#imperial radch

[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.

[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."

[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.

[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.

[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

[sowlmates]

ann leckie is like. this book is narrated by a stone. that book is narrated by a spaceship. and it's the greatest thing you've ever read

[volpestarks]

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

[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.

[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.

[cat-dragron-arts]

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

[dustywave]

imperial radch gender thoughts:

i have now seen several people refer to the radch as a "matriarchy" and it confuses me. how can a society without gender roles be considered matriarchal? the radchaii do not even have the concept of "woman." this interpretation seems entirely based on the universal "she" pronoun - but in "the left hand of darkness," the genderless gethenians are referred to with "he" pronouns, and no one calls gethen a patriarchy! what makes the radch different from gethen? is it the fact that the radchaii do have sexual dimorphism, unlike the gethenians - as evidenced by seivarden being read as "male" by non-radchaii people? if so then this is simply a case of people conflating "biological sex" with gender. even then, it actually seems like another point against describing the radch as matriarchy, because being "biologically male" clearly holds no great significance in radchaii society. but i think the real story is that people are much more primed to interpret "he" pronouns as gender neutral, whereas people referred to with "she" pronouns are always necessarily women in some sense. men are considered the default, and women are innately "more gendered" than men, and i think this is precisely what ann leckie meant to underline by using universal "she" pronouns in a story about a genderless society. if you came away from it thinking of the radch as a society dominated by women, then i think you missed the point by a long shot

[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.

[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.”