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It’s like a combination of the morbid fascination of watching a car crash in slow motion layered with the upbeat thrill of a heist movie plus politics intrigue and spy-movie style paranoia, all in a gigantic blizzard swirling around this one little guy. I didn’t know how I would be able to become attached to a character in this series after reading Shards of Honor and Barrayar, because I loved Cordelia so much as a protagonist, but Miles Vorkosigan did the job. Truly the character of all time.

He’s a strategic genius. He can figure out a solution to almost any problem. He’s in love with his childhood best friend and gets shut down repeatedly. He serves as the officiant at her impromptu wedding to a guy he saved through another random act of kindness, and plays out the roles of three different people in it like some kind of vaudeville comedy act. He makes people laugh. He inspires everyone around him to genuine loyalty and trust. He was playmates with the current emperor of his home planet when they were kids and is the heir of an aristocratic family. He refuses to get anything by nepotism and uses his mother’s maiden name when he meets people so they won’t know who he is. On a whim, he decides to help a random stranger and has to lie to do it. He commits to the bit so hard that he ends up faking his way into running a mercenary fleet whose existence was initially a complete lie and stopping a war he had nothing to do with. He has stomach ulcers from how stressed out he is. He refuses to break a promise, even when doing so would allow him to escape the web of lies he’s woven. His house of cards is always one gust of wind from toppling and he’s somehow able to keep it standing by sheer force of character. He will not stop because if he does he’ll have a nervous breakdown.

“It had been years since he'd memorized the ancient play, but the vivid iambic pentameter carried him along relentlessly. Short of beating him into unconsciousness, there seemed nothing Galen could do to turn him off. Miles was not even to the end of Act I when the two guards dragged him back down the lift tube and threw him roughly back into his prison room.”

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

Making friendly noises while someone else talks/smiling and nodding, which does not involve talking at all

Connecting to someone over a shared topic of interest, like weather or sports or itchy sweaters, which you obviously cannot do if you, e.g. do not like sports, or do not own an itchy sweater

"A greeting to affirm that you're buddies in the universe", which involves talking, but does not require you to have had specific life experiences like point two up there

This is the problem with all the "small talk is actually great" posts I see around tumblr frequently - it very quickly becomes very apparent that the majority of people either do not know what small talk is, or have vastly different ideas about what it is, and therefore do not really understand what people mean when they say they don't like it

my definitions all align, actually.

smiling and nodding do not preclude speaking. they are part of the performance of speaking. the throughline being: presenting yourself in a friendly manner.

i did not say you had to be interested in the topic. i said it can be something you know you have in common as humans on the planet - eg, the weather, which happens to everyone.

if you believe you have no common human experience with another person, that’s something you need to iron out yourself. have you never been tired, or hungry, or gotten new shoes? sharing the basic experience of being alive is what makes you buddies, not the specific topic. the point isn’t about whether the topic interests you - it’s about connecting positively with another person and finding interest in THAT. that is your compelling reason.

the problem with my post is not mine. i think you are looking for ways to complicate the sentiment because you would rather believe it’s too unpleasant to engage with others who are different from you to bother with it. and i understand completely why you don’t like it, i also said i didn’t like it either until i changed my perspective.

the kid who replaced his hard G sounds with soft ones, leaving me incapable of thinking of glasses as anything other than jlasses

kid who would holler "DID" any time she finished her work no matter how many times we told her to just raise her hand

kid who began her scary stories with "once a time" and her friend who began his with "paw time"

middle schooler i had during student teaching who pronounced magritte as "mah-gritty"

the kid who said "i got boogies comin out my nose" while sobbing and the kid who said "theres his puddle of cry" while describing a drawing, both of whom i think of when im crying

kid who said that if he was 80 he would get big and turn grandpa

kid who, for no reason in particular, would just say "like a little feet" as a standalone phrase in relation to nothing