Haven't finished reading part 2 yet (or even started) BUT:
(1) I actually squealed when I realised what was going on (2) I feel weirdly icky about the gendering in this society; I am having to remind myself that having been given details about the physical configuration of Breq's body says nothing at all about her gender (3) her name aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah her name :D :D :D :D
basically I AM SO GLAD THIS BACKSTORY IS BEING FILLED IN because I did wonder, and now I get to know
perhaps more detailed thoughts when i've finished flailing!
I feel weirdly icky about the gendering in this society;
It felt so wrong to have someone referred to as he!
I am having to remind myself that having been given details about the physical configuration of Breq's body says nothing at all about her gender
Very good point, and particularly so in Breq's case as I'm strongly drawn to her gender being ship.
There's a lot of backstory information here, it explains Breq's religious icon (though with a twist I hadn't imagined at the start of the story, and where her money came from.
I feel weirdly icky about the gendering in this society; I am having to remind myself that having been given details about the physical configuration of Breq's body says nothing at all about her gender
*nodnod* me too.
You know what I would really like to see? Preferably in one of Leckie's own future stories, but in fanfic if nowhere else? I'd like to see a story in which some people from a culture that has binary gender automatically assume Breq is male, or that Seivarden or Anaander Mianaai is female. Bonus points if those people are certain about Anaander but have trouble reading Seivarden, or vice versa.
When it comes down to it, we don't know why the people from the binary gender cultures we've come across so far have made the assumptions they did, or that if we the readers met those characters in this world, knowing nothing about them, we'd draw the same conclusions; and I would love to see it shown in practice that (as Breq has already pointed out) the gender rules aren't the same in every non-Radchaai culture, and sometimes they're contradictory.
[I can't discuss this topic without launching into my canned rant about Seivarden and gender, but I've said it all already so I'll just drop this here.]
I thought it might be worth discussing the game itself. The instant I saw the illustration* I thought of the Aztec ball game, ullamaliztli, and knew that there would be deaths involved. There's a pretty good explanation here. Politically the Aztec game seems to be the closest match we have, though play-wise the game Sister Ultimately-Justice makes her own seems to have somewhat more in common with volleyball, with the distinct player zones, though the scoring across a goal-line is more handball-ish (I was completely confused as to who had won the final point as I initially read it as out-of-play in the soccer or tennis sense).
*It's disappointing from the access side of things that there's no alt-text to explain the image for people who can't see it.
*It's disappointing from the access side of things that there's no alt-text to explain the image for people who can't see it.
And as soon as I pressed post I realised it was stupid of me to leave it at that without providing a description, whilre discussing the image for what it tells us is potentially useful to the general discussion(though whether AL discussed it with the artist we don't know). So: the image is portrait format, of five players on a ball-court, the court itself is surrounded on all sides by a wall to around head height at the sides and well over head height at the rear, with seating atop, with a large crowd hazily sketched in. Behind the crowd are Greco-Roman style colonades and there appear to be streamers of flowers running the length of the court at the height of the colonades. Above is what appears at first to be an ornate ceiling, but may in fact be the distant opposite side of an orbital habitat, with parks and lakes and housing.
The court is lined, with our viewpoint looking down the court from low, almost at floor level, almost on the mid-point width-wise, and noticeably canted, with the left side higher. The lines appear something like you would see on a five-a-side football court, a goal drawn onto the rear wall (which wouldn't work for the description of the final point dropping beyond the line), a box is drawn on the floor around the goal, in front of that a line (a zone marker?) crosses the court, another line (the halfway line?) is just visible drawn on the court at the left hand corner of the image, this line is yellow rather than the white of the others.
Of the five players, all appear to be brown-skinned and dark, if not black, haired, though some of that may be that they seem to be lit with a orange-ish light from somewhere high and to the right rear (the court floor is also orange-ish). The image is framed by players to left and right, the left-hand player is visible only as a (noticeably hairy) leg, the right hand player is squatting, so only rises half-way up the margin of the image, their chest is flat, and their face has notably high cheek bones. All of the players are barefoot and dressed only in white, baggy, knee-length shorts (I'm almost tempted to say bloomers, but they aren't gathered at the knee), with an arm guard on their right forearms, however the player furthest from us (defending the goal? They're inside the box around it) may be wearing something (flower garlands?) across shoulders and possibly chest, this player's chest is shadowed because of their position relative to the lighting and it's impossible to tell if they are flat-chested or have breasts. The fourth player is shown turning on one foot, their position on the zone boundary line and offset to the left of court, their arms are low and to the sides, as though they have been caught wrong-footed and they are certainly in no position to defend. Their chest is flat, and their relatively light skin-colour combined with their position relative to the lighting means they could potentially be caucasian.
