#Yskandr Aghavn

[exmakina]

Mahit Dzmare, Kel Cheris, and the troublesome fellows in their heads.

Combined prompts from @terminallyuninspired and @frumpkinspocketdimension for this one. Thanks for the requests!

[tallysgreatestfan]

Tag game for fanfiction authors !

Tagged by @riotbrrrd

The story you're proudest of: 

"Sins Unexplored", this longfic about Entrapta and Hordaks developing relationship and how their disabilities and trauma affect that.

Not just is it fairly long for my standards and I wrote longer than a year on it, I also put so much of myself and my own experiences in it, and, and that sounds pretentious about a fic, but these are such important topics, ableism and disability and queerness and how that affects someone. I even got feedback from people feeling seen in it!

Your story that's gotten the most love online:

Again "Sins Unexplored", absolutely justified.

Tease a current WIP or idea you're working on: 

Oh god I have so many Uglies fics in my folders to publish somewhen after the movie came out and the fandom resurrected, most of them about Tally/Shay post-canon, shortly after Extras, and how their trauma and neurodivergence and body image issues affect their relationships (see a pattern?)

Your top 3 fandoms:

Babylon 5 - Because this fandom is like the toxic ex I just can't get rid off

She-Ra - Because this was, despite how incredibly toxic the fandom and how... badly executed some parts of the series were, the first time I not just saw someone like me in mainstream media, but relationships like mine, between two disabled queer people

Star Trek Discovery - First femslash ship I ever had! But then the series did a 180° and I didn't even finish it, and by now I write much more Locked Tomb or Uglies

Your top 3 ships:

Delenn/Lennier (Babylon 5)- Just the femdom and how this is both messy and complicated and badly communicated but also so deep and loving. Ruthless but wise high priestess turned politician/younger, naive monk who is her assistant. Not healthy, but fun, and wow are they both pretty.

Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra) - They're mad scientists. They are also deeply traumatized and lonely disabled people bonding over being different. Also femdom. And a really sexy monster boy design, and Entrapta is hot too.

Katrina Cornwell/L'Rell - An alien torturer and an human admiral, meeting as enemies, but coming to respect each other. Both women. The have exactly two (2) scenes together, but wow is their chemistry intense.

Rec someone else's fic:

Don't really read that much fic right now, so this is a bit difficult. The last really good one I read was:

"A Star Chart In Rotation" by halcyonine, which shows the tender beginnings of the doomed relationship of Teixcalaan Emporer Six Direction, future Empress Nineteen Adze and Lsel ambassador Yskandr Aghavn from "A Memory Called Empire". It is just so bittersweet, and gets the dynamic and worldbuilding so right.

Pick one!

Fluff or Angst (Fluff is nice sometimes too, but I love how deeply Angst can go into how a character works)

Oneshots or longfics (Both for writing and reading, because while longfics are amazing, I just don't have the energy for them most of the time)

Canon compliance or canon divergence (If I would want canon, I would watch or read the media. Also canon divergence just has so much more possibilities)

AO3 or FF.net (Not just the better functionality, the culture there feels much more open and welcoming, and also smut is allowed)

tagging @a-certain-elf and @entrapdaknation if you want

[northofallmusic]

10 characters, 10 fandoms

tagged by @owlpockets

Wen Kexing (TYK)

Wei Wuxian (MDZS)

Asaka Rei (Oniisama e)

Seivarden Vendaai (Imperial Radch trilogy)

Samot (Friends at the Table)

Xie Lian (TGCF)

Fenris (Dragon Age II)

Yskandr Aghavn (A Memory Called Empire)

Yang Wen-li (Legend of the Galactic Heroes)

Juri Arisugawa (Revolutionary Girl Utena)

I'm meant to tag 10 people and i would love to but brain says no. so you just get me diagnosing myself as a liker only of people who are weird assholes and/or deeply traumatised

[crowbarrd]

reread A Memory Called Empire and reminded once again about how Yskandr Aghavn, slut (affectionate), is my favourite character

[hotguynextdoor2]

Flash Memory Transitions

Reference: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Marine

Transitions between the present day and a memory coming up unbidden pose writers quite the challenge. MCM presents a unique solution to this.

1. Clips

Rather than a massive exposition dump or a separate chapter or page break entirely, it’s present in 30 word or less snippets. The tale end of a conversation, an impression of a person, a vague feeling: not outright memory but a shadow, stronger than a deja vu while not interrupting the narrative much, sometimes jump starting it.

