#and seivarden's like 'i know :('

[scribefindegil]

people will really look at a series with a two-book-long subplot about the protagonist being desperate for physical affection but unable to access it because the only option she feels is available to her is sexual which she doesn't want, which finally resolves with her friend starting to platonically share a bed with her in a relationship that everyone involved and their spaceship explicitly states on multiple occasions is not sexual . . .

and then go "okay but what if they had sex anyway?"

[lurking-latinist]

think I will reread Ancillary Justice & series, I think the first time I read it I mainly absorbed worldbuilding and now I need to remember the names of like. characters

[gideonisms]

I do think that not being allowed to be a little grumpy and unreasonable in private without someone noticing would give me new unique kinds of neuroses though. I have always wished the imperial radch books examined breq's surveillance of her crew more in the later books because the common radchaii habit of being intentionally oblique/people from other places being more oblique and unreadable when talking to someone from the radch irritates breq frequently but seems to me to be the natural result of constantly being monitored. breq may be causing some of her own interpersonal issues here

[falloutcoys]

irl friend said they haven't seen me this insane about a book since I read gtn so. take that as you will

[guccigarantine]

I hate taking one step out of my orbit and finding the ugliest opinions I’ve ever seen

[coquelicoq]

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.

[ilovedthestars]

of all the fun characters in imperial radch for some reason the one who has been stuck in my brain the most is Seivarden. what is UP with her. I need to see inside her brain so bad. she got dragged off the street by a mysterious stranger who inexplicably knew her name and spent like a week waiting to run away from her and buy more drugs but then she was like. no actually, instead i think i will be sticking to you like a barnacle forever, thanks.

she was also frozen for 1000 years and it's not like the book doesn't acknowledge that but???? she woke up after being frozen for a thousand years and this is a remarkably small deal relative to the main plot. "spaceship captain loses her ship and gets shoved into an escape pod and wakes up a thousand years later" could absolutely be its own whole story, where the spaceship captain then goes on to save the world or something, except instead of saving the world seivarden got addicted to drugs and this is just all happening in the background of breq's own saving-the-world-adjacent adventure.

i mean for goodness sake she was frozen for a thousand years and then got dragged off the street by the one person in the galaxy who knew her a thousand years ago and is still alive. what kind of luck is THAT. she decided she was gonna stick to breq like a barnacle forever before she even knew that. (i mean, arguably you could put that point in a lot of different places, but to me the bridge scene and the picking-her-up-from-jail scene in AJ are both strong candidates.) i NEED to go find some good seivarden POV fic because i need to know what is going on in her HEAD.

[madcap-nattery]

Seivarden absolutely kills me in Sword. Haha hey Breq did you know that the whole ship thinks we are dating? Crazy right? I told them they were wrong obviously. But the consensus is that I've been negligent in my duties on that front 🥺 so like 🥺 have I been

[a-side-character]

Frustrated with whoever edited the pronouns in the Imperial Radch Wiki. I mean, look at this for Seivarden:

Guys... her pronouns are She/Her. Regardless of where she is. Because she's Radchaai and those are the only pronouns she feels comfortable with. Nilters misgendering her based on their own gender conventions doesn't change HER pronouns, just like how a Radchaai misgendering every non she/her user in sight doesn't magically change that person's pronouns.

Also, MALE DOES NOT EQUAL HE/HIM

Yes I know the book mentions that Denz Ay is a grandfather and Breq uses "the simple respectful address towards a male person", but that tells us nothing about her (using the only pronoun we're given in the book to refer to Denz Ay, which is admittedly biased) actual pronouns. "Male" could mean literally anything to the Orisians, and we would never know because the narrator has no clue either.

The fact is, we'll never really know the pronouns of non-Radchaai characters unless we hear them referred to by others in their culture/language, like how we know that Uran uses he/him and Queter uses she/her, because that's how their family refers to them.

[morhath]

"'There's no tea here.' I set the instrument aside. 'There's milk.' More specifically, there was a fermented bov milk, which the people here thinned with water and drank warm. The smell--and taste--was reminiscent of sweaty boots. And too much of it would likely make Seivarden slightly sick." (page 72 of my copy of AJ)

you know if I remember correctly I previously read this bit as having something to do with her coming off kef, but I think Seivarden might actually just be lactose intolerant. she also expresses distaste/unfamiliarity when confronted with cheese.

