#One Esk

[laatmaar]

"'Five years ago it was noncitizen. In the future, who knows? Perhaps not-citizen-enough?' She waved a hand, a gesture of surrender. 'It won't matter. Such boundaries are too easy to create.'"

A very loose rendition of lieutenant Awn's conversation with the head priest in Ors.

[unbizzarre]

Good Morning, One-Esk

Fanart of the moment Justice of Toren One Esk was woken up from cold storage.

REFERENCE IMAGES:

1) I came across this pose on Pinterest and screenshotted it right away, cuz like it’s such a kickass expressive I had to try drawing it. Sadly I know next to nothing about the original artist. Maybe a person named Kiera Paulsen? Idk I can’t find the original post and only have screenshot rn 😭.

—- edit: a kind soul in the comments found the artist!! Thank you! Artist is @saltweave on twitter https://twitter.com/saltweave/status/135964282496724976

2) a quick doodle I did years ago of a random weird photo I found that had a satisfying half-told-story feeling to it. No idea title of the photo I referenced for the doodle tho.

Even though I imagine the ancillary hookup process would be a lot more organized/less tangled wire-y than what I drew, the chaotic bony mass of wires and hookups is just such a fun look to draw, and I really wanted to put it on the frightened pose so… voila fan-art with artistic liberties taken.

[forsooth-verily]

Oh TREE

where's my ASSSSS

[air-of-the-waterfall]

Breq: I don’t care if you die.

Sievarden: Fuck you, I don’t care if I die.

Breq: … I will literally hurl myself into the void and break all my limbs for you. Whatever you do, don’t let go.

[three-fold-symmetry]

Day 4 of @codywanweek with the prompt 'Light and Dark'.

This is the last thing I've prepared for this week, so I'd like to thank @codywanweek here for organising this amazing event! There's so much amazing art and fic to enjoy right now, it's so much fun.

[thiddleston]

[I wrote an Adar lives Adariel ficlet set in Rivendell while they're recuperating

Mutual hair braiding and deja vu ensues]

Adar goes to visit Galadriel's tent at night to talk and finds her sitting on a tree stump by her bed roll attempting to brush and braid her hair for the night. However, the ache in her wound makes it difficult and she huffs in frustration while trying to talk to him.

He offers to assist and she hesitantly accepts with a skeptical inquiry as to whether he knows how to braid hair. He only responds with a long-suffering raised eyebrow and taking the brush from her hand moves around to stand behind her and begins.

She finds herself simultaneously too relaxed and too tense with his ministrations and she distracts herself with chatting about little nothings and eventually they fall into a comfortable silence with him steadily working at her hair.

When he finishes, she surprises him with a reciprocal offer to do his hair, and after a beat too long of silence, she almost thinks he'll decline. Then, without a word, he nods as he hands her the brush and turns to kneel down with his back to her.

She starts brushing but realizes he's still too tall for her to work comfortably and bids him to sit between her legs against the tree stump. He settles in as she resumes and they revive their small talk and delicately dance around deeper topics until once again slipping into silence—the only sounds being the quiet of her fingers weaving his hair and his own private battle to keep breathing steadily.

His battle is quickly lost though as her fingers keep brushing into his scalp and a soft stuttered moan escapes his throat, but though he tenses his back, she spares him by continuing as if nothing happened.

As she finishes the end of the fishtail braid she's given him to match the one he’d given her, she sets aside the brush and rests her hands on his shoulders in a wordless offer. Inch by inch he accepts it as he relaxes his muscles and slowly leans back to rest his head on her shoulder—her right shoulder to spare her wounded left.

Galadriel slides her hands forward to wrap around him and tilts her head to the side to catch his eyes. "This seems familiar," a cautious humor to her voice.

Adar smirks lightly, "At least you don't have a dagger to my throat for a third time."

They gaze at each other in a mimic of those memories for a moment. This time though, with no sharp objects to stop him, he slowly tilts his head closer—first brushing his nose against her cheek, then mouthing light kisses at the corner of her mouth and jaw.

Galadriel, with eyes closed, is utterly lost to sensation. Adar continues like this, kissing every bit of her face he can reach, for an amount of time she could not possibly describe until it is her turn to release a moan. At the sound, his lips barely leave her skin to whisper, "Tell me to stop and I will."

