t want to be your daughter,” Jiang Yanli burst out. Her young voice, raised for the first and only time in her life, rang out high and clear and strong as a challenge. “I wish that I was never your daughter, and that you were never my mother.”

Or: Jiang Yanli grapples with her fraught relationship with her mother.