#symptoms of writing

[eqt-95]

a new kind of romance, pt 7

part 6 | cuddles - - - -

🎁 | mistletoe magic

“Ooh, look she’s doing it again.”

“Doing what?” Kara asked, shrugging off her jacket to join Nia and Brainy at a hightop laden with empty glasses.

“Mistletoe magic,” Nia sighed fondly.

“Mistletoe what-?” Kara glanced at Brainy who looked flush with a smudge of Nia’s shade of red on his own lips, and then her eyes tracked to Kelly and Alex two tables away giggling under the glowing branch of green leaves that glistened with the telltale golden sparks of magic. Of Lena’s magic. “Oh.”

She found the culprit loitering on the far end of the bar nursing a drink, smiling, and looking totally and completely huggable, and Kara’s mood immediately brightened. Not that it was sour: it was Al’s holiday party after all.

Kara’s natural reaction to seeing Lena was to superspeed over and engulf her into a super-sized hug and hope the burst of surprise and laughter would land quiet and private into the crook of her neck. 

She very nearly did exactly that except just as she was about to shift into sixth gear and race over Kara realized Lena wasn’t alone. More specifically, she was bookended by two people: Sam and... Andrea.

Which was… fine. Kara loved Sam and all the support she had for Lena. But Andrea? Kara was trying to find warmth for Andrea.

“How long has she been here?” Kara asked before the green-eyed monster could be swallowed down.

“Who?” Nia asked, distracted by a stuffed potato skin.

“No one," Kara blinked, brushing away imaginary crumbs from the table, "nothing. Forget it-”

“I believe Kara is referring to either Ms. Rojas or Ms. Arias,” Brainy interrupted, being all correct and stuff. Kara shot him a dark look that went missed because he was still trying to rub off remnants of lipstick.

“Oh, dunno,” Nia replied with a shrug. “I think they came together?”

“Sam and Andrea?” Kara asked for confirmation even though she definitely didn’t care.

“No, Andrea and Lena.”

“Oh. Sure. Right.”

Positively, absolutely, for sure wasn’t bothered by that.

“Why?” Kara asked nearly a minute later, interrupting a conversation she wasn’t listening to.

Nia paused mid-sentence and glanced at a very distraught-looking Kara. “Why what?”

“Why did they come together?”

“Who?”

“I believe Kara is referring to Ms. Rojas and-”

“Did they have a work meeting?” Kara interrupted, eyes jumping back toward Andrea who was far too cozy and far too close to Lena which was… fine. It was. It really was.

Nia’s mouth opened to respond. Then it closed. Then her eyes narrowed. Then they lifted. Then a smirk the size of the Nile spread across her face. “Why do you care?”

And Kara didn’t like the Nile-sized smile. She didn’t like it one bit. “No reason.”

“I dunno. Brainy, does she look a bit jealous to you?”

“I’m not-” Kara tried to cut in - whined, practically.

“Kara, you do look rather, as they say, ‘put-out’.”

“Does it have anything to do with Andrea subtly guiding Lena toward that mistletoe next to them-?”

“What? She isn’t-”

“Or are you just jealous Lena’s full attention is on her ex at all?”

Two things happened next: the first was that Kara fish-mouthed and blushed furiously because yea, obviously she was jealous. Who wouldn’t be jealous of someone getting Lena’s time. Not that Kara wanted to control her time or who she spent it with or…

And then the second thing happened. And that second thing was like an Acme anvil falling on her Wile E. Coyote state of confusion: she registered Nia's actual words.

“Her ex? Who’s ex? Sam’s ex? You… you mean Sam and Andrea, right? They’re exes?” 

Right? she shouted in her brain and maybe out loud.

The look on Nia’s face did not support this thesis because the look on Nia’s face was like she was looking at an alien, which technically Kara was, but ‘idioms’. 

“I don't know about Ms. Aria, but Ms. Rojas dated Lena for a number of years at boarding school,” Brainy confirmed and shattered Kara’s hopes and dreams and maybe her heart too just a little bit because at that exact moment Lena burst into laughter and Andrea looked so proud for being the source of said laughter and no, Kara’s eyes were not glowing red that would be preposterous but if they were it’s not like anyone would notice with all the colorful lights hung everywhere-

“Hey you know your eyes are glowing, right?” Nia asked before sucking up a bright purple drink from a tiny blue straw and smiling like the dang cheshire cat. 

