#my tpw reread

[duomeiszd]

Sinegard era!

Side note: what color is the sinegard uniform 😭😭😭 I made them white bc Rin mentions they made her white lore armband out of leftover uniform fabric + white makes the most sense for students?? But I have no idea

[pearypie]

out of nowhere but on the tpw Disco Horse i think while YES tpw is absolutely not a romance it's wrong to say there's NO romance. like if we're defining anything that's romantic love as romance, yes, there is romantic love but the point as nezha literally says himself in tdf is that there was love and it didn't matter one single bit. rinezha basically serves to help hammer in the central tragedy of the story (and reel in the booktok girlies lmao), how war ravages and desensitizes and destroys-- it's only part of the horror

also it's not like a romeo and juliet type tragedy, it's fucked all on its own -- it can't really exist without the war and devastation and insanity, even though that's what damns it. rin and nezha's romance develops as they're fighting a war. their first kiss is under the murui mid-battle to resuscitate rin. nezha finds rin so compelling precisely because she's a crazy insane fucko who would kill him, the only person who can, and part of why rin likes him because he's a) sexy b) a reminder of her days at sinegard where things were so good in comparison to the war.

the first real snippet of anything but hostility between them is when they're, again, fighting a war back to back. and when it becomes hostility again, it's because both chose their duty and principles over each other. and hate coexists with that love, anyway-- rin hates nezha because he's one of the most privileged people in the country, because he took advantage of her trust to betray her for the fucking HESPERIANS, and nezha hates rin because she's, you know, a genocidal drug-addled peasant warlord who can only thrive off of conflict and doesn't value human life, because she's leading a war against everything he stands for, etc.

there was love and it didn't matter. on with the bloodshed, folks!

---

ok. well. it probably doesn't count as a "romance" what with it being so intertwined with the war, but saying there's no romance is just not true

[wetratianthe]

i know “right where you left me” is nezha’s song (if I think too hard about it I start crying) but I’m rereading the entire trilogy (bc I hate myself), I’m currently almost halfway through tdr and I just think this song fits this moment perfectly (someone has probably already pointed it out but I’m new to this fandom so bear with me)

[literaturebf]

too many books to read

[duncantashi]

my 2023 in books

tagged by: lindsay @permanentreverie and sara @ohwarnette i love you both so much for tagging me <33

honourable mentions (almost favourites + rereads): - rereads: the hunger games trilogy, tweet cute, rwrb, beach read, little women - if you could see the sun - ophelia after all - the dragon republic & the drowning faith (tpw trilogy caused me so much pain, so ofc it's a favourite) - heartless - i'll give you the sun

tagging: @deadpoets @sunflowervol6 @mayclair @singularities @moirainesedai @camiladune @dlndjarin @acotars @newyearsyet @tbosas @dallaswinstons @daisysjones

[meepertmee]

I liked tpw series sm I bought all the books after just borrowing the ebook bc ik my ass Will be rereading… fuuuck being chinese american is my downfall

[rrylies]

how's your tdr fic going 👀

omg hi skies !! my tdr fic is. going slowly it's a ?? pre-canon divergent / au fic of what would happen if the cike were all assigned with the mission of assassinating emperor ryohai pre-third war !! iirc in canon i think feylen and one or two others attempted to kill ryohai under daji's orders but they failed and went mad rereading tdr to better flesh out chaghan and qara's characters and trying to figure out what it is that chaghan can do other than predict the future and be cryptic and so far all its done is bring me misery anyways !! how's the tpw reread going :D

[exy101]

9 books I plan to read in 2024

this has been in drafts for so long idk who tagged me and idk who to tag :(

slaughterhouse-five by kurt vonnegut (subway’s been reccing this book and this author for AGES..maybe this years the time i listen)

phantoms in the brain by v.s. ramachandran (been wanting to read sum non fiction maybe psychological shit will be fun??)

atalanta by jennifer saint (wanna read more greek myths outside of rick riordan and this was on a website i looked at!)

house of hollow by krystal sutherland (idk why i havent read this already tbh)

rest of TPW series (probably after i reread the first book i know ill like it but i didnt commit last time and ended up forgetting most of it)

these violent delights by micah nemerever

rest of alice oseman’s books (i love everything ive read of hers so why havent i read more??)

