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burngods · 3 months

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( medalion rahimi / cis woman & she + her ) here ye here ye — the riverlands welcome lady shireen redwyne of the arbor. king matthos baratheon is glad that the twenty - nine year old appears to be astute and he shall overlook that it is said they are also ruthless, as long as they are glad to celebrate peace in the seven kingdoms. fortunately for them, matthos remains oblivious that they aren't happy with his reign.

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐄

𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄. shireen redwyne. 𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄. the merchant princess, the queen of the straits, sour grapes. 𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐋𝐄𝐒. lady of the arbor. 𝐀𝐆𝐄. nine and twenty. 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑. cis woman. (she/her) 𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍. biromantic, bisexual. 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐀𝐋 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐒. unwed. 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐈𝐎𝐍. faith of the seven. 𝐀𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍. house redwyne. 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐊𝐄𝐍 𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐒. common tongue (fluent), valyrian (high & low; fluent), trade tongue (fluent).

𝐏𝐇𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓. 5’6” / 1.68m 𝐖𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓. 116 lbs / 53 kg 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒. russet brown, hooded, upturned. 𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐑. coal black, long, naturally frizzy, carefully contained. 𝐁𝐔𝐈𝐋𝐃. mesomorph. small of frame, slender of build, modest figure. exceptional poise. 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐗𝐈𝐎𝐍. warm ivory, cold undertones. 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐒. dusting of freckles across bridge of her nose and shoulders (often concealed with makeup). thin scar on base of right index finger.

𝐏𝐇𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐍𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓. lawful evil. 𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 𝐁𝐄𝐒𝐓. astute, confident, efficient, strategic, strong-willed. 𝐀𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐒𝐓. arrogant, dominant, intolerant, reticent, ruthless. 𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐒. aloof dark-haired girl, at least i admit it, broken bird, fame through infamy, iron lady, manipulative bastard, old money, rich bitch, tsundere, woman of wealth and taste 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍. baru cormorant, cadsuane melaidhrin, chrisjen avasarala, olenna tyrell, tuon athaem kore paendrag, vivienne de fer

𝐃𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐓 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘.

lord gilbert redwyne, 51, father, former ruling lord, deceased 3 years. lady amarone redwyne nee malvesia, 25, mother, former ruling lady, deceased 22 years. lady _____ redwyne nee _____, 47, step-mother, former ruling lady, alive. (open) lord laurent redwyne, 20, eldest sibling, twin, former heir, deceased 9 years. lord/lady/liege _____ redwyne, 20-27, younger half-sibling, alive. (open) lord/lady/liege _____ redwyne, 20-27, younger half-sibling, alive. (open)

𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘:

𝐃𝐄𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐘 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘. it could be said that her father was never a clever man, and what little wit he possessed was frequently lost at the bottom of an oaken-aged barrel. wealth was his redeeming quality in the eyes of many. but he was loving, in his careless and almost absentminded way. more than could be said about her mother who was simply just absent in both mind and presence; claimed by the stranger before her children saw out their first year. and then there was laurent; the proverbial golden boy, heir to the house and their father's pride and joy. the monster of her youth. a wicked, sociopathic creature somehow given leave by the gods to take human form. his constant and fickle cruelty, always carefully planned and quietly dealt, shaped her in more ways than she cares to admit. even death, his ghost lingers. the first and last to make her a victim. 𝐃𝐄𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐘 𝐖𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐇. though her family fortunes may not match up to the vaunted and storied wealth of the lannisters, house redwyne have always been an undeniably affleunt family in their own right, graced with rich, fetile lands and one of the largest fleets in the seven kingdoms. while her late lord father was content to rest on his inherited golden laurels, shireen took an active interest in her house's prosperity from an early age, displaying a deceptively sharp business acumen and political savvy far beyond her years. it is widely remarked that where the lady of the arbor walks, coin quickly follows. the uncertainty in the wake of her parents' passing has only allowed her to take a more considerable position and role in her dictating her house's finances. 𝐃𝐄𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐘 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐃𝐘. it has not gone entirely unnoticed by the westerosi courts that shireen's life has been marked by a series of rather unfortunate events and untimely deaths. her brother, golden laurent? why, such a shame that the poor boy was taken before his time in that tragic hunting accident. her would-be suitor, lord PLACEHOLDER? man simply couldn't handle his wine - and certainly couldn't handle that flight of stairs in the dark. and then there were her father, gilbert. crossing the stepstones is always a voyage fraught with danger at the best of times, but few could have predicted such an unseasonable bout of stormy weather. as they say, one is by chance. twice is a coincidence. a third time… 𝐃𝐄𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐁𝐘 𝐀𝐌𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍. with such shred, cut throat business practices and a somehwat circumspect rise to power, it is easy to paint her as a blackhearted creature of unchecked avarice. many have, in fact. but the actual physical accumulation of material wealth holds a surprisingly little amount of interest for the arbor's merchant princess. to her eyes, it is simply an means to an end. a measure of success and the surest way for her to secure her true quarry; influence, power and (most importantly) recognition. she hungers to be seen as a force within herself, be that for the better or the worse, and have a hand in shaping her own future and that of her house.

𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒:

her sharp tongue and penchant for cutting remarks has earned her the nickname of 'sour grapes' behind closed doors.

has a closeted love of astronomy and has one of the most lavish observatories outside of the citadel located within the confines of her private demesne.

one of her favoured few memories of her youth is learning the basics of arithmetic by counting vessels and sea birds in ryamsport.

loves to haggle and fashion a good bargain; prides herself on rarely paying the full price if she can help it.

has an aversion to being touched and will rarely accept anything given to her directly by hand.

thumbs the scar on her index finger while in deep thought.

#𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔦𝔰 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔱𝔯𝔲𝔱𝔥. 𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔴𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔨𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔟𝔢𝔠𝔞𝔲𝔰𝔢 𝔦𝔱 𝔥𝔲𝔯𝔱𝔰. ⸢ shireen redwyne ⸥#tw death #tw abuse #conquest.intro #tw murder #(albeit implied)

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theygotbitchesinmedia · 24 days

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okay so here is her review: https://arkadymartine.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/the-traitor-baru-cormorant-a-reviewresponse/

admittedly its from 2015- i haven't poked around to see how she may have changed how she feels about it, and i know she did blurb seth's recent scifi novel (Exordia), so there's no bad blood there or anything. it's also a positive review, in general- she ends with this sentence: "I highly, highly recommend this book; I have not thought so much about something I read in a long time."

i am also coming into this as someone who has read all of seth dickinson's work for the game destiny, where he was near-singlehandedly responsible for a good oh… 80% of the interesting women (& overall interesting concepts lol!) in the game, and his writing of one of those characters in particular as a complex and flawed character got him bullied viciously off of all social media. if you've tried to find his social media presence and havent found anything, that's why. so i mayhaps have a little more emotion in the game.

THAT SAID. here are some specific parts from her review i find really fucking annoying! and color the way i feel about Memory & Desolation, despite them being so incredibly targeted at me as a classics person AND someone who fucking loves the specific sub-genre of scifi her novels are.

"[Traitor] asks a question which I find compelling as a student of an empire and as a queer woman. That question is: what do we gain by complicity? What do we – we barbaroi, we women, we queer people, we imperialized – what do we get when we say yes? When we say yes I will hide my true nature? When we say yes I will subsume myself into the beautiful machine? When we say can we speak English? Or the literature I love just happens to be written by straight white men – and mean it, too, mean it with the kind of depthless love that a person can have for a text that speaks to them, which holds up a mirror to them?"

i dont think the use of the greek word for barbarian does anything here (she also keeps coming back to the greek term orthos in her review, which also pisses me off lol), i dont think empire is a "beautiful machine," and i don't think the invocation of identity politics is useful. like. i know she's a byzantine scholar but if your first association with empire is purely a finite Historical Empire instead of, like, modern US imperialism, or British colonialism, you are going into this discussion with a certain set of values and opinions! a set of values and opinions that let you call an empire a "beautiful machine" in all earnestness. this claim probably seems unsubstantiated and nitpicky now just from this excerpt but ill come back to it with more i promise. on the idpol front, she also says immediately after this that she does believe that straight people can and should write queer people, but that they should listen to queer people when they point out those errors. she then continues:

