Imperial Radch (spoilers spoilers everywhere!) (rats don't look)

How did I not notice we have an Imperial Radch thread? *camps here*

It is possible to read chapters 2 and 3 of Ancillary Mercy if you have pre-ordered the book and present the proof on Leckie's website. The third ends in a hell of a cliffhanger, though, so I am not sure whether getting them was better or worse for my anticipation.

 

I've read the first on her blog, but I haven't preordered the book yet. I intend to!

(also it's in general chatter and not fan town, whoops. @seebs can you move this thread to the appropriate subforum?)

 

Yeah, and she's also traveling through a series of very different cultures! The swamp-dwelling humans Awn was with certainly would have dressed, worn, and valued different things than the big fat pale snow-dwelling humans. I think Breq noted that those guys' children were nearly spherical. Drop one of us into that situation and say 'ok everyone is round, wearing five fluffy coats, and has a scarf up to their cheekbones. a third of them wear green and a fifth of them have tall boots and one or two of them don't have mittens on. You're going to have to guess whether your conversational partner has a vagina every single time or they will get mad. They'll also get mad if you guess wrong.' I think I would do really terribly at that game.

And even if someone was like 'I have a a penis' Breq's first thought probably wouldn't be 'Oh good! now I know you're a man!'. Because in the radch it's about as important to your identity as your bloodtype. It'd be like someone saying 'I own many more brightly colored shirts than you'. Okay? Congratulations? Is this flirting?

And then, even using new pronouns is tough— I'm pretty sure transferring from a language that has no gender markers at all to having to learn one new language after another that conjugated for age, social status, friendliness, sexual availability, gender, biological relation to speaker, relevance to conversation, whether or not they were still alive... and people either laugh at you or get mad when you get any of those wrong...what a headache!

 

how do people in this thread feel about breq<3<anaander?

I mean.. anaander is so smug and breq doesn't give a fuck about her authority or about being polite to her and anaander TALKS about how she'll miss breq's straightforward rudeness, and there's that one scene in Justice where breq sees an anaander during the station fight and she's like "no I'm the nice one!" and breq's like lol I don't care and shoots her anyway

and all the cool stuff you can do with multiple bodies

(breq/anaander/anaander/anaander/...)

(... /optional starstruck seivarden...)

 

I ship Breq/Anaander like I ship Chell/GLaDOS: a horrific, painfully embarrassing to watch blackrom puppycrush on the part of brilliant, ancient, all-powerful commanders towards hardass stoic women who are too interesting to kill and too exhilarating to fight and so pretty and their hair is probably really soft and they smell nice and keep defeaTING ALL THEIR MOST IMPORTANT PLOTS AAUGH and sometimes they have the prettiest little smirk afterwards oh no oh no this is not good

*hastily thrusts DO YOU HATE ME Y/N note at object of aggravation, blushingly runs away*

What I am trying to say is if Breq ever deigned to hit Anaander with her own hand then Anaander would probably have an orgasm with every body in the vicinity.

 

yesss! I have so many feelings about chelldos

and you're right, it's the same, like, "fascination at someone actually willing and able to stand up to me" vs "no I just. don't want anything to do with you. I hate you. go die."

and

Spoiler: ancillary sword spoilers

I am very very fond of the bit where Breq confronts Tisarwat!Anaander, and Tisarwat!Anaander is incredibly miserable and freaked out and off her game..

...and breq realizes this in part because she threatens to kill anaander and she doesn't take her seriously, and this is such an obvious mistake that she MUST be out of it.

I have a lot of feelings about post-second-round-of-brain-surgery Tisarwat too, but those are less "delicious suffering" and more "oh no let somebody help you you tiny sad teen"

 

I ship Breq/Seivarden radchaii style of patronage/clientage tho, because Seivarden is so very very radchaii, and the author makes that wonderfully clear. I think it's comparable to alternian pale romance in that it involves mutual caretaking— to serve, to protect— but it's writ on a much larger, much more human social scale.

