April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

Love this. Girlamatic on Mihara Mitsukazu: Part 1, Part 2. More to follow later, I hope. I am a huge fan of Mihara, both for her art style, which I dig--it's not the Gothic Lolita aesthetic specifically, although she's apparently kind of like a Gothic Lolita deity; she's just got this unique and distinctive style that works extremely well with her writing, to my eyes--and because, as I've commented before, and Shupe observes, Mihara is an interesting science fiction writer. Science fiction in its classic speculative, probing function, the kind that burrows into uncomfortable, unsettling questions about human existence, rather than the purely entertaining set dressing. Which I also like.

I don't normally bother to rec this or even note this sort of thing, but this was pretty good fanfic for my favorite author, Lois McMaster Bujold. It's Vorkosigan Saga fic, Miles/Gregor slash. It's good stuff!

E.E. Beck's (and her co-writers Stacy's and Sahiya's) A Deeper Season and sequel What Passing Bells, (and followed by one more must-read among some fragments, Seeds. There are a few other stories set in and out of this universe, and they're worth looking at).

There are some serious flaws in these stories. There are two really major totally bust-your-suspension-of-disbelief elements,

( SUPER SPOILERY PLOT POINTS )


THAT SAID. If you can bring yourself to ignore these issues, the stories read pretty well. If Beck's prose doesn't cut as deep or sparkle as brightly or as often as Bujold's, remember, you're comparing her to the best. And though Beck has a tendency to pile on the drama and people get the drop on our protagonists a little too often, the pacing is overall excellent and the drama never loses its hold on you.

This is a world where Gregor has been in love with Miles even since the shenanigans of the The Vor Game (and admit it, folks, Gregor has never come off as aggressively interested in women, although canonically that's perfectly explainable by the fact that most of the women he knows are aggressively interested in his throne. Or are Cordelia), Laisa doesn't exist, or at least never shows up, and Miles--and yes, this really is a departure from canon, where Miles is shown to have actually thought about his sexuality, and is shown to be clearly and firmly heterosexual--is just flexible enough to be brought round to the idea of Gregor. The drama of the story stems as much from the adjustments they have to make to actually pull off a romance as all the lovely twisting and plotting of the adventure part, which is in the spirit of Brothers in Arms or Cetaganda.

What makes this such an utter pleasure to read is that Beck's drawing on and expanding the emotional intimacy that implicitly exists between Miles and Gregor. They were raised together as brothers, but the connection in adulthood comes also from their shared, insider's understanding of Barrayaran government, and the families of power, and the enormous sense of mutual responