#batmanaintapeasant

AW THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! i've been dealing with a ton of mildly evil stuff lately tbh but i'm definitely hanging in there! working on an original writing project and it's giving me strength! 💪

Hi! Thanks for liking my Les Mis fic! I still read a bit in the fandom and follow blogs, and actually have some abandoned stuff still cluttering up scrivener. I’m hoping I get a kick in my pants from the BBC series and get more ideas.

I highly recommend the Vorkosigan Saga, but I will say it comes with certain caveats and warnings. The first book in the series, Shards of Honor, for example, has attempted rape, plus evil psychiatrists, and one of the books, Mirror Dance, is kinda notorious for torture porn. But they are so good and so witty and funny, and SUCH quick reads. I cannot stress how fast they read. They’re very well-written, and don’t let the warnings about subject matter make them seem grimdark or anything, they are funny.

Most of the books were made available for free on CD with the publication of the book Cryoburn and are available here http://hell.pl/szymon/Baen/Cryoburn/ . Note that that doesn’t include the book Memory, which is seminal, pivotal, and my absolute favorite (also the first one I read). BUT since it’s published by Baen, it’s available for purchase as a DRM-free ebook, iirc.

Your library may also have the more recent ones available as ebooks for reading. I think probably the only “book” that might be hard to track down is the original Borders of Infinity anthology that has the frame story; I got that one from the library, possibly even interlibrary loan, and I don’t know if the frame story has been published independantly, others may know. That frame story is interesting in various ways, but it’s not necessary for understanding the series. (EDIT: I got off my ass and checked calibre and it turns out I have a copy of it, and also lol, Baen has the ebook of the original, it looks like, this is what I get for not checking a damn thing :P)

As far as starting place, there are two generally recommended points: Shards Of Honor or Warriors Apprentice. I’d say start with Shards, which was the first book. The advantage of WA is that the POV character is Miles Vorkosigan, who is the main character through most of the series, whereas Shards and the book Barrayar are about his mom, Cordelia, after which point she becomes a minor character.

If, erm, you’ve paid any attention to the character lists in my fic, you may be a little surprised at who the series is actually about :P I always love side characters, plus early on, I saw someone refer to a pairing as “Vorkosigan/Vorbarra” and took that as a personal challenge to slash as many Vorkosigans and Vorbarras as possible, so, like, my fic is not representative of what’s actually in the books. The books are sort of split into space mercenaries, and also Barrayar stuff. I’m far more interested in the Barrayar stuff and I’m heavily interested in mining the books for backstory details about Barrayar, and don’t really care about space battles.

Also one thing to be aware of is that the books started in the 80s and you can absolutely see the technology shift, for one (they went from computers that  didn’t move, and in a recent book, 3D-printed something), and also other things. There’s an infamous line in the book Barrayar that refers to Aral as “was bisexual, now monogamous” and I know there’s a lot of people who say “it was the 80s, leave it alone” but in a much more recently published book, she basically doubled down, so, no, I’m not letting that one go. :P

Also be aware that the planet Beta Colony has people who are referred to as hermaphrodites, and the Cetagandan Empire has people who are called ba, and both of them have “it” as their pronoun. This is still jarring even for me when I do canon-review and stumble over it and have a confused moment.

Also also there’s various consent problems sprinkled throughout, including a character not respecting a no. There’s also a reference to a past character, in backstory, who was very likely honor-killed for adultery, and no one experiences any consequences for doing it, no one even knows for sure who did it, and everyone in canon forgets about her existence, and she doesn’t have a name ever given in canon, and also the canon forgets her existence so much she’s never mentioned in graveyard scenes even when she should be, or listed as someone Aral is suspected of murdering even when it’s immediately relevant, and basically I will never be over that erasure, and I have the word count to prove it. :P

Oh, and interrogators are referred to as “medical staff”, a lot, so that leaves some wonderful things to the imagination.

Anyway, now that I’m done talking you out of it… I still highly recommend these books, they are very good! I don’t want to spoil Warriors Apprentice for you, but it does 2 things that are just not in the vein of space fantasy stuff at all and I still have heart-eyes over, it just really sets it apart, it goes against so much expectations. They’re really great.

draw da2

haaaa you look so cute!

um no this is delightful and wonderful to hear. i ran into some huge roadblocks with ch6 and ch7 that i’ve almost resolved now; and it doesn’t help that i was out of town and at a convention haha. BUT i really, really hope to have ch7 done by the beginning of next week. i just need to tevinter better.