Ok, so yea, maybe her eyes glowing red wasn’t, like, the greatest. 

“I need to get some food,” Kara mumbled, abandoning Brainy and Nia for the bar where M’gann was telling off a drunk Haverack wobbling on of his stool and J’onn was stepping up to intervene. Before his stony disposition could do its trick though, a tickle of gold flecks from overhead stalled the entire confrontation.

Kara wasn’t going to pout. She wouldn’t do that. She was a way calmer, cooler, collected-er kryptonian than that. 

What Kara was going to do though was lean against the bar and stare longingly at M’gann laughing when J’onn pointed to the glowing mistletoe that had not-so-subtly appeared above them.

The Haverack fell off his stool again, but that wasn’t what kept Kara’s attention.

“I’m sure M’gann is willing to share, darling.”

It wasn’t fair that Lena could make Kara jump and send her super calm, cool, collected demeanor catapulting out the nearest window with a little whisper. It also wasn’t fair that Lena was so so pretty leaning in next to her while wearing nothing more than a simple pair of jeans and sweater. A sweater that was too long in the arms and bunched at Lena’s wrists and made Kara want to pull her close and fly her home and wrap them both in a blanket for the rest of eternity.

Naturally Kara replied with a stammer and in a fit of indecision, she grabbed Lena's hand and also winked and then booped her head against Lena's shoulder.

Which was far from normal. It was because Lena was so pretty tonight.

But Lena was always pretty. She could make cardboard overalls look good. And sure, Kara had seen from a distance that she was just as jaw-dropping as ever, but seeing her up close? in Kara’s own space? where she could get lost in Lena’s soft pretty skin? where she could feel the piercing meant-only-for-her gaze and get all sorts of weak-kneed and breathless? where she could take in the perfect shampoo-perfumey-Lena mix that couldn’t be imitated because Kara, curious and missing Lena while she was off saving acquisitions and mergers once in Shanghai, had tried recreating the scent but failed? 

“I thought you weren’t going to make it. Duty calling and all that.”

“I’ve got one ear on the city, and deadlines can wait one more night,” Kara explained, trying to ignore the distraction that was Lena. Always Lena.

"Don't let Cat hear you say that," Lena smirked.

“Did I miss anything?”

“Just the usual: M’gann’s eggnog has half the bar dancing, though it looks like some hit it a bit too hard,” Lena said with a nod toward the passed-out Haverack, “and Nia is dragging Brainy under every green leaf in the place,” Lena chuckled. "Not sure whose going to tap out first."

“It sounds like someone is to blame for that ‘mistletoe magic’,” Kara replied, nudging Lena with her shoulder.

Lena hummed, her feigned ignorance betrayed by a revealing smirk. 

“Care for some?”

“S-some?” Kara choked, ears ringing.

“Mistletoe magic,” Lena explained slowly, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow arching with the elegance of a chandelier or an umbrella or hand-painted porcelain or-or… Kara didn’t know. She wasn’t thinking clearly.

Kara glanced across the bar toward Alex who was giving her a knowing stare and supportive smile that really looked more like a grimace mixed with nausea which meant only one thing: here it was, the chance. The chance Kara had spent minutes and hours and days pacing and hoping and yammering Alex’s ear off for. 

She had gone through every stage of fretting and panicking and unintentionally tearing her couch cushions in half before Kelly’s calmer touch gave her the confidence to believe in her own feelings and maybe - maybe - even Lena's.

Because that’s what Lena was implying now, right?

It was a frosting-covered finger. It was an intimately placed zipper. It was nonexistent personal boundaries that Kara wanted and wanted and wanted.

Now was the chance to put those feelings in motion. It was the perfect setting: holiday tunes were playing, lights were twinkling, the laughter and raucous of friends and family surrounded them. It couldn’t be any better, which was why Kara took a readying breath, propped herself against the bar in a way she hoped looked confident, and offered what Alex would later call the most manic-looking smile she’d ever seen.

“Well if it’s on the table…” Kara began bravely with a throat-clearing to steady herself, “uh, do I get to… er, you know,” she continued with the elegance of a newborn calf taking its first steps, “to pick?”

