#reading vorkosigan

[kissingdeadgirls]

the next plot point is that miles goes on an 8 day meth binge and starts a harebrained get rich scheme smuggling weapons in to a war zone

[kissingdeadgirls]

James Clifton

reading this paper called the erotics of the axillary pose (aka the arm-up-pit-exposed-facing-the-world pose) and feeling so seen rn

[crowsintheforest]

you can look at the vorkosigan saga books and assume (correctly!) that it's a lot of space opera/space war stories, with daring rescues and laser gun pew pew and clones wandering around. but they're also full of other things, like

probably most famously, jane austen via space russia (a civil campaign my beloved)

look I swear we're going to finish our honeymoon but my boss's ships got impounded and whoops I seem to have found a murder mystery

oh no we lost a dead body before we could do future medicine to bring it back oh no we lost the protagonist

fake wedding turns out to be a real wedding and your cousin won't stop laughing at you

great news shareholders, we've genetically engineered humans to live in null G by giving them arms instead of legs! what do you mean humanity invented artificial gravity

culture and medical exchange's influence on gendered politics, or how does nobility's patrilineal inheritance work when you can trans your gender

navigating polyamory when one of you is dead

basically a decades-long multibook treatise on the impacts of providing and utilizing alternatives to in vitro fertilization and live births

[i-cast-zone-of-truth]

So I just picked up another Vorkosigan book (having inhaled the first 8 or 9 books several months ago), and I dont know if it's that I've been away or that this series just keeps gaining momentum, but I am here to tell you the PLOTTING on these bad boys is THE TIGHTEST SHIT. Listen. Every time I pick up one of these books I underestimate it. somehow!!!! I say to myself "ah yes, this will be merely good." AND THEN IT KNOCKS MY SOCKS OFF. it's not just the plotting. It's the fact that this woman UNDERSTANDS PEOPLE SO GODDAMN GOOD. And she's like. Genuinely progressive about it. do NOT be fooled by the archaic language. she's got THE SPIRIT in a MAJOR way. And in my (huge metropolitan) library's app, where you borrow nothing without waiting 4-50 weeks, her stuff is TRAGICALLY always available. Please help me create hold times for these books! You'll thank me!!!

[dehautdesert]

Another thing I liked is how Laurent's trauma is handled, because usually when a character has a Secretly Traumatic Backstory there's some kind of annoyingly maudlin scene about it. Either they get into some kind of big conflict with the love interest and are forced to explain themselves so they don't get judged or dumped, or the love interest intrudes on a vulnerable moment and sees them being abused or somehow handling the consequences of that abuse, or they are explained the circumstances by a benevolent third party, and this changes their view of the abused character because now they're god's poorest meow meow and I just fucking hate it every time.

Like, this is why I stopped reading this type of story: because the amount of crowding and backing into a corner and privacy violation that happens to abused characters in order to coax them into opening up about it and reassure them that they're okay is so annoying. I feel like I've been psychologyposting on main too much lately, so I might explain later why I feel this way or I might not but in any case I hate it.

I love that this book is the literal opposite of that, that Damen not only doesn't crowd Laurent and insist that he open up, but that Damen ensuring space and privacy and time to calm down for Laurent when he's overwhelmed is repeatedly portrayed as an act of friendship and caring and love (that Laurent later reciprocates, because they both lose their heads when something pushes their buttons and understand this about each other).

I also love how Damen doesn't fall in love with Laurent because Laurent is sad and fucked up, or because he's so brave to have put up with the abuse, or because Damen too is sad like Laurent (I'm physically restraining myself from going off on a rant about how shared trauma is hardly ever a good foundation for a relationship): no, he falls in love with Laurent because he's whip-smart, and a good leader, and funny, and tender once he opens up, and a lateral thinker, and a man of integrity who keeps his promises and pays back his debts (and because he's pretty and blonde and good at sporty shit that Damen likes). Some of these things may have been shaped by the awful shit that happened to Laurent, as they were also probably shaped by his station or his education or his body type or any other circumstance of his life, but it's refreshing to have a character who went through awful shit but who also has other things going on for him that make him loveable instead of being completely defined by his trauma. And even when Damen finds out, the way he thinks about Laurent literally doesn't change at all - the things he likes about Laurent are still seen in the same light as always, Laurent's personality as a whole is still the same, even his attitude towards what Laurent did to him when they first met doesn't change much (as we see in the short story epilogue). And even this last bit is really cool because Laurent is never stripped of his agency or made out into some sort of helpless victim currently, both of which would probably mortify him with how much he's trying to establish that he's not at any opportunity.