2. In Between

It jars the text slightly but it doesn’t outright shift the flow on a hard pivot. Think about 50 words, no more than a thick paragraph.

3. Full Pivot

MCM has an excellent example of this on Page 144 to 145 in Chapter 6.

“Running, Mahit heard, an echo from a long distance off. A sensation like electric sparks ran from her shoulders through her elbows to hover in her outmost fingers, buzzing.

‘—keeps your new integrated subway running at all hours without operators,’ Yskandr Aghavn is saying.’ “

In addition to Martine’s writing style of the abrupt shift into italics, it cuts in like a memory would come up. No clear definitive beginning like you’d have for a scene in the main body of the story. More like it was salvaged from a damaged tape recorder.

.

While Mahit isn’t remembering her own past but instead Yskandr, it stands as a fascinating example of how to integrate flash backs into the text of a story.

I have a collegue, lets call zem Bliss, Bliss stumbled into an interesting conundrum.

How does one narratively depict trauma induced amnesia reversing?

The character in question, Hamish, doesn’t regain all of their memories but enough to move the story forward.

Reintergration

The next problem one faces after an interruptive flash back is how to incorporate it back into the text.

In this scenario, the character has recollected the flash back.

In MCM’s case, it used similar narrative devices to return Mahit to the present.

“ ‘[…] Yskandr thinks: It hasn’t failed you yet.’

More electric prickles swam in Mahit’s fingers. Her mose folled with remembered scent of ozone, the blue flash of light from the City’s algorithm going very, very wrong and catching Three Seagrass unawares and—

She was back” [145].

The landing appears to be far more challenging in my opinion. As far as flash backs, sudden visions, or memories go, the start can’t give much preamble before throwing you in.

The after effect apears similar to the feeling after a rollercoaster, said character having to get used to the feeling of being grounded after so long in the air.

4. Mirror the sensation

If the character left with an “electric prickle” have them return with some. Other sensations may be included but make sure to mirror something.

5. Vivid

The impact of the memory naturally is strengthed with using descriptions of one of the 5 senses. Our sense of smell is very closely tied to our memory, which would be a good place to start.

6. Coming back Mid-Something

A conversation is MCM’s landing pad but I assume that other in progress activities would also add to emphasizing the jarring effect.

[netmassimo]

The novel "A Memory Called Empire" by Arkady Martine was published for the first time in 2019. It won the Hugo Award as the Best Novel of the Year. It's the first book in the Teixcalaan series.

Mahit Dzmare is sent as the new ambassador of Lsel Station to the Teixcalaani Empire, which rules over most of humanity. Upon her arrival in the imperial capital, she discovers that her predecessor Yskandr Aghavn died, officially of accidental causes.

The reluctance that everyone seems to show about what happened to Yskandr Aghavn leads Mahit Dzmare to suspect that he was killed but why? The new ambassador suddenly finds herself in a stranger land enmeshed in intrigues of which she knows nothing.

Lsel Station's embassy has no other staff and the people who are supposed to assist it were assigned by the local authorities. Her only help should come from Yskandr Aghavn's imago, a reproduction of his consciousness and memories, but the discovery of his death seems to have caused it to malfunction.

[aspiringspaceship]

I’m back on A Desolation Called Peace and I cannot stress enough how much this book goes back and forth between “Mahit Dzmare, complicated feelings about political entities” and “Three Seagrass, professional simp and problematic product of her environment” and “Eight Antidote, the love of my life a perfect adorable child I want to protect him he has an attitude this is the only child whose perspective I ever want to read from”

[ravencromwell]

Yskandr thinks of waking up, wrung out and pleasantly aching, an hour or so after he’d fallen asleep in the Emperor’s bed, and finding him awake, a stack of infofiche on his bare knees, working. He’d curled around him, then, made a warm curve of himself as a brace to work from. It was such a small thing and Six Direction had left one hand cupped to Yskandr’s cheek, lingering—he’d wondered, then, if he ever slept, and heard, an echo like a cloudhook in his mind, a verse from Fourteen Scalpel’s “Encomia for the Fallen of the Flagship Twelve Expanding Lotus”: the verse describing the captain of that ship, how she had died with her people. There is no star-chart unwatched by her / sleepless eyes, or unguided by / her spear-calloused hand, and thus / she falls, a captain in truth. Sleepless emperors. Seduction’s a matter of poetry. Of a story he wants to be true. --Chapter 16, A Memory Called Empire

[possiblesword]

Accidentally obsessed with a character from an obscure space opera novel check!!!!

