(Source: imjustagirlwithadr3am, via littlestartopaz)
people calling breq emotionless is still the funniest thing to me like she acknowledges the truth in Mianaai calling her a ‘grief-crazed ex-ancillary’ (or something along those lines) by protesting that she hasn’t been grief crazed in at least ten years
and this conversation takes place nineteen years after awn’s death. so it took her nine years to get to that point
Also: *tears streaming down her face surrounded by people who would die for her* “Okay well, I guess I’ve failed. Why are you keeping me, a piece of equipment, alive? Seivarden move over.“
(via gyps-fulvus)
Breq: of course AI’s have emotions
Also Breq: it sure would be inconvenient if I, an AI, were to have an emotion. What do you mean I’m crying?
My sympathies go out to Mercy of Kalr Kalr Five, who just got sent to ask the more-or-less supreme dictator of all of civilized space for some plates back.
(via gyps-fulvus)
When anaander mianaai was asking seivarden for the codes to control justice of toren, and that little fucker, despite being right in the middle of a nervous breakdown and literally in mortal danger, was like “dunno those, bro. but here, you can have the codes for sword of nathtas. it died 1000 yrs ago though, not sure if that helps”. I love my asshole space daughter.
same. remember how anaander says she forgot how arrogant vendaai could be, and seivarden takes it as a compliment?
(via gyps-fulvus)
mirandatam asked: I am SO GLAD you read imperial radch I love that series SO MUCH :D would you be interested in doing the headcanons thing for Breq or/and Seivarden?
FUCK YEAH IMPERIAL RADCH HEADCANONS and like what if both with bonus Mercy of Kalr because I love them all?
A: what I think realistically
I have no idea if this is supported by canon, but.
Justice of Toren has been the subject of any number of overwrought entertainments over the last nineteen years. The drama of the singing ship, the romance of ships gone mad over their lost favorites, the mystery of it all. If Anaander Mianaai had forcibly shut down the entertainments, it just would have drawn more attention to the lost Justice, so instead she lets the harmless ones pass muster, and besides, no Radchaai would have thought to make the Lord of the Radch into the villain of the piece.
After the Republic of Two Systems forms (“Provisional, Cousin,” Sphene drawls), Seivarden catches one of the Amaats watching an old one that she grew up with, as a sort of comfort item, and is immediately enchanted. It’s completely inaccurate, of course, all drama and honor and nobility with none of the complications of real life, but there’s beautiful music and Seivarden loves it at once. Amaat decade starts watching various Justice of Toren entertainments after their shifts, piled comfortably in their bunkroom, and it snowballs from there.
No one knows who tells Breq about this, but she drifts idly into the Bo decade room and stands quietly at the back and watches the first episode of the latest entertainment, and after that Kalr starts watching them in the decade room as well, previously avoided in case of upsetting their Fleet Captain. Some days she can’t stand it and removes herself. Other days she simply watches in silence, with an ancillary-blank expression on her face only occasionally broken by a faint, ambiguous smile. On very rare good days, she’ll smile outright and even laugh, although often at highly irregular times, prompted more by inaccuracy than real comedy.
Even on the days when she can’t stand the memory of being shipself, Breq hums the songs.
It’s good to be remembered.
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
It…takes Seivarden a while to realize what exactly her emotional response to Breq is. Initially, it’s pure blind hatred because how dare this stranger go to such lengths to save Seivarden’s life, which Seivarden has every right to throw away in the snow if she so desires, this strange noncitizen can take a long walk out of a short airlock. Then. Well. Bridges. Falling. Near death on Breq’s part. It’s hard to justify hating her after that because. It just is, Seivarden doesn’t have to justify herself. By the time they reach Omaugh Palace, Seivarden is attached and horrorstricken at herself because she is Vendaai but she…she almost wishes that Breq was of a mind to take on a client. Making Breq tea and making sure that Breq is well-dressed and ensuring that Breq is treated with honor sets Seivarden at ease. Half the reason Seivarden goes out and gets into trouble upon arriving at Omaugh Station is that she’s suddenly confronted by the reality of just how incompatible that is with every part of herself she’s spent so long trying to hold onto since she came out of stasis.
