#ilisidi

[calmnivore-new]

fanart for foreigner by cj cherryh

[fansideblogtocjcherryth]

Here I made some Transparent png of the foreigner book covers if any one needs them. probably part 1 of something 1/?

[queerian]

I love Ilisidi so much

Eavesdropping on Bren, sending him useful information in response before Bren could go ask her opinion, and then telling him to go the fuck to bed

[fansideblogtocjcherryth]

Question, like what do you think would happen? Like would it get chaotic or something else?

I think they should've put Ilisidi in charge of the space station. Think of how funny it would be.

[gravything]

Conspirator: Bren Cameron’s working vacation accumulates troublesome houseguests :( :(

the themes are strong in this book and the action is terrifying! yes there is adventure, yes there are buses driven wildly overland, yes there is elite verbal knifework (Ilisidi my beloved great-grandmother) and rigid social protocol—

and then there is, basically, zoomed-in exploration of frayed social fabric post-coup-and-re-coup, examination down to the level of family ties and up to what’s holding clans and nations together or what’s not, because those are the same things. cherryh’s been laying down details for books now in things like missed messages and weird guys out of place and unmaintained roads.

one of the main points in this one is, like, what if we had cell phones. part of the world has them and it’s a plot point that the rest is considering whether and how to adopt them too. there’s worldbuildy alien social reasons this is complicated.

and the story itself is throwing up all these situations where instant person-to-person communication would be expedient and situations where it would be disastrous, and situations where you are thinking about, well, these people would be in reach of each other but would they be connected? in the way they need to be?

while the main characters directly and indirectly grapple with those questions, too!!! in the ways they make decisions about each other!! a bunch of Things about the main character are About This Question: where am I connected, how securely, how properly, how do I maintain it?

this is one of those books that makes me want to be writing proper reviews/analyses.

and this is number 10!! the opener of trilogy 4! (smart me, to have gotten 11 and 12 at the same time, except for how maybe I will not be able to put them down.) who knows what she’s got planned for this trilogy.

Pretender (#8) was my absolute favorite so far (the theeeeeemes, the bonkers action was delivering hard on the underlying themes of the series, and the physical description was so sense-evocative) and this one is giving it such a fight.

[fallloverfic]

I read some bizarre as fuck takes about The Tomb of Dragons by Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison and commentary on the fandom and reaction to the book, and I think it's some of the most brain-dead stuff I've seen in a while, by people who have possibly never read any of Monette's other works outside The Cemeteries of Amalo or The Chronicles of Osreth (maybe they have, I don't know, but I'm not sure they'd have stated things this way if they had).

Spoilers below for many of Monette's works, including The Doctrine of Labyrinths, The Angel of the Crows, the Kyle Murchison Booth stories, The Cobbler's Boy, and obviously The Chronicles of Osreth (I have not gotten past the first 1/3 or so of Iskyrne, which she wrote with Elizabeth Bear, so I have no thoughts on that, but that's basically the only part of Monette's back catalogue that I have not read at this point). Also spoilers for Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh.

It is fine if you liked Tomb - I generally did! But coming up with weird, anti-fannish, nonsensical reasons for why other people didn't just ain't it.

It is not abnormal for non-Romance stories to incorporate romance elements or plots. One of the series I honestly feel like Monette has read, based on when she mentioned C.J. Cherryh as an influence, and which was possibly inspiration for Osreth, Foreigner, is not a romance, but involves a number of ongoing romance subplots, including that of the protagonist, Bren, and his bodyguard, Jago, who have been in a relationship for years, and get together in book 3. (I could go through the similarities between the two series, particularly TGE, but we'd be here all day; there's a reason people draw comparisons between the two series, though, including the four bodyguard structure, braided hair as cultural requirement, black/white motif, a focus on culture clash and linguistics, warrior girlfriend to non-warrior boyfriend, and attempted assassinations). Bren's past romantic/physical relationship is an ongoing plot for many books, Tabini's marriage is an ongoing plot for many books, and Ilisidi's relationships are a kind of ongoing joke and political point of import, historically. I feel like it's honestly a waste of my time to try to prove by example that romance plots occur outside Romance genre stories. The guy getting the girl is a trope, and romance is foundational in some form to many, many non-Romance fantasy stories. Foreigner is notably remarkable in that the series is largely broken into multiple trilogies, and Jago's interest is introduced in the first trilogy, in book 1, with Bren not entirely non-reciprocating, increasingly not entirely non-reciprocating in book 2, and then consummating in book 3. In a non-Romance book that is extremely not about their relationship. Also Jago is Bren's bodyguard. If Monette read this series - and maybe she didn't, who knows - and Hanu/Thara ended up the way it did... It's kind of strange, particularly given the potential love interest showing interest in Thara from book 1 of Cemeteries was not Hanu.

