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When I read 'Dream of Red Mansions,' I was really struck by the fact that it was built differently from a lot of genre works. Specifically, a lot of the events that should have taken centre-stage - wars, social upheavals - were seen entirely through the eyes of the women of a Chinese household.
Aliette de Bodard -
You feel like a field of sugar canes after the harvest—burnt out, all cutting edges with no sweetness left inside.
Aliette de Bodard
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It certainly seems as though a great majority of genre is conflict-focused and, not only that, but focused on large physical conflicts.
Aliette de Bodard -
All the heads of Houses looked like tigers who’d just caught prey— which boded ill for Silverspires.
Aliette de Bodard -
Is almost pleasant, at first, to be Falling. The harsh, unwavering light of the City recedes, leaving you in shadow, leaving only memories of relief, of a blessed coolness seizing your limbs. Nothing has turned yet into longing, into bitterness, into the cold that will never cease, not even in the heat of summer.
Aliette de Bodard -
You leave behind your fine poems. You leave behind your beautiful flowers. And the earth that was only leant to you. You ascend into the Light, O Quechomitl, you leave behind the flowers and the singing and the earth. Safe journey, O friend.
Aliette de Bodard -
I still couldn’t banish the image of the Quetzal Flower. In my mind, it merged with that of Priestess Eleuia: everything a man could desire or aspire to, a woman who would suck the marrow from your bones and still leave you smiling.
Aliette de Bodard -
Nothing, until the ground comes up to meet you, and you land in a jumble of pain and shattered bones; and the scream you didn’t think you had in you scrapes your throat raw as you let it out—like the first, shocked breath of a baby newly born into a universe of suffering.
Aliette de Bodard
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We’ve discussed this before. Not just other people saying yes, but whether they mean it, or whether they’re just doing it because they’re afraid.
Aliette de Bodard -
Power is power. Those who hold it seldom remember where they came from.
Aliette de Bodard -
A man of no religion, who dares use pain as a weapon, tainting it for mundane things.
Aliette de Bodard