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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.