Vorkosiverse on Crack_Van

[beatrice_otter]

I'll be driving the crack_van for the Vorkosiverse as a Featured Fandom in March.  The fandom overview is, erm, somewhat limited and out of date, being almost exactly five years old.  I'd like to do a supplement; what things and people do you guys think should be added?

Comments

[philomytha]

Oh gosh, it is, isn't it? The fandom's had a lot of activity since that was written. A lot of the links are dead, for one thing. You should probably mention the ficathon(s) - the summer one seems to be a fixture, and I daresay Tel will chime in with whether she plans to keep Winterfair going in future years. And it might be nice to mention the Russian fandom, since it's large and active. Most of the fanart is done by the Russians - you could link here for a lot of it, and this is the main Russian archive site.

Perhaps also link to the fandom's section at AO3, since a great deal of the fanfic written in the fandom gets posted there. From there it's pretty clear that Aral/Cordelia is the most popular pairing in the fandom, along with Gregor/Miles, Ivan/By, Gregor/Laisa and Alys/Simon. (Interesting that Miles/Ekaterin barely gets a look-in.)

Oh, and you could link to the entire works (except Memory) free online.

[branchandroot]

It might be good to mention the Cryoburn CD which has released the books into the wild for legal non-commercial distribution.

I'd also say that a few more words about the planet Barrayar are in order. It's a lot more complicated than a bunch of pre-Communist Russians, and the "all soliders" thing is... well, that's flattening things a lot. Maybe mentioning that Lois spends actual plot time on the variety and the ethnic/class/gender divisions. Cetaganda could also do with some mention of the haut as well as the ghem. Lois elaborated a lot after that initial military-mad-miles focus.

Definitely add Ekaterin to the Characters section. I'd also say Mark and Kareen. Possibly Galeni and Simon, but possibly not. Given latest developments, perhaps Roic as well.

I'd really like to see the het pairings get more specific than Miles/Various Women. That's... really a lot more dismissive and erasing of some fantastically kick-butt women than I'm comfortable seeing, especially in this fandom! Miles/Ekaterin has grown up nicely, and I'm reasonably sure Miles/Elli is still hanging in there. To say nothing of Miles/Bel, and, speaking of that, this is a fandom that seems to call for a more flexible and open-minded framing of fic than just a "slash or het" binary with gen not even getting its own heading. An AO3 link for fic might be of use by now.

I think that's most of my two cents.

[reginagiraffe]

Aral attractive? Um, that's not generally one of his defining characterstics.

I think you should mention right at the beginning that this is a universe with NO aliens. Humans only.

ETA: Having read it more thoroughly, I think you should throw out the whole "no spoilers" thing. Put a big note at the top that it's going to be full of spoilers and that if they don't want to be spoiled, go read the damn books already... and then go for it, full speed ahead.

[azurelunatic]

I think the major divide in pairings in Vorkosiverse fic is not slash/het, but fic that works with canon relationships, and fic that goes against canon relationships, with fic that fits in non-canon relationships without challenging canon relationships somewhere snugly in the middle.

[raveninthewind]

Hey, I posted the overview back in 2006, although I didn't write it. I currently have edit rights and can update the post if you suggest changes. It's only till the evening of 2/28 that I can update.

Or if you post an entirely new Part 2/update, I might be able to get the mods to let me link it in this overview.

I did add some links as noted in the comments above, tweaked the pairings and put the gen section above the slash and het pairings lists, because you are indeed correct that there's more gen/less of a slash presence in this fandom.

I'll at least try to remove dead links. I have to work tomorrow, so I won't have tons of time to spend on this.