#he needs an uncle cliopher too

[captainkirkk]

I think the Goblin Emperor hurts in a different way from HOTE because it's from the pov of the Maia, the trapped emperor

In HOTE, we're inside Cliopher's pov, who only understands but only glimpses moments of his Radiancy's pain and isolation. And Cliopher is so full of hope and stubborn determination and competency - the system may be full of imperial prejudice but he knows that he WILL dismantle it for the sake of the people and his emperor. Plus his career is established and he has spent centuries acclimatising to and shaping the world within the Palace

Maia, on the other hand, is barely an adult and has lived most of his life in isolation with his abuser. He's overwhelmed and out of his depth and can barely trust his Household, who he has known for maybe a few days or weeks. He's kind and determined, yes, but it's overwhelmed by loneliness and confusion. Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying TGE, but not as much as I loved HOTE

[hermitknut]

Kip and Buru Tovo and opposing perspectives

OKAY so time for a little mini deep dive on my current obsession.

One of Kip's major challenges is always about coming home. About how his family and community treat him, about how they see him. From his perspective - well, it's in the opening section of Hands of the Emperor:

By the time he reached the bottom of the Spire he no longer felt like Cliopher Mdang, personal secretary to the Lord of Rising Stars, Secretary in Chief of the Private Offices of the Lords of State, official head of the Imperial Bureaucratic Service, unofficial head of the world's government, the Hands of the Emperor. He was, instead, merely everyone's Cousin Kip, the one who left.

He thinks of people back home as bafflingly insular, as unappreciative of anything outside of the ring, and he thinks that he doesn't rate highly enough to merit much from them - he's too much and not enough, as he says to Fitzroy in At the Feet of the Sun. He didn't find what he was meant to do at home, and he sees himself as without a place there. He assumes people a home barely think about him, and if they do it's trivial or negative. He doesn't doubt that they love him, and he doesn't think of them as bad people - but he doesn't feel seen or appreciated, and he's made his peace with that (well. he tells himself he has, anyway). He assumes they see him, fundamentally, as too foreign, and inadequate.

There is a lovely little microcosm example of this, when he is about to tell Buru Tovo (and his Radiancy, Rhodin, Conju, Ludvic) about his life. Kip feels the need to have a flame present in the room, even if it is only symbolic, so he gets the brazier:

He lit it with the fire-starter, knowing even as he did it that this showed a certain want in him. His great-uncle watched him narrowly, obviously noting the symbolic presence of the fire and the use of a Solaaran method of lighting it.

showed a certain want in him. Oof. But that's how he feels!

Now skip over to Portrait of a Wide Seas Islander, and there's this incredible, almost shocking shift in perspective. Because we can suddenly see what Buru Tovo can see - we can see past the snide little comments about Kip's clothes and how long he's been gone, and we can see the anxiety over his absence that drives it. Kip sees these things as people wanting to knock him down a peg, and that's not entirely untrue - but he has no idea of how much he is valued, back home. Both as a person (as we find out from Bertie's letters and some of the later scenes), and more broadly as the rising tana-tai - people care so much about what he does and what happens to him, and they are so bad at telling him that (Kip's perspective is entirely justified, given the information he has and the way people talk to him, and it hurts).

And going back to the microcosm, this is the part that always makes me pause, because look at the lighting of the brazier from Buru Tovo's perspective:

Tovo watched Kip light the fire in the velioi way, which had the merit of taking bare seconds. When the fire had caught - first try, of course it was first try -

Not only is Tovo entirely neutral on the method - he notes that it's foreign, and the pro is that it's quick, that's it! - he is immediately distracted by the fact that Kip did it on the first attempt, because of course he did, because Kip is just that good.

We don't dwell on this moment in the text, because it's immediately followed by Kip revealing to Buru Tovo that he's been practicing the fire dance, which is understandably a Big Deal. But! the contrast!! between the two versions of that moment!!! kills me every time. Kip, sunk in to the rut of his own belief in his own inadequacies, can only see a lack. He can only see something he could be doing better (as if Kip has ever done something worse than his best, I swear). And Buru Tovo, looking back at him, can only see just how brilliant he is.

