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In which there is more nattering about the Vorkosigan books
How is this series so massively addictive when I've read it all before? I really wanted to do other things than read books today, but the books had other plans for me ...
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xparrot, I'm sorry! ^^;; READ MOAR so you can catch up!)
"Mirror Dance" still WINS ALL THINGS FOREVER. I wondered how I'd react to it fifteen years later; the answer is "with breathless, can't-put-it-down fascination." I think that book is not only my favorite in the series, but one of my favorite books ever. It just ... hits so many of my favorite tropes and fiction kinks, and does it in a way that's full of thinkiness and psychological subtlety.
Despite my love for the book, this is only the second time I've read it in its entirety -- mostly because it's such an emotional wringer of a book that I couldn't bring myself to re-read it before, at least not all the way to the bitter end, because, oh, Mark. (Despite having read certain scenes so often, back in my original Vorkosigan phase, that I still remember the wording of them. But the book as a whole ... no.)
So it was really fascinating and wonderful to get to experience it all over again. Knowing where it was going, I was even more appreciative of Bujold's careful craftsmanship in putting it together -- little touches like the casual introduction of cryo technology at the beginning (that becomes so very important later on), and big things, such as the incredibly subtle way that Mark's entire perception of the world shifts over the course of the book. I just don't even know where to BEGIN talking about that, because she does such an amazing job with Mark's psychology. One of the things that made me a little nervous about how I'd react to the book the second time around is that when I read it the first time, I was going through some pretty serious mental issues myself, as well as having just come out of my teens and still being rather overdramatic in the way that teenagers are. I think one of the reasons why I glommed onto Mark as a character in the first place is because of his angst and his issues. But reading it as an older and more emotionally stable adult, what impresses me is not so much Mark's angst but how angsty it isn't. Even when she's dealing with Mark at the bottom of a suicidal, self-destructive depression, there's still a wry self-awareness in the narrative voice and in Mark's own perceptions of himself that pulls it back from emo wallowing and lends a sort of ... black humor, I guess, to the whole thing.
And I loved watching Mark come around just as much as I did the first time: his slow shift from neurotic, suicidal mess to the hero that he wanted to be (but never could be, until he stopped being an emotional black hole and found people to love him and learned how to give back a little). I love how the change in his perceptions of the Vorkosigans happens so slowly and subtly that I couldn't really pinpoint the moment when he starts referring in his own head to Cordelia, Miles et al by their family relationship to him, but he's very definitely there by the end of the book. And all the many, many little bits of psychological depth ... the way that you can clearly see Mark's various neuroses/psychoses in the early parts of the book (the masochism, the eating disorder, etc) that will later flare into full-blown alternate personalities under Ryoval's torture; the change from craving adulation so obsessively that he tries to bully it out of his rescuees, to giving anonymous gifts to the clone-children with no expectation of reward; the way that he and Miles each get to walk in the other one's shoes; the bookending of Miles sacrificing his life for Mark at the beginning, and Mark sacrificing his life (potentially) and sanity for Miles at the end ...
MY ID, IT IS SATISFIED. :D
Oh, oh ... and I'm dwelling on Miles and Mark rather heavily here, but oh my God, ELENA AND MARK. For some reason I had misremembered that scene with Elena swearing allegiance to Mark as his Armswoman as having happened earlier in the series between Elena and Miles, but no, it happened here, and I hadn't remembered, either, that it was Elena who discovered Mark with the clone-girl that he tried to rape. The way that Elena and Mark's entire relationship was handled ... it could so easily have gone completely off the rails, and instead it was all subtlety and a slow build and -- I DON'T EVEN HAVE WORDS FOR HOW MUCH I LOVED IT. The fact that Galen's rape of Mark (and the severity of the psychological aftereffects) was handled seriously, but without brushing off Mark's attempted rape of Maree, or Elena's past and the way that it became the lens through which she saw Mark ... and then all of this building up, eventually, to Elena and Mark's trust in each other at the end, after all their secrets were laid bare, and she was the one he went to, the one who had to be the keeper of his secrets, because he couldn't entrust them to his family without being drawn back into Ryoval's vortex, and it just all felt so real, so right, so respectful to the characters without dismissing the real-world issues of rape and torture and emotional recovery that were being touched upon as well.
But Mark and everyone was awesome too! Mark and Kareen (more on them in the next paragraph). Mark and Cordelia. Mark and Ivan. Mark and Aral. And yes, Mark and Elli Quinn, because it lends balance to have at least one character who never did come around on him, never did stop hating him or seeing everything that he wasn't. And as much as I love Elli, it works very well for her to be that person, because of who she is and who she isn't, and what she expects from the people around her. I love Elli as a character, but I think she would be absolutely terrifying to know. Actually, half the characters in these books, at least, would be quite terrifying to know ...