Another example of non-romance works with a romance that ends well that I can think of is Monette's own work (that she wrote with Elizabeth Bear), The Cobbler's Boy, which has a romantic subplot. It is also one of the few works of hers to involve a queer protagonist who has a partner at the end of the narrative, or really a protagonist of any sexuality who does so; I think the only other examples are Maia, who's still engaged at the end of The Goblin Emperor, and Mehitabel in The Mirador, who continues her affair with Stephen. Felix, Mildmay, Kay, Doyle, Crow, Booth, Ulcetha, Vineän, Aiveän, the handful of short story protagonists I can recall... basically every protagonist ends up single (maybe Mildmay has his friends with benefits thing with Corbie, but that's a stretch). Felix leaves open the possibility of something with Murtagh, and outside Thara's maybe something with Hanu, that's kind of it. Romance features throughout nearly all of these works, but they are not romance works. Felix and Mildmay have varyingly disastrous relationships with multiple characters, and Kay's tragic one-sided romance is central to his narrative. Maia's engagement - while largely politically and tragically distant for much of the book - forms a central part of TGE, while Ulcetha's affair with Csecoro is a tragic, central part of his story, and a key part of the climax of The Orb of Cairado is another tragic romance. Doyle's entanglement with Mary is perhaps not the core part of the novel, but it is not insignificant, as is Crow's complex involvement with physicality. The Bone Key starts with Booth's tragic pining, and there's an entire short story devoted to his relationship with another man (Elegy of a Demon Lover).

Again, it is possible to have romance narratives in non-romance stories. It is also, as evidenced here, not unusual for Monette to have them end badly, or at least for the characters to not end up together. A Monette protagonist crashing and burning for whatever reason with a love interest? More normal than not (and honestly goes against the bizarre idea that what happened in Tomb is going against expectation, particularly in a trilogy that started with someone committing suicide to protect a lover while starring someone who blames himself for his lover's execution). Notably, Kay was meant to be Felix's romantic interest in Corambis, but that got changed before publishing, which is fascinating in the sense that I'm still convinced Tomb was rewritten at some point to remove Iäna as Thara's love interest, because it makes way more sense than what happened, and is in line with Monette's writing (also, if she read Foreigner while writing Tomb... suddenly that bodyguard romance makes a little more sense). To pretend that people who like Monette's works require that a romance plot be followed through or whatever is bizarre and not true to the majority of her stories (I don't even think most people who read her works even know what The Cobbler's Boy is, and that's not what I would call the height of romance). And to pretend that this breakage of "expectation" for demands from a different genre is why people are upset or something is just fucking weird. Though I will note that I have seen criticism of Monette's writing patterns along these lines in the past. I have even argued against people who said she had a pattern in her work of leaving characters, particularly queer ones, miserable, principally because she has such a focus on platonic relationships in her narratives, which are equally valuable.

To pretend that the only people who saw Iäna/Thara were stuck in their shippy fandom glasses and were reading some other book series than the one we have is laughable. I've read almost all of the things Monette has written, including her poetry. I'm not saying everyone has, I'm not saying I'm Just That Special and immune to fandom happenings or whatever. But if you want a three-book structure that introduces and consummates in some form a romantic and/or physical relationship, just look at DoL: Gideon is introduced in book 1 as having an interest in Felix, their relationship is developed in book 2, and book 3 starts with them being a couple. Book 4 is partially about Felix's grief over Gideon's death. This isn't a shippy thing, this is a "Monette has done this before, and she didn't have to do the same thing again, but to not even mildly expect it after reading her other works would be strange". (She wrote TGE while writing book 3 or 4 of DoL). (Also she wrote it better before, and wrote "this isn't going to work out" in many, many better ways).