Every time I come back to this I have to take a goddamn moment, so I thought I'd share. It's only a tiny moment, and of course it's a theme that the books return to at much greater length, but I really love the deft way this is done.

[savrenim]

i am running thru ur tumblr to find ONE POST to cite for tvtropes, and i agree so hard with the soulmate stuff. what if my soulmate is an awful abuser, i want the choice to NOT be with them without some painful physical consequence or loss of perception if i don't date them just because the universe said we were "meant to be"... plus if it's just a magic thing it "feels" more justified in-universe that soulmates exist and less like an ass pull so you could justify getting 2 characters together

oH gods this is something that I have SO many feelings about that probably is slightly informed by my own orientation and preferences, but. feelings. this got long so it's going under the cut

so there are three and a half major things that I have a problem with in terms of general soulmate tropes that are "there is one person who is your perfect romantic partner" (which to be fair I've seen a number of soulmate AUs do that trope with the addendum "although it only applies to a certain percentage of the population / not everyone has soulmates / everyone has soulmates but not everyone has SUPER PERFECT ROMANTIC soulmates" which at least somewhat avoids the statistic inevitability of abusive soulmates if combined with Fate Can See The Future And So Your Fated Soulmate Just Won't Be) and these complaints aren't even from the "I'm poly where's my poly rep" kind of place which is a whole 'nother bag of worms, but let's go:

1. I aggressively believe that love is a choice. Love is something that is built, not predetermined before you meet someone. There might be initial compatibility aspects going down when you first meet someone, but, like. statistically there are more than seven and a half billion people on this planet. If there is only a single person perfectly meant for you, again, statistically, you are not going to meet them, I've seen the figure thrown that on average a person will meet on the order 10,000 people in their lifetime but let's even go 100,000, you will meet 0.001% of the world's population. Unless you think some sort of divine coincidence or fate is guiding you to a soulmate which throws free will out the window and then I can't help you but, like. discarding the math, I think it is actively harmful to a relationship to believe that it can be sustained on chemistry or predetermined 'but we're perfect for each other' alone. It requires work. You choose who is in your life, you choose who stays in your life, you choose who you want to be important to you based on what they contribute to your life and what you contribute to theirs.

(I am assuming this ask is at least partially in reaction to my soulmate post, which actually the fic in question, a buried and a burning flame, has since gone up. I highly recommend reading Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard first, but besides the setup for arson wizards that alas is never used because the fire mage with a soulmate in question is Responsible, I decided to both tackle 'okay soulmarks trope too let's throw it in', which leads to the not-really-a-spoiler passage that appears fairly early on about actually the full layout (albeit with less detail on the 'yeah for mages it just helps ground their magic, nothing romantic about it' part) of my Soulmate Rules:

Soulmates existed, both in the Empire of Astandalas and across the Wide Seas. They just worked slightly differently in Vangavaye-ve than the rest of the worlds.

The rest of the Empire seemed to view soulmates as a monolith. From what Cliopher had been able to glean, the tradition was grounded in their magic. Magi had soulmates, or rather, magic-workers would each have a soulmate. Cliopher wasn't clear if all magic-workers had a soulmate, or if magic-workers simply could have one, but there was always a mage in soulmate pairs, and it was always a pair. There were no marks, no visible signs involved, as soulmates were something that were sensed with magic. They were permanent, intrinsic, and to be recognized immediately.

To Wide Sea Islanders, soulmates were a choice.

The soul-marks, lana and lani-voa, would appear the first time you touched someone that you had chosen to love, with the full knowledge that you loved them. Cliopher had the marks of his mother and father, his sisters, Basil and Dimiter, Bertie and Ghilly. His skin was covered lovingly with the colors of his love, marks that he had gotten used to concealing with long sleeves in Astandalas when he had gotten tired of the constant staring at his 'primitive tattoos'.