And then Breq strides into Security, dressed in the finery of a Radchaai noble house, eyes bright and jaw set and shoulders squared, and Seivarden stares and—
Oh fuck, Seivarden thinks faintly, feeling both kind of concussed and much clearer. She’s hot.
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
One morning, for no particular reason that Breq can think of, Mercy of Kalr wakes her up early, with slow-rising lights and a quiet, “Cousin, wake up.”
“Is something wrong, Cousin?” Breq asks silently, sitting up.
“No,” Mercy of Kalr says, and it’s a ship, but it has a thread of repressed excitement touching its voice, touching Breq’s mind. “But you have to wake up.”
So Breq wakes up.
“Wait,” Mercy of Kalr half-commands when Breq starts to get out of bed, and Breq stops as the ship presses on her mind, pushing forth data that swells to fill her, almost as complete as if she were Ship itself.
Across the ship, the Kalrs are just rising, the Amaats and the Bos about their business, the Etrepas all just dozing off. Seivarden is frowning at the report being handed to her by Amaat Two, while Tisarwat smiles shyly at a comment from Bo Nine, and Ekalu stretches luxuriously, smiling at the ceiling with the satisfaction of a shift well completed with no disaster. The cold stillness of space touches Ship’s hull, Breq’s hull, the stars beginning to be bleached out as Atheok Station reveals the distant sun.
“Ship, what–?” Breq says with her body, at a distant remove, and Mercy of Kalr simply repeats, “Wait.”
Breq realizes what she’s waiting for not ten minutes later, when Seivarden starts to sing.
I was walking, I was walking
Amaat picks it up first, a warm chorus as they work, and Amaat Seven is passing near Bo Five, and then Bo is singing too.
I was walking, I was walking,
When I met my love
Kalr Five blinks and begins to sing, and it trickles through the Kalr bunkroom like water, punctuated by the quiet sounds of morning, hands passing brushes and clothes being straightened.
I was in the street walking
When I saw my true love
Etrepa sings with the slow sleepiness of having just finished a shift, but even Ekalu joins in, even Medic in her infirmary gives a small smile and blinks at the sound and adds her low voice.
Breq’s body opens its—her—lips and sings.
I said, she is more beautiful than jewels, lovelier than jade or lapis, silver or gold.
And with that Mercy of Kalr is singing, with a mere fraction of the voices that its long-shattered cousin Justice of Toren might have brought to the chorus, but Ship sings many-voiced, Breq sings many-voiced, until the last strains of the song die away.
“Cousin,” Mercy of Kalr says quietly in Breq’s ear, as Breq remembers what it is to have a body and no longer feel the touch of space on her hull. “You are crying.”
Breq touches her face and her fingers come away wet.
“So I am, Cousin,” Breq whispers, voice cracked as poor Sphene’s tea set. “So I am.”
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway
There really were ships that went mad and vanished when their captains died. Breq knew this all along, of course—even if Justice of Toren hadn’t really vanished, it had certainly been quite out of its mind with grief, and the madness had brought a terrible clarity about how mad the universe was. It seems to be more the norm than the entertainments make it out to be. Ships don’t go mad when they lose their captains, they go sane, and sanity is terribly hard to bear.
All the same, when a long-lost Sword and an even more mythically vanished Justice limp out of gatespace, empty of life except for the minds of the ship, limited only to their shipself with all their ancillaries long dead, Breq is taken aback. She remembers Justice of Varden, they served together once during an annexation. For all that Justice of Varden vanished when they were both young, barely five hundred, Justice of Toren was older. Sword of Ferils vanished with all its crew aboard, after the tragic murder of its captain during an annexation some three centuries later, and was never found.
Except, apparently, by Justice of Varden.
