vorkosigan | Fic Dilemma

I'm signing up for

femmeremix, a remix ficathon for female-focused fics, and realized that if I wrote one more Vorkosiverse fic with a woman in an important role, I could add the Vorkosigan fandom to my signup. And, thinking, I got a REALLY awesome idea for a genderswapped Aarl, which I now have to write. And then I realized "but genderswap doesn't count for signup purposes," but I'm going to write it anyway because it's such a cool idea.

And then I realized, "but wait, if I say instead that Aral died in Mad Yuri's massacre and his unnamed sister survived instead, that would qualify!"

Brilliant solution. Only problem being she is so firmly GIRL!ARAL in my head that I don't know if it would work.

Her backstory: canon!Aral married Ges' sister in an arranged marriage. Given an arranged marriage, wouldn't girl!Aral likely be married to a man from the same family? OMG, SHE WOULD HAVE MARRIED GES HERSELF! Except Ges would not treat a wife like an equal the way he treated canon!Aral, so he abused her, and given Aral's temper, she killed him, and now lives in semi-disgrace down in the Vorkosigan district. That is where the story starts.

Now, the main things that she has in common with Aral are a) brilliant tactician, except used socially instead of militarily, b) that infamous temper, and c) bisexuality. And sure, I can say that the sister had all of those too, but ... isn't that kinda denying the sister's individuality?

Sigh.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

bookblather

Well, I dunno about the bisexuality, but Aral seems to have gotten his temper from his father, so it's entirely possible she did too. Same for the tactics. No way Piotr Vorkosigan leaves his only child defenseless.

From:

beatrice_otter

Yeah, but families are varied enough that the more you start talking about children inheriting traits from their parents, the more I side-eye things. For one kid to inherit it, sure. Two ... eh. Plus, girls get entirely different socialization and training than boys do, even when they're only children.

As for Aral's temper, Piotr has a temper. But he doesn't have the killing rages that Aral gets, and in fact never even sees one in person until that one scene Cordelia witnesses.

From:

bookblather

That's a good point about the socialization, although I do think some tactical knowledge would filter down to her, if only through Daddy's war stories. She could also be the curious type and go digging through the library.

Re: inheritance, I worded that badly, I'm sorry. I didn't mean inheritance in the genes, I meant more of a toddler-see toddler-do inheritance. I also misunderstood, though, so that's a little more difficult.

I think overall you could get away with these shared traits, since they do share parents and early life experiences. It'd just take some spadework to justify it.

From:

archangelbeth

I think you could justify bisexuality, or full-out lesbianism, if you assume that she started at something besides 100% het -- though you might want to go for an outcome of No Man Is Worth Risking My Freedom (again) For.

Since "horrible person turns woman gay" is kind of... an icky concept. To say the least. You would probably want to firmly establish a history of, at least, moments where she'd think "I'd flip my Kinsey for that one." (Which is something I, a primarily het cis gal, have experienced! "OMG she is so hot I have a crush...")

Or you could make her out-and-out lesbian, from the start! Yeah, she married a guy, but it was an arranged marriage and maybe she was trying to make the best of it, and maybe she was repressed (on Barrayar, this would not be implausible, I'd think...) or maybe she expected that she could hold her nose, do her duty in providing an heir or two, and then wave cheerfully while Ges went off to his lover(s) and/or find a few herself. Whiiiich didn't happen, obviously.

And now I have to run off. Good luck with the plotbunny!

From:

beatrice_otter

The issue, for me, is that I've read a few too many fics where EVERYONE IS GAY. Which. Uh. Look, statistically, that just does not happen outside of self-selecting environments. I can buy a very high percentage, but ... not everyone, particularly not on Barrayar where heteronormativity is so strong.

Two isn't everyone, I know.

From:

archangelbeth

There is that.

Were it me, I'd probably be torn between going "heck with it" and...
A: just presuming that the universe has a certain requirement from a character and the survivor gets to do that. If little Aral-in-that-timeline had survived, he'd have been more het than not. Or...

B: picking something different. Asexual, Kinsey-flipping, etc., or depending on the story, just leave it ambiguous.

Or C, as bookblather alludes to above: assume some of it is societal, and something in the family upbringing (they did have Betan relatives!) means all the siblings would've been open to the potential of having same-gender relationships, even if their primary attraction was opposite-gender. (Which is kind of a Kinsey-flip thing, but more taken in stride than as a surprise. Betans!)

(...which I tried to do with a protagonist once -- give him a societal acceptance of certain kinds of experiences -- and he wound up being much more bi than I'd thought he was at the beginning. The perils of running black-box character emulation in one's head. *wry*)

Meh, it's all "what I'd do." Can't tell what would work for you! Don't want to be pushy (the idea is interesting to play with!), either, so I do apologize if I'm coming off that way.

From:

beatrice_otter

Thank you for commenting! I've actually already written and posted the story.

From:

archangelbeth

As I now see!

*facepalm*

I have it waiting to be read! (Too much distractions.)

From:

beatrice_otter

Hey, I know how that goes!

From:

castiron

So, to make her an individual, what besides her gender makes her different from Aral? Does she have a different take on honor? Does she love Barrayar like he does, or feel the same obligation to it, or does she privately wish the Cetagandans had won? Before her exile, would she be using her Alys-Vorpatril-wishes-she-were-as-socially-adept-as-me skills to maintain the Vor, or shift the culture subtly, or undermine it? Does she scorn the use of alcohol and other drugs as an escape from awful reality, and if so, how does she cope instead?

(Does she need the temper/is that one of the traits inherent to how you see her? Or did she use her tactical skills to coldly plan Ges's death in a way such that it couldn't be proven she did it? I can't recall what if anything canon says about that time period's treatment of abused wives.)

From:

beatrice_otter

Well, but the thing is, girl!Aral would have a different take on honor than canon!Aral does, because honor is so heavily gendered on Barrayar. EVERYTHING is so heavily gendered on Barrayar.

She was actually planning to divorce Ges, and was gathering information to blackmail him and convince his family to stay away from their son, when she snapped and killed him. Then she used the information to blackmail people into getting her a pardon.

From:

17catherines

You know, she doesn't need to have Aral's temper to kill Ges. I mean, I think we can be reasonably sure that Ges is physically abusive. What if she was gathering her blackmail information, and either he found out about it, or he didn't, but in either case, went to physically abuse him and she defended herself a bit too effectively?

She doesn't have to share Aral's temper for that. She can be a woman who intended to use her brains to escape, but had to defend herself in the moment. And honestly, I can well imagine that a sister of Aral's would know how to defend herself physically, at least to a degree - can you see Aral leaving his little sister to grow up defenseless? Hell, even Piotr wouldn't fail to teach his daughter self-defense. After all, the Vorfemme knife may leave you less armed than the men around you, but it still leaves you armed, and it certainly doesn't suggest a culture in which women are expected to be completely non-violent. And with the Betan connections in the family, I doubt she had a terribly submissive/meek upbringing in any case.

You have many possibilities here, I think - and I think you should go for it!

Catherine

(Personally, regarding the sexuality thing, the hints that we've had about Ges suggest to me that it would be entirely possible that his wife would be turned off sex altogether for some time, regardless of gender. And if she had any interest in women at all, she might well conclude that they are a safer bet. Which is not to say Bad Sex Made Her Gay, just that she might calculate the risk that way, especially if she were just dipping her toe back into the water. Someone who couldn't physically overpower her might be a lot easier to trust.)

From:

beatrice_otter

Good point about the temper.

From:

siliconshaman

I'll point out that sexual orientation has a strong genetic basis, so inheriting that is plausible. [who knows, maybe Piotr was so far into the closet he was living in Narnia.] Ditto temper.

Truth be told, families have traits, and since Piotr was not too shabby as a tactician, we could say it's a family thing.

However, it wouldn't be implausible to have all those, just in different measures. Say she hasn't quite got Aral's self-control over her temper. She doesn't repress it to the point where she blows up in a killing rage, but she does have less dramatic 'tantrums' or flares far more frequently than her brother. Aral was primarily hetro, whereas given her experiences with Ges she's more lesbian. Aral was a wizard at military tactics, his sister is the brilliant socialite and plays the game of social influence as a Master of Strategy. [witness the fact she's still received in society despite technically being in disgrace.]

She can still have the same traits as Aral, but with different expressions of them. Road less travelled and all that..

From: (Anonymous)

I would say that said character exists in one of two formats depending on how you want to read it.

1) the obvious one is Cordelia herself, but not being Barryarran lets skip her for one her truly is Barryarran to the core, and is in a very very real sense a female Aral (where as Cordelia is more a bemused/horrified outsider mostly inadvertently breaking Barryar around the edges into change)

2) Think that Ivan's mother Madame Vorpatril is very much exactly the type of character your are describing - she just also has the social graces to channel her temper effectively and to good use. Even as she is already written, she is a character of some significant depth I feel. And in true Mile's as the next generation tends to surround himself with pretty strong non-wallflower type women, or in the case of his wife serve to catalyze such change

--

Just a thought. I love anything in this universe mind, but if it helps you to not have to re-write the wheel, I think there is simple a lot to choose from in universe without requiring any real change to existing story or cannon, just viewpoint shifting and telling a good story from said perspective.