Anaander “Ann” Leckie, the Lord of the Imperial Radch Trilogy, is actually the pen name of multiple authors. Each has her own idea of how the trilogy should end, and are petitioning publishers to publish their own versions of Ancillary Mercy.
Orbit Anaander recently completed a book signing tour, handing out pins in envelopes labeled “spoiler” to her fans. Her version of Mercy was critically acclaimed and received well by the fandom.
Tor Anaander is planning a tour of her version of the third installment, and has ordered pins to hand out at her upcoming signing. The pins are inscribed with the name “Ettan” and handed out without envelopes. Most are not aware of the split because the @annleckie tumblr account is currently controlled by Orbit Anaander.
While all this is going on, @breqq finds @lieutenantseivarden facedown in the snow in a remote town in Alaska. How she got there, neither is certain. Seivarden is recovering from a Bioware addiction and misses Anders and Garrus very much.
Breqq is secretly @justiceoftorenoneesk, who herself is an ancillary of @tetracontakaidigon. tetracontakaidigon’s account was deleted by Tor Anaander and now she seeks to bring the schism out into the open.
Meanwhile, @kalr5 ignores the drama and blogs about dishes.
I am working on a project, and I am looking for people interested in collaborating with me on it! If you have the time and energy, I would really appreciate contributions. Mutuals, non-mutuals, people I don’t know, people who have been following me for a while but never interacted with me—everyone is welcome to participate. Even if you don’t think this is for you, I’d appreciate a reblog/signal boost if you can.
The task itself is simple: I will send interested parties a list of questions, you will answer them, and then send the answers back to me.
The idea behind it is somewhat more complex. Over the past few years, I have been contemplating how often I lie to people. Polite lies, small lies, lies about my plans for the future, lies to protect my friends, lies to protect my feelings, lies I tell to myself. In actuality, most of the time I would hesitate to even call them “lies”. Most are just everyday secrets—you don’t tell a stranger on the subway that you cried at a cartoon theme song the other day, and sometimes you decide not to tell your friends, either. Omitting some parts of your private struggle from the world often allows you to feel safe, secure.
Other times, it turns into a trap. You tell everyone you feel fine for so many days in a row, by the time you admit you’re nearly dying, no one knows to take you seriously.
I found myself falling into one of these dangerous cycles. It became inexplicably important to me that no one knew how badly I was doing, and by the time I realized it might be a good idea to seek help, I had nearly completely lost the ability to open up about myself with people. I would start to try to say something, just to freeze up and change my mind.
What I did still have was a platform I could speak from to no one in particular, but where others could still see it and respond—the Internet. A space of relative anonymity, where if I changed my mind, I could delete something, or reword it. I could talk, and it didn’t have to be directed or shaped for any listener in particular. This sort of interaction has been an invaluable part of my life since middle school. It gave me a place where I could be completely honest about what I felt without fear of repercussions affecting how I live my daily life.
This project is an extension of that. I began compiling a list of questions, things I thought I would want to answer, or things I didn’t want to answer but thought I should ask myself, or questions that might give interesting or unexpected answers. Often, I found I didn’t think I had much to say on a topic, until I started answering and then remembered some feeling I’d buried down ages ago, and ended up having an awful lot to say after all.
Writing all my thoughts out has always been cathartic for me. In some ways during this process, I’ve addressed issue directly about subjects I always just avoided thinking about before. But that is only the first half of the experiment. The second half is sharing these confessions, and I would like to invite others to join me in this experience.
I will forward the questionnaire to those who want to take part, and then—and this is the important part—I will have you submit the completed answers back to me anonymously. I won’t know who responded or which answers belong to anyone in particular. I have other steps I am looking into to preserve anonymity, which will be explained further to people who decide to contribute.
I will then compile the questions & answers into a document, again, preserving all anonymity. The format for placing the questions/answers themselves is something I’m still debating over, and will partially depend on how many participants/responses I get, and the tone of the material. Not every answer will make it into the final copy, or every question, out of a necessity of space and mood. The completed work will then me made available as a pdf/ebook, free to access and share. You can read all the answers everyone else submitted alongside a few of your own. This will be entirely free/there will be no profit from it, since splitting royalties would compromise the hidden identities of those involved.
Why bother with a project like this?
Well, it can be really, really scary to share things, especially important things or secret things or things you’re ashamed of or things that make you happy or things that make you afraid. But it can also be an incredible relief to do so, even if the people who see it have no idea that the confession comes from you.
The questions I’ve put together are designed to make you feel relaxed, reflective, nostalgic, sad, and uncomfortable. If you decide an answer is too personal, you don’t have to include it in the final list you send to me, but I encourage you to take the time to write it out anyway, being honest with yourself.
Answers don’t necessarily have to related directly to the question. The questions are meant to spark ideas or memories or introspection for you, rather than solicit specific information.
The only caveat is the most important aspect: you must be completely, 100% honest in your replies. Especially if it makes you uncomfortable. Even if it makes you ashamed. No one will know it is you. And it is okay to feel those things. Don’t feel the need to tone down your replies to sound less dramatic. Talk about things the way you phrase them with your heart, not your tongue.
