OK GOING OFF MY TAGS ON MY PREVIOUS REBLOG I FEEL LIKE comparing teacher w kiriona as constructs of the empire also plays a crucial role in the panning out. teacher is a character you’re supposed to empathize with in gtn but he’s relatively removed, he’s not The Main Character, when the atrocity what was done to him is revealed you’re like hm!! that’s deeply fucked up!!! the way you might go abt a news event happening in a country other than your own. like we the audience can recognize what’s been done to him is horrible but because we haven’t been inside his brain, seen his life beforehand, the empathy we have for him is only ever removed and relatively shallow. it’s still there, just not Personal.

when kiriona is revealed, kiriona as the emperors construct, it fucking Gets You. it’s like a slap in the face. it feels!!! SO wrong!! i had a legit sense of dysphoria reading her first couple of chapters!!! and what’s happened to her is essentially the same type of thing as what happened to teacher, they’ve both had their bodies and souls violated and warped into things that benefit the empire, they’ve been dehumanized by its hands. BUT NOW because it’s happening to gideon, one of our main girls, WE fully experience it alongside with her. that empathetic link with the audience is there- we KNOW gideon, she was our introduction to this world, we have spent books enmeshed in her perspective and have come to care about her. we can recognize the distortion and corruption kiriona is of her. we experience the full blunt of how empire fucks you up and dehumanizes you, up close and personal, and oh boy, does it fucking hurt.