... but not Kareen, who would be quite sweet and lovely to know! Which might be one reason why I love her as much as I do. YET ANOTHER of the many ways in which these books and this series satisfy my id is that I've always had a very strong visceral reaction to a certain kind of romantic pairing: tough/badass character + sweet, supportive, intellectually-oriented noncombatant. (I used to think of it in terms of "tough fighter guy + sweet non-fighter/intellectual girl" until I hit upon a "badass girl + sweet dorky guy" pairing and realized that actually, gender doesn't matter at all; it's just that in pairings of this sort, the guy tends to be cast in the badass role much more often than the other way around.) Anyway, this is absolute pairing Kryptonite for me. Most of the pairings that hit this particular kink tend to be anime pairings (Shido/Madoka in GetBackers, or Kuwabara/Yukina in Yu Yu Hakusho; a non-anime example would be Duncan/Tessa in Highlander) but Mark/Kareen hits it pretty damn hard, despite Mark not really being a classic sort of fighter type, unlike the above examples.
It wasn't really until "A Civil Campaign", though, that Mark/Kareen were catapulted onto my "favorite couples of all time" list, because of the way that she goes ahead and blossoms and comes into her own as his partner and as her own person. Kareen in "A Civil Campaign" is, quite frankly, the awesomest thing that ever awesomed. She's smart and determined and completely devoted to Mark, yet not willing to abandon her family and run off and become an appendage of Mark (not that he would really want her to). And she knows about the Black Gang, and has apparently learned to accommodate Mark's sexual tastes -- I think that I have to add some extra bonus heartmarks (<3 <3 <3) simply for the two of them being one of very few fictional couples I can think of off the top of my head who are canonically, happily kinky.
But what I love most about Kareen is that she is a traditional Barrayaran girl who keeps all the best aspects of her upbringing while also being open-minded enough to love Mark, defy her parents, have a career and basically live a Betan lifestyle. (Wikipedia tells me that Mark and Kareen opt not to marry or have children, and simply become lifemated/sexual/business partners in the Betan style, which ... I'm not sure if this is explicitly stated to be canon in later books or simply implied, but it fills me with INFINITE SQUEE if it is true.) I love Kareen because she isn't a rebel; she's a nice, sweet, accommodating person who loves her sisters and her parents, and continues to have a good relationship with them while also being her own person (and having a wild kinky sex life) and it is pretty rare in fiction, especially action genre fiction, to see characters like that. :D
ETA: "Cryoburn" spoilers in the LJ comments, though not in the post itself.
(
xparrot, I'm sorry! ^^;; READ MOAR so you can catch up!)"Mirror Dance" still WINS ALL THINGS FOREVER. I wondered how I'd react to it fifteen years later; the answer is "with breathless, can't-put-it-down fascination." I think that book is not only my favorite in the series, but one of my favorite books ever. It just ... hits so many of my favorite tropes and fiction kinks, and does it in a way that's full of thinkiness and psychological subtlety.
Despite my love for the book, this is only the second time I've read it in its entirety -- mostly because it's such an emotional wringer of a book that I couldn't bring myself to re-read it before, at least not all the way to the bitter end, because, oh, Mark. (Despite having read certain scenes so often, back in my original Vorkosigan phase, that I still remember the wording of them. But the book as a whole ... no.)
So it was really fascinating and wonderful to get to experience it all over again. Knowing where it was going, I was even more appreciative of Bujold's careful craftsmanship in putting it together -- little touches like the casual introduction of cryo technology at the beginning (that becomes so very important later on), and big things, such as the incredibly subtle way that Mark's entire perception of the world shifts over the course of the book. I just don't even know where to BEGIN talking about that, because she does such an amazing job with Mark's psychology. One of the things that made me a little nervous about how I'd react to the book the second time around is that when I read it the first time, I was going through some pretty serious mental issues myself, as well as having just come out of my teens and still being rather overdramatic in the way that teenagers are. I think one of the reasons why I glommed onto Mark as a character in the first place is because of his angst and his issues. But reading it as an older and more emotionally stable adult, what impresses me is not so much Mark's angst but how angsty it isn't. Even when she's dealing with Mark at the bottom of a suicidal, self-destructive depression, there's still a wry self-awareness in the narrative voice and in Mark's own perceptions of himself that pulls it back from emo wallowing and lends a sort of ... black humor, I guess, to the whole thing.