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon (its time for me to get back into my lesbian era PLSSS)

the ballad of songbirds and snakes (i think abt THG 10 times a day so why havent i read this??)

[orionhong]

RIN i’m reading foul lady fortune <3 also i started dragon republic and . wow if i thought tpw could be hard to get through. God. so i’m reading foul lady fortune too now 😼😼😼

SO TRUEEEEE WE ARE TWINNING ACTUALLY !!!! i was reading dragon republic until my libby loan expired (SAD) and then yesterday i reread foul lady fortune :))) anyway FUN TIMES AHEAD uh yeah just wait until the burning god……. i love it when books make me want to eat drywall 😊 but foul lady fortune is so funnnnnn

[foolishmortal]

I saw a post about you being the author of the professor’s wife pop up on my dash, and I wanted to say I just reread it and it is so beautiful and lush and just…wow. I love it, thank you for sharing it with the world.

aw, thank you! I do love the holic fandom very much. I'm currently working on the next chapter of a WIP I've literally had in my drafts since 2012, if you want more holic goodness ^_^ (Employee of the Month on Ao3) or you know, maybe badness because I haven't written anything in five years, and I haven't written anything for holic fandom since TPW

[duomeiszd]

Portraits of Rinezha my beloved :’)

[fangruninsimp]

I love him your honour

[aylinaliens]

whenever i’m in a bad place mentally i reread the poppy war trilogy by r.f. kuang. does it help? no. it actually makes it worse :)

[asexualnezha]

why is this basically rin in a nutshell—

[wishesofeternity]

rambling thoughts on The Burning God:

(SPOILERS)

It was pretty obvious that Kuang was writing a more open book and intending on asking more questions than answering them, blurring fact and fiction to mirror real-world history, and it was really well done. Although I would've honestly preferred some things to not be so open to interpretation lol, but I guess that's a personal thing

God, all the military tactics and psychological warfare. Also, trigger warnings for pretty much everything. It's a brutal series.

The parallels between the Trio and the Trifecta. Kitay and Jiang, Daji and Nezha, Rin and Riga. How Rin had been Riga all along.

“darling, fucking what?” 

Jiang remembering who he was and still choosing to save Rin.

The Trifecta-content was kinda disappointing overall, though. They were so hyped up, especially Riga, and I really thought we were going to get a lot of them, but they just kinda ... fizzed out. 

And speaking of disappointments: Venka. One of my favourite characters for so many reasons - her growth, her trauma, her survival, her healing, her rage. I’m gonna make another post to properly write this later, but to sum it up: she was the one character whose fate I was completely fucking against, from a writing perspective. She did not have to die, and I am angry that she was killed.

Rin and Kitay. Rin and Kitay. They are soulmates and they love each other and I love them. 

CIKE 2.0!!!!!! I loved all of them, but I think it's ridiculous that they were introduced so late into the game only to be almost immediately killed off.

(Also, Kitay deserves better.)

Rin and Nezha. I just - everything. The dynamic of fire and water, of purification and regeneration, of Rin blazing out in destructive glory and Nezha living on in haunting chains. How they loved each other so much but it didn’t matter, because they were always going to be trapped by the patterns of history, and they were always going to be parallel lines, doomed to be on opposite sides. They could have never been anything other than a tragedy. 

How Hesperia wasn’t defeated in the end. How it would have to be survived for years, probably decades, for Nikan to truly begin to heal. How that small, flickering, desperate chance was still worth it. It would always be worth it.

Nezha being the last one standing. It was fucked, and infuriating, and I hated it, but it made sense.

Riga would have broken Jiang, but Rin gave up because she couldn’t bring herself to break Kitay. 

Rin choosing to die, to write herself from the narrative, both following the pattern of history and altering it from its course.

Rin dying in Nezha’s arms, just like she did in his nightmares.

Rin dying in Speer.

The ending. The ending. It was blazing tragedy and fragile survival, and it felt so very wrong and so very right. It felt inevitable.

“She’d nearly destroyed this country. And then she’d given it one last, gasping chance to live.”