[gretchensinister]

What your favorite A Memory Called Empire/A Desolation Called Peace ship says about you:

Mahit Dzmare/Three Seagrass: You are a wlw who has fallen in love with someone on a different continent

Three Seagrass/Twelve Azalea: You think a good friendship is the basis of a good relationship…and suffering is the basis of a good ship

Mahit Dzmare/Three Seagrass/Twelve Azalea: You are touch-starved and need more friends

Yskandr Aghavn/Six Direction (His Brilliance the Emperor of All Teixcalaan): You have a very well-curated collection of fics tagged Enemies to Lovers

Yskandr Aghavn/Nineteen Adze (She Whose Gracious Presence Illuminates the Room Like the Edgeshine of a Knife): You like women who can and will kill you, and you’re valid

Yskandr Aghavn/Nineteen Adze (She Whose Gracious Presence Illuminates the Room Like the Edgeshine of a Knife)/Six Direction (His Brilliance the Emperor of All Teixcalaan): We get it, you’re bisexual and want to be topped

Mahit Dzmare/Nineteen Adze (She Whose Gracious Presence Illuminates the Room Like the Edgeshine of a Knife): You’re a wlw who has said the phrase “step on me” out loud to someone

Nine Hibiscus/Twenty Cicada: You’ve cried about Spirk, and then sat down at your keyboard to make other people cry about Spirk

Nine Hibiscus/Sixteen Moonrise: You’ll read anything tagged Enemies to Lovers

Twenty Cicada/the we: You don’t often find what you’re looking for in fics (or…anywhere, really), but I’d love to see anything you have bookmarked

[bighfantasy]

OKAY BISEXUAL ICON YSKANDR AGHAVN LIKES DANGEROUS WOMEN AND OLDER MEN

[cromulentbookreview]

A Memory Not Called Texi-Cat

By which, I mean: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine!

Oh, hey, look, I’ve written 100 posts! Hurray! 

Yeah, no one cares. And 100 posts on a blog on tumblr isn’t exactly an achievement. So. Moving on!

Mahit Dzmare has been sent from her home on Lsel Station to replace the Station’s ambassador to the empire of Teixcalaan. Her predecessor, Yskandr  Aghavn, has been murdered and now it’s up to Mahit to keep her home station from being swallowed up by the Empire. 

Now, imagine the great Empire of Teixcalaan as like the galactic French and British Empires of the 19th century combined with modern American culture and its tendency to show up and force everyone else’s culture into the background. That’s Teixcalaan. Teixcalaan is massive and constantly consuming other planets, stations, star systems, etc. in its wake. Sometimes, these other planets and stations let themselves be consumed willingly because, hey, it’s Teixcalaan, why not? Teixcalaanli literature and culture is considered to be a cut above everything - knowing how to speak Teixcalaanli and reading Teixcalaanli poetry and literature on a place like Lsel station makes you “cultured.” The feeling is decidedly not mutual: in Teixcalaan, anyone who isn’t Teixcalaani is considered a barbarian. Mahit, as the fricking ambassador from Lsel is frequently referred to as a barbarian. 

(Teixcalaan, by the way, is pronounced Teyks-kah-lan, according to Word of God. Whenever I see the letter X in the middle of a word, I get super confused and so I spent roughly half the book with no idea how to pronounce the name of the empire. I ended up settling on “texi-cat.” It is not pronounced texi-cat, or anywhere near that. Learn from my mistakes!)

And, since this is an epic Space Opera, let me clarify: the Teixcalaani are human. The people on Lsel station are all human. There are some aliens referred to in A Memory Called Empire but all the main characters are human. Though the Teixcalaani consider themselves to be the standard for actual human. They’re kind of dickish that way.

Alright back to Mahit. On Lsel station they have this super-nifty-cool tech called an “imago” which is a lot like the Flame from that CW show The 100, a show that is so bad that I absolutely love it and never miss an episode. Anyway, an imago is a cybernetic implant containing the memory of a specific person. A person with an imago basically has a whole other person in their head who can talk to them and such. Lsel station has been preserving the memories of multiple generations this way. Normally, receiving an imago is a whole long process involving a lot of psychotherapy, but Mahit had to get hers in a rush due to the whole sudden opening in the Teixcalaani ambassador position. Mahit’s imago is that of her predecessor,  Yskandr  Aghavn. Kind of. See, the last time  Yskandr  Aghavn uploaded his memory into the imago system was 15 years ago. So, in her head, Mahit has a version of her predecessor that’s 15 years out of date. Useful! If all this is confusing (and for me, it was a bit at first, but you get used to it real quick) just imagine the imago of young Yskandr is Colin Hanks... 

and the older, more experienced, and now very dead Yskandr as Tom Hanks.

