#garach jedao shkan

[tin-tweezers]

read “Ninefox Gambit”

I’m dead serious. the “Machineries of Empire” series - buy and read them immediately.

Do you like intricate genderfucked sci-fi world building powered by arcane mathematical space magic

Do you like raw characters careening back and forth between despair and mania, who want to make the world a better place, but commit atrocities and sacrifice the lives of millions in the name of that dream

Do you like piercing analysis of imperialism, empire manifested both in violence and in culture, the ways entire cultures are swallowed by empire but also resist and thrive in hiding and exile

Do you like mind control

Do you like characters who crave mind control and the security of conformity, a found family that would die for you, and have it taken all away

Do you like people being made into weapons, objectified to the point they can’t conceive of themselves any other way

Do you like immortals playing games of mutually assured destruction, cat and mouse enemies-to-allies-to-I-would-kill-you-but-I-need-you-you-are-the-only-one-who-understands-me-and-I-love-the-way-you-hurt-me

Do you like quiet little green onions growing in quiet little pots, kept on the desks of dictators to remind themselves that they are human

Do you like questioning the definition of human

Do you like unreliable narrators

Do you like conflicting factions and political alliances and backstabbing and assassins

Do you like canonical edge play dubcon sex scenes that expand the reader’s understanding of the characters’ emotional topography and motivations, and which ALSO scratch a deep and vicious Dead Dove Don’t Eat itch deep inside you

Do you like cats

Listen to me. This series is 50 content warnings in a trench coat. I read all the books and short stories in two weeks over the summer. I think they rewrote me on a chemical level.

You need to read “Machineries of Empire”

I am extremely normal about this

[invariant-ice]

op turned off reblogs, but, jedao

[syeniites]

🌱 vs 🦋 flavor of genetically-alien humanoid construct

[captainamsel]

Actually the othersense can do much more than a 360° view, there's a suspicious lack of host, he can talk to the moth, is hurt by the firing of its cannon and, oh yeah, bleeds black blood and doesn't die when shot. Also Kujen is an engineer, not a doctor. I'm starting to think the Revenant is not the only new moth prototype

About a quarter into Revenant Gun, we already know quite a bit about new baby Jedao, but it doesn't add up. Kujen has confirmed he's made from leftover carrion glass. He remembers being 17 last, but he has skills, knowledge and a way of talking that he didn't get until he was much older. He also has some memories from his time with Cheris. What's more, he can access senses and, tellingly, a 360° view like a revenant, something I don't believe Cherisjedao retained (although her viewpoint chapters are very few). Kujen hasn't talked to him revenant to revenant, so either he can't or (more likely imo) he doesn't want to reveal that particularly skill yet. Most disturbingly, he looks like OG Jedao around the age at which he was executed. The Hexarchate has technology to make someone look like someone else, but - there's no host. It's only Jedao in his head. So either this is his original body, somehow preserved, or Kujen found a way to erase the host. So whose body is this??

[adurna0-art]

Change status to: obsessed with Shuos Jedao

[dreamsatdusk]

On Sartorial Choices

I mentioned this on a Discord server a while back, but realized I don’t think I ever posted about it here.  So!

*

Hexarchate Stories; “Omens”:

(Jedao’s mother preparing for a first date with Jedao’s father.)

So Ledana donned a tasteful necklace of onyx and black pearls that she’d inherited from her gran, matched it with black pearl earstuds, and slipped into a dark gray dress with a diagonal slash of lavender.

Hexarchate Stories; “Honesty”:

(Jedao as a child.)

The slight figure in a lavender jacket belonged to her brother.

Hexarchate Stories; "Silence”:

(Jedao on a visit to his family while on leave.)

Jedao’s shoes were decidedly unmilitary lavender loafers.

(snip)

Right now Jedao was wearing informal civilian garb in violet and gray, a loose, short-sleeved tunic over well-tailored pants.

Raven Stratagem:

(Cheris, in the scene where she reveals to Brezan and Khiruev that her calendar reset is going to happen in fifteen days.)

She had changed her clothes:  an unexpectedly festive lavender dress and a raven pendant, the one Khiruev had seen once before when she played dangerously with her gun.

*

When I first read Raven Stratagem, I thought the dress mention was very interesting, mainly because I wondered why Cheris made that choice at this point in time.  But after reading the various short stories about Jedao, I came to think the colour choice was even more interesting. 

Did Jedao grow up liking lavender and gray because his mother did?  Perhaps she selected that jacket for child-him even. 

Did Cheris decide to wear a fancier outfit on the eve (or near to) of a triumph over the hexarchate that Jedao had been working toward for centuries and combine a colour choice significant to him, along with her own raven luckstone?  Jedao’s mother was murdered after Hellspin Fortress.  Cheris’s mother had just recently been murdered by the hexarchate, along with a great many of her people.  Her outfit selection here calls back to both Ledana and Dzera.

[edpizzahands]

i am not doing entire facetober but if im out of ideas and there’s a neat prompt i’ll do it.. day three was: pattern, long bob, plants so here’s a Cheris!

[image description: a colorful pencil portrait of Kel Cheris from The Machineries of Empire books. She has a round face, full lips, monolid eyes colored with dark blue and purple, and her skin is colored randomly with pink, bright purple, red, and lime green. Her hair’s a bob length just below her chin, and its colored randomly with purple, dark green, brown, dark blue, red and yellow spots which make it creamy over the other colors. She is wearing a Kel uniform, supposed to be black but colored with same dark colors as her hair. Her pin is a shuos eye and wings above it, yellow with gold rims. The background is a flower pattern, petals shaped like blank eyes. The flowers are white, background behind them is soft blue. /end description.]