If you would like to see some sample questions—and my answers to them—you can read them here. If you are interested in participating in this project, please send me an ask/message/etc so I can gauge interest. If you know someone not on tumblr who’d like to participate, feel free to message me their emails/pm me for my email to give to them.
If you’d think you’d like to participate, but want to keep the fact that you are doing so anonymous from me as well too, feel free to send me an anon ask with a number in it. I’m probably going to have a couple versions of the questions to send out to people, and this way, I can upload one for your number specifically online to access without compromising your identity.
Anything relating to this project will be under the tag “Questionnaire” on my blog.
If I were hypothetically planning to request and/or offer IR but was struggling to narrow down prompts to write my letter then it's certainly possible that a comprehensive selection of AUs would be very useful indeed.
Hypothetically speaking, http://justiceoftorenoneesk.tumblr.com/tagged/au might be useful to someone like that, though it misses some submissions that weren’t tagged. But if you archive binge to try and catch those, I won’t tell. ;)
i’m not saying i nominated Imperial Radch, but hypothetically speaking, I definitely wasn’t the only one. and, in this hypothetical fanfiction universe, I’m just saying, my blog @justiceoftorenoneesk still would exist for all your AU needs.
i’m not saying you should sign up for Yuletide and write for Imperial Radch (I’m not even sure if I myself am signing up this year) - I’m just saying, hypothetically, if you were to do such a thing, I would have adequately prepared for the moment.
no pink (though still secondary colors >:( ), and a positive message, but... seriously? women have to use hair dryers to dispel falsehoods? this is not any better than “women are the ones who clean, so we’ll ask them to do something inventive with a vacuum! it’s ok because they’re not *just* cleaning with it!”
hint: it’s not ok. the underlying assumption is the problem here.
inspired by http://yurigamejam.tumblr.com/, an autobiographical short work. ~500 words.
I wrote this last night, in an hour, instead of accomplishing any of the literally dozens of other things I’ve committed to getting done in the next couple weeks.
Might submit to itch.io, might expand on it more in the next month first.
He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means “I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve.” It’s easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.
Isaac Asimov on Robert A. Heinlein and libertarian ethics
(via seriouslyamerica)
a post which is both about imperial radch and intensely personal
you’ve been warned. beneath the cut.
Key moments from my life as scenes in Imperial Radch
1. At fifteen, I discover I fall under the bisexual umbrella, while at a sleepover with several friends (including my soon-to-be girlfriend).
Me: Seivarden
Future girlfriend: Breq
Future girlfriend’s parents, who are hosting this party: Anaander Mianaai
Scene: At the tea shop, Seivarden asks Breq to take her back.
2. At sixteen, I am hospitalized for severe depression.
Me: Justice of Toren, also Lieutenant Awn
My girlfriend: Captain Rubran
Hospital staff: Anaander Mianaai
Scene: Anaander Mianaai questions and then shoots Lieutenant Awn.
3. At eighteen, I transfer to a different university.
Me: Breq
New university: Mercy of Kalr
University system of the United States: Anaander Mianaai
Scene: Anaander Mianaai makes Breq a Fleet Captain.
4. At twenty-one, I graduate college and move to New York City for work.
Me: Lieutenant Awn
New York City: Anaander Mianaai
Scene: Awn goes about her daily business, unaware that Anaander Mianaai is going to visit.
I love your books and your blog and your tumblr. I check your blog semi-regularly to see if you'll be doing signings or attending cons in the Boston or New York area but I haven't seen anything in the year or so that I've been following you. Am I just being unlucky and not catching event listings or do you never make it out this way? Any chance there will be East Coast events for Ancillary Mercy? Thanks for being such a delightful presence on the internet and writing such incredible novels!
So far as I know there are no current plans for signings on the East Coast. However! I am scheduled to attend Vericon in March, which I gather is in Boston. Or near it.
http://www.vericon.org
Incidentally, I’ve started putting my travel/appearances schedule on a sidebar on my blog, so if you go to my website, hit the “more posts” button or the “blog” button, and then scroll down, it’s under the thing about the latest book.
Boston is like five+ hours away from where I live, adjacent to the city that never sleeps, and this whole summer has been an exercise in “don’t impulse buy tickets to the Midwest, don’t impulse buy tickets to the West.” still might cave and buy plane tickets. it’s only a matter of time.
Why do quirky indie-rock groups consisting entirely of white boys with guitars always have a lead singer with exactly the same nasally accent? Doesn’t matter where they come from, or when they got started: the Arrogant Worms, the Mountain Goats, They Might Be Giants - they could totally trade vocalists and nobody would know the difference. Do they stamp these guys out of a mould, or what?
my first reaction to this was “how DARE, TMBG and the Mountain Goats are nothing alike though I love them both”
my second reaction, immediately on the heels of the first: “I AM THE PROBLEM HERE, this post is correct, the years I have spent learning to differentiate Linnell and Flansburgh are not indicative of anything to most people except my obsession with fandom”
overall: brb, listening to more Tegan and Sara to try and quell my feeling that I have uncritically accepted the dominant paradigm of indie rock (& that it’s not as counterculture as i’d like to believe, but incredibly manufactured as well as any other popular music)
