#imperial radch

[dangerousyako]

Love Ancillary Justice it's all Breq showing up places "I'm Breq an impossibly cool and ultracompetent expressionless determinator with inhuman reflexes on a two-decades-long revenge quest. And this is Seivarden, I just found her in the trash and she has nothing to do with my plans. No I don't like her and she doesn't like me either. We are not to be separated."

[scribefindegil]

Obsessed with this bit in the preface to the 10th Anniversary edition of Ancillary Justice:

Specifics aside, "I thought this would be fun and relaxing. It was not." is a great summation of what happens with like 80% of creative endeavors.

[blessphemy]

there’s a thing about Breq’s POV where she will notice the specter of servant/household labor. which makes sense considering that back when she was a ship she was the one to do the work. invisibly and without recognition. cleaning and mending and tending. We see though her eyes how much of her time was this menial labor. Comparatively little of her time was the explosive brutalism of military violence. The real exercise of power is the exercise of who sits back and who does the work.

- the perfectly white uniform of the immigration officer coming into the Radch, which she described as indicative of either a servant, or a great deal of time invested in an effort to look like there was a servant

- the impressive wall of household plants in Skaaiat’s home, speculated to be the full time job of one of the household’s occupants

There are more of examples, probably. And there’s something in here about Seivarden acting as servant to Breq in book 1.

I’m having a half-baked thought about how, even with the POV character being a millennia-old warship, with the arc of the story being about galaxy spanning imperialism and political maneuvering. this is a story about the overlooked and taken-for-granted daily work, which is what that empire invisibly hinges upon. man I love this series. And this first book in particular. It’s put together so clean.

[arianwells]

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

[despiashrq]

“Boy, I can’t wait to read more about the Presger, I have so many questions!”

100 pages into Translation State: ✋ I have additional questions

[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.

[volpestarks]

Landscapes inspired by Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch 3/?

[cat-dragron-arts]

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

[crouchabout]

hi i'm really good at controlling my facial expression and keeping it pleasantly normal and mysterious. also one time i looked at someone and she got so startled she fell off a bridge. what was that about lmao

[air-of-the-waterfall]

“Significant”

In honour of the Radch AIs declaring themselves significant and Breq tripping face first into an unplanned coup d’état <3

(Embroidery by me using the Ancillary trilogy title font and Nicole Thayer’s emanation Vahn design)

[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.

[vehicularmotorcycle]

This is your sign to read The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. If you've been thinking about it but you're not sure, read it. If you've never heard of it but you like scifi, read it. If you want cool aliens and lgbt+ rep READ IT.

It's one of the best books I've read this year. It's up there with the Imperial Radch series and Murderbot. Also it's free on Kindle

[scribefindegil]

As much as I adore conlangs, I really like how the Imperial Radch books handle language. The book is entirely in English but you're constantly aware that you're reading a "translation," both of the Radchaai language Breq speaks as default, and also the various other languages she encounters. We don't hear the words but we hear her fretting about terms of address (the beloathed gendering on Nilt) and concepts that do or don't translate (Awn switching out of Radchaai when she needs a language where "citizen," "civilized," and "Radchaai person" aren't all the same word) and noting people's registers and accents. The snatches of lyrics we hear don't scan or rhyme--even, and this is what sells it to me, the real-world songs with English lyrics, which get the same "literal translation" style as everything else--because we aren't hearing the actual words, we're hearing Breq's understanding of what they mean. I think it's a cool way to acknowledge linguistic complexity and some of the difficulties of multilingual/multicultural communication, which of course becomes a larger theme when we get to the plot with the Presgar Translators.

[sunshinemoonrx]

Tisarwat really is one of the Most characters ever written. I'm 17 years old I'm 3,000 years old I'm six months old. I've died twice and been born three times. I was secretly emperor of the universe for about a month and I spent most of that time throwing up. I spent my first paycheck on surgery to get purple anime eyes. My interests are hot girls of all genders and (distant second) fish

[beansoup3000]

It's so important to me that Breq does not support either side of Anaander Mianaai's civil war. Like given the events of the first book I half expected her to join forces with the side of Anaander who didn't destroy Justice of Toren against the side that did, but that's not the kind of story it is. Her first priority is to find and protect Lieutenant Awn's family. And by the third book her objective is to keep the residents of Athoek System safe (including Station itself). It's just so helpful to me to have this story where the fabric of society is ripping apart on an incomprehensible scale, and our hero is someone who chooses a specific group of people and says, I will keep them safe. Not "I will save the universe" or "I will prevent collapse" or "I will fix it all," just "I will do what I can to keep this population safe amidst the chaos." So even during big action scenes, harm mitigation is central to Breq's calculus. She's trying to establish trade with the Presgr for medical correctives bc she recognizes the need for medical infrastructure independent of the Radch empire. She's pushing for mundane repairs. She's supporting workers unionizing. It's not sexy it's not action packed it's just a grounded response to crisis. She doesn't waste time engaging in the rhetorical stakes of the intra-Anaander conflict, she just gets to work helping people. I think it's a good example of how to handle problems that feel paralyzingly large.

[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.