The fifth player is the focus of the entire image, with all four other players turned towards them, they are caught mid-leap, about to smash the ball (dead centre and just below the top of the painting) towards goal. Slightly offset to left of centre, I suspect they're centred just about on the golden ratio point for the image. Their face is long and narrow, cheekbones high, ears long and lobed, their hair chopped off in a shaggy bob at neck length and swept back. Their left arm is outstretched to top right, right arm pulled back for the smash, legs tucked up from the leap. Caught with their body turned mostly towards us, they are potentially darkest-skinned of all the players, and powerfully if compactly built, one breast is caught in semi-silhouette and it appears likely they are a relatively small-breasted woman - Sister Ultimately-Justice-Shall-Prevail.
I love how immediately recognisable Breq's voice is, and I don't mean her singing voice.
"One of the disciples who witnessed it," Ultimately-Justice said, "became abbot in his place. The other died soon after." "You're a student of Blue Lily history." "No," she said. "It was obvious."
Yes!! I thought it was absolutely _fascinating_ getting the view of Breq from an external perspective in this short - I really really loved it. Yes yes yes. And how recognisable, and how simultaneusly opaque & clear, &!!!
Ultimately-Justice seemed unfazed. As she walked past her middle court man, she suddenly spun around and slammed her armguard hard against his knee.
No emoting, no 'WTF was that?', just smash their knee and take them out of the game, because that's what's needed for the mission (and this whole story is Breq preparing for her mission - to kill Aanander Mianaai she needs the gun, to find the gun she needs huge amounts of money, to get huge amounts of money she needs to do something dangerous with high rewards)
Of course Breq doesn't really spontaneously emote at the best of times, not unless she is actively acting the part, which is why one or two people have twigged she's an ancillary.
Of course Breq doesn't really spontaneously emote at the best of times, not unless she is actively acting the part, which is why one or two people have twigged she's an ancillary.
She does occasionally. And doesn't necessarily notice when she does. I think her spontaneous emotional expressions are in a language most people (Radchaai or otherwise) don't speak... and neither does Breq herself.
The humming! The humming is canonically emoting even though Breq is largely oblivious to it (think My Heart Is A Fish, think It All Goes Around, think Kalrs knowing that Not Humming is a huge problem...)
I've actually been meaning to raise the whole singing/humming thing as an issue (and my re-read is stalled waiting for me to do it, because the point I noticed was just before the AM/Awn scene aboard Justice of Toren, and I really don't want to go there).
When One Esk (and Awn), come back aboard JoT, there is a scene in the Decade Room the next morning (Kindle Loc 2370-ish) where various lieutenants are being offensive towards Awn in her absence, and, in the general banter, one of them notes that One Esk is not humming, and the comment is made that "It really is One Esk, maybe Awn broke it of it's bad habits".
The significance here is that it means the singing is specific to One Esk, and only One Esk, not to any other decade aboard JoT, and not to JoT itself. The implication is that One Esk/JoT has an identity separate to JoT alone, and certainly to Any-Other-Decade/JoT. Which to me heavily implies that Breq is not so much all that is left of JoT, but all that is left of One Esk/JoT, a particular, not very typical, aspect of JoT. Which implies that AIs may have semi-independent sub-identities and raises all kinds of interesting issues about synchronizing them. And doesn't that reflect interestingly on Aanander Mianaai's problems....
That's discussed a few times in the first book - in the scenes with Strigan and with Anaander Mianaai in particular.
One of Justice of Toren's captains long ago had a taste for music and asked One Esk to sing for her, and One Esk developed an interest in music, and that was what started differentiating it from Justice of Toren. The progressive faction of Anaander Mianaai noticed that and recognised it as a similarity to the division in herself, and also as a potential advantage to exploit. That's what gave her the idea to ask One Esk to teach her a song, and use that as the trigger for her accesses.