"But then, critique: there are two points on which I think Dickinson’s portrayal of a queer protagonist has faltered, and I think both of these errors arise from the fact that he isn’t part of – as far as I know at the time of writing this review – a queer community. Firstly, I disbelieve Baru’s awareness of her own desires… …For the first portion of the book, her queerness felt more like a character trait assigned to her for reason of plot than a naturally built part of her as a person… Secondly, I wonder where queer people in Falcrest are…"

theres more to these excerpts, but. i personally didnt find the depiction of baru's desire to be unrealistic, and also this was a review of Traitor, specifically, so where on earth would baru have heard about queer people in falcrest? and more importantly, why should we care so much about queer people in the imperial core? moreover i think the way seth does it with svir is very very well done, and illustrates the hypocrisy of empire in a way that does NOT seem like what martine is asking for here!!!

"Why am I invested? I myself am a student of empire. I’m a Byzantinist. My academic work is about empire and its seductions; it is the animating principle of my professional life. And: I am myself someone who loves order over disorder. Who looks for systems in all things. Who is comforted by structures; who is concerned deeply with propriety. But here’s my real criticism of this book: I don’t buy the seduction of the Masquerade. And I think if this book fails, it’s there: in that its empire is too easily read as undesirable. As profane, unethical, fundamentally wrong. It is really overtly evil." … "The Masquerade isn’t civilized. It’s civilization, but I don’t recognize it as civilized, and this is a problem with a constructed empire. An empire relies on itself as the definition of civilization – I would footnote here Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch as a SFnal example of an empire which is built on this principle, and which, for this reader at least, achieves the facsimile. (But then my ancestors were not enslaved, we were exterminated; not annexed, but exiled. Perhaps I like the Radch better than the Masquerade because I can find a place for myself in it, and cannot imagine a place within the Masquerade someone like me would ever be safe –)"

and THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE IS MY BIGGEST PROBLEM. critiquing the masquerade as not "seductive" enough, calling it too evil to have people join it- how does someone miss the point THIS badly??? like. are you FUCKING serious??? how do you read a book about the immense violence of colonialism and your problem is that it is boohoo too violent for people to join willingly. google literally fucking anything the US has done ever!!! and the invocation of the concept of "civilized" as an objective quality, despite the recognition that the empire constructs what counts as "civilization" is so fucking unserious/simplistic/juvenile! why do you need to imagine yourself a place in the empire? in the imperial core specifically!

and i think this particular approach bleeds into her books. i read them at Least 2 years ago, so this is mostly vibes-based, and i will avoid spoilers.

there is such a focus on the allure of the imperial core, on the "beautiful machine" of the empire as she calls it. there is violence done, but it is abstracted away from the wealth of the imperial core. there are no economics there. the empire sees her independent station as a backwater, and there is some cultural tensions there, but there is no realistic violence and exploitation! it is not clear at all what maintains the empire, besides some abstract idea of trade. i also don't know what her Point is with the naming & language conventions, which are very clearly inspired in part by ancient Mayan- e.g. the empire and core planet are called Teixcalaan. and idk this may be reductive of me but i think if you are going to pull features from civilizations that have been colonized and use them to inspire fictional colonizing forces, you ARE saying something there! idk! and like, the ancient Mayan

and on the ~representation~ front, i also don't think she does a better job than seth tbqh!!! i felt like the characters getting together came out of nowhere and felt anticlimactic- there is also not the tension i think there should be with the main character being an ambassador-ish and the love interest being… idr. junior intelligence officer iirc? idk! and for all her critique of baru's desire for women not feeling "real" or present enough, i do not remember the main character in Memory having any real focus on it!

i enjoyed Memory just fine, but i don't think it says anything interesting or novel or even critical about empire, and i found her review of Traitor extremely shallow and useless, if very revealing about her own outlook on empire lol!!!

this has been at best Minorly proofread and edited but im not like, writing an academic essay on the matter and so i apologize for any inconsistencies.

oh man thanks for this this is really interesting. i went and read the whole thing and i agree a ton with your critique. i'm going to stick my thoughts below the cut because i went on for a bit here, in typical fashion.

i personally didnt find the depiction of baru's desire to be unrealistic, and also this was a review of Traitor, specifically, so where on earth would baru have heard about queer people in falcrest? and more importantly, why should we care so much about queer people in the imperial core?