Galadriel only tightens her hold and opens her eyes to look sharply at him. "If you dare stop now then I will hold a dagger to your throat again."

A deep sound between a hum and a chuckle rumbles from Adar's chest as he continues to nuzzle her face with his, "Is that a promise, my light?"

[screamsofanoutlawbrain]

Neo Metal Sonic is cool because they become a dragon and have hella cool style but also sad because it's the closest thing we've seen to Metal Sonic showing their own individuality, separation from just being a metal(adjective) sonic(noun) instead being Neo(adjective) Metal-Sonic(noun), and that they lose their freedom of choice once eggman comes back and don't even have the voice to complain about it.

Neo Metal Sonic is self-destructive in their individuality, but when they were standing atop the world, do you think they could see the stars through the storm?

[fish-o-cola]

Can't ignore the beautiful art and the poem that inspired my username.

My heart is a fish Hiding in the water-grass In the green, in the green.

[alf-art]

she never knelt, not to me...... not metaphorically

[laatmaar]

Another imperial radch piece! Can’t seem to get this scene out of my head

[unbizzarre]

One-Esk, Murderbot, and A.R.T. watch "2001 a Space Odyssey - The Musical"

Meanwhile...

Creator’s Note: I made some more incredibly niche crossover content! Three of my favorite fictional robots/AI hanging out. This scene popped into my head when I was rereading the scene in artificial condition where ART was afraid to watch certain shows with secunit because it would get too upset if the ship cremembers in the show were endangered. (Probably the cutest moment in the whole series TBH, and definitely the moment I became 1000% on board with ART as a character.) I had a lot of fun imagining the characters reactions and trying to pick out what they should watch for their pajama movie night (obviously it had to be a musical for breq, and include space ships for ART). Hope you enjoy!

Also, here's a text-free version of my drawing, which you are welcome to use/edit/draw-over however you'd like:

Post script: if you like Martha Wells Murderbot Diaries, you should definitely check out Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice trilogy, or vice versa. More angry traumatized non-binary human-ai constructs for all! Mega-latestage-capitolist dystopia, or xenophobic -imperialist-socialist empire? Sentient space ships? C’mon. Just read both series u know you’ll love it.

[air-of-the-waterfall]

This is actually mind-blowing

justice of toren collecting songs and one esk/breq constantly humming/singing them is such a good detail and ann leckie does so much with it. an incomplete list:

justice of toren's eager collection of songs is part and parcel of its violent destruction of cultures: these songs are cultural artifacts that it only learns because of its presence on those worlds during their conquest, and in many cases breq is the only one to remember them because their people have died out due to that violence. JoT preserves cultural artifacts for its own use at the same time it directly contributes to the need for that preservation in the first place.

the matter-of-fact way in which this is narrated to us gives us information about JoT's stance on respect and imperialism - that is, contrasted with other characters who look down on the conquered cultures, JoT does actually seem to appreciate their value. and yet it communicates to us no sense of remorse over its role in their genocide.

singing can be a communal activity. this allows us to feel the difference between one esk's multiple bodies singing together in harmony/in a round vs. breq singing alone. this has emotional weight, is an evocative image, and illustrates quite nicely some of the logistic considerations of having one vs. multiple bodies.

the constant humming/singing is extremely notable and idiosyncratic according to other characters, which is a dangerous combination for someone who's supposed to be undercover, so it adds a lil bit of fun suspense for us.

the fact that no one ever figures out breq's identity despite this giveaway tells us something about the other characters' attitudes towards artificial intelligences (though see below about seivarden).

the fact that it's so idiosyncratic also tells us something about the ability of individual AIs to have personalities that distinguish them from other AIs, and the fact that one esk sings constantly but two esk doesn't tells us something about the ability of different ancillary decades that are all part of the same AI to have distinguishing characteristics. this is very relevant to, and illustrative of, the series' thematic throughlines around identity, personality, continuity, etc.

the fact that breq personally has a bad voice also serves multiple purposes. because breq and seivarden both believe that the medic could have chosen a body with a good voice if she had wanted to, we can infer something about how ancillary bodies work, how much the AI (and, by extension, its medics) knows about the individual capabilities of those bodies while they're in suspension, and what kinds of things the AI can and can't control once it has unfrozen and taken over a body.