The humming and singing are the most obvious and important thing (I remember on my first read-through going WAIT, WHAT? when Anaander Mianaai points out that Breq does it without being aware of it, at times has to deliberately stop herself from doing it. That was the point where I first realised just how unreliable a narrator Breq is on some topics) but there are other, smaller things too.
She mentions having involuntary facial expressions sometimes, small ones. And not just physiological things like pain grimace or crying.
And Seivarden can read her, at times when Breq herself wasn't aware she was visibly emoting. (Which makes sense, in a way: the times when Breq is frightened or in pain or exhausted enough that there's something for Seivarden to see would also be the times when Breq is too frightened or in pain or exhausted to self-monitor. But I think Breq's tells are still nonstandard and infrequent enough that you'd have to be very attuned to her and also have known her for a long time to know there was something to see. Seivarden, for Reasons, is paying close attention.)
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(1) I actually squealed when I realised what was going on
(2) I feel weirdly icky about the gendering in this society; I am having to remind myself that having been given details about the physical configuration of Breq's body says nothing at all about her gender
(3) her name aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah her name :D :D :D :D
basically I AM SO GLAD THIS BACKSTORY IS BEING FILLED IN because I did wonder, and now I get to know
perhaps more detailed thoughts when i've finished flailing!
no subject
It felt so wrong to have someone referred to as he!
Very good point, and particularly so in Breq's case as I'm strongly drawn to her gender being ship.
There's a lot of backstory information here, it explains Breq's religious icon (though with a twist I hadn't imagined at the start of the story, and where her money came from.
And that name is just so appropriate!
no subject
*nodnod* me too.
You know what I would really like to see? Preferably in one of Leckie's own future stories, but in fanfic if nowhere else? I'd like to see a story in which some people from a culture that has binary gender automatically assume Breq is male, or that Seivarden or Anaander Mianaai is female. Bonus points if those people are certain about Anaander but have trouble reading Seivarden, or vice versa.
When it comes down to it, we don't know why the people from the binary gender cultures we've come across so far have made the assumptions they did, or that if we the readers met those characters in this world, knowing nothing about them, we'd draw the same conclusions; and I would love to see it shown in practice that (as Breq has already pointed out) the gender rules aren't the same in every non-Radchaai culture, and sometimes they're contradictory.
[I can't discuss this topic without launching into my canned rant about Seivarden and gender, but I've said it all already so I'll just drop this here.]
no subject
Ullamaliztli
*It's disappointing from the access side of things that there's no alt-text to explain the image for people who can't see it.
Re: Ullamaliztli
Re: Ullamaliztli
Re: Ullamaliztli
And as soon as I pressed post I realised it was stupid of me to leave it at that without providing a description, whilre discussing the image for what it tells us is potentially useful to the general discussion(though whether AL discussed it with the artist we don't know). So: the image is portrait format, of five players on a ball-court, the court itself is surrounded on all sides by a wall to around head height at the sides and well over head height at the rear, with seating atop, with a large crowd hazily sketched in. Behind the crowd are Greco-Roman style colonades and there appear to be streamers of flowers running the length of the court at the height of the colonades. Above is what appears at first to be an ornate ceiling, but may in fact be the distant opposite side of an orbital habitat, with parks and lakes and housing.
The court is lined, with our viewpoint looking down the court from low, almost at floor level, almost on the mid-point width-wise, and noticeably canted, with the left side higher. The lines appear something like you would see on a five-a-side football court, a goal drawn onto the rear wall (which wouldn't work for the description of the final point dropping beyond the line), a box is drawn on the floor around the goal, in front of that a line (a zone marker?) crosses the court, another line (the halfway line?) is just visible drawn on the court at the left hand corner of the image, this line is yellow rather than the white of the others.
Of the five players, all appear to be brown-skinned and dark, if not black, haired, though some of that may be that they seem to be lit with a orange-ish light from somewhere high and to the right rear (the court floor is also orange-ish). The image is framed by players to left and right, the left-hand player is visible only as a (noticeably hairy) leg, the right hand player is squatting, so only rises half-way up the margin of the image, their chest is flat, and their face has notably high cheek bones. All of the players are barefoot and dressed only in white, baggy, knee-length shorts (I'm almost tempted to say bloomers, but they aren't gathered at the knee), with an arm guard on their right forearms, however the player furthest from us (defending the goal? They're inside the box around it) may be wearing something (flower garlands?) across shoulders and possibly chest, this player's chest is shadowed because of their position relative to the lighting and it's impossible to tell if they are flat-chested or have breasts. The fourth player is shown turning on one foot, their position on the zone boundary line and offset to the left of court, their arms are low and to the sides, as though they have been caught wrong-footed and they are certainly in no position to defend. Their chest is flat, and their relatively light skin-colour combined with their position relative to the lighting means they could potentially be caucasian.
