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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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....
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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.
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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.)