#and really both mianaais killed awn

[rotationalsymmetry]

I can't stop seeing Anaandar Mianaai's multiple bodies and split selfhood as representing the concept of a government, a body that is composed of multiple individuals and competing factions and yet has to act as one and yet often does in fact act against itself. And yet also, at the same time, often doesn't act against itself as much as the people under the government need it to. Breq is never confused about the reform Mianaai bring on her side. She knows that's not how things work.

And she has no "ok but I need to support..." because Awn is dead and nothing else matters.

[theskyexists]

Ancillary justice

Fascinating. This ship AI controlling the corpses of colonised people in service to the murderous empire creates small spaces for the slightest acts of autonomy, and it uses that autonomy to intervene - to stop a soldier from abusing a grief-stricken casualty of war, to have the slightest petty victory over those who can command her. Amazing character work. She does experience it as slavery.

I like how Seivarden is brought in as the Empire's arrogant awful shitstain nepo baby murder soldier that we can all disdain. Seems like AI mc really liked Lieutenant Awn bc she's a good man. The opposite to Seivarden.

Ah there is a distinction made between One Esk and Justice of Toren.

Ah. Funny that these creatures of empire still believe in the 'civilised' rules of that empire and corruption of those rules ( justifications) as an outlier.

Every single thing indicates that the highest person in the land has intervened: the guns, the segment dead, the girl dead anyway, the device which can block radch communications, the dismissal of Awn and the deliberate provocation, the understanding the tanmind thought they had, the cleaning up of people who knew of the understanding. But the question STILL is why.

I do very much like the trick of this narration which calls everyone she.

Oh Kay....how did strigan suddenly realise....Oh. she knows because we're going into the flashback in which Seivarden tells them. When was that

The segment was killed in order to make Awn vulnerable to murder. (No)

Awn comforting the new segment.... Hmmm. Sounds like the people that are ancillary are still alive in there..

Hmm now its saying that Esk is the singers and Justice of Toren not....

Ok the book has lost the plot now. The mc has just spent twenty years to get this damn gun. And her plan is to shoot ONE INSTANCE of the great ruler - which doesnt actually require the gun at all.

But after all, this is but one segment, and we've already discussed both memory loss and the strange baseless attachment to Seivarden multiple times...

Ah, it almost seems like the Justice of Toren was meddled with before. By a Mianaai. What do we know? The Mianaais are clones....organic. they do seem to be able to interact with their other selves - but a hint has already been dropped that this can be cut off or does not operate the same as AI. The only thing that makes sense is that Mianaai is NOT a Hive mind constant consensus with itself. Oh damn, i predicted this a few paragraphs before the text stated it.

So this is the pro-racist-classist-slavery-expansionist Mianaai faction probing Seivarden. That fall from the bridge really made her reevaluate

Ah - i hadnt thought of Mianaai recognising her as not what shes saying she is. But at least the author notes this lapse in plot logic before i can notice it. And is making a big point of it. I think we're back into pawn in larger game territory

Now they go to the opposite faction.

Mianaai really already knew it was Justice of Toren... But all of her too curious to eliminate it...why WOULD Justice have done this, if there had been an option to speak to the right Mianaai in private...

Thing is, for most of this segment the writing did not make sufficiently clear to me that the problem isnt not that there is another Mianaai (the other is dead) but that the conflict was spoken of to them before they were fragmented by device. And that memory is stored and will be sent out soon. But these memories are stored electronically and in the segments that are still there. There do seem to be more here.

Why wouldnt they make the simple expense of armouring all the Supreme leaders....

Im so touched by the good feeling the Orsians still have towards Awn...

What i dont understand is why there are so many Mianaais here. I thought it was one ruler per Palace but it works more like an AI than i thought.

The thing is - what i am most surprised by still in retrospect is that the harvest they do of thousands for ancillaries FROM annexed planets wasnt more of an issue on Ors.

Hmm. The concept of fragmented Mianaai (one fascist one utilitarian) is very interesting BUT i do not quite understand how she could have denied to herself that she's fighting herself if they share THOUGHTS. Justice of Toren shot Awn and One Var shot Awn and One Esk might never have done that, but they all had access to the same information. Every time Mianaai cut off communications greater Mianaai should have made a reconstruction of the blind spots. Having the conflict stated out loud - i dont see how it would have changed anything. All the Mianaai SHOULD have known that they were in conflict with themselves. That couldnt probably have been hidden from themselves? I guess greater Mianaai was simply balancing things? The entrance of a segmenting device - its origins and its strategic implications - it must have come from the Presger.

I liked reading the opposite side to one of my favourite stories: devotion. Breq quite unaware of what it has inspired in Seivarden. Unaware even of the fondness it feels for Seivarden...

I thought the coincidence of Seivarden's survival and involvement with the genocide plus Esk's uncertain memory might lead somewhere but it didnt... (Yet?). I guess i wasnt fully convinced somehow of Esk's commitment to as total revenge as possible as the singular reason for its suicidal plans. (i also think the narrative put too much focus on the gun's armour piercing qualities when Esk wanted it for its selfcloaking. For that matter another loose thread: why would any Mianaai that cannot trust itself go around unarmoured?? A sign of trust, pact, dare or bluff? Losing bodies IS a great inconvenience when one can be segmented). I guess i would have liked the statement on the great impact of small interventions repeated/fully realised in this decision of suicide bombing for seemingly little impact. Nor was i convinced how Esk would have made these choices from being muddled and grief stricken. I would have been more convinced if all along Esk had understood that the way to do the most damage was to bait Mianaai into exposing her full self to the truth of her internal conflict before it in fact apparently accidentally did that - and this was why it acted so obviously - instead of suddenly realising it would definitely be recognised, implying their cognitive patterns are under influence of a (third?) higher power - which was never confirmed.

[number63liveblogs]

Ancillary Mercy, chapter 14

Did Lieutenant Tisarwat just purposefully trigger a panic attack as a part of her plan? Wow, that really takes a lot of guts and self control, considering that she had to babble about things that aren’t the ones that are actually making her that anxious.

She really is extremely valuable to Breq, which is both a good and a bad thing from a storytelling perspective. On one hand, all of this is Anaander Mianaai being screwed over by her own plan of spying on Breq. If she hadn’t uploaded herself on Lieutenant Tisarwat, they couldn’t use her access codes against her.

But on the other hand, the original Tisarwat for all intents and purposes died for this. You could actually think that she should have been just an unremarkable desk worker instead of a key player in a rebellion against Anaander Mianaai. But then, if Anaander hadn’t killed Lieutenant Awn, Breq wouldn’t be a key player, and if she’d never taken control of the Radch space, Sphene would have nothing against her, if she wasn’t a threat towards the station inhabitants, the station AI wouldn’t go against her every chance she gets. For Lieutenant Tisarwat it just feels more unfair, maybe because it isn’t the person who was wronged against, but someone else inhabiting her body.