Babel - Blog Posts

Ant-egoitistical

Unlike people, I don't have ego. I don't feel evil when I do things. Only people who have good lives feel fear of losing these lives, i had everything of pride stolen from me long ago. That's why I've always been objective and never egoitstical. Because I long have lost. I was always loser when it came to winning anything, the bottom of the barrel. That's why we losers tend to objectify things, atlhough I never lie to myself so I can never really cope. We like science so much because we can't win in usual environment. I don't know if you believe this is blessing in disguise, but I already lost to you.

genuinely going insane about how "we're scholars, not soldiers" (Babel, RF Kuang) fits in with Arcane. something something Jinx and Ekko are both brilliant prodigies born in an environment that forced them to be fighters something something Jayce and Viktor, for all their involvement in the conflict, were still inventors at heart something something

something something reading Babel when english is your first language but not your mother's something something

you don't even understand the first 15 pages tore me up SO BAD

in shock hearing people say that babel only takes a turn and becomes heart-wrenching at the end because that experience is so incomprehensible to my chinese diaspora ass that felt like their heart was being torn from their chest in the very first chapter likeeeee babel is underscored by such immense amounts of tragedy and loss and horror around colonialism and imperialism from the very beginning it's so crazy that white people can just read the first half of babel and not feel like every bone in their body was being dissolved in acid by the centuries of unspoken grief written in robin's experience SORRYYYYYYYY. average poc reading babel vs average white person reading babel truly LMFAOOOO

I read Babel back in Febuary so that means it's been at least three months of waking up every single day and thinking about Robin and Ramy and Victoire and and and and

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.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE

my brother's keeper (poem from here)

rf kuang really looked at the whole "main characters cant die and mostly everyone has to get a happy ending" thing and said you know what? fuck that

“Babel” by Cildo Meireles (2001)

You know the funny thing about Afghanistan?’ Griffin’s voice was very soft. ‘The British aren’t going to invade with English troops. They’re going to invade with troops from Bengal and Bombay. They’re going to have sepoys fight the Afghans, just like they had sepoys fight and die for them at Irrawaddy, because those Indian troops have the same logic you do, which is that it’s better to be a servant of the Empire, brutal coercion and all, than to resist. Because it’s safe. Because it’s stable, because it lets them survive. And that’s how they win, brother. They pit us against each other. They tear us apart.

R.F. Kuang, Babel

Babel by Rebecca F. Kuang: English and Indonesian translation

I will think about Ramiz Rafi Mirza every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year of my life.

so anyway