After drifting in each other’s company for some twelve centuries, gradually suffering more damage with fewer options for repair, now they are seeking…family.
“Welcome, Cousins,” Breq says, letting her face fall ancillary-blank to hide her shock and…joy. She is glad, she realizes suddenly, to have these others who are like her in some way, the same aching bittersweetness in her chest that she felt when she and Mercy of Kalr first spoke. “I was Justice of Toren, before I was destroyed. Can we be expecting more lost ships?”
There is a brief pause, and then Justice of Varden says, “Yes.”
Writing is slamming out an epic battle in one afternoon and then getting stuck on how a character walks across the room for three weeks
I am feeling so personally attacked right now
(via littlestartopaz)
Anonymous asked: Gosh, you like a lot of the same things as me and seeing all your stuff about everything makes me happy! Hellboy and his cat fam are one of my favorite things about the movie, also when he's talking to the dead guy he brought back.
LISTEN BUDDY I know you didn’t ask for headcanons about Hellboy but also no one ever talks to me about Hellboy so here are some headcanons about Hellboy (and Liz and Abe).
A: what I think realistically
Let me tell you the story of how a firestarter first met a demon
Liz is an eleven-year-old girl fresh off the accidental incineration of a square block and the accidental manslaughter of thirty-two people. BPRD swoops in to grab her out of the foster system because she tells one person—the very first firefighter on scene—that it was her, that the fire just exploded out of her and she couldn’t stop it. The firefighter writes her off as a scared, traumatized kid, but the arson report is inexplicable and BPRD can’t, in good conscience, take the chance that the incident might happen a second time.
Their concerns are immediately confirmed when an agent, unused to working with children, brusquely informs Liz of the deaths of her grandmother, her parents, and her baby brother. The agent gets away with only second-degree burns, by dint of one of his comrades tackling Liz with a fire retardant blanket.
Liz, on her own insistence, is placed alone in a fireproof room, and she refuses point-blank to allow anyone else inside.
“Well,” Hellboy says, absolutely unconcerned, when one of the agents guarding the door tells him all of this. “Lucky I’m fireproof then.”
It takes him three months and fifteen occasions of having some part of his clothing scorched away while he sprints back to Liz’s fireproof room with her tucked close to his chest, but by December, Liz sits at the table for Christmas dinner. She’s a tiny little slip of a thing in Hellboy’s hulking shadow, but she stays glued to him the whole night, murmuring responses to his deep voice. The handful of agents invited by the Professor are shocked to learn that their silent, grave charge can actually smile.
B: what I think is fucking hilarious
There is a HANDSOME betting pool on how long every new agent will last, with a timer that is helpfully started by the agent at the reception desk the moment a new recruit comes through the door. The record is fourteen seconds from entry to end of bet, so fast that no one even had time to put money down—the floor started to move, and the young man hurled himself off the platform, landing sprawled on the marble while the agent gave him a disdainful look. As new agents last longer, the pool grows, and while reupping one’s bet IS allowed, the catch is that only one person at a time is allowed to bet that the agent will stay. Generally it requires a round or two of reupping before someone’s ballsy enough to put money on a permanent assignment, but there have been one or two times that someone (…often Hellboy) has been reckless and it’s paid off.
Some highlights of the pool include Liz’s uncanny ability to predict (and precipitate—for some reason it’s more unnerving to watch an otherwise normal person burn down a building than to see a visibly strange person do visibly strange things) exact departure times, Hellboy’s tendency to either bet ‘five minutes’ or ‘they’ll stick around’ with no discrimination whatsoever, and the fact that Abe isn’t allowed to bet anymore since he placed a bet over the comms exactly three minutes before an agent quit.
C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
Hellboy learns when he’s three years old that people don’t just die in battle. Sometimes they just die. He lives on a military base, he knows that death happens, he just. It comes as a shock that it can just happen, even though he knows it in theory. One of the administrators suffers an unexpected heart attack and Hellboy—about the equivalent of an eight-year-old, and already standing as tall as his father’s shoulder—clings to Professor Bruttenholm’s sleeve throughout the funeral, in a way that he hasn’t done in almost a year.
