my brother's keeper (poem from here)

reposting this babel drawing w/o the ask and then remembering abruptly that I have a sketchbook pg of babel drawings just sitting around

Babel, by RF Kuang, is fun cause the first half is sad but also really sweet and hopeful and relatively low stakes and you’re like “aw this is nice, found family, thanks” and then suddenly it’s the most intense most emotionally heart wrenching book you’ve ever read in your life so that’s cool I guess.

"The Undergrad Cohort"

I finished Babel in about 2 weeks and it's left a gaping hole in my heart I need to patch with fanart.

Uncleaned scanned sketch below.

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The Fallen Angel of Babel 📜✒️🪽

LOVE BABEL BY RF KUANG!! I drew Robin Swift as the fallen angel painting!!

Two people who understand each other deeply. The power they hold over each other's hearts. the trust between them. That's why I keep reading books. It fascinates me.

i will forever cry over how robin lost ramy and griffin after both of them saved him. only for him not to be able to continue life. because the grief was greater than he could bear. the pain was too much for him to think of the life after the strike. after all he did in the spirit of his late brother and dearest friend.

i will forever cry over robin letting victoire go. i simply couldn't find the words to describe the bond that they had. it was meant to be. victoire was the voice of reason between the two and robin just couldn't get through all of it, not without griffin and ramy. she made up her mind and so did he and it was hurtful to witness this two souls make peace with their choices. im going insane over this.

So my friend recently finished Babel and they said creating homoerotic tension between robin and ramy only to kill them afterwards was a weak move.

What does that even mean? If you wanted to a read a happy queer novel why did you choose Babel? Why are you looking for a fairytale ending in a book that deals with heavy topics like colonialism, racism, sexism, poverty, slavery, war and whatnot. Death was always upon them. Being gay doesn't magically give characters plot armour. War doesn't care about anyone's sexuality.

I finished Babel last week and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. So, here’s an animatic about Griffin. MAJOR SPOILERS HERE!!

my favorite thing about babel is how nerdy the characters are,,,schoolwork is so fundamental to their existence that literally everything is homework to them. being a spy? covering up a murder?? overthrowing an imperialist empire??? haha yeah man its just like doing a big assignment

long stares and long hugs

Can I mention the brilliance the RF Kuang did with Robin Swift’s name? No, not “Robin Swift,” but his original one. We’ll never know what his original name was. I was waiting, all 500+ pages, and on the last one with Robin’s POV, we get nothing.

But he gets his name back. After all his suffering, I’m inclined to believe that he deserves it.

哥哥

"Your motivating goal cannot be to join Ramy"