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Jun. 25th, 2019 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreSo, I'm reading this book: Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which is the first in a series of epic fantasy novels about bug people that I found out about thanks to rachelmanija. I'm about 3/4 of the way through it and enjoying it immensely, to the point that I've already put the second one on hold.
But! Y'know that thing, where you have a character type that nearly always works for you but that you're ever so slightly ashamed of? One of my bulletproof character types is what I think of as the Good Soldier - a character who's nearly always military or something similar, is extremely Lawful in alignment, and who is fiercely blindingly loyal to their idealized military/government/country. Usually they end up doing terrible, unforgivable thing as a result of this loyalty, because for whatever reason, this character type doesn't work for me nearly as well if the thing they're loyal to isn't pretty much the worst in actuality, no matter what the character might believe. And then I feel conflicted because clearly they are the worst but also, I love them.
Which is to say that I thought my favorite character was going to be Achaeos the Moth dude, because he is a somewhat creepy wizard/priest with weird eyes and that is another of my favorite things, and I do like him a great deal, but no, there's a captain in the villainous Wasp Empire who loves the Empire so much that other Wasps think he's a little weird about it and who has canonically murdered children in front of their mother in the Empire's service. He's terrible and also, I love him.
Given my track record, this will probably mean that he will hang around just long enough to be betrayed by the Empire he loves and then die tragically.
rachelmanija. I'm about 3/4 of the way through it and enjoying it immensely, to the point that I've already put the second one on hold.But! Y'know that thing, where you have a character type that nearly always works for you but that you're ever so slightly ashamed of? One of my bulletproof character types is what I think of as the Good Soldier - a character who's nearly always military or something similar, is extremely Lawful in alignment, and who is fiercely blindingly loyal to their idealized military/government/country. Usually they end up doing terrible, unforgivable thing as a result of this loyalty, because for whatever reason, this character type doesn't work for me nearly as well if the thing they're loyal to isn't pretty much the worst in actuality, no matter what the character might believe. And then I feel conflicted because clearly they are the worst but also, I love them.
Which is to say that I thought my favorite character was going to be Achaeos the Moth dude, because he is a somewhat creepy wizard/priest with weird eyes and that is another of my favorite things, and I do like him a great deal, but no, there's a captain in the villainous Wasp Empire who loves the Empire so much that other Wasps think he's a little weird about it and who has canonically murdered children in front of their mother in the Empire's service. He's terrible and also, I love him.
Given my track record, this will probably mean that he will hang around just long enough to be betrayed by the Empire he loves and then die tragically.
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Date: 2019-06-26 04:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-26 05:24 pm (UTC)I think one of the lasting appeals of Farscape for me is that the show allows one to indulge in both of those character types.