Buru Tovo had been the only one to give him lani-voa, a greater mark of the soul. The pattern, with its thick lines and twisting design in a deep blue, extended over the entirety of his left arm and shoulder. They were the dances of his family pressed onto his skin, and he had traced them over with reverent and feather-light touch for months after he had received them. A lani-voa marked someone who had changed your life for the better in a deep and irrevocable way. It was a great honor to have even one.

And now, with the gold stretching up his right arm, new patterns that he didn't recognize stretching up from a handprint of pure gold that was expanding the longer he held that first contact with Tor—

now he had two.

(Buru Tovo is Cliopher's great uncle, for context. In fact, everyone listed there is either a familial or platonic relationship, with a single relationship that used to be romantic but settled into platonic.))

so. yeah. Love is a choice! The Biggest Of Moods! any soulmate lore that undermines that is a Bad Message, in my opinion.

The emphasis also on platonic soulmates leads into my second point:

2. I have found in my life that platonic relationships that I have are and have always been as important if not moreso than the romantic relationships. the emphasis of a single romantic relationship as the most important relationship that you can be in maybe fits for some people, but as a generalization to absolutely everyone I think is toxic and harmful. and not just for aro people! I'm not aro, but I would be miserable to write off my friends as Less Important And Meaningful to me than my parter, whom I love with all my heart! (I've actually ended up in my life settling into what I call the red/blue/gold system for 'relationships that I treat with the importance that society treats romantic relationships', but that's a personal thing). The standard soulmate trope tends to really solidly deliver the thesis of "there is a single romantic relationship that is the single most important relationship in your life" and I just think that's a very bad thesis.

3. Finally, I think the emphasis on permanent/forever is a harmful one for relationships in general. People change. you drift closer to people or further away from them. you move, they move, your schedules change, your interests change, your life changes. if you are living with a romantic partner you're going to keep seeing each other every day, but that doesn't stop you from changing as a person, which means see Point 1 Love Is A Choice; but even if you choose to remain together, you are probably eventually going to Ship Of Theseus your entire relationship. I think it is an important message that if that happens and it is no longer a relationship that is as deeply positive as it once was in your life, you don't...have to keep it out of loyalty to what it once was.

It's okay for people to drift out of your life that were once the most important person in your life. It doesn't invalidate how important and meaningful that relationship used to be, and it isn't a betrayal to let yourself and them and your relationships change and evolve. The idea that something has to be forever for it to matter I think is the idea about soulmates that I disagree with the most. Probably because that was the hardest lesson for me to learn as a kid and a teenager, and the life lesson that I am proudest for learning.

3.5 your point 'plus if it's just a magic thing it "feels" more justified in-universe that soulmates exist' is exactly on the nose, literally I am unable to write anything without attempting to write down a universal theory of everything for How The World Works. if something soulmate-wise is going down even if it never appears on the page you bet your ass I have either figured out the general cosmology and theology of "are there gods or divine forces who have instituted this policy? if so, why? what purpose does it serve", or in the case of abaabf which already has such interesting magic rules in the original canon of "is there an evolutionary reason for soulmates to exist" which I don't go tracing out full evolutionary biology for a fic necessarily mostly because I would want the full evolutionary biology in canon to make sure mine is compliant enough but that sure as hell does translate to "if soulmates exist and it's not for the reason of Because Godlike Beings Said So, there better be a practical purpose". I find at least long-form soulmate fics (ie things With Plot and a Developed Setting that aren't just "let's do a ficlet with this well-known trope") that Do Not Feel Like They've At Least Thought About Why Soulmates Happen To Exist hurt my soul. which I think slightly intersects with my "I hate it when the rules of the universe/ laws of physics are human-centric" instead of "the base rules which were not designed for humans came first, and how the human world works arose in reaction to them" and. yeah. consistent desire to know at least for myself why things are set up the way that they're set up which gods ifmlam is wild and completely bullshit and pulls from quantum multiverse philosophy I started writing that thing when I was like. eighteen? nineteen? but at least it's there so I can be consistent.

