#breq

[arianwells]

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

[nasty-little-guy]

Just mainlined the first three imperial radch books and a new thing I noticed this time round is that every time Breq needs to load visible_disdain.exe she simply does her best Seivarden impression and honestly what a beautiful friendship. If I taught my 3k year old warship bestie how to be a condescending dick, purely on accident, just by being myself, I would die of joy.

[cat-dragron-arts]

Hey go read Ancillary Justice it's so good I'm insane.

[winter-wise]

Reading Ancillary Mercy rn and Seivarden has really been on the journey of all time. In a coma. Woke up. Whole family dead. Only person who recognises her is her former company car, who's decided to go and shoot the president. Not kill, just shoot. The car shoots the president several times. The president gives the company car her own company car. Seivarden can come along. Seivarden is in love with her former company car. The company car never liked her. Her company car is now in love with another company car. The company cars are openly discussing this in front of her, including Seivarden's own feelings for one of the company cars. Sequence of events of all time.

[trokopotaka]

I'm thinking about Imperial Radch always...

[pallasparthenos]

The instant my hands touched her shoulders, the red glass shattered, sharp-edged fragments flying out and away, glittering briefly. Seivarden closed her eyes, ducked her head, face into my neck, held me tight enough that if I hadn't been armored my breathing would have been impeded.

[a-side-character]

I am once again thinking about Breq and Mercy of Kalr.

Specifically, I'm thinking about how and why their relationship is so different from any other relationship in this series, and what that means for them as characters.

I'm thinking about Breq's response to being told by other people, often people she likes or respects, that they don't see her as an ancillary. Because they (for the most part) mean it as a compliment, a way of validating her and expressing that they care about or think highly of her. But she never takes it as such, and is always made uncomfortable by it.

Because she IS an ancillary, and by using "I don't think anyone here sees you as an ancillary" as a compliment, or as a reason why her life matters and she deserves to be taken care of, only furthers her belief that what she IS is wrong, is inherently less deserving.

I'm thinking about how the only time people use it/its pronouns - the identity she used for 2,000 years and continues to use to refer to her cousins and fellow AI - to refer to her is when they're trying to disrespect or demean her. How her crew looks at her, horrified, and says "sir, none of us would ever call you it" while continuing to use those same pronouns to refer to their own ship. It shows her that the only reason people think they care about her is because they're too caught up in the version of her she pretends to be (human, Radchaai, she), however wrong that viewpoint may be.

I'm thinking about how, in Ancillary Mercy when Breq breaks down and repeats the line "ships don't love other ships", Mercy of Kalr responds with "ships love people who could be captains." It doesn't say 'well that's okay, because I don't see you as a ship', it doesn't treat her as some exception to the supposed rule that ships and ancillaries aren't people worthy of love, it tells her 'you, Breq, Justice of Toren, One Esk Nineteen, YOU are my captain, and I can't help but love you.'

I'm just. thinking

[spyrograph]

Seivarden is like, “Everyone I know is dead so I’m gonna do Space Ketamine about it,” and honestly that’s a more reasonable reaction than Breq’s, “Everyone I love is dead so I’m going to spend two decades searching for a McGuffin so I can shoot a Space Dictator about it.”

[homosekularnost]

ancillary mercy (i stole the joke from here)

[unbizzarre]

One-Esk and Murderbot meet in the waiting lobby for Robo-Therapy

(…specifically rage counseling )

Probably two of my favorite robot/ai/construct protagonists in literature! Though I have a lot. (What’s up Culture shipminds…)

Creation notes:

A pattern I’ve been noticing is that a lot of these robots are very traumatized, very angry, and don’t like talking about their feelings. I was gonna originally make this short comic about One-Esk (aka Breq) and Murderbot on the first day of group therapy for rage counseling and it would just be a bunch of shots of them sitting in silence cuz neither of them like talking about their feelings but, uh…. the shots were just a lot and the series of events wasn’t really flowing right so I scrapped that idea in favor of not having to draw a zillion backgrounds. Still wound up taking a stupidly long time to create a product that feels… underwhelming. I really like how Breq turned out but I just couldn’t get the hair or costume design on MB to really fit the corpo-futuristic spacer asthetic I was going for, while still capturing that social-anxiety-comfort-hoodie energy. (Was originally contemplating having a shot of MB pulling hoodie strings closed over their face in one shot but wound up scrapping that idea as well.) Cannonicallly, MB should probably be in all dark blues and blacks, but the colors just weren’t working so I went with yellow instead. Idk. Maybe it’s a loaner hoodie from one of MB’s humans.

Here’s a shot I never wound up using:

Anyways! I hope this made you smile if you like one or both of these series! 😊

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.

[longearedhare]

the 3ish interactions that Tisarwat and Seivarden have are so fucking funny. suicidal teenager mad because Mom’s (Breq’s) situationship is being nice to her and doesn’t know that she was briefly a 3,000 year old tyrant. well-intentioned side piece (Seivarden) trying to be nice to the step-kid and mildly baffled as to why a 17-year old has access to top secret military gossip. there is absolutely no situation like it. thank you Ann Leckie.

[laatmaar]

"If that's what you're willing to do for someone you hate, what would you do for someone you loved?"

Again black and white version under the cut as well as some sketches I made of the characters in preperation for this piece!

[winter-wise]

Actually hilarious that Breq found out that Anaander hijacked Tisarwat's brain and instead of getting the fascist tyrant out of her ship straight away, she made the Lord of the Radch, Lord of Mianaai, The Tyrant, do a bunch of gross chores first.

[amemoryofwot]

[volpestarks]

Tea time with Breq

[laurelnose]

I am currently being oppressed by the Libby holds queue for Translation State >:( have this Breq speedpaint from back when I finished Ancillary Sword