To address the "shippers are just mad" or whatever thing. I have also read a lot of fanfiction in the fandom. There's a lot of great stuff here by great writers (though, among Monette fandoms, the folks in the Kyle Murchison Booth fandom are really killing it). And no shade to them, but I have bookmarked a grand total of two Iäna/Thara fics in the entire time I've been in this fandom. And I have reread neither of them in nearly three years (that's not because they're bad, Iäna/Thara is just one of those ships I never really needed fic for, in part because no one can do better than how Iäna flirts with Thara in canon, including in Tomb, even after the stupid "I only like women" conversation). In fact, the fic in this fandom I reread the most, unlike a lot of Monette's works, has no romance in it (though the second-most reread fic I have is a Maia/Csethiro series, because it's very good; there's a lot of great Csethiro-centric fics). The only fic I've written for the fandom is for Lisava Ormevar/Aathis Rohethar, where neither Thara nor Iäna appear, and the only planned Monette-related fics I have are for DoL characters (and one for Maia & Cala that I've kept on the backburner for years).

I have chatted with other fans about Iäna/Thara as a ship, though it hasn't exactly taken up much of my time (most of my thoughts were hopes Maia + Co would return in some form, and that Thara wouldn't end the series sad, and the hope that Ormevar and Rohethar would somehow return, and that Iäna would at least be present in book 3). It's been a pleasant surprise seeing said obviously written romance flourish over the course of books 1 and 2, and I was looking forward to see where it would go in book 3. Having read many of Monette's works where, for one reason or another, such relationships don't work out, I knew it was a possibility (particularly given Thara's similarities to Booth, who, after a fashion, almost has worse luck than Thara does). But given the build-up, and given what happened in book 2, it didn't seem likely. But it was also not my end-goal for the story. It was just an assumed added bonus.

So to be clear, you can participate in the fandom from a fanfic angle and from a ship angle, and also not have spent your entire time in the fandom being obsessive about it, and also still be annoyed about how Tomb turned out.

The Monette book I've reread the most is, hands down, The Goblin Emperor, in large part because Maia's struggles for platonic friendships are so compelling (I drafted a Cala & Maia fic ages ago that I'd still like to publish someday, but at this point, I'm not sure I will). And I would hardly call that book a romance, though Maia's feelings for Nedaö Vechin and Csethiro, Varenechibel's feelings for his wives, Sheveän's feelings for her husband, and the side romance of Pazhis Nethenel and Reshema and so on are all in the narrative. Thara is introduced principally through his relationship with Evru: he arrives at Maia's doorstep in mourning, still a shambles from his broken relationship, and a significant part of his existence in TGE and in Cemeteries is that relationship (yes, it's mostly his investigation, but to ignore how Evru and his relationship play a role in Thara's life on-page is very weird). It is impossible to divorce romance subplots from Thara's stories, and to pretend that people are just expecting too much from the very obvious is foolish.

If you want to speculate why she wrote it this way, that's fine, go for it. I've already speculated it was a rewrite for whatever reason. But this aspect of Tomb is just, frankly, bad writing. If this was the intended result after Witness and Grief, particularly after this scene near the end of The Grief of Stones:

“In the dark, Iäna’s hand found mine, and we sat for a while in silence, until I dredged together enough fortitude to say, “I am keeping thee from thy rehearsal. I should go.”

“As long as thou com’st back,” said Iäna.”

then what is in Tomb is bad writing. She's written relationships that didn't end well, romantically, for the leads before. There are a dozen ways she could have written this to be not as bad as it is. Heck, if you want "intense" male friendships in her series that ended in non-romance, look at Felix and Mildmay. Except Mildmay made it extremely clear in each book that it was never happening, and Felix also knew - despite offering and even manipulating Mildmay - that it was never going to happen, and accepting it was a big part of their story. And again, Thara already has a close platonic male friend who's done a lot for him: Anora. There is no reason his relationship with Iäna has to be so outlandish, even considering Iäna is artsy, if not for what it very clearly was being written as in books 1 and 2.

