more rin doodles

something about rin being betrayed by everyone in her life and in her final moments turning against the only person who would never betray her because that’s all she’s ever known (they make me go insane)

…so when the teenage protagonist blows up. the entirety of Japan. in Book One, where does a series go from there?

Altan Trengsin was doomed from the start. Mans had death flags written all over him, alongside all the regular red ones. And even after, he haunted the narrative, never letting go, forever ingrained in every step the others took, every action and decision and planned move. Everywhere they went, he was there. He became the epitome of rage, the incarnation of pure, unbridled fury. He came close to being a god, yet found that he was so incredibly human, so incapable of ever crossing the line into divinity (for his immense shortcomings rivaled his immense strength) that he was unable. He was set up for failure when he needed to win the most. He was let down by everything he ever put his faith into. He became anger. He became vengeance. Never in his life did he know the warmth of love, the comfort of reciprocated acts of kindness, the selflessness in caring and being cared for. And when he was faced with it he still couldn't understand. When he saw a glimpse of it he realized he had no place for that in his heart, for all left inside was charred bone and ash. And by "no place for that in his heart" I don't mean he didn't want it. Of course he wanted it. Though he wanted revenge a bit more. He had no place for selfless love in his heart the same way a body rejects medicine, viscerally, unconsciously, unwillingly, because it is incapable of carrying that with him, because it is a foreign thing he's never known, and it's far too late for assimilation. He tried. The phoenix knows he tried.

UGH I wanna study him like a bug

rinezha moments i can't stop thinking about

short analysis of the tragedy of fang runin because she’s scratching at the walls of my brain like usual.

fang runin is probably the most tragic character i’ve ever read about. she left tikany to escape drugs, poverty and abuse, and then had to suffer tremendously by those factors again and again. she fought whole-heartedly to build a world free from corruption and oppression, even if her methods were… less than ethical on some occasions. hell, she refused to even sit on the throne because she deemed that there’s where her corrupt predecessors sat. that’s how badly she wanted to separate herself from the evil of nikara.

rin so desperately wanted to give her people the childhood and life she and the people she loved never got. and then only for her at the very end to realise that war and oppression won’t end and that her country could never be free. her country is broken beyond repair, and the only way for nikara to survive is for colonialism to put it the broken scraps together, the one thing rin fought all her life to defeat.

rin's fandom page

this is so fucking funny to me

need this engraved in the depths of my skin

Raban concerned for Rin whdbjsjdjdjd “and I swear he wants to kill you” shshisksjd i screamed because i BET he does but no sir. We’re fighting. We’re doing THIS. Venka is down one more to GO. bullies. OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! go RIN!

*TPW Spoilers*

In The Poppy War Rin said “I don’t love you and I can kill anything.”

Then in The Burning God, Altan’s ghost asks “How many more chances are you going to let go?” and Rin responds with “At least one more.”

She is given multiple chances to kill Nezha, but each time she fails to because she just can’t bring herself to. She loves him, she hates him. It’s never a balance, one outweighs the other on different occasions.

Re-reading The Poppy War from the beginning after finishing The Burning God, going over the scene where the Fangs are trying to marry Rin off to the import inspector, and Aunty Fang is telling Rin that no one would want her because Rin is too dark, and she's a poor war orphan with no family, no connections, and no other prospects ...

... and I'm just dying to write an AU fanfic with a happier ending where the wars effectively do not tear Rin and Nezha apart, and Rin one day returns to Tikany to introduce her fiancé to the Fangs and brings home the Dragon Warlord's son.

Just imagining Aunty Fang's reaction to that is fueling my cold dead heart 🙂

This is like, a few pages apart

Fang Runin & Yin Nezha - The Poppy War - 2023

Haunting the Narrative Round 1

Haunting the narrative means that the character’s absence heavily impacts the plot. They’re not present when their influence is most strongly felt, whether they’re alive or dead!

yin nezha vs compliments