And I also like how it's not necessary for Laurent to tell Damen about it in order for them to be close, nor does Damen push him into it. And everyone else seems to agree that it's Laurent's story to tell when and how he wants it told, except for the villain of the piece, who reveals it in the most awful way possible. This is particularly important because Damen spends three books grabbing everyone in Laurent's life by the shoulders and shaking them and going, "Why do you care about this guy??? Have you noticed that he's kind of an ashole?? Why are you loyal to him?? Why???" and no one ever says anything, because they're protective of Laurent and don't want to take away his agency or privacy because it's his fucking story to tell. Even after Damen finds out, we don't see him mention it and he probably lets Laurent open up or not on his own terms, as he does with everything else that doesn't directly concern him. Even though we've seen through Laurent's dialogue time and time again that he's probably conceptualizing it in some fucked up ways in his own head and needs yet to realize that he's not some kind of twisted pervert for what happened to him, crowding him about it before he's ready won't accomplish much.

And the story itself backs all this by never being maudlin about it even though it's obvious what happened pretty early on (I figured it out really early, I remember suspecting it almost immediately and being dead sure of it by the Ancel scene in the garden); it kind of elipses around it, gives hints and parallels to other characters in similar circumstances, has Laurent say incoherent shit that makes sense in context, has other characters hint at it, but with Laurent being one of the central characters it's cool that the story gives him that respect and doesn't wallow in the tragedy of it all.

[agardenandlibrary]

"I'd have mistrusted my memory chip before I mistrusted you."

"God save me from another such victory."

Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold

[clonerightsagenda]

Some rando from the repressed military planet (trying to ruin Cordelia's marriage): Did you know... your husband is bisexual??

Cordelia (from the planet full of nonbinary socialists): And??? That just means he thinks I'm hotter than everyone else instead of just half of you. Grow up

[call-me-rucy]

Small Vorkosigang

(I have probably messed up someone's uniform's colours but shhhhh)

[il3x]

ah, yeah, this quote will do numbers on the tumblr

[platoapproved]

i am seriously enjoying the hell out of the vorkosigan saga. miles vorkosigan has a similar vibe - imho - to gen from the queen's thief series. obnoxious twerp too clever for his own good who gets into Situations™ but manages to muddle through with a mixture of luck, trickery, and inspiring undying loyalty in the people around him.

[leojurand]

reading the vorkosigan saga is so interesting because i think miles is a fascinating character and i enjoy following him a lot because he's always getting himself into trouble, then making it worse, and finally, somehow, succeeding. and he's very complex, his feelings towards barrayar are super compelling.

but i don't really love him. he's not my baby or my best friend or my best boy, or any other term of endearment i call my favourite characters. my love in vorkosigan is reserved for cordelia and ivan, mostly. even mark. with miles it's like... what a great character! what a fun character! but that's it. i don't know if i've felt like that before, it makes for a rather unique reading experience

[kissingdeadgirls]

i liked in shards of honour that the medicalization was demonstrated to be dangerous, it’s a threat to cordelia and she has to flee the galaxy to barrayar

“The Betans would consider something like this a matter for nonvoluntary sociopath therapy. Up to and including neurological rewiring, if there were underlying physical deficits discovered. Of course, Beta has far fewer such cases to start with, as in”—Cordelia almost said our culture, but it hadn’t really been hers since the Pretender’s War, had it—“that culture, therapies would be supplied at a much earlier stage. ”

betan therapy makes no room for the structural. that there’s something inside a person and not misogyny that makes a man kill his wife and children

[grumpyoldsnake]

So I've been saying for years that the Discworld series (by Sir Terry Pratchett) and the Vorkosigan Saga (by Lois McMaster Bujold) share several of the same thematic bones

But I never go into specifics

So! For tonight! I will present one case among many.

The Wee Free Men and The Mountains of Mourning

It's about taking action because these people are yours and you have a duty. It's about speaking up for those with no voices of their own. It's about saying, sure, maybe your motivation is selfish, but the impact of your actions sure as hell is not going to be. It's about finding a center to which you can return, when the challenges you face nearly undermine your purpose.

It's about someone who died, and whose memory you refuse to betray.

[thirdwifeofriversong]

“Unhand Lady Vorpatril!” is such an amazing line/moment— one of the few times when it’s completely clear that miles and ivan are related, however much ivan tries not to be like miles

[dehautdesert]

I just realized that Ekaterin Vorkosigansaga's maiden name is Vorvayne because the structure and nature of her and Miles's romance are heavily inspired by Sayers's Wimsey novels, in which the romantic heroine is called Harriet Vane.

[agardenandlibrary]

The old Vor: that woman is to have no influence over the young emperor

Cordelia: cowards, but okay

The old Vor: you get women's responsibilities! Like choosing his household staff, the people he will see every day, and overseeing his education for the next 8 years!

Cordelia, later, to Aral: do they understand what they just did?

Aral: lmao absolutely not. Have fun, Captain.