What if you were a guy who was actually a girl who was actually kind of the guy

And they were both war criminals <3

(Or, I hyperfixated on the Machineries of Empire series for a week and all I got was a handful of new blorbos and a desire to do more linear algebra)

There were a couple versions of this drawing before this one, here:

First sketch, first digital drawing, finished the sketch since I didn’t like the digital version, did another digital version based off the finished sketch

Anyway

I love her <3 and her gender and identity fuckery <3

cleaned-up dispatches from the sketchbook, where I am avoiding many different responsibilities (including the historical litfic I have to read for work...) by doodling terrible memes

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

I just think I just think I just think that in the beginning she wanted to be a part of something larger than herself so badly, she wanted to conform in the matrix of the larger Us and even through all that she was still so human she couldn’t help but listen to the ghost in her head and realized he was human too. in the end she again gave up who she was for the hope of something greater

she was such a good Kel but god she was a better Person

There's so much going on with Cheris shooting Moth Jedao in the head (the second time) but I'll put my thoughts under the cut for discussions of rape

The thing that gets me about this is that is makes clear how much they are both Jedao, and how much they see themselves in the other even if they don't want to think about it. Does Cheris empty her magazine into Moth Jedao's head because he admits to raping someone? Not solely. She hates that, it's a line Jedao draws despite all his other atrocities, but she's able to keep her cool in every other situation. Like, even when her people are under threat of genocide she makes it look like she doesn't care! One could argue that shooting Moth Jedao is consequence free, and it is, but mostly it's personal. Cheris did not pursue Khiruev, not for strategic purposes and not even when Khiruev was not chained to her anymore. (Cheris's Kel taboos empower Jedao's own even more.) What really gets her, I believe, is the suggestion that she - that Jedao - could be a rapist. This one cornerstone of morality he's trying desperately to protect. And Moth Jedao, as suicidal as the original, knows this. Yes, he's trying to protect the Revenant, but I can't help but feel that he's asking to be punished for what he did to Dhanneth. Perhaps he's even hoping she'll find a way to kill him, and this is the one transgression she would most hate him for.

Chapters: 1/1

Fandom: Machineries of Empire - Yoon Ha Lee

Rating: Teen

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Ajewen Cheris/Kel Khiruev

Characters: Kel Khiruev, Ajewen Cheris

Additional Tags: Femslash February, Suicidal Thoughts, watch repair

Summary: Khiruev finds the will to live for herself and to choose what she wants.

This is a very silly observation but writing Aubreyad-MoE crossovers is making me think a lot about naming traditions; specifically the fact that in the Aubreyad, and possibly 18th/19th century Europe by extension (?), not only do all the characters use last names unless they're very close, but also last names are just better for distinguishing people (enter jokes about 25 Williams on the books or whatever). On the other hand, in Machineries of Empire, faction names often take the place of surnames, so the characters are generally distinguished by their given names, and at least for people in the service of a faction (most of the characters in the books) surnames are a moot point—or at least not something that get used outside of full name introductions (i.e., it's only Ajewen Cheris, never Ajewen). Anyways, insert some cool observation about name conventions in different cultures, and also I have no idea how to insert side characters from the Aubreyad into this fic by name sdfhjksdhfdsf

i have carnal and sensuous feelings for ajewen cheris.

(with apologies to kate beaton)

this is a birthday present for my best friend. i love her, and yet i do this

She swallowed a splinter. It punctured her heart on the way down.

Old piece from 2019 I still like a lot

Day 4: Ghosts

Shuos Jedao-Ajewen Cheris moodboard from random pictures I found on my tablet

@a-voltage asked: Jedao and/or Cheris? OwO Pink seems like a challenge! [A26]

menace (extroverted) and menace (introverted)

[send me a color palette]

Shuos Mikodez does stand-up:

There’s an arch-traitor loose with a Kel swarm. I think eventually everything’s going to be okay, but I have no idea what’s going to happen next. And neither do any of you, and neither do your parents, because there’s an arch-traitor loose with a Kel swarm. It’s never happened before, no one knows what the arch-traitor is going to do next, least of all the arch-traitor. He hasn’t been off a leash in four hundred years, he’s as confused as you are. 

There’s no experts. They try to find experts on the news. They’re like, “We’re joined now by a man that once saw a Shuos at a dinner party.” Get out of here with that shit! We’ve all seen a Shuos at a dinner party. This is an arch-traitor loose with a Kel swarm. 

When an arch-traitor is loose with a Kel swarm, you got to stay updated. So all day long you walk around, “What’d the arch-traitor do?” The updates, they’re not always bad. Sometimes they’re just odd. It’ll be like, “The arch-traitor offloaded all his threshold winnowers, and didn’t use them to kill anyone at all?” I didn’t know he knew how to do that. The creepiest days are when you don’t hear from the arch-traitor at all. You’re down in the operating room like, “Hey, has anyone…Has anyone heard–” [imitates shooting a fellow officer in the head] Those are those quiet days when people are like, “It looks like the arch-traitor has finally calmed down.” And then ten seconds later the arch-traitor is like, “I’m gonna spread word from untraceable sources throughout the Hexarchate that I could’ve defeated the Hafn invasion in one battle if the local fortress didn’t hold me back! I’m Shuos Jedao, the arch-traitor!” That’s what I thought you’d say, you dumb fucking arch-traitor.

And then… then… then you go to brunch with people and they’re like, “There shouldn’t be an arch-traitor with a Kel swarm.” And it’s like, “We’re well past that.” Then other people are like, “If there’s gonna be an arch-traitor with a Kel swarm, I’m going to achieve immortality.” And those don’t match up at all. 

And then, for a second, it seemed like maybe we could survive the arch-traitor, and then, 5,000 miles away, the Hafn were like, “We can teleport now and we’re going to blow up a pivotal clocktower!” And before we could say anything, the arch-traitor was like, “If you even fucking look at the clocktower, I will anticipate your exact probable locations and blow you to smithereens. I dare you to do it. I want you to do it. I want you to do it so I can blow you to smithereens, I’m so fucking crazy.” 

“You think you’re fucking crazy, I’m the fucking Hafn. I wire kids into scoutships for power with vines. I’m fucking crazy.” 

And all of us are like, “Okay.” Like poor False Hexarch Nirai Faian at those goddamn meetings. “Okay.” And then, for a second, we were like, “Maybe the crashhawk high-general will catch the arch-traitor.” And then the arch-traitor is like, “I have recruited the crashhawk high-general. Also, I’m actually Ajewe Cheris.” She can do that? That shouldn’t be allowed no matter who the arch-traitor is. 

laying awake at night thinking about Ajewen “Are you lonely when I sleep?” Cheris

[ID: 3 colorless half-body sketches of ajewen cheris from the machineries of empire series. she is drawn as a slim woman with short, choppy black hair, a round nose, and monolid eyes. in the first she is wearing casual clothes, looking off to her left while eating a kel ration bar and thinking about a meat pasty. below that she is facing the viewer with a serious expression while wearing a space suit. to the right of the others, she looks up and to the right while in a space suit, laughing in disbelief with one hand pressed to her chest and the other hovering in front of her. text above her head says "{That's what you've been talking to?}" /end ID]

if there were two guys on the moon and one of them fed the other his lost memories that she'd been carrying would that be fucked up or what