#khiruev

[knivesareourwalls]

Kel Khiruev

[asaethiel]

raven stratagem,,... i am Thinking about them 💆

[IMAGE ID: digital fanart of busts of characters from the raven stratagem. on the top are Khiruev, with light brown skin and swept-back short brown hair with gray temples, and Brezan, with dark skin and a faded crew cut. on the bottom are Cheris and/or Jedao, with pale skin and close-cropped black hair, and Mikodez, with dark skin, grayish straight hair, and golden earrings. end description.]

[venndaai]

@maratai idk if you’ve seen Revolutionary Girl Utena but I was rewatching it and this just... happened...

[aloveforthepages]

Raven Stratagem has started to do what I so desperately wanted it to do: humanize Jedao. It bleeds through in his strategies, in his concerns, and even in the elaborate games he constructs to assure his end goals come to fruition. The conversations that he has with our main characters, who I have yet to find any true affection for, allow us to see even deeper into his psyche, even though we can no longer see into his shared mind. 

Interestingly, the topic that’s caught my eye the most is the mention of children. Children have come up with Jedao again and again, either in conversations that he has begun, or in circumstances that he has found himself entangled in. The children that are the cores of the Hafn ships, the children that Jedao speaks of having had to kill, and the promise that he makes that he will never be so evil as to use children as the fuel for one of his wars. Perhaps this is because in children, Jedao see something redeemable: a chance at redemption he lost himself long ago. 

Raven Stratagem also has a number of profound quotes, on the topic of both the characters, and the nature of empires that thrive on war. This novel makes the true nature of the hexarchate a secret any longer; the hexarchs go so far as to discuss the genocide of an entire people just to manipulate a single person. Even the discussion of such an action is heinous, and makes the hexarchate all but irredeemable in my eyes. 

I will leave a parting line that stuck with me about the hexarchate and their true nature, through the eyes of Khiruev: “[she] was in the business of creating refugees when she wasn’t creating orphans and corpses”

[venndaai]

I don’t have anything for Fave Friday so you get some old RS sketches instead. they’re all my faves anyway

[venndaai]

I lied, I do have something for Fave Friday, squeaking in in the last fifteen minutes... and I think Khiruev truly is my fave

[venndaai]

then it wasn’t entirely a lie, was it?