The wagging eyebrows probably didn’t help her efforts because she was met with a small Lena scowl that made Kara swallow and mutter some incoherent set of sounds and extend her finger toward the sprinkle of mistletoe hanging around the bar like Lena didn’t understand.

But then Lena said “oh” in this small sort of way that made Kara think that maybe Lena didn’t understand. So she clarified: 

“Put me in, coach!” Kara said, puffing up her chest with the kind of confidence reserved only for superheroes and poorly thought through actions.

And technically they were words. Maybe not the best words. Definitely not her best words. But together, it made a semi-coherent sentence that surely - definitely - made her intentions clear.

“Put you… in? I wasn’t… I meant-”

“You meant that since everyone else is… you know...” Kara said conspiratorially with a hand gesture that was meant to say everything else. “I don’t wanna miss out on that holiday spirit, right?”

“I didn’t, uh,” Lena began, a small cough and blush making her discomfort clear which made Kara want to hoover back those misguided intentions real fast and keep her dumb mouth shut. 

Then Lena’s scowl deepened to a version Kara wasn’t familiar with and definitely couldn’t identify which made Kara’s heart plummet. “Right, of course. Who did you-”

“I call dibs!” came an excited shout from behind Lena. 

And yea, maybe Kara should’ve been better at observing her surroundings because there was Sam. 

Who was standing on the other side of Lena. 

The whole time.

Not like it could be Kara’s fault though: Lena just had a way of making the rest of the world disappear. 

“Uh- '' Kara stammered because that technically - definitely - was not what she meant and having Sam sidekick her way through Kara’s ‘feelings’ reveal was not the chance she had pictured. But from the look of tempered frustration on Lena’s face, maybe she should be thanking Sam.

“Pucker up babes,” Sam said, dancing around Lena to split the two. “Lena, you don’t mind, right?” Sam asked, eyes bright and mischievous and far too excited for Kara’s waning courage.

“I don’t really think Kara needs my permission,” Lena replied with a tone that sounded… mad? Was Lena mad? 

“I meant the green leafy goods; get your magic hands moving, Luthor,” Sam said, jazz hands waving at her own sides.

“I-I'd only meant it for, uh, real couples-”

“Oh,” Kara answered while a ton of metaphorical bricks squeezed her chest empty of air and hope and confidence. 

Kara peered past Sam toward Lena who looked flush and annoyed and her jaw was clenched like a vice and, oh gosh, Kara had misread the whole situation. 

Maybe it wasn’t a frosting-covered finger or an intimately placed zipper or nonexistent personal boundaries that Kara wanted and wanted and wanted.

Maybe Kelly and Alex had talked her into a false sense of security. Maybe she had just barged in and ruined a perfectly good time. Had she just ruined a perfectly good friendship? Kara didn’t have an answer so instead she stared at the floor which was peppered with fallen mistletoe leaves and dirty napkins and cobwebs and… was that a ring?

“Oh relax, Lena. What’s the harm in a little-”

“Sam, enough-”

“I was kidding,” Kara practically shouted as an uncomfortable hand fidgeted with a pair of absent glasses. 

For having super hearing, Kara could only make out pin-drop silence, Sam’s shocked “what?” and Lena’s racing heartbeat.

“There isn’t, you know… I was just kidding. Can you imagine that? Supergirl kissing someone? Here? And-and besides, Lena’s right - you’re right,” Kara rambled, looking at her best friend who was decidedly not looking at her, “real couples only, and there isn’t, you know, anyone here who… uhm, yea.”

And then she forced a laugh because she wanted all of it to end.

It sort of did after that: 

Awkwardness ensued through silent sips and half-glances. Sam did her best to rope in the others, but Kara couldn’t shake the discomfort. 

Then Alex and Kelly offered their goodbyes - “babysitters are expensive!” - with Kara getting a tighter hug than usual from Alex that didn't make anything feel better.

Sam followed moments later with a matching reason and what looked like an apologetic smile - “minus the babysitter part. Ruby would skin me alive if I hired a babysitter. She already thinks she’s twenty.”

Nia, with Brainy in tow, made some excuse about needing to replace a lightbulb that no one believed because by then the color Nia’s lips had started the night with was now the color of Brainy's face, neck, and collar.

Which left Kara and Lena, and boy did Kara want to apologize for overstepping. Her fingers tapped on a bottle she didn’t remember getting while mustering the courage and bravery she thought she remembered having. She almost found it again.

