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

i had the idea that there's neural pathways formed by the brain's original inhabitant, and then the ancillary-programming forces a bunch of new ones, and since the ship is controlling the brain it's those new connections that are reinforced, while the old ones wither if they're not used. since justice of toren was slightly eccentric, it used those pathways to a certain extent, thus the personality quirks.

and that's why tisarwat was able to have her original personality restored (if with the addition of the anaander parts), because the neural connections hadn't died off yet.

 

Hm, ok, here's my take on Tisarwat:
You start with Original Flavor Tisarwat. Then Anaander puts Anaander-implants/modified ancillary implants in her; this is difficult not least because all the other Anaanders are genetically identical. This gives Tisarwat 1) access to Anaander's memories 2) the belief that she is Anaander. She spends a while like this.

Then Breq removes them, also sort of badly. This removes Tisarwat's conviction that she is Anaander - but, as we see in the book, she still has Anaander's memories. Even more confusingly for her, she remembers time /being/ Anaander - she has memories where she believed herself to be Anaander (and.. was. sort of.)

So now you've got the underlying, somewhat fragile and teenage Tisarwat personality. She's still got all of Tisarwat's memories, but by the end of Mercy she doesn't consider them to be hers - to Breq, she speaks of Original!Tisarwat as a different person, and doesn't consider her family hers.

I'm not sure here if this is because messily fucking around with her sense of self got rid of it for good- that is, she believes Original!Tisarwat is dead, because they got rid of her belief that she was Anaander but didn't restore her belief that she is Tisarwat - or if she's looked at herself, thought about it, and concluded that she can't be the same person anymore.

tl;dr no wonder the poor kid's depressed

 

i wonder if there was a degree of cultural conditioning, too. It Is Known in radch space that ancillaries are part of the ship and have no personalities of their own, so perhaps post-anaander tisarwat wouldn't have believed that she could go back to being original-tisarwat even if it was possible.

unrelated, but leckie reblogged a picture of these teacups and i thought it was so delightful i had to share with those of you who don't follow her tumblr:

 

@roach @jacktrash your werewolf au made me realize that a werewolf radch au would be kind of amazing. i mean, the hierarchies, the little packs (decades, ships), the fact that seiv goes from constantly testing breq to 'oh ok you're the leader' as soon as breq punches her in the nose, breq and anaander fighting more through threat displays and posturing than actual fighting...

so now i want to read space navy werewolf fanfic and i have no idea where to find it.

eta: oh and how in the books the ships are able to sort of 'tune out' the suffering new ancillaries go through because they have so many ancillaries that it's just a speck of pain, really? totally works for werewolf soldiers: ancillary soldiers shapeshift faster and can essentially power through the pain because they're just part of a consciousness, which makes them really freaky. being made into a werewolf is really painful, so of course you'd want to use non-radchaii primarily to save on painkilling drugs. not to mention how werewolves are classed as 'undead', and ancillaries are referred to as corpse soldiers

 

Hello! I come bearing an offering of the most delightfully infuriating earworm that I've ever heard, which is a fan's take on the tune of It All Goes Around, just in case some of you haven't heard it yet. There's also this competition to finish the duck who was God limerick, and all the featured entries are beautiful.

 

So somebody in tumblr.txt mentioned Kalr Five <3< Sphene and I was moderately confused but now I'm reading Ancillary Mercy again and.. yeah. yep!

Mercy of Kalr arguing with Sphene through Kalr Five is so good omg

 

This time around, the role of Anaander Mianaai is, in my head, played by ... Daveed Diggs!

resulting in a bunch of dialog I'd read as "icily precise and angry" now reading as "dangerously casual drawl." Which is very fun.