Don't look at a book using romance tropes and pretend people are fools for seeing it or that we should, I don't know, be satisfied these tropes were broken/upended/ignored? It's fine if you like the book, this part of it, or don't care, but it's perfectly understandable to me why some folks would, bare minimum, be bothered by it, and not purely because "Romance expectations" or whatever. I'm not broken up because my ship didn't get together. I'm frustrated because a plot was clearly built up across two books and then kind of pushed to the side for no apparent reason, and in a shoddy way (following the release of a novella with yet more dead queer people and queer murderers, and a rushed climax). As someone who loves Monette's prose, who has repeatedly recommended it, who's gotten several friends into her works, and who firmly believes she is still a good writer, and who generally enjoyed the rest of the book, the shoddiness here is absolutely bizarre. It is not helped that, despite the fact I like Hanu just fine and think his relationship with Thara is cute enough as things go, it feels so incredibly forced. Also! It's weird to insist people are strange for expecting a romance to work out because -general story structure of romances- when Romance readers wouldn't expect it, because usually Romance novels don't take three books to get it done (Thara and Iäna would have been together in Witness if this were Romance; introducing a love interest in the final book of a Romance trilogy is for spin-off pairings, not the lead(s)). Thara also essentially ends up in a romantic relationship at the end of Tomb anyway. If people are weird for expecting romance from a pairing involving Thara, what exactly are we meant to think of Hanu's basically entire plot, especially since it's so heavily shoved in our faces that Thara is crushing hard? And given, again, this mimics DoL - Felix has Gideon in book 3, whom he's known for two books, and then a new relationship of sorts with a brand new character introduced in book 4/the final book in the series, which is left open-ended - what other conclusion are Monette fans meant to come to about Thara and Iäna?

As for gritty, most of her works are. Like honestly, if you want a depressingly "gritty" version of Thara, just read the Booth stories. If you want a Monette plot where ongoing pining ultimately gets shattered/a relationship that was never advancing beyond platonic, despite desire on one side, just look, again, at DoL, with Felix and Mildmay. Heck, it's not even the first time this happened in Osreth (e.g., Maia's crush on Nedaö Vechin), though in DoL it was a plot that lasted over the course of the entire series, which makes it more directly comparable. This is not new territory. But it is handled far better in those instances than whatever went on in Tomb. And I'm not saying she had to copy DoL, but DoL is a good roadmap for a lot of things that were maybe attempted in Cemeteries. Heck, if you want stories about disappointment as a narrative theme, DoL is right up there throughout.

I enjoyed the greater part of Tomb. I'm over the moon Rohethar and Ormevar came back, along with the other returns. I'm glad Thara ends the book on a happy note. I love all the stuff with dragons and cats. There's a lot of humor and fun stuff in this book and commentary on bureaucracy, capitalism, and empires. I'm not surprised people like the book or are content with what happened with this particular relationship or otherwise fine that it went this direction. But insinuating shippers, Romance readers, or more fannish people just had weird expectations or whatever? No.

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

Summary: When the Redanian government decides to revive the ancient legal tradition of Correctional Marriage, Eskel is forced to take on his strangest Witcher contract yet: he must marry and "rehabilitate" a convicted smuggler who also happens to be a bard, a Viscount, and the longtime companion of Eskel’s best friend, Geralt of Rivia. Jaskier expected to waste away in a dark prison cell under the streets of his beloved Oxenfurt. Instead, he is given a simple but impossible choice: agree to marry a strange Witcher, or hang for his crimes. Jaskier soon finds himself handfasted to Eskel, a man he barely knows and cannot afford to trust. Bound together by fate, marriage, and a powerful spell known as the Ringbound Curse, Eskel and Jaskier’s destinies were linked long before their first meeting. Now they must learn how to work together, break the deadly curse, and find Geralt of Rivia before it’s too late.

Author: @flightsfancy22

[humanjeff]

"average academic battles 3 giant assassins every day" actually just statistical error. bedraggled translator Bren Cameron, who survives 10,000 assassination attempts every novel, is an outlier and should not have been counted

We feel that Bren Cameron would be a perfect skrunklo for the tumblr set, if only they knew him. With special guest Ann Leckie!

