#fang runin and altan

[nepttunnee]

rin and chaghan were so funny as a dynamic when altan was alive and even sometimes after because on one side rin was deeply struggling with experiencing familial love and her new powers/identity as a speerly/nikara girl and seeking validation from people she looked up to after being treated like dirt her entire life with altan who also didn’t know how to deal with family relationships because they were both war orphans and on the other side chaghan just rly wanted to fuck rin’s cousin

[polartss]

Haircut

Rin from The Poppy War by RF Kuang

[wesperskanej]

My favorite illustrations from The Poppy War Collector's Edition

[dcvina-claires]

everyone leave your favorite war criminal in the tags

[cikebabbler]

absolutely genius of rf kuang to elaborate on virtually nothing about speer's culture. the only things said about speer are "speerlies are mindless savages" and "speerlies are most definitely not mindless savages". there are no deep dives, no explanations of their way of life, nothing beyond the glimpses that disproves nikan's belief that they are nothing but a violent group. we saw that they had leaders that cared about their people and children. we saw that they are people who found joy in life. but that's really not much.

this emphasizes the horror of genocide. millenia of culture and history, individual lives filled with love, pain, and passion, just completely wiped away. there were only two surviving speerlies. one of them was too young when he was taken away, and probably doesn't remember much. the things he did remember was also probably buried under years of abuse and drugs people were plying him with. the other one didn't even know she was from speer until the last few months of her life, and there was really no one around to teach her about their culture. and if there was, life as she knows it was falling apart. learning about her dead people's culture probably didn't even cross her mind.

without saying any of these things and by intentionally leaving readers in the dark about what speer was truly like, rf kuang said so much about the horrors of genocide. by not saying anything, she said everything. she did the "show me, don't tell me" tip for writers and it was brilliant.

we will never learn most of speer's culture and history and that was the point.

[dudlesdudles]

altan and rin

[ammapola]

I lied, put your clothes back on

I'm going to explain to you why Altan, Qara and Chaghan are the characters that were telling us in advance about the end of the trilogy and the trifecta formed by Nezha, Rin and Kitay but we didn't pay enough attention to them

Altan, Chaghan and Qara are the" failed" trifecta

Altan's sacrifice breaks the cycle, paving the way for Rin, Kitay, and Nezha to become the next generation of the trifecta

Each reflects the mistakes of the past: Rin as Altan and Riga, Kitay as Qara and Jiang, and Nezha as Chaghan and Daji, all trapped in the same vicious cycle

In the end, Rin understands that, like Altan, her destiny is to sacrifice herself to break the cycle. Her death, along with Kitay's, leaves Nezha alive and ruling, mirroring Chaghan's fate

In the dynamic of Rin, Kitay and Nezha, it is clear that they represent an echo of Altan, Chaghan and Qara's failed attempt. Rin takes Altan's place as the center of destruction and strength, Kitay represents strategic and emotional stability as Qara did, while Nezha, being the only one left in the end, is a distorted version of Chaghan, the survivor who carries the weight of the world

Rin understands, at the end of the trilogy, the meaning of Altan's sacrifice: not only was it necessary to break the cycle to create something new, but his sacrifice was also an act of love towards her, giving her the opportunity to build a future that he never had. Rin's sacrifice reflects that understanding, breaking the cycle of hatred and revenge that Riga perpetuated in his generation

(I hope you understand, English is not my native language)

I should be drawing I Know...

[kalbaishakhi]

Do the Yin family men reproduce by mitosis because why the fuck are they all described as carbon copies of each other

[sweeetsh]

no genocide au rinaltan <3

[iambecomeyourvillain]

rin, while she still believed that altan was invincible: how did you learn to control the fire how do you block out the phoenix's voice in your head how

altan, with his crippling opium addiction: don't ask me how i did it i just did it it was HARD

[marsmel]

Imagine being the last two (known) members of your race but one destroyed her womb, the other is in a toxic situationship with another man, and they turn out to be cousins.

[len-22y]

still waiting for rf kuang to release the fourth poppy war book where it’s revealed that rin just had a really long bad dream and everyone is happy and im happy too

[arianwyn-art]

she’s never done anything wrong ☺️🫶🫶

[nartml]

Don't you love it when they're so ruthlessly doomed by the narrative it's actually a bit impressive how you ever even had hope

[chard0nneret]

Had this vision of RF Kuang's characters from The Poppy War trilogy on this song (Just A Man) from EPIC The Musical by Jorge Rivera-Herrans, so I had to draw it despite the ambition being way above my skills !

[ihuak-art]

chasing altan