Chris Settle

Forgot to tag @annleckie.com please check out her work. I haven’t been so eager to find time to read a book for a long time.

(9/9) I really recommend this book to anyone who likes sci-fi. It’s one of those unique reads I’ll remember for a long time. There’s so much to talk about that would make this thread 100x longer, but for now I’ll cut it off here. Thanks for reading!📖

(8/?) I rarely see books that present a new language and live in it at the same time. It is not sidelined to the occasional italicized exclamation or glossary in the back of the book. It reaches throughout the book to inform the reader, create conflict, and build a fascinating world to investigate.

(7/?) For example, when a commander assures their lieutenant that they weren’t acting improperly, there’s an implication that if propriety wasn’t the issue, justice, or the lack thereof, was. The commander cannot state that directly, but the connotation is understood and adds weight to the scene.

(6/?) Lastly, Raadchai society is very proper and they can’t always speak directly without risk of punishment. But their language has a lot of implied meaning. When those subtle undertones are leveraged, it gives a better glimpse of the society that exists underneath.

(5/?) This also presents a challenge for Breq when they have to speak in a new language that does include gender, they have to be careful in what pronouns they use or else let on to others they aren’t fully human. The language becomes a way to view the protagonist as well as being an obstacle itself

(4/?) Notable features of the language and culture are the lack of gendered pronouns and the importance of propriety.

All pronouns are rendered as she which when combined with Breq’s (the AI) lack of concern for other character’s sex allows the reader to see the world as Breq does.

(3/?) Leckie’s work becomes the language. In the story, a ship AI has been shunted into a human body and admits the posthuman explorations of that, we learn about Raadchai language and culture. The Raadch being the predominate human empire.

(2/?) When people think about language in world building, often the first thought to mind are con-langs like Elvish and Klingon. Those are impressive feats, but many burgeoning writers will often create a dictionary and grammar for their language, but then fail to go much further.

I’ve been reading this book, Ancillary Justice, and I love the world building in it, specifically how Ann Leckie uses language to examine the cultures within. Linguistics was a key focus for Tolkein in Lord of the Rings, but I think Leckie takes it in a new direction that I want to examine. (1/?)

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Hi friends 🫶
As some of you might have a hint of, I'm currently facing pretty serious financial trouble. Racking up thousands of $ of hospital bills (literally just the portion insurance wouldn't cover) and losing my vehicle didn't help.
So I'm trying to sell my comps of publications I worked on. 🧵

It’s a new LLM that is open source (meaning easy for people to use and install on their own platforms without having to pay another company) that was developed in China. It’s a fraction of the cost to train and has widely impacted tech company shares in the US

OpenAI venmoing the Orange man a couple million to have DeepSeek labeled as some kind of surveillance tool

Man who has been waiting for so long to be that guy: “Well you know I hate to be that guy…”

Kind thoughts are how you shape yourself, but kind actions are how you shape the world.

What does kindness without action look like? Holding a door for someone is a kind act that takes action. Kindness requires action for it to do anything for anyone.

Anti-racism is the theory that “not being racist” isn’t a good thing if you do not actively prevent racism. It’s challenging the idea that you can be a good person while ignoring the injustice around you. How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi is a great book that might give you a new perspective

Oh I see I wasted my time trying to explain anything logical, later nerd ✌️

I think the whole video game journalism movement of finding every Easter egg did this too. Just look at any article around the Ready Player One movie :/

I think you have the assumption that supporting Palestine will lead to some sort of Islamic domination across the globe. Stand against genocide, stand against bigots.

There’s a big difference between “I support the people that are being genocided” and “I don’t agree with anti-LGBT sentiments that may or may not be held by the people being killed.” Like, I don’t support bigots, but I don’t think they should be killed? How is that exclusive?