one of the things i love about the hands of the emperor is that both the setting and cliopher himself is batshit in very subtle ways. absolutely funniest possible pov character for these events. cliopher has such strong Just Some Guy energy that he had to mention that one time he was stuck in a thousand-year fugue state doing paperwork like three times before i realize "oh he actually literally means he's over a thousand years old." he's like "oh it didn't feel like a thousand years while we were doing it haha" and i was like "haha sounds legit" and it was only later that i was like "wait what? a THOUSAND years??" the crisis of the first part of the book is trying to take his boss on a vacation. he legitimately could get executed at any point if he does this wrong but he looks at a guy whose whole schtick is to be god on earth and is like "gosh that guy seems like he'd like a vacation" and not only was he right he also didn't do the sane thing which would be to bury that thought six hundred feet deep and throw away the map. no. he said well if my boss seems like he'd enjoy a vacation i guess i'll give him a vacation. he got the job that made him the most powerful man in the world by cracking a joke in front of a guy that previously wouldn't have been able to help burning cliopher's eyes out if they made eye contact. the relentless competence is def a big thing but the relentless normalcy is i think his real superpower. he's like hi yes my boss would like to book a vacation bungalow for the week. yes the whole week. well he's the god-emperor of all seven worlds so he would really like a place where he could get away from it all, you know. i mean yeah implying that he's human enough to feel things like "work stress" is high treason and i could be killed for this but he looked kinda tired so what's a man supposed to do but take him to the beach.

Sorry for being such a slow writer, it's because I [remembers that self-deprecating jokes are harmful to my mental health and make everyone else uncomfortable] was attacked by dark spirits and washed up on the shore of a mysterious island with no recollection of who I was

#sorry for being such a slow writer it's because i was captured and bound and apotheosized as #the god-emperor of five worlds and had my humanity denied for a thousand years #i'm okay now though (@rattyjol)

that stretch of chapters when the emperor is having his sad boy breakdown and cliopher tries to call the emperor "tor" instead of "my lord" but can't quite break the habit so he ends up saying "my tor" instead ........

Cliopher Mdang's Business Card

A sarcastic business card for Cliopher Mdang (with the name corrected by some cousin who was passing it along).

Transcript after the cut.

finally reading Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor and it’s really got all of the good fantasies in it. sky ships and sea trains. a functional imperial bureaucracy. the loneliest god-emperor you’ve ever seen and a big sprawling rambunctious family to love him. death-defying devotion to your friendships. a deeply intimidating clothier who will give you a personal makeover upon promotion. a lot of competent people trying their level best to survive mountains of paperwork. disgustingly gorgeous textiles. academic digressions into historical research that hijack entire chapters. an unspecified cataclysm that fractured time, space, and maybe reality, but don’t worry that was a thousand or maybe just twenty years ago and we built a functional bureaucracy out of the debris eventually. we’re dismantling the aristocracy and it’s taking a moment, but the rehauling of the meritocratic exams is bringing promising young candidates from the hinterlands to reform the future. oh by the way we rolled out universal basic income. the spreadsheets are many but so are your assistants helping you make sense of it. you are finally loved and appreciated and recognized for all you have done. you are bringing the fire back to the hearth of the world. you’re doing it, you’re doing it, it’s really happening. put your pen down, the meetings can wait until tomorrow. you can rest now

Main characters who are Totally convinced that they're doing what any decent person would do (it is not and in fact they are low-key insane and don't understand when people call them out on it):

-William Laurence, Temeraire

-Cliopher Mdang, The Hands of the Emperor

Adjacent, but for capability instead of morality:

-murderbot, the murderbot diaries, "it's what any basic secunit would be capable of doing" (it's not)