[pseudospaceship]

20 Questions for Fanfic Writers

Thank you to @lavenderprose for the tag!

Tagging @rooks-leather-jumpsuit and @redheadsramblings if they're down!

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

Four so far. I've only been on Ao3 for a few months. I wrote fics as a kid and didn't come back to it for many, many years, until I discovered it was the only way to deal with the grooves Emmrich Volkarin was eroding into my brain.

2) What’s your AO3 word count?

58,028 and growing.

3) What are your top five fics by Kudos?

Well, I don't have five yet, so I'll just give them in order.

Everything. 205. Short one-shot smut. The first thing I posted on Ao3, which was immediately bombarded with attention I assume because: porn.

The Ferrous Sun Shines on the Living. 79. The Drugs Fic. Emmrich goes a little off the deep end while Rook is in the Fade prison.

Three Days in Arlathan. 61. Another angst-fest: hurt/comfort and pre-relationship bad communication.

The Oracle. 51. Modern AU set just about 3 millennia after the events of Veilguard. Up to chapter 13 of maybe ~20.

My takeaway is y'all want smutty and angsty one-shots. I posted Arlathan two days ago jeez (and yes I might write a smutty sequel for it).

4) What fandoms do you write for?

All Dragon Age all the time. Currently all Emmrook. Sometime I might branch out into Solavellan (someone asked for angst?), but I'm not really confident that I can carry Solas's voice as well as I can Emmrich's. I'm fluent in academic, but Solas is getting more into pre-19th century in a way that I don't quite have the chops for.

5) Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do, but not always all of them. I try to give comments most of the time, because I know we all want that feedback/validation, but I go back and forth about how important a generic "thanks for reading!" is. I do appreciate you reading, I just don't want to sound transactional about it.

6) What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

So far they're all at least hopeful endings, if not outright happy. Ferrous Sun is probably the angstiest one, that it ends at the very, very beginning of what's got to be a long healing process. I'm capable of them, but ultimately I want only good things for our longsuffering necromancer. :(

7) What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

"Everything," definitely. "The Oracle" will be a happy ending, too (sorry spoilers).

8) Do you get hate on fics?

So far none! The Dragon Age fandom and the Emmrich fandom in particular are all very sweet in my experience.

9) Do you write smut?

Oh yes.

10) Do you write crossovers?

Sort of sometimes? I'm working on an AU right now that is a rewrite of a popular adventure film--I don't know if that makes it a true crossover in the current parlance.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Also, not that I know of.

13) Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Not recently. Back in the distant mists of time, my HS friends and I had a very messy round robin that was an unholy amalgamation of the X Files, a few peoples' favorite comics, at least one video game, and probably a number of other things I'm forgetting.

14) What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I mean, Mulder/Scully is the classic, right? That's where the lingo even came from, if I remember correctly (there was even a name for the people who specifically didn't ship them, but I don't remember what it was). I'm pleasantly amused by Destiel, I think Eliot and Hardison probably have amazing angry sex, and it might not count as a ship because the canon hints at the possibility (likelihood?), but Ilisidi/Cenedi from CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series is just way too *chef's kiss* for many reasons.

15) What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

The sequel to my first/only finished (yet unpublished) novel. I love that book so bad and I really, really want those characters to keep going but I can't for the life of me find a plot for them.

16) What are your writing strengths?

Language. I'm good at language. I have an excellent command of the English language gained through years of reading and then years of studying other languages with very different grammar and syntax. I like words and I'm good at putting them together. I'm also good at dialog and, I think, pretty good at character voice, if I know the character well enough.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

Plots and endings. Absolute trash. I've slowed down on The Oracle because I'm getting toward the end and I have a Pavlovian fear of it, even though I know mostly how it's going to go.

18) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

I won't do it unless I'm sure of it. I'll throw words in sometimes, but if it's a real language I do a lot more work than Google translate to make sure I'm doing something reasonable. In non-fic work I've got dialog in a language that I studied for years and used to translate regularly (gotta get back on that bicycle...), but even then it was very limited and basic. Conlang is different, especially something as half-baked as Dragon Age elvhen. I'm pretty free with that.