And I loved watching Mark come around just as much as I did the first time: his slow shift from neurotic, suicidal mess to the hero that he wanted to be (but never could be, until he stopped being an emotional black hole and found people to love him and learned how to give back a little). I love how the change in his perceptions of the Vorkosigans happens so slowly and subtly that I couldn't really pinpoint the moment when he starts referring in his own head to Cordelia, Miles et al by their family relationship to him, but he's very definitely there by the end of the book. And all the many, many little bits of psychological depth ... the way that you can clearly see Mark's various neuroses/psychoses in the early parts of the book (the masochism, the eating disorder, etc) that will later flare into full-blown alternate personalities under Ryoval's torture; the change from craving adulation so obsessively that he tries to bully it out of his rescuees, to giving anonymous gifts to the clone-children with no expectation of reward; the way that he and Miles each get to walk in the other one's shoes; the bookending of Miles sacrificing his life for Mark at the beginning, and Mark sacrificing his life (potentially) and sanity for Miles at the end ...
MY ID, IT IS SATISFIED. :D
Oh, oh ... and I'm dwelling on Miles and Mark rather heavily here, but oh my God, ELENA AND MARK. For some reason I had misremembered that scene with Elena swearing allegiance to Mark as his Armswoman as having happened earlier in the series between Elena and Miles, but no, it happened here, and I hadn't remembered, either, that it was Elena who discovered Mark with the clone-girl that he tried to rape. The way that Elena and Mark's entire relationship was handled ... it could so easily have gone completely off the rails, and instead it was all subtlety and a slow build and -- I DON'T EVEN HAVE WORDS FOR HOW MUCH I LOVED IT. The fact that Galen's rape of Mark (and the severity of the psychological aftereffects) was handled seriously, but without brushing off Mark's attempted rape of Maree, or Elena's past and the way that it became the lens through which she saw Mark ... and then all of this building up, eventually, to Elena and Mark's trust in each other at the end, after all their secrets were laid bare, and she was the one he went to, the one who had to be the keeper of his secrets, because he couldn't entrust them to his family without being drawn back into Ryoval's vortex, and it just all felt so real, so right, so respectful to the characters without dismissing the real-world issues of rape and torture and emotional recovery that were being touched upon as well.
But Mark and everyone was awesome too! Mark and Kareen (more on them in the next paragraph). Mark and Cordelia. Mark and Ivan. Mark and Aral. And yes, Mark and Elli Quinn, because it lends balance to have at least one character who never did come around on him, never did stop hating him or seeing everything that he wasn't. And as much as I love Elli, it works very well for her to be that person, because of who she is and who she isn't, and what she expects from the people around her. I love Elli as a character, but I think she would be absolutely terrifying to know. Actually, half the characters in these books, at least, would be quite terrifying to know ...
... but not Kareen, who would be quite sweet and lovely to know! Which might be one reason why I love her as much as I do. YET ANOTHER of the many ways in which these books and this series satisfy my id is that I've always had a very strong visceral reaction to a certain kind of romantic pairing: tough/badass character + sweet, supportive, intellectually-oriented noncombatant. (I used to think of it in terms of "tough fighter guy + sweet non-fighter/intellectual girl" until I hit upon a "badass girl + sweet dorky guy" pairing and realized that actually, gender doesn't matter at all; it's just that in pairings of this sort, the guy tends to be cast in the badass role much more often than the other way around.) Anyway, this is absolute pairing Kryptonite for me. Most of the pairings that hit this particular kink tend to be anime pairings (Shido/Madoka in GetBackers, or Kuwabara/Yukina in Yu Yu Hakusho; a non-anime example would be Duncan/Tessa in Highlander) but Mark/Kareen hits it pretty damn hard, despite Mark not really being a classic sort of fighter type, unlike the above examples.
It wasn't really until "A Civil Campaign", though, that Mark/Kareen were catapulted onto my "favorite couples of all time" list, because of the way that she goes ahead and blossoms and comes into her own as his partner and as her own person. Kareen in "A Civil Campaign" is, quite frankly, the awesomest thing that ever awesomed. She's smart and determined and completely devoted to Mark, yet not willing to abandon her family and run off and become an appendage of Mark (not that he would really want her to). And she knows about the Black Gang, and has apparently learned to accommodate Mark's sexual tastes -- I think that I have to add some extra bonus heartmarks (<3 <3 <3) simply for the two of them being one of very few fictional couples I can think of off the top of my head who are canonically, happily kinky.
But what I love most about Kareen is that she is a traditional Barrayaran girl who keeps all the best aspects of her upbringing while also being open-minded enough to love Mark, defy her parents, have a career and basically live a Betan lifestyle. (Wikipedia tells me that Mark and Kareen opt not to marry or have children, and simply become lifemated/sexual/business partners in the Betan style, which ... I'm not sure if this is explicitly stated to be canon in later books or simply implied, but it fills me with INFINITE SQUEE if it is true.) I love Kareen because she isn't a rebel; she's a nice, sweet, accommodating person who loves her sisters and her parents, and continues to have a good relationship with them while also being her own person (and having a wild kinky sex life) and it is pretty rare in fiction, especially action genre fiction, to see characters like that. :D
ETA: "Cryoburn" spoilers in the LJ comments, though not in the post itself.