[dameronalone]

look as a disclaimer im not changing my url i love my current one too much

however

i just saved the url goosejedaoshkan. and am understandably over the moon about it alksdjf;lka

[sickeningradiances]

i miss him........

[redsixwing]

Machineries of Empire Week: Fave Friday

In case it isn't very clear already, my favorite is Jedao. So why, in a situation where I have Brezan (loyalty-driven fish out of water!), Khiruev (tragic self-sacrificing Good Boss!) and Cheris (conflicted smol bean!) do I latch on to the Immolation Fox?

In case I wasn't sunk by the time Cheris has become an anchor and wakes up with this dry, witty stranger inhabiting her mind, the scene where Jedao was bugging her to go to bed really did me in. Finding the short stories about him has only made it worse better.

To begin with: I really like twisty, sneaky characters. (I play Scorpion for a reason.) There's that post going around about lining up all your favorites and realizing you have A Type? Jedao is my type in lots of fun ways.

The Hexarchate is an awful dystopian society, and Jedao is one of the few people to stand against it. For that alone I like him. Yes, he does horrible things; those are so heavily overshadowed by the atrocities of the Hexarchate at large and Kujen in particular that I can hardly consider him an outlier. But this isn't an essay about fandom morality.

No, I like Jedao because not only can he plan at the large scale, he demonstrates a level of care we see from literally nobody else in these books. He's the one encouraging Cheris to take care of herself: to sleep when she's tired, to step away and do something else when she's disassociating, even to pursue games or fencing when she's stressed out. He shows even more care for his family in the short stories, and I winced when their fates were rubbed in his face throughout the books. Jedao shows caring when he doesn't have to, when it might even be easier to overrule his anchor, seize control, and force what he needs. Instead he tries to teach Cheris, befriends her, and supports her.

I'd go so far as to say that he's not a foil to Cheris, or not entirely - he's a foil to Kujen. Also immortal, sadistic and fully capable of designing an entire society to depend on his whims, Kujen is the mastermind of not only Jedao's hardships, but of the Hexarchate's, and those they invade and force to conformity with the high calendar. He's a suitable target for Jedao, and the coming showdown between Cheris!Jedao, Kujen, and revenant!Jedao ought to be fascinating. 

In short, Jedao is the best mass-murdering spacefox momfriend a person could have, and I hope (however thin the hope) that something happy is in store for him in Revenant Gun.

[lemonadesoda]

blorboing book characters is hell actually because unless it's like an absolute mainstream hit, nobody fucking knows who the hell you're talking about so you're just sitting there by yourself Rotating Them In Your Brain

[redsixwing]

Some WAFF is definitely in order and I can hardly wait to see what you write!

The fridge thing really got to me, too. I spent three quarters of a book trying to figure out: was the fridge the black cradle? Was the fridge where Kujen was stashing Jedao's body (hahahaha NO.)

No, the fridge was the price for which Kujen was bought, that and something to put in it. That was what he thought was his price, and then he turns around and does the exact same thing to Jedao, but it's okay, because Kujen bought him a nice fridge and he'd want for nothing.

Nothing, but ethics. The choice of what he might like to do. Nothing but freedom, and the room to be himself.

Kujen and Jedao as foils make me very happy, for all the ways their situations rhyme if not match (mostly thanks to Kujen).

Cheris and Jedao and Kujen as mutual foils make me /really/ happy because they expand the target space. Because Cheris' arc parallels Jedao's so neatly that I can't help but think it might have been planned that way, and she diverges as wildly from him as he does from Kujen. So here's to that.

I'd be very interested in any meta you'd like to write about the differing trajectories of Jedao-the-revenant and Jedao-not-the-kitten. :3

I … will reserve judgement but I’m not yet sold on canon kujedao.

over half way done with the book, kind of never want it to end

[chilled-ice-cubes]

hi, i’m garach jedao shkan, 17 and i never fucking learned how to read do math

[ciaran]

Chapters: 1/1

Fandom: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Garach Jedao Shkan & Jedao Two, Garach Jedao Shkan/Kujen

Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Guilt, Mind Meld, Suicidal Thoughts, Angst, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Summary:

“We’re too different to integrate seamlessly,” the Jedao-that-is-not-Jedao says. “His memories and personhood are stronger than mine, though, so it’s easy for him to take over. I’m sorry.”

[morhath]

top 5 books!!! or top 5 characters lol

this is kinda just general current vibes, my answers prob differ from day to day

I’m gonna assume that “books” includes series, so:

The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner (was anyone surprised?)

Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones

Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho (I wasn’t as into the sequel)

three-way tie between the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire AND the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson AND the Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones

and for characters:

five-way tie between Pheris Mostrus Erondites, Attolia Irene, Attolis Eugenides, Kamet Kingnamer, and Costis Ormentiedes from the Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner so as to free up some spots for everyone else (yes sorry not quite as much love for Sophos and Helen although I also love them a lot)

Mayalaran from the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson

Breq from the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie

Garach Jedao Shkan from the Machineries of Empire series by Yoon Ha Lee

Sophie Hatter and Howell Jenkins from Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

[dreamsatdusk]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Garach Jedao Shkan/Lirov Yeren/Vestenya Ruo Characters: Garach Jedao Shkan, Lirov Yeren, Vestenya Ruo Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence Summary:

In the wake of a shocking betrayal that rocked the heptarchate and high calendar alike, Shuos Jedao confronts a long-awaited reunion and the weight of necessary lies.