As a general rule, though, the reader's comprehension is the most important thing. Any non-English I include will either be reasonably obvious (in mood if not literal translation) through context or will be translated for the reader at some point. If that process of discovery can't be done or isn't important to the story somehow, I'll just find some way to say that the character is speaking another language and therefore isn't comprehensible, or I'll give the dialog in English and tag in the narration what language they're actually speaking.

19) First fandom you wrote for?

Probably Redwall when I was like 10?

20) Favorite fic you’ve written?

Of the ones on Ao3, I like them all for different reasons. Ferrous Sun might eke out the rest just because I wrote a bunch of it on a redeye flight and it still turned out pretty damn good. Though, honestly, given the story maybe that's why it turned out so good.

The crossover I'm working on might be my very favorite, though. I'm being really coy about it on here because I think it's MIND BLOWING and I want all of your minds to be blown, but we'll see how that pans out.

[geoderocks]

I made some sketches for C.J. Cherryh’s amazing Foreigner series. (I’m no great artist, obviously, but had a lot of fun doing these).

In the first book Cherryh describes atevi faces as ‘not by any remote kinship human, but sternly handsome in planes and angles’. So here is my attempt with the Banichi portrait - and of course Bren in one of his long coats (subtle lace included). I haven’t dared to have a go at Jago, Ilisidi or Cajeiri yet, but maybe will put my subpar drawing skills to the test sometime ✏️

[karalynlovescake]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass it on to some other writers if you like. Let’s spread the self-love 💜 (i personally hate these sorts of chain-letter things, so no pressure, but i do like to know which of their works a given author particularly loves, so consider this an opportunity to celebrate your work!)

Man, my instinct was "but I haven't written enough to have five favorites" and then i looked at my works page and I was like. Huh. Ok, actually that's wrong somehow.

Anyway.

The Next Level - Sandman/Good Omens crossover.

Originated entirely from that post where Neil said that Aziraphale and Crowley like to hold hands. Wrote it during a work training conference instead of paying full attention. As you do.

Put that Thing Back Where it Came From or So Help Me - Sandman,

My gen Gault and Jed buddy adventure story that took me a while to write but I got there in the end. Unfortunately for me, the readers don't go for gen-fic, so it has a third the reads of my other stuff. QQ

Wash these Sins On Down the River - Dreamling AU, written to go with @teejaystumbles art.

Vampire Hob, mysterious supernatural entity Dream. Gosh this was fun to write have take over my entire brain for like two months.

The Vampire, Formerly of Surrey - for The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison.

I just really wanted more Crow and Doyle, and also there's only eight works in that fandom and I got to deal with my personal feelings about both vampires and chronic illness.

Lowdown and Dirty - for the Foreigner series by CJ Cherryh

Still really proud of this one, even though it's from 2017, before I took my five year fanfic writing hiatus. This was just me going "wouldn't it be fun if Ilisidi Filed Intent on Bren for sneaky political reasons? he would be so hurt and annoyed and inconvenienced."

[not-a-space-alien]

Hi , I have a question.

So do you have any ideas for ship fiction situations based around bren × his ashid , Bren x tabini and/or bren x ilisidi.

You see I was planing on making a fiction for you but I do not have a lot of ideas.

The only idea is this very nsft wet dream or just romantic dreams fiction of bren having dreams around tabini , tano , algini , jago , and banichi separately.

Any better ideas then the one I got?

OH FOREIGNER FANDOM OUT OF LEFT FIELD!! :D

I think those are great ideas! :D

Personally, I love scenes with Bren x Jago, since there's a line in one of the books about it being awkward due to their size difference 😳 I also uhh love the idea of Bren x his entire ashaid just in a big pile because they can 😳😳 👉👈

if you're writing it specifically for ME (that's great ♥) Let's just say I uhhhh don't mind nsft 👀 not in the slightest

I don't have any good ideas though, unfortunately xD

[fansideblogtocjcherryth]

I have an reason why I have not been updating my blog.

so I kind of got distracted by two games, "EGGLIA: Rebirth" and "Palia". the latter is what I will be talking in depth about for one of the Characters reminds me of a certain character from the Foreigner series.