The fifth player is the focus of the entire image, with all four other players turned towards them, they are caught mid-leap, about to smash the ball (dead centre and just below the top of the painting) towards goal. Slightly offset to left of centre, I suspect they're centred just about on the golden ratio point for the image. Their face is long and narrow, cheekbones high, ears long and lobed, their hair chopped off in a shaggy bob at neck length and swept back. Their left arm is outstretched to top right, right arm pulled back for the smash, legs tucked up from the leap. Caught with their body turned mostly towards us, they are potentially darkest-skinned of all the players, and powerfully if compactly built, one breast is caught in semi-silhouette and it appears likely they are a relatively small-breasted woman - Sister Ultimately-Justice-Shall-Prevail.
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"One of the disciples who witnessed it," Ultimately-Justice said, "became abbot in his place. The other died soon after."
"You're a student of Blue Lily history."
"No," she said. "It was obvious."
Yep, there you are. Hi, Breq.
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no subject
No emoting, no 'WTF was that?', just smash their knee and take them out of the game, because that's what's needed for the mission (and this whole story is Breq preparing for her mission - to kill Aanander Mianaai she needs the gun, to find the gun she needs huge amounts of money, to get huge amounts of money she needs to do something dangerous with high rewards)
Of course Breq doesn't really spontaneously emote at the best of times, not unless she is actively acting the part, which is why one or two people have twigged she's an ancillary.
no subject
She does occasionally. And doesn't necessarily notice when she does. I think her spontaneous emotional expressions are in a language most people (Radchaai or otherwise) don't speak... and neither does Breq herself.
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no subject
When One Esk (and Awn), come back aboard JoT, there is a scene in the Decade Room the next morning (Kindle Loc 2370-ish) where various lieutenants are being offensive towards Awn in her absence, and, in the general banter, one of them notes that One Esk is not humming, and the comment is made that "It really is One Esk, maybe Awn broke it of it's bad habits".
The significance here is that it means the singing is specific to One Esk, and only One Esk, not to any other decade aboard JoT, and not to JoT itself. The implication is that One Esk/JoT has an identity separate to JoT alone, and certainly to Any-Other-Decade/JoT. Which to me heavily implies that Breq is not so much all that is left of JoT, but all that is left of One Esk/JoT, a particular, not very typical, aspect of JoT. Which implies that AIs may have semi-independent sub-identities and raises all kinds of interesting issues about synchronizing them. And doesn't that reflect interestingly on Aanander Mianaai's problems....
no subject
That's discussed a few times in the first book - in the scenes with Strigan and with Anaander Mianaai in particular.
One of Justice of Toren's captains long ago had a taste for music and asked One Esk to sing for her, and One Esk developed an interest in music, and that was what started differentiating it from Justice of Toren. The progressive faction of Anaander Mianaai noticed that and recognised it as a similarity to the division in herself, and also as a potential advantage to exploit. That's what gave her the idea to ask One Esk to teach her a song, and use that as the trigger for her accesses.
no subject
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The humming and singing are the most obvious and important thing (I remember on my first read-through going WAIT, WHAT? when Anaander Mianaai points out that Breq does it without being aware of it, at times has to deliberately stop herself from doing it. That was the point where I first realised just how unreliable a narrator Breq is on some topics) but there are other, smaller things too.
She mentions having involuntary facial expressions sometimes, small ones. And not just physiological things like pain grimace or crying.
And Seivarden can read her, at times when Breq herself wasn't aware she was visibly emoting. (Which makes sense, in a way: the times when Breq is frightened or in pain or exhausted enough that there's something for Seivarden to see would also be the times when Breq is too frightened or in pain or exhausted to self-monitor. But I think Breq's tells are still nonstandard and infrequent enough that you'd have to be very attuned to her and also have known her for a long time to know there was something to see. Seivarden, for Reasons, is paying close attention.)
no subject
Yes, that sums up her emoting better than I did!