Vorkosigan Readthrough: Labyrinth

[extrapenguin]

It's here!

• Jackson's Whole's neighbors find it a "secretly useful interface with the sub-economy" – fic plz?


• JW was a hijacker-base only a century or two back – wasn't this about when Barrayar was rediscovered?


• Money laundering, weapons deals, bio/gene stuff, fence and ransom deals... such delicious fic ideas.


• Poor Bel, so lonely – and aware of Miles' secret identity, perhaps?


• Saris on women, coffee-colored skin on Bharaputrans, the very name Bharaputra – it would seem that JW got a significant population/cultural influx from India.


• Uterine replicators practical only for last ~200 years – so the Cetagandans, herms, and quaddies are significantly more recent than I'd thought.


• Quaddies aren't widely known of outside quaddiespace.


• The treatment of Bel being in love is rather ... heterocentric. Bel flirts with a man? Bel's playing up the womanly side! Bel flirts with a woman? Bel's playing up the manly side!


• Bel's suggestion of "Fry 'em from orbit" re: Ryoval was very apt, especially considering what will come up later.


• Nicol's contract woes are sadly familiar to all who've looked into migrant workers from Southeast Asia.


• Between The Vor Game and this, Miles seems to be a bit of a duct expert.


• why is there a dubcon sex scene here WTF LMB no


• Oh, Miles, and his lessons on tactics.


• Tung quotes Sun Tzu in the orginal Chinese? Oh Ky.


• Hey, a timeline! 4 000 years after the death of Sun Tzu, which happened c. 496 BCE – so it's c. 3500 CE.


• Needed: Miles strangling an enemy with pajama pants/successfully crashing an aircraft by throwing underwear in the air intakes.

Next: "The Borders of Infinity" on the 13th of November.

Comments

[liv]

I really hated that bit about Bel, making it so het even though it's supposed to be NB. It's up there with Cordelia saying that Aral isn't bi any more now he's married, or some of Ivan's sympathetically portrayed attitudes to Dono. I think it's partly that the books have aged badly; I get the impression that the latest one is trying to do better with Aral's bisexuality

[extrapenguin]

I could make do with the "was bisexual, is now monogamous" if there'd be some worldbuilding on Beta colony dividing sexual orientation into available/unavailable, and then gradating from there. So there'd be monogamous and celibate on the unavailable side, and then the polygamous X-sexuals and X-sexuals on the available side. I saw a meta on it!

Ivan's attitudes towards Dono, yes. They're a bit um. The latest book... well, I'd like to see an on-screen same-sex relationship at some point. Apparently it's not even shown via flashback.

[naath]

I conclude from the latest book that Cordelia was just *fibbing*.

Ivan says stupid things, I've always chalked that up to "Ivan is an idiot" personally. But I do wish the authorial voice was less on Ivan's side.

[extrapenguin]

Well, to be fair, he probably was monogamous at that point in time. Just temporarily. :P

[xochiquetzl]

This, yes. (The availability spectrum in addition to the orientation spectrum.) As it was, I winced and moved on.

Part of the issue is that society has changed a lot. Ethan of Athos could probably be rewritten nowadays to have a lot more steam or smut in it, but I imagine it was pushing the envelope pretty hard at the time.

[shanejayell]

The character POV is important to remember too. As much as Miles has tried to develop culture and such, he deep down is still backcountry Vor. It's a tribute to Cordelia and his trips to Beta that he's doing as well as he is.

[extrapenguin]

Miles is more cosmopolitan than the average Vor, and has spent a lot of time out in the Nexus, so I'd hesitate to pin him as backcountry anything. I'd say he's encountered a number of non-heterosexual relationships.

I do think it would've been better had the passage gone "Bel straightened up and flirted with Nicol, shedding the feminine affectations it had put up for Miles' benefit and becoming the familiar officer and gentleherm once more" or something to that effect. Just ... less explicit textual (assumptions of) heterosexuality. Also make the Bel/Nicol seem better by confirming that Bel is returning to its native behavioral patterns and Nicol being attracted rather than Bel switching from one "disguise" to another and Nicol being attracted to the disguise.