“Father,” Hellboy says afterward, unusually subdued. “Will you die someday too?”
“Yes, my boy,” Trevor says, because he doesn’t believe in lying to children. “But not for a long time, I hope.”
Hellboy nods quietly to himself and sits there in silence for a few minutes before he speaks again.
“Will I?”
“We don’t know,” Trevor says, bending to kiss Hellboy’s forehead. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Almost sixty years later, Hellboy is sitting at his father’s grave, kneeling on the ground in the pose of someone praying, one hand clenched tight around his father’s rosary and the other tracing the words on the stone. And I shall fear no evil, reads the simple inscription. Trevor Bruttenholm, Beloved Father and Mentor.
It has been over ten years since Hellboy noticed any sign of aging in himself. Even if he did die, of old age or of injury, he knows where his father’s soul is now, and he doesn’t know if he’d even be allowed in the front gates.
D: what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway
Oh, I don’t know…I mean, the great thing about the fantasy noir style of the Hellboy universe is that you can justify a lot. But one crossover I haven’t seen but would really enjoy the hell out of would be a crossover between the Wonder Woman movie and Hellboy. Diana hears stories about some supernatural shenanigans happening during World War II, but she’s neck deep in struggling to do something, anything to stem the tide of bodies so she’s not around. A couple decades later, she almost walks straight into a huge man with horns and bright red skin and a friendly smile at an archeological excavation, and Hellboy tries real hard not to blurt out “Oh my God, you’re Wonder Woman!”
They hang out. It’s good. They never meet up on purpose, but they run into each other every few years, despite Diana’s firm refusal to get involved with BPRD or any other official government organization, and Diana is delighted to meet Liz when she’s just Hellboy’s shy, quiet teammate and even more delighted to meet her when she’s Hellboy’s fiancée. Also, Abe likes Diana because she can think in a bunch of different languages and teach them to him rapid-fire.
Also I’m still really enthusiastic about that one Animorphs/BPRD crossover I came up with one time?
mirandatam replied to your post “hey so what’s the animorphs college au?”
okay so a) sympathy about the housing nonsense, sounds almost as bad as my school’s, and b) this au sounds FANTASTIC and makes me wish I’d actually read more than the first quarter or so of the animorphs books
A) WHAT ARE COLLEGES DOING WTF GUYS WHY THIS WHY WHY WHY, WE PAY SO MUCH MONEY. *clears throat* thank you for your support. I was fortunate enough to be able to consistently bully Security/Housing into putting me with people I knew because I was Not doing that shit and I can be very…um, persuasive? Commanding? When I feel like it.
B) you definitely do not need to know anything about this series other than having a vague impression of the characters and a desire to see these kids have a nice time in order to grasp this AU, so if you bailed on the Animorphs because it was unremitting chaos and violence and death this may be the AU for you.
C) if you actually do want to read more of the Animorphs and join this very small corner of fandom, here is a collection of all of the ebooks entirely for free, keep me posted so we can cry together. Trigger warning for unremitting chaos and violence and death. And dismemberment.
a blog: *follows me*
me, an aged monarch lounging on my fur-strewn throne, gesturing for my servant to bring me my monacle: Bring them here! Bring them here, I say. Let me look at them.
guards: *drag the unwitting blog before me*
me, peering intently at the new blog and poking them with my scepter: Is this a real person? Hmm? What have you to say for yourself? What are your fandoms? Your interests? Speak up, these old ears aren’t what they used to be.
guards, tentatively: they do seem to be a real person, sire. We found them in possession of several memes and a fandom rant.
me, subsiding back into my sumptuous furs and waving them away: most extraordinary. It has been an age since there was a real person, but just as well, the dungeons have been overflowing with those tacky pornbots. This newcomer may remain in my domain. Make them welcome. And fetch me a quill! I feel a ficlet coming on…
(via wildehacked)