we can also draw conclusions about the medic that chose that body and about intracrew relations on that ship.

breq's bad voice creates moments of humor and irony in the narrative, such as when breq's constant singing - aka the most obvious clue that she is one esk - is precisely what makes seivarden so sure that breq can't be one esk, because no esk medic would use a body with a bad voice for an ancillary.

constant singing/humming imposes itself on the shared soundscape, meaning other people can't easily avoid it and it has the potential to annoy them, especially if the voice itself has annoying qualities. the reactions of other characters to the frequency and/or quality of this verbal tic tells us something about the level of affection those characters have for one esk or breq.

because singing involves words, the meaning of the lyrics being sung can be used to advance the plot, communicate things about specific characters, create irony in juxtaposition with what's happening on the page, etc.

i especially like what's done with the lyric "it all goes around". it's woven throughout the story in such a way as to manifest its own meaning (the repetition of "it all goes around" is, itself, an example of something going around). by repeating the lyric, breq is the one making it true, and i would argue that her repetition of this particular lyric about things orbiting other things contributes to, and/or is a sign of, her growing understanding of the necessity/reality of interdependence and her place in that framework/her role in constructing it, or in other words, the extent of her own agency and the rights and obligations it confers upon her.

because the singing/humming is a constant, background, automatic action, it only ceases when breq is experiencing a strong emotion. from this we are able to infer things about the emotional state of our famously-omits-details-about-her-emotional-state narrator based on other characters' comments about whether or not she is currently doing this thing.

we also aren't even aware that breq is doing it constantly until another character says so. on a narrative level, this serves the dual purpose of making sure we know about how much she hums AND of reminding us that she's not telling us everything.

the humming is not mentioned constantly even though it is happening constantly - this helps us forget in between mentions that it's going on while also simultaneously reinforcing just how constant it must be, so constant that to mention it every time it happens would be like narrating every time she breathes in or out. whenever someone brings it up, we are reminded anew that something has been happening all along that we forgot about. this means that ann leckie is able, by leaving information out, to hammer home to us how much we are not being told.

through this one character trait, ann leckie efficiently and elegantly communicates not just aspects of character but also of setting, plot, tone, theme, and narrative. there's no extraneous exposition just to tell us about the song collection or singing; everything that tells us about it is serving other functions in the narrative as well. the ways in which she manifests this one character trait in the universe and in the narrative contribute to and exemplify both the story itself and the method of its telling.

[cezura]

for your consideration, justice of toren one esk:

the devotion..................... the love and loyalty and adoration.................

the tragedy!!! oof ouch hurts my little heart

the grief... the guilt... the rage... forever seeking atonement for a thing that can never be atoned for... chefs kiss

robot is 'weirdly' attached to specific aspects of humanity and/or specific human(s) :)

sings her little songs

learns her little languages

sweet to children

defender of people who aren't even considered people by society

passive aggressive asf

kinda weird and unsettling to people

acts like she doesn't give a fuck but then oh goddammit there she goes giving a fuck again i guess

does stupid things bc they are Right and Just

has like zero sense of self preservation

robot has to deal with having a shitty human body full time

was a really cool spaceship

has like really cool fighting skills

she's not a girl but also everyone and their mother who has a big ol lesbian crush on her is 100% correct. yes sir i too would follow you to the farthest reaches of the universe just to be your side. constantly thinking abt you when i know you can peek into my little brain and see me thinking abt you <3

anyway sorry to be a one esk apologist but in my defense your honor i am right

[air-of-the-waterfall]

“Favourite”

One Esk tenderly helping Awn clean up after killing dozens of people in Ors. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

[andreai04]

Granny, meanwhile, was two streets away. She was also, by the standards of other people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just everywhere else didn’t.

[black-water-simping-ships]

"tisarwat, baby lieutenant": a cousin of mine saw anaander mianaai shirtless during a temple ceremony and she said she has an 8-pack. every last instance of anaander mianaai is shredded.

breq, powering up the brain surgery machine: anaander mianaai is a punk bitch.