[larkiethings]

So my household went through the annual imperial radch fever which meant that we had two people listening to the books at the same time (but not together which is fun when you walk from one end of the house to the other and hear the same narrator reading books)

But it got me thinking about adaptations again, and while I think this would be a difficult work to adapt, I was thinking about fan casts. And I know that we have very few descriptions of Anaander Mianaai, we know that she has dark skin (and dark skin is considered beautiful and aristocratic bc of this) and we know that non radch people tend to he/him her, so I have heard Idris Elba as a fan cast. but hear me out.

there's a lot of exposition in AJ that's basically Breq telling us things, and that's hard to work into film organically. My thought for introducing Anaander would be that it's early, when Breq is on Nilt, and there's some kind of show (or even an ad for the show) playing. Maybe Breq is watching it to appear more human, maybe it's playing on all the screens in the window of the space electronics store, maybe someone is projecting it onto a wall and Breq stops to watch in bemused curiosity, bc the show is some kind of history about the radch and how it came to power. I'm thinking history channel quality, heavy on the dramatizations and misinformation, light on nuanced takes and actual historical detail. An external view on radch history about the Most Terrifying Warlord Emperor In Space. And that Anaander is Idris Elba.

HOWEVER. When Anaander actually arrives on Justice of Toren, who shows up? Queen Latifah.

Think about it. It provides a challenge to gendered notions from outside the radch (and from modern day) as to which gender is considered more likely to be Dangerous or Violent. It reinforces that the radch does not play by those rules in a way that communicates well to the audience. It shows us some of that inside/outside the radch perceptions which have been some of my favorite tidbits from the follow up books. And it reinforces some of the beauty standards that we know exist (mostly from administrator celar) that the radch considers fatness and darker skin beautiful...just like their emperor.

Also Regé-Jean Page should play Seivarden I will not be discussing this

[scribefindegil]

I queued that last post a few days ago but it's great timing because I started my reread of Sword today and just got to Seivarden's Most Awkward Breakfast Conversation. she is suffering so much. it's great.

Like on the one hand the way that they're constantly talking at cross-purposes--because Breq can't believe that Seivarden cares about her except as a tie to the past and the memory of a thing she no longer is (because of course she's not a *person* but she's not really a ship anymore either), and Seivarden can't ask for any kind of intimacy that falls outside the paradigm of a patron/client relationship which Breq can't provide--is extremely compelling and kind of tragic. But also Seivarden's hopeless pining that Breq is utterly oblivious to is SO funny.

[lurking-latinist]

I think I might need the mathematical resources of category theory to express the blorbo thoughts I'm having right now

[abstract-ornithology]

some miscellaneous thoughts after rereading Ancillary Justice (this is my third time reading it but first time listening to the audiobook):

I think I’ve gotten better at picking up on unreliable narrator since the last time I read this book because it is only now hitting me that Breq (whom I love and cherish) is (respectfully) kind of a fucking dumbass sometimes

Adjoa Andoh!!!! is so good!!!!!

I think what threw me off the first time I read the book is that Breq is both incredibly confident in her abilities and competent enough for it to be justified, so I, being the emotionally incompetent (and almost certainly neurodivergent) teenager I was at the time, failed to pick up on the fact that despite this, she is also oblivious to the extent that her actions are dictated by her emotions (I say this like I’m not still an emotionally incompetent teenager, but humour me)

I want to make my was-almost-an-English-major friend read this so we can analyze it together, but she said she doesn’t like sci-fi because she finds the worldbuilding stuff too complicated so that’s not going to happen :(

I love how Ancillary Justice gets around the otherwise potentially suspension-of-disbelief-breaking coincidences by making them A Thing That’s Important for Radchaai citizens. Also the moments where it outright tells the reader the connotations of a word because it’s different in the in-universe languages compared to English. My thoughts on this aren’t very coherent, I just think some of the literary devices in this book are really interesting and different to what I’ve had to analyze in English class and Ann Leckie is really cool

Like, seriously, I want to have an actual conversation about this with someone who actually knows what they’re talking about because there’s so much neat stuff in the writing of this book and I want to have coherent ideas about it. I can hear all my past English teachers laughing maniacally as they bask in their success.

All the names in this series are such a vibe. And now I even know how to pronounce them! Audiobooks are great :)

Seivarden’s character development??!! (/pos)

That’s all the words my brain has to vomit for now, but I may do some actual analysis or something when/if I develop more coherent thoughts. It’s exam season though so no guarantees

[falloutcoys]

i just realized that breivarden might be like. the only canon* aro/allo** ship i know of

[meggannn]

in justice, breq says seivarden never abused any of justice of toren’s ancillaries. in sword, breq knows seivarden has had sex with ancillaries before, despite knowing little of her post-justice service, and brings it up unprompted. she explains ancillaries do have a range of bodily needs, some of which are sexual, and each body is different and will take care of needs on their own or with others. though seivarden was a jerk, treated ancillaries like tools at the time, and didn’t consider their needs a priority, breq doesn’t consider anything seivarden did to her ancillaries abusive or cruel, so seivarden apparently received consent from those ancillaries she did sleep with.

so this. i believe means breq and seivarden have already had consensual sex with presumably justice of toren kneeling to its lieutenant two thousand years ago. now over breakfast in sword, and then again in mercy’s first scene, seivarden offering to kneel to breq means she wants to flip the script and fill the position breq once filled for her, in more ways than one. hmm