NO BUT EXACTLY... for starters this is explicitly a novel about colonized people taking place in a colony where none of the major characters are from the empire. where, when, and how would we take the time to explore what queerness looks like for them and more importantly, like you've asked, why the hell should that be a priority for the narrative in this case.

in terms of 'i found this to be an unrealistic depiction of queer desire' 9/10 times i feel like what that means is 'i found this to be an unrelatable depiction' which is an entirely different critique. i know i'm working with two additional books worth of context that martine isn't working with here. but even taking into account just the characterization we have for baru in traitor i think this is suuuuch an unfair complaint. i'm gonna pull the entire quote she says about baru's sexuality here because i have additional specific gripes with it.

Firstly, I disbelieve Baru’s awareness of her own desires. In the first portion of the book, I do not ever feel the weight of Baru’s own awareness of her sexuality; there is an absence of carnality, a kind of intellectual version of lesbian desire which is, to me, inconsistent with the sort of desire I expect. Not until the introduction of Baru’s eventual lover Tain Hu do I get a sense of Baru as a woman who loves women. Further, considering how very much the Empire of Masks and Increastic philosophy criminalizes the sin of queer desire, I wish Baru had struggled more with the nature of her desire. For the first portion of the book, her queerness felt more like a character trait assigned to her for reason of plot than a naturally built part of her as a person. This markedly improved in the second half, where Baru notices women in a way she does not notice men.

For starters, it is insanely hypocritical to me to complain that her desire both isn't carnal enough and she processes it too intellectually, but that she isn't struggling enough with it. Baru intellectually processes things! That's her entire character from the getgo! She also has a difficult time conceptualizing other people as fully realized beings with their own agency. These character traits paired together don't make for a particularly passionate and carnal relationship to her sexuality. She is also, at her absolute oldest in this book, 21! (Or 22? I can't remember. I know she spends 3 years in aurdwynn) and has spent her entire youth being groomed to be a scholar. Of course detached intellectualism is her primary way of navigating all things. Why wouldn't it be?

Baru primary motivation is to save taranoke, she wants to save the taranoki way of life, and part of that way of life includes an acceptance of nonhetero nonmonogamous relationships. Sure, a different character arc may have involved baru actually internalizing and then having to break free of the trappings of race, gender, and sexuality that the empire tries to impose upon its citizens. but that's not baru and acting like this is a writing flaw rather than a character choice is insane to me.

There's absolutely no reason for Baru to lie awake at night pontificating about how wrong and dirty of her it is to want to have sex with women because we are never lead to believe even for a minute that Baru puts any emotional weight in incrasticism. She doesn't conceptualize it as sinful she conceptualizes it as illegal!

And "Not until the introduction of Baru’s eventual lover Tain Hu do I get a sense of Baru as a woman who loves women. " is killing me in particular because like. Yeah. Tain Hu is baru's first love. thats the point. But beyond that this is just not being able to see anything other than what she's looking for because i think the chapters covering baru's childhood make it pretty clear that her feelings for aminata and cousin lao (im not double checking the name but im pretty sure it was this) are deep and strong. the fact that they're not as explicitly and straightforwardly romantic and sexual as her relationship with tain hu doesn't change that, and in fact, points to baru's struggle with/development of her sexuality that she claims was somehow missing in this book.

like i just simply can't see anything here but someone who is seeing an emotional landscape they can't relate to and assuming that means it's flawed writing. skill issue frankly.