Seriously, picture it just like that, it really helps.

Also, is it wrong to be attracted to Colin Hanks purely because he looks like a younger version of his dad? I’m going to say no, that’s perfectly fine. 

As I was saying, Mahit is stuck with Colin Hanks while the Empire had been dealing with Tom - so she has little to no idea what older Yskandr up to this whole time on Teixcalaan. Her Yskandr had only been working on Teicalaan for a few years - older Yskandr was there for two decades. What did he do to get murdered? Are the people who killed him going to want to get Mahit, too? 

Also not helping: the moment young Yskandr sees (though Mahit’s eyes), his own older self in the form of a dead body, he promptly freaks out and Mahit’s imago fizzles out. Now she’s alone in her own head on a new planet with people who maybe want to kill her and her only source of diplomatic info, however outdated, gone. Somehow, Mahit has to maintain her station’s independence from the ever-expanding Empire while solving the murder of Tom Hanks Yskandr while somehow, hopefully, not getting murdered herself. With no functioning implanted neurotech to guide her through the process. Mahit’s only friend seems to be Three Seagrass, her Teixcalaani cultural liaison, but can she be trusted? Can anyone in the Empire be trusted?

Good luck, Mahit! I’m sure you’ll be fine. 

Holy crap, A Memory Called Empire is absolutely epic. It’s got everything you could want in a Space Opera: small-time station holding its own against the Big Mean Empire, political intrigue, a murder mystery, a potential civil war, an Imperial succession crisis, and poetry analysis! Ok, that last one I’m more “meh” on - Martine goes to great lengths to describe Teixcalaan’s long history of complex poetic symbolism, but all it did for me was give me some horrible college flashbacks. Martine’s writing style is a bit dense, which is not surprising as in real life, Martine herself is a historian and a scholar and generally someone who sounds way smarter than me. She has a doctorate for cryin’ out loud! I just have a lowly Master’s. But if you’re not big into a kind of academic style of fiction writing, you might find A Memory Called Empire a bit daunting. I can’t really complain too much - as with most of the books I review here, I read an Advanced Reader’s Copy, which isn’t a finished book, so maybe the final round of edits will cut down on some of the sections where things tend to drag. 

RECOMMENDED FOR: Hardcore academic space opera sci-fi fans, fans of intense poetry analysis, fans of the Galactic Imperialism.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: People who don’t like poetry or academic writing, wheel-shaped space monsters.

RATING: 4/5

RELEASE DATE: March 26, 2019

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR SEQUEL: Kangchenjunga

HANKS RATING: 

[netmassimo]

Il romanzo "Un ricordo chiamato impero" ("A Memory Called Empire") di Arkady Martine è stato pubblicato per la prima volta nel 2019. È il primo libro della serie Teixcalaan. Ha vinto il premio Hugo come miglior romanzo dell'anno. In Italia è stato pubblicato da Mondadori negli "Oscar" nella traduzione di Francesca Mastruzzo.

Mahit Dzmare viene inviata come nuova ambasciatrice della stazione di Lsel presso l'Impero del Teixcalaan, che governa la maggior parte dell'umanità. Al suo arrivo nella capitale imperiale, scopre che il suo predecessore Yskandr Aghavn è morto, ufficialmente per cause accidentali.

La ritrosia che tutti sembrano mostrare riguardo a ciò che è successo a Yskandr Aghavn inducono Mahit Dzmare a sospettare che sia stato ucciso ma perché? La nuova ambasciatrice si trova improvvisamente in una terra straniera invischiata in intrighi di cui non sa nulla.

L'ambasciata di Lsel non include altro personale e le persone che dovrebbero assisterla le sono state assegnate dalle autorità locali. L'unico aiuto dovrebbe arrivarle dall'imago di Yskandr Aghavn, una riproduzione della sua coscienza e delle sue memorie, ma la scoperta della sua morte sembra averne causato un malfunzionamento.

[bighfantasy]

Amelia bedelia 🤝 yskandr aghavn

Taking orders very literally and it ending in disaster