So for an introduction , Palia is a Free to play MMO that just released on Switch last month I think (now it has some flaws for example you can not delete your character , Yet according to the devs so if your interested in the game just b please know about that before diving in blind. and look up a few play troughs to see if this is kind of interesting. ) but what it makes up with is the world and the characters that are defiantly wonderfully written. like I can find a reason why I adore each character in there.

to sum up the basic plot it is about humans that start showing up in Palia and you are one of those humans that now have to get involved with the world around you and try to figure out why humans are returning.

now there is a character who goes by the name of Eshe. this is Eshe:

so you might be thinking "okay this is just an old lady with a cane, what makes you think of Ilisidi about her?" Well to start here are some similar stuff about ilisidi and eshe:

the two are politicians

They are kind of funny but can be a bit tense.

They are politically powerful and good at their jobs.

Known for being sort of argumentative .

they both are kind of distrustful of humans at first.

Yes there is some key differences, like how:

ilisidi has a fuck ton of guards and travels more then eshe.

while eshe just has a daughter instead of a grand son and great grandson that is tied to the story like ilisidi .

Ilisidi has to deal with legal assassins while Eshe doesn't.

that's all I currently got that dose not go into spoiler territory at first.

[queerian]

on Man'chi in foreigner

Warning! Spoilers for Foreigner (book 1) and Defender (book 5).

Tabini places extremely valuable players (or pivotal moments) in extremely risky situations, expecting those who feel man’chi to him to fulfill their duty to the best of their abilities. It's the same thing when there’s a dangerous situation brewing and Bren says “I have every confidence in you, nadiin” to his staff.

When you feel man'chi, “not only do I trust your loyalty but I trust your understanding and your skills and that despite all the risks and dangers you will be able to rise above it and achieve what is necessary” just goes unsaid.

When Tabini or Ilisidi don't give him what he feels is crucial information, or take actions without informing or warning him, he interprets that as them not trusting him but it actually means they trust him more!

They trust him to operate independently of instruction (and in some cases trust him to know better than they do!), they trust him to intuit the needs of his aijin and carry out what is necessary.

This is why Tabini sends Bren to Malguri in Foreigner and essentially invites/challenges Ilisidi to test Bren, knowing or trusting that Bren will not break or do the wrong thing.

This is why in Defender Tabini sends Ilisidi and Cajeiri up to go on the ship to go on the mission Reunion, knowing how valuable they both are to him and the whole aishiditat, but trusting in Bren's man’chi to him and Ilisidi, and trusting that the man’chi of the ship captains and crew to each other, all will ensure a felicitous outcome. As long as there is the treaty, Tabini can trust that all parties adhering to the treaty will maintain their common interests.

Man’chi is basically a biological assurance of stability and trust that allows atevi to operate under high levels of risk, stress, and uncertainty. As long as man'chi is clear, they know more or less what the involved parties can or will do, and this allows them to take action easily. It comes back to this so often in the series - man'chi allows you to predict fairly well how someone will act under pressure.

Man'chi is not a choice for atevi, it's biological. If they fail at something, it's either because they lack the ability/skill to accomplish the intended goal, or there is a conflict of man'chi. So if an atevi folds under pressure, they lose their value to their lord because they are not reliable - either in terms of skill or man'chi.

And this is why, in the first trilogy, Bren’s staff is initially so perplexed by his constant need for information, because they see it as him lacking confidence in them - their skills and man’chi.

As Bren says to Yolanda in Defender: "Don’t back down from Tabini’s baiting you. If he thinks you'll fold rather than argue with him, you’ll be out of his confidence in a heartbeat.” To me, this is a way riskier cultural mixup than “friend” that Bren keeps harping on about.

[karalynlovescake]

Uh, and we met his mom so we even know why.

Tabini: You're doing great. 10/10 no notes. Everyone's happy with you, just finish the job and don't worry about me, other people are keeping me posted. I'll back you in whatever you need.

Bren: ... ah, I must be misunderstanding this letter. Is this a trap?

[sylvanauctor]

chrisjen avasarala and ilisidi-aiji should hang out. nothing bad at all could result from this.