aral vorkosigan really is one of the most characters of all time. he’s bisexual. he watched the dismemberment of the emperor and the killing of most of his immediate family when he was eleven years old. his first wife cheated on him so he challenged both other men to a duel and killed them both. it looked as if they’d killed each other so nobody ever investigated and he got away with it. his wife then killed herself. he went on a years-long bender and had a very public affair with his dead wife’s brother. he dumped his dead wife’s brother thus initiating a ~20 year long toxic yaoi situation. he helped lead the invasion of the nearest planet and was dubbed "the butcher" of said planet after a subordinate initiated a massacre against his orders. he killed said subordinate with his bare hands. he met his second wife after his crew mutinied on a near deserted planet, and also after her entire party was killed. he fell in love with her at first sight because she was throwing up in the dirt while wearing pants as a woman. she helped kill his ex boyfriend. he proposed marriage to her in the middle of a war while she was considered a POW. he plotted with the emperor to kill the heir to the throne and all his significant supporters. he’s an adrenaline junkie who enjoys drunk driving his lightflyer through canyons at night and definitely has a death wish. and he's bisexual. all of this is information available in book 1 of 17

csevet gets away with being crazy bc he's so sweetie but his story arc within tge is pure bedlam, he just does it so elegantly and politely it glosses over. courier agreed to be imperial secretary after one vague and polite insinuation from the emperor in that direction, despite possibly not having learned to read until he was a teenager (and the circumstances within which he was sent into maia's service are HIGHLY questionable, it's possible csevet wilfully interpreted chavar's wording to get the outcome he wanted). he got offended when maia insinuated, not that he would covertly read a letter of imperial business entrusted to him, but that he wouldn't immaculately reseal it if he had done such a thing. about fifty pages later he is hustled into admitting he did that exact thing with the first letter he ever gave to maia. and he immaculately resealed it. he is the only person to land a punch on anyone on-page, and he did it in front of like half the government. he insinuated the emperor was insane, to his face, then promptly prostrated himself on the floor outside. in like, the gravel. he loudly guilt tripped priests in a holy building and wasn't sorry about it even a bit. he personally influenced and drove several state matters that rightly should not have really been up to him, including the emperor's marriage and the investigation of the assassination of the previous one. he then proceeded to pick an empress and present the proposal to the corazhas as if that was the emperor's opinion, even though maia had no opinion in the slightest. one can make a textual argument suggesting he might have sliiiightly lied to the emperor about a few things, including his age, or at least obfuscated. his only apparent objection to becoming lord chancellor was said nebulous age. he still somehow has time to read ethuverazhin jane austen. he compared his commitment to his role to celehar's Actual For Real Religious Calling. katherine addison please let me look in his brain just once it HAS to be absolute scenes in there

there are places in the world today that are experiencing 40°C for the first time in recorded history. of course there's no way to know whether chucking billionaires into volcanos will appease the sun god but i feel we're doing the scientific method a disservice if we don't at least try

This blog is my adult version of cutting pictures out of magazines and glueing them on to paper

Thank you so much @draconym ! Look at those differences!

some hyper famous artists like Van Gogh transcend overratedness and become underrated because they're so normalized. Like I'll look at a van Gogh and I'm like wait this really is amazing you guys don't get it

Shakespeare is like this