She's also fucking insane for acting like the masquerade is too cartoonishly evil to be appealing. once again im going to post her full quote here because i think its important to see

its empire is too easily read as undesirable. As profane, unethical, fundamentally wrong. It is really overtly evil. It punishes sexual “deviants” with mutilation and death. It murders children callously. It inflicts plague and withholds vaccines. It lobotomizes its own emperors for the sake of convincing its populace that the emperor is just. Most of all, the Masquerade is a eugenicist empire: it is explicitly founded on not purity of bloodline but on purification of bloodline, on making people useful to it. It makes people: it breeds them carefully, it indoctrinates them through schools, it uses drugs and operant conditioning to transform their minds and make them into automata tools. It commits every atrocity that a modern Western reader recognizes as abhorrent. This is a problem. It is a problem because we are asked, as readers, to believe that there are reasons besides blackmail that a person would willingly become an agent of the Masquerade. We are asked to imagine that the Masquerade is a beautiful machine.

for starters. "It commits every atrocity that a modern Western reader recognizes as abhorrent." MODERN WESTERN EMPIRES DID, AND OCCASIONALLY STILL DO, MOST OF THESE THINGS!!! THIS IS US! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!! I FEEL INSANE!!!!

I think the book makes it more than explicitly clear why the empire is appealing??? it has all of the capital???? its building schools and sewage systems and importing food and goods and teaching reading and writing??? baru's own internal narrative often shows her own strife at the fact that the empire has made genuinely incredible scientific advancements that offer significant improvements in quality of life to many, many people. martine actually acknowledges this in the next paragraph of her review, and then brushes it away as not being good enough. why? what about that doesn't convince you?

she is seeming to hugely ignore the fact that in the case of aurdwynn specifically, the bureaucracy of the empire is coming in to unseat feudal aristocracy! what the masquerade offers may not be particularly tempting to most of that ruling class, but its economic opportunities are more then believably appealing to the common people. i think this is made pretty clear when baru's ploy to use the fiat bank to make loans to the aurdwynni people and basically lessen the massive tax burdens from the duchies wins her huge favor with the public.

and frankly even for the ruling class the potential economic benefits are massive too if you're willing to participate in the empire properly. yes the empire doesn't have Moral appeal. it doesn't fucking have to. it owns pretty much every economy outside of the oriati mbo. the fact that that's not enough for her is as you've pointed out really really showing her biases and blind spots. 'no reason besides blackmail' MONEY!!!! MONEY! IT'S MONEY! THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT ACCOUNTING! HOW DID YOU MISS THAT!!!

and the invocation of the concept of "civilized" as an objective quality, despite the recognition that the empire constructs what counts as "civilization" is so fucking unserious/simplistic/juvenile! why do you need to imagine yourself a place in the empire? in the imperial core specifically!

And this is really it for me too, yeah. It's gross. It's absolutely gross. "An empire isn't believably appealing unless I, personally, find it appealing" there are people alive who are eugenicists, who love community policing, who believe in race science. the masquerade is an empire for them. the thing about empires is that they are only actually empowering for an incredibly small subset of people, and the fact that You, Specifically, Arkady Martine can't imagine being one of those people in this instance doesn't make it not believable. This is a shatteringly individualist way of engaging with a work.

As for your points about the way she handles empire in her own book obviously i can't have anything to say there because i haven't read it yet, but i do absolutely agree with you on this bit:

and idk this may be reductive of me but i think if you are going to pull features from civilizations that have been colonized and use them to inspire fictional colonizing forces, you ARE saying something there! idk! and like, the ancient Mayan

1000% i don't think this is reductive of you. whether or not you're consciously saying anything is one question but it's a choice that absolutely doesn't exist in a vacuum. out of curiosity i googled her to see if she was of mayan descent or anything and maybe she chose that due to some personal ties to the subject matter but she doesn't seem to be. which of course i don't think means she can't or shouldn't draw any inspiration from there but i do think all of these sorts of choices are meaningful

i don't really have much to say here to round off a conclusion but. wow. deeply deeply telling review that does not particularly make me want to read anything she has written beyond this.

#long post #lb baru cormorant #ask

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