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

[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.