Almost.

Except that’s the exact moment Kara realized it wasn’t just her and Lena, because Andrea picked that exact moment to reappear.

“Where’d everyone go?”

Lena said words and Kara nodded but didn’t hear. What she did hear was Andrea’s suggestion that they call it a night. Then she heard Andrea propose she and Lena share a cab - “we live two blocks apart, after all” - and within seconds had both jackets at the ready. 

Then Lena, who hadn’t said another word to Kara all night, looked briefly conflicted toward Kara before nodding.

“Goodnight, Kara.”

And then it did end. It ended without the right words or a hug and definitely not a kiss. It ended before it even began with Kara standing alone under a branch of forgotten mistletoe.

- - - - - - part 8 | new years

[inkskinned]

crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.

i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.

in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.

i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.

i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.

plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.

the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.

we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.

i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.

a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.

today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.

loved beyond thinking.

[writingwithfolklore]

Show Don't Tell - Symptoms vs. the Affliction

              Another way to think of show don’t tell is to describe the symptoms rather than tell the affliction. You could say someone was close to fainting—or you could describe their symptoms and trust the readers to understand what they mean: the world swirled around her head, her ears beginning to hum lowly, then louder, increasing into a high-pitched ring. She took a deep breath, her stomach turning over itself. Etc.

              Symptoms can also mean the lump in your throat as a “symptom” of being sad enough to cry, or the warmth of your face as a “symptom” of embarrassment.

              That might sound a bit silly, but I find it really helpful when I’m reading over mine or others work and looking for those places where showing would be better than telling. Have you described the symptoms, or just told the affliction?

              Here’s a short list of “afflictions” and their associated “symptoms” to get you started (but make sure to explore how different characters express different afflictions, even in more odd or unusual ways!)

Any symptoms I missed?            

[bones-of-a-rabbit]

manmade monsters Sun/Moon au. bc i have no self control lol

i also mentally call it the 'why are there giant robot monsters in my shed' au lol

idk what else to say so uh. enjoy

[sadisthetic]

limewire virus

[sibylsleaves]

thinking about how little compassion buck probably has for Buck 1.0 still to this day......thinking about how he still views that version of himself as just this fuck up instead of a young man with heaps & heaps of trauma who was given absolutely zero tools to deal with any of it......thinking about the disdain with which he said "you mean you don't want him to end up like ME" about chris in 7x01......

[lumpsbumpsandwhumps]

whump fic where whumpee is being held captive by whumper and continually tries to escape to find where caretaker is being held so they can get out of here together, but as the story progresses it becomes more clear that whumpee is a victim of stockholm syndrome/brainwashing by "caretaker" and is actually being rehabilitated by "whumper" after being rescued, not kidnapped

[jasperthejester]

me: finally accepting theres a good chance im autistic and starting to work up the courage to ask my parents to see if i could get a diagnoses but being scared to

my mom: do you ever think you have adhd? if you want to do a screening for add next time your at the doctors you can

me:

[symptomsofdeceit]

What would Thaumo and Nalis do if I just went up to them sniffed their head and said “ew do you not take showers????” and proceed to stare at them with the most deadpan look

Thaumo would stare at you with that stunned confused look he sometimes gets for a minute. He’d then try to pull off a pitiful/pathetic expression & insist that he tried… if it wasn’t good enough maybe you should help him next time he is so obvious it is hurting me

Nalis would be more genuinely stunned and worried & immediately smell himself.

• if there’s a strange smell but it’s not coming from him, Nalis would immediately lead you out of the room, then go back & look for the cause of it.

• if there’s no strange smell he’ll accept your teasing & try to tease you back later in the day.

• there’s a small chance that Nalis got too caught up in his work & didn’t go home to shower or sleep that night. If this is the case he’d be kinda embarrassed, mumble that something work related came up, and sulk off for the rest of the day. The following day he’d show up at your desk, freshly showered & carrying your favorite drink, and in a much better mood again.

[anglerflsh]

solution for intrusive thoughts

[helyeahmangocheese]

the next time you find yourself researching a detail such as, say, how doors work in Hotel Valhalla, ask yourself: WWRRD? (What would Rick Riordan do?) The answer is, 9 times out of 10, he would not look it up and instead make up whatever rule/detail would be most convenient!