as a caveat for everything above: I don't actually think that fiction, fanfiction in particular, needs to perfectly reflect what A Good Relationship or A Good Message About Relationships should be. it is a very human desire in a chaotic and confusing world to want a simple, absolute, binary thing to hold onto. fiction is a place for escapism or wish fulfillment or even exploring things that you wouldn't actually want in real life, I think that the movement in fandom/fiction that all of the messaging in your story should match the advice you'd give for a real-life setup is a bad and harmful one. mostly my opinions on soulmates and hence desire to do inversions of the soulmate trope in my fic and things like the red/blue/gold system and heavy emphasis on platonic relationships in original work that I'm writing is about a desire to see representation for me and the things I love and find important and my sort of relationships in the stories that are a big part of my life. but I am really glad that in doing so I seem to have struck a chord in other people, who maybe want to see the same thing!

[hermitknut]

At the Feet of the Sun and tragedies that sort of did, sort of didn't happen

So I already texted this to a friend but I wanted to share on here too: last weekend I was subsumed with deeply agonising yet interesting thoughts about That Time Kip Got Declared Dead.

Below cut for spoilers but also length; this is mostly copied straight over from whatsapp so hopefully it still makes sense.

Because!! Kip is our PoV character!! So it took me until now to think outside his perspective on it - he thinks "oh wow the court, the newspapers, the empire" re The Death Of Cliopher Lord Mdang, which is understandable.

But I don't think it at all occurs to him to think of how much his presumed death would have devastated the Vangavaye-ve.

I mean they must have known, because Kip's mum and sister and uncle are all there at court when he wakes up, and he notes that his efela will have been sent home for funereal reasons. So, he knows they've been told. But Kip doesn't think about it much because a) he's got a lot else to think about and b) he never thinks of himself as missed or valued back home, at least not on a grand scale, even with what got clarified in HotE. And, c) he's still getting the hang of the fact that people back home even know what's going on at court.

I keep going back to the fact that, in this gathering of his family at court because of his death, there's someone significant missing: Buru Tovo.

Because we, if we have read Portrait, we know what Kip doesn't: we know just how much people care about him and value him and long for him to come home, not in a corrective way (the vibe Kip gets, which is basically "come home sit down and stop being weird") but because he's their best and brightest and their rising tana-tai and they need him and treasure him.

And we know that Buru Tovo kept that ember of hope alight for decades, that Kip would come home, and…

I keep thinking about Buru Tovo hearing that after all that hope, that time, that triumph of the fire dance… Kip has died. Kip will never come home.

And then I wonder if he… because he's like Kip, when tragedy strikes he goes to do what needs doing. He stays home because there are duties to do, because he cannot leave the community in this moment, and because he needs to go to Aya and ask her what he'd hoped not to have to, that she will hold the dances in trust, because there is now no one to follow him.

And also, at the same time, if he stays home because it hurts too much to go to Solaara.

And then!! The relief!! The joy!! The heart-stopping, tear-inducing news that Kip is okay, he's alive… damn. The way that must have hit home. It might only have been a short time before the announcement of Kip's death and the announcement that he's alive again, but frankly even a day would have been enough.

What happens next, in the Vangavaye-ve at least? Kip returns home at the end of the book and claims everything he deserves.

And people leave gifts for him at the house, and I think he attributes this to his claiming the position and finally Coming Home and all he's achieved in Sky Ocean, because that's what's just happened to him.

But… this is the first time he's come home since his family and the Vangavaye-ve had heard he died.

I feel like a lot of it comes from that, a lot of need to welcome him and express what they feel.

God, Kip always thinks he needs to Overachieve to the Max in order to earn love and respect back home, but I don't think they need him to, they're just terrible at expressing it. The love! Was there!! The Whole Time!!!

~

Additional comedy headcanon: the reason Vou'a is hanging out with the lore keepers when Kip and Fitzroy make their grand entrance is because he's in the doghouse with Buru Tovo about letting him think Kip was dead, and he's trying to make it up to him.

He got whatever the traditional islander equivalent of "go sleep on the sofa" is and he's sucking up by losing to Buru Tovo and friends at draughts and trying to earn Husband Points back.