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Read Cryoburn. They're in it.
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I'm already three chapters into Cryoburn anyway; I figured that it ought to be the next book I read, since it's the latest and I haven't read it at all.
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And now I need to go grab my copy of Mirror Dance and reread the scene at the ball where Mark picks up the flowers that fell out of Kareen's hair and puts them in his pocket.
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I know! It's especially fascinating with books that I had really strong opinions on, at the time, but haven't read in 15 or 20 years. It's such an interesting window into my head back then.
Awww, Mark and Kareen. You know, that thing with the flowers could easily have come off creepy, but it doesn't, at least I don't think so; it's just sweet.
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Canon, in... A Civil Campaign, I think. She puts an option on him (like putting an option on stocks!). It's pretty adorable.
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(I did love the fanficcy nature of the drabble endings, though. SO FANFIC. I know that Bujold started her writing life as a fanfic writer, but there have been a few things that she's said/written in interviews that lead me to believe that she is actively involved in fandom even now; she seems to be awfully current on fannish terminology and tropes, for one thing.)
And then I went and found this on AO3: Treatment for Shock, which is a pitch-perfect "and this is what happened next" missing scene for the book that blends perfectly into Bujold's writing style.
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I had no idea that was coming. No idea whatsoever. And I read it the first time and totally didn't notice the significance, and sort of looked up at my computer as I began to turn the page, then went... waitaminute, that didn't sound right... and flipped back. And basically went
Steel-toed boot to the heart is exactly the right description.
(And I like Aral, but he's not even close to being my favorite character! What are these books going to do to me if/when Miles dies??)
I did love the fanficcy nature of the drabble endings, though. SO FANFIC.
I lol'd pretty hard when I saw that. I'm sure it seemed totally innocuous to anyone not in fandom!
(I *do* wish she'd chosen something besides drabbles, though. That ending deserved far more than a few hundred word snippets!)
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(I *do* wish she'd chosen something besides drabbles, though. That ending deserved far more than a few hundred word snippets!)
Yeah ... she does convey an amazing amount of information in them (how he died, how all the important people react, the general timeline of events from his death to his funeral), but I wanted mooooore. I'm particularly worried about Miles, and the hints that Miles is really different now. I think that was a big part of the kick in the gut, actually, because Cryoburn had made me fall in love with Miles all over again -- he's just such a neat person, and I don't like the idea that Aral's death has made him ... I don't know, grow up, or become harder or colder or less Miles than he used to be. I think I'll be slightly wibbly until we get a post-Cryoburn book in which we get to see him being Miles again.
Also ... bets on Cordelia? Do you think she'll stay in the Barrayaran Empire, or leave? I am actually split on that ... Barrayar is where her family is, and certainly where her grandchildren are, and where her life is. But I can also see Cordelia at some point going "screw Barrayer, I've given you enough of my life" and retiring to Beta to live out her remaining years.
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Yeah, the line in Ivan's drabble-- where he wondered what the old Miles would have said-- just broke my heart! So much of what makes Miles Miles is that spontaneity, and seeing it dampened-- it's just wrong.
Also ... bets on Cordelia? Do you think she'll stay in the Barrayaran Empire, or leave?
I seem to recall reading somewhere that it was Word of God that she'd be heading back to Beta. Maybe not right away (she's still the Vicereine of Sergyar, after all, I don't think she's the kind of person to just up and leave a job like that without making sure her successor is up to speed and everything is running smoothly), but sooner rather than later.
That said... it might be Word of God, but I'm not sure I want it to be canon! Her kids, her grandkids are there; she could still do a whole lot of good on the planet, and I think it still needs her. Or maybe it's just because, as a reader, I want her to have grown to love Barrayar on its own terms... I don't know. This is the problem with having a planet be just as much a character as any of the people; you don't want them to break up!
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This is true. And the poor woman has definitely earned some time off! I can't imagine how stressful Barrayar must be, especially if you weren't born into the lifestyle, and with everything that's happened in her life...
and getting so agonizingly bored without having the Barrayaran patriarchy to fight against that she has to go back to Barrayar and take up some hopeless causes once again
Yeah, I could see this happening. She's barely middle-aged by Betan standards, and she doesn't strike me as the type to want to laze around all day... and she can't exactly go back into her old career field after the Steady Freddy debacle!
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...and AH, so she was a ficcer, neechan and I were wondering...and then actually using the term drabble REEEALLY had me wondering...
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I'm glad the story worked for you; it helped me a lot, with getting past the initial smacked-in-the-gut feeling that the ending gave me. (Yay, fanfic! *g*)