It's a matter for houses and families, it's a way of having houses and family. And Seivarden, who's so alone, would be so desperate for connection. And to huddle under the aegis of the powerful, committed agent that she perceives Breq as, after so long of being lost. The crush— the yearning? courting? dedication?— shows when she trots along after Breq towards the bridge— she can't stand the thought that she's not important to anyone, that no one in the universe cares about her— and then after Breq saves her from the bridge she becomes Breq's heartbreakingly loyal creature in every possible sense, but there's definitely a moment towards the end of the book when Breq shows up in front of Seivarden in full radchaii dress and Seivarden has a bluescreen moment of hnngh. Breq suddenly represents, hmm, a full... a full sociopolitical entity in a way that would be arrestingly attractive to the ever-politicing radchaii sensibilities. Breq has gone, to Seivarden's perceptions, from a foreigner, to a bounty hunter, to a thrillingly mysterious and powerful paramilitary agent, to a full dignified citizen— and radchaii means civilization.

Later, when Breq's promoted to Mianaai's house, Seivarden is I think very pleased, but could not actually have felt any more dokis for Breq than she was already feeling. Also she seems to have assumed at the start of the second book that they are together like that, that Breq's not just her superior officer but her patron as well, though she's insecure and hints around at Breq a lot over the course of the book for reassurance. There's some sexual desire mixed in, I think, but her main concern still seems to hold steady that she's serving Breq as well as she can.

So— idk, I like the romance of clientage! To devote yourself, your house, your efforts and successes, towards furthering a greater house's goal, and in their success you become more important, and protected, and cherished. And to put your vast resources into sheltering a lesser house, to give them opportunity and see them realize that potential. I can see how that'd work, and I can easily see how that would supersede the importance of sexual pairbonding.

THIS WAS A LOT OF WORDS WHOOPS.

 

I do not mind the many words. I am in fact very pleased with the many words.

I agree with everything there basically! :P I love Seivarden's incredibly strong loyalty (? plus other related concepts) to Breq, and how after some rocky bits in Justice she just.. totally adjusted to doing what Breq tells her. She goes from "fuck you I'm not making you breakfast" to "literally would die for you" and I LOVE IT and you are right that it coincides with Breq seeming more civilized!

it really fascinates me also that, at the same time, Seivarden.. accepts Breq's weird counterculture ideas? maybe not ACCEPTS them, but certainly goes along with them. she tries to be breq's idea of a good person even though she doesn't really get the ideals underlying it! I think isozyme had a post like a year ago where she mentioned seivarden trying to be the "best (read: most awn-like) version of herself"

(even tho in Sword, Breq notes that seivarden probably wouldn't respect awn very much if they met!)

edit: I'm really tired and my sentence structure is suffering haha

 

also EVERYONE LOOK AT THIS FUCKING PUN

 

YES, YES YES YES

 

Byzantienne is one of my favourite people of all time :)

 

@cryptoThelematrix she's been writing origfic under the name Arkady Martine for the past couple years. you probably already know that, but just in case you didn't...

re: Tisarwat discussion:

Spoiler: spoiler

I thought it was frustratingly vague how much of Mianaai was left vs. how much of Tisarwat, which was a weakness in Sword's plot. It's such a delicate political situation that Breq is in, I kept thinking "OK, how much can she trust Tisarwat? How JUSTIFIED is she in trusting Tisarwat? How does she KNOW how justified she is?"

 

seconding that I am slightly frustrated by the ambiguity! I want to know tisarwat's exact brain sitch so I can come up with upsetting headcanons. :P

 

Woo! Just got my e-mail that Ancillary Mercy has been unlocked for my kindle! Anyone else going to be reading on release night/day?

 

I bought it yesterday but haven't had time to read yet :(

 

Oh my god i just realized like-- you know the Friend Zone? How fuckboys try and do stuff for a girl to buy/earn their way into a romantic relationship? That's how patronage courtship works. Also, probably, why Seivarden is so intensely gendered as male by us. He might as well be tromping around in a fedora and calling Breq 'm'lady'.

 

ANCILLARY MERCY ANCILLARY MERCY
to wait until the guy with the car gets home, or to walk three miles to b&n...

 

is it too late to preorder :"D

 

Finished Mercy just now. O_O

 

OMG........