it is very important to me that we as a society think about the bit in the first yang episode when lassiter is trying so so hard to convince everyone that yang is calling out HIM, not shawn and not another detective, as lassiter throwing himself in front of the proverbial bullet. he saw what happened to the last guy yang targeted. he doesn’t want to see that happen to someone else.
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Obsessed with the POV choice in Imperial Radch as well, both because Leckie does some really wild stuff with how expansive the strict first-person is able to become due to the worldbuilding and who her narrator is, and because it's SO entangled with the central thematic concepts of identity. In the first book flashbacks when the narrator is still a warship, "I" can encompass so many things, and sometimes explicitly refers to different facets in the narration--is "I" Justice of Toren, or One Esk, or a specific segment, or Breq narrating from twenty years in the future? "I" isn't simple, isn't unified, and while this is most literal and obvious with Breq/One Esk/Justice of Toren and Anaander Mianaai's split factions it's true constantly throughout the work at every level of scope. Individual characters struggle with internal conflicts and hit their breaking points--what is it that makes someone decide they have to disobey orders and make a stand or they won't be themself anymore? How do you know who you are if you've been forcibly changed (Tisarwat) or if the world you knew has moved on and become unrecognizable (Seivarden)? How does a character on a colonized world navigate the split identity that comes from the pressure to assimilate to the dominant culture? And then there's the Radch writ large, all the Radchaai so deeply invested in the idea that there is only one true concept of Radchaai society, of civilization, but of course there isn't! It changes based on location and over time, and Breq muses that the Radchaai empire would be largely unrecognizable to the isolated sphere of the Radch itself. In these books, even if you aren't the last remnant of a destroyed spaceship and its legion of bodies, "I" is such a complicated concept and the narrative never lets you forget it.
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Guys hear me out: Cinder had memory issues all his life, courtesy of being the EM of smoke. His memories, old and new, seem to dissolve into nothing all too often or they're foggy and hard to grasp. It's nothing too horrible, he can still function perfectly well. He's been working with this poor memory of his all his life.
But then Ras strikes the gong for the first time. And his powers get a new angrier, stronger breath to them. He finishes the fight, proud and emboldened by his strength. That evening he forgets where he lives.
Jordana, the teenage girl working alongside him, clearly struggles under the effects of magic. Her hands shake when she's even slightly tired, Cinder notices, her breathing is labored even as she only passively stands and the dark beneath her tired eyes slowly burrows itself deeper and deeper, so much so that Cinder sometimes worries wonders if it has already carved itself into her bones. Her mind dwindles, too, her memories getting murkier and more chaotic. She misuses words, changes them, forgets them. Her sentences are becoming riddles, mysterious, confusing, strange.
He doesn't think much of it. They are rivals, after all. If anything, it makes him selfishly glad. She's falling behind, moreso than he is, he's sure. He walks with pride in his step, thinking that he has a better grasp on his thoughts and memories than that little ginger twerp -- he has a lifetime of practice in remembering even when his mind doesn't want to. Out of the two of them, he's the one who's more fine.
Until he forgets his name on the battle field.
Until, for a terrifying moment, he forgets who he's supposed to be.
Until he realizes that he doesn't quite remember how his hands or face look.
Until his memory slips away from him and leaves only smoke behind.
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