[realbeefman]

stacy is sooo interesting because she's in love with house but knows that they will never ever be able to have a healthy, stable, sane relationship because they're too similar so. she finds house-lite instead and marries him and. essentially moves on with her life! and is successful in this because she's a moderately well-adjusted person!

wilson, in contrast, never manages to escape the inevitable, in spite of his best efforts to find a house-lite of his very own, because he's an absolute fucking freak and ends up glued to house to the bitter. bitter end

[inkskinned]

you wanted to be a good friend, because you loved your friends, but the truth was that everyone else somehow had a pamphlet on being normal that you never received. most of the time you learn by trial-and-error. you are terrified of the next big mistake you make, because it seems like the rules are completely arbitrary.

you've learned to keep the prickly parts of your personality in a stormcloud under your bed - as if they're a second version of you; one that will make your friends hate you. it feels feral, burning, ugly.

instead, you have assembled habits based on the statistical likelihood of pleasing others. you're a good listener, which is to say - if you do speak up, you might end up saying the wrong thing and scaring off someone, but people tend to like someone-who-listens. or you've got no true desires or goals, because people like it when you're passive, mutable. you're "not easy to fluster" which is to say - your emotions are fundamentally uninteresting to others around you; so you've learned to control them to a degree that you can no longer really feel them happening.

you have long suspected something is wrong with you, but most of the time, googling doesn't help. you are so-used to helping-yourself, alone and with no handbook. the reek of your real self feels more like a horrible joke - you wake up, and, despite all your preparations, suddenly the whole house is full of smoke. the real you is someone waiting to ruin your other-life, the one where you're normal and happy. the real-self is unpredictable, angry.

your real self snarls when people infantilize the whole situation. because if you were really suffering, everyone seems to think you'd be completely unable to cope. but you already learned the rules, so you do know how to cope, and you have fucking been coping. it's not black-and-white. it's not that you are healed during the other times - it's just that you're able to fucking try. and honestly, whenever you show symptoms, it's a really fucking bad sign.

because the symptoms you have are ugly and unmanageable for others. your symptoms aren't waifish white girl things. they're annoying and complicated. they will be the subject of so many pretentious instagram reels. if they cared about you, they'd just show up on time. you care, a lot, so deeply it burns you. you like to picture a world where the comments read if they loved you, they'd never need glasses to see. but since that's a rule you've seen repeated - "one must never be late or you are a bad friend" - you constantly worry about being late and leave agonizingly early. there are no words for how you feel when you're still late; no matter how hard you were trying.

so you have to make up for it. you have to make up for that little horrible real you that you keep locked in a cabinet. you are bad at answering emails so every project you make has to be perfect. you are weird and sensitive so you have to learn to be funny and interesting. you are an inconvenience to others, so you become as smooth as possible, buffing out all the rough parts.

all this. all this. so people can pass their hands over you and just tell you just the once -how good you are. you're a good friend. you're loveable.

[koifrog]

​People after I tell them that I have ‘struggles with time management and focus and emotional regulation’ disorder: okay but that’s not an excuse to struggle with time management and focus and emotional regulation

[kelocitta]

i saw your post on how you were thinking about handling the Whole Artificer Thing and i say, let em be a villain! i think it would be fun

I don't have any qualms about Artificer being cruel or whatever; I just don't think that when working them into an anthro doing a 1-to-1 transfer of their behaviors and/or making them just flat out racist/genocidal is an interesting or accurate way to characterize them. (and I just have. Negative interest in working with that type of character) People can do whatever they want but ultimately I just find the idea that anything other making them aggressively genocidal is like, woobifying them, tiring.

Artificer is obviously not good in the context of the game. But the problem and focus of their actions is the scale and spiritual aspect of it, not the actions themselves. Other slugcats are perfectly capable of killing scavengers, most players likely will and many who don't are only held back by the consequences. Scavengers are also warriors, and Artificer's whole campaign is basically set up on the fact that scavengers are defensive and very much follow a 'shoot first' method of self preservation.

So why does Artificer have always be the one thats uniquely villainous in behavior (now with significantly more moral weight behind it than they had as an animal) when the other slugcats, and even the scavengers, get properly 'civilized' when people make them anthros? I just don't think its an interesting way to utilize them, and I won't fault people who do- but like- I feel like if Artificer is going to be Like That when they can walk and talk and do taxes or whatever than at bare minimum the other slugcats and scavengers' relationship with violence/murder/hunting should be touched on.

I'm not making Artificer a good person. I don't want them to be a good person, because I think the fact they are so bad that they have problems on a spiritual level to be the interesting part. Technically, the Artificer I do for anthro stuff has already done their 'Scav King' and found their 'closure'. They set out to do something awful and did it, they got their ending. So now theyre just old and tired and mean and miserable because getting what you want isnt a solution.

[cookie-nom-nom]

Reading Barrayar I felt trapped in Cordelia’s head. It’s incredibly effective for the dread of war as a civilian. Plans and machinations happening beyond you, with no input. Hearing of things happening that seem far off and like yeah that’s awful but then suddenly it dominoes in a way that destroy your life and it’s not your fault and you could've done nothing at all to prevent it. Especially the tension of being hunted in the Dendarii mountains with no idea how the war is going, if they’ve already lost, if it is already too late. Cordelia is doing actively important things in service of the war by sheltering Gregor, yet there's this pervasive feeling of helpless lack of control. She spends most of the book with this dread of not knowing when the next threat to their family will come, and I don’t think it could’ve been done so effectively if we had access to the information Aral had. I found it frustrating at times, since it felt like Cordelia was swept up in events with little agency (at first; obviously our dear captain didn’t remain there). I wanted so badly to be with Aral seeing and knowing and making the decisions.

But that’s the point! Most people have absolutely zero agency in those situations and little information and it’s terrifying. Barrayar captures the feeling of being a civilian in war where so many narratives narrow in upon the heroes and 'men of history' that control conflicts. That's what readers expect. I think that’s why I loved the ending so much. After so long trapped with Cordelia, just trying to survive the larger machinations of Barrayar’s bloody politics, it felt so, so good to finally be on the offensive, to have information the opponents don’t, to finally have power and the means to control what happens. It's a relief to the constant tension of having no agency in a giant conflict that frankly Cordelia had no business being affect by, yet was swept up in because of her love of Aral.

Which is the second thing I deeply enjoyed in Barrayar. I love how the war is made so human. A messy tangle of human relationships control it. I can’t stop thinking about the hostages. There are just so many children being used because the war holds the future hostage. Tiny precious Miles utterly incapable of comprehending how large a pawn he is. Young grieving Gregor vital to the plans of both sides whether dead or alive. Elena, who should be of no importance but she is because that's the kid of an unimportant soldier, just like every other hostage is another piece in the web of the war. I keep thinking about the relatives of Aral’s men caught in the capital. The hostages that Aral refuses to take. Everyone just trying to take care of those they love, and the points where they must put other priorities over their relationships are heart wrenching.

Barrayar looks dead on at how little people try to survive a civil war. From the mountains where the fighting seems so far, and information is slowed to a trickle of the singular mailman. The invasion of forces that disrupts people who may not even know there’s a war yet. The scientists and the genius lost in a single blast that goes unnoticed. The urban populations trying to sneak in food and people and keep their heads down. Random citizens debating who to sell out, weighing risks and bounties, if it will get them the favor with the occupiers that will help them survive. All so small in the grand scheme of things, and yet they are who Barrayar concerns itself with.

Cordelia’s uncertainty and fear would’ve been undermined if we were allowed to see in the heads of people driving the conflict, because Barrayar isn’t about those people. It is the desperation of two mothers, powerless and kept in the dark, that topples the regime.

Addendum: Cordelia’s relationship to Aral firmly places her in an upper class position that is important to note when discussing the role of civilians/‘little people’ within this analysis. But as a woman on Barrayar she is extremely limited in the power she is allocated, especially compared to someone like Aral, which would be the military leadership POV that novels more focused on the grander scope of war would utilize. Again not to say Cordelia has no agency or power, but it is not to the degree of the people in charge. Thus I place her alongside the average people swept up in a war outside their control. Still, her position as a Vor Lady gives her some access knowledge and connections that she turns into power, which while limited are far more than the average citizen. Her significance to Vordarrian is exclusively viewed as yet another hostage, an underestimation that Cordelia readily exploits, but still afforded only due to her status. Cordelia occupies a position of importance but not power beyond the scope of the people she’s formed direct relationships with, which only further ties into the essay's thesis.