Fanfic: If Breq Were a Dinosaur, My Blog

My friend Ann Leckie showed me a tumblr where people were sharing fan fiction they’d written about the Ancillary Justice universe. This inspired me to write some of my own.

Since everyone else is writing parodies of “Dinosaur,” I figured I’d go for it, too.

It’s just meant as fun and silly, not a commentary on anything.

(Super interesting–to me–thing that happened to me while writing it, though, is that I know the physical sexes of some of the characters, and I found myself frequently using ‘he’ in the text and then having to go back through and replace it with ‘she.’)

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If Breq Were a Dinosaur, My Blog

If Breq were a dinosaur, my blog, she’d be a robotic one. And that would be awesome because she would fight in gladiator-style robo-dino competitions.

If she fought in gladiator-style robo-dino competitions, Breq would clearly win due to her superior athletic ability. She would make a lot of money and be deified and there would be a very amusing local religious icon showing a robot dinosaur with a halo.

If there were a local religious icon showing a robot dinosaur with a halo, people would start asking questions about why they didn’t also get to be awesome robot dinosaurs. There would be a flood of people uploading their brains into robo-dino bodies, and they would overwhelm the gladiator games, enthusiastic but totally incompetent.

If they overwhelmed the gladiator games, enthusiastic but totally incompetent, then Breq would quit because it’s no fun competing against suckers. She would strap herself into a robo-dino spaceship and sail off to Mars because robot dinosaurs on Mars is a thing that needs to happen.

If robot dinosaurs on Mars was a thing that needed to happen, then the people of Mars would eagerly await Breq’s arrival. They would throw a ticker tape parade, and huge holograms showing her approach would loom over the crowd. They would be surprised that, in real life, Breq did not have a halo, but everyone would be be too polite to mention it. Maybe she’d lost it on the way.

If she’d lost it on the way, it would have been found by Seivarden, who would have tried to sell it for some drugs. But the halo is holy and made of a vaporous material sacred to the universe, making it priceless, and therefore impossible to price.

If it was impossible to price, Seivarden would sulk a lot, and then steal some drugs, and then sulk a lot more, and then pass out in the snow.

If Seivarden passed out in the snow, then Breq would go save her. Yes, even as a robot dinosaur. Because robot dinosaurs have morals, too. Breq would abandon her adoring audience on Mars and strap herself back into her shapeship and spend long months sailing lonely through space until she found the ice planet where Seivarden, unconscious, was dying in the cold.

If she spent long months sailing lonely through space until she found the ice planet where Seivarden, unconscious, was dying in the cold, Breq would find someone with hands to slap Seivarden lightly across the face and wake her wake up. When Breq tried to depart with Seivarden, some people would try to shoot her down, and then they’d see she was a robot dinosaur and shout, “Holy shit! It’s a robot dinosaur! RUN AWAY!”

If they shouted, “Holy shit! It’s a robot dinosaur! RUN AWAY!” then Seivarden and Breq would high five. In fact, they’d be so trumped up on this success that they’d totally ignore the Presger gun thing and just go off to kill Anaander themselves because no Mianaai can withstand the awesome power of ROBOT DINO.

If no Mianaai could withstand the awesome power of ROBOT DINO, then Breq and Seivarden would chase the Raadch’s cloned leader’s hundred thousand bodies across a hundred thousand planets, and give each one a choice: death or being uploaded into robo-dino bodies for gladiator games.

If Breq and Seivarden gave them a choice, every Anaander would choose to become a robo-dino. At first, they would plot revenge, but then they would really get into the gladiator thing. Every match would be a down-to-the-moment battle between robot dinosaur clones. Instead of the loser being thrown to the lions, the winner would get thrown a lion for lunch.

If the winner got thrown a lion for lunch, robot-dino-clone-Anaander would eat it lazily, and then floss her giant mechanical teeth with its mane, and then settle down to snooze, dreaming of tomorrow’s competition.

Breq and Seivarden, in the meanwhile, would busily try to figure out how to fix all the stuff that Anaander had let go to hell. Unfortunately, they would be beset by the gods of plot and pessimism, and accomplish very little.

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2 Responses to Fanfic: If Breq Were a Dinosaur, My Blog

  1. 1
    Elusis says:

    2/3rds of the way through “Ancillary Sword.” I LOL’ed. :)

  2. 2
    Dreidel says:

    Oh, come on. You can rewrite that story in a single sentence:

    “If you were a dinosaur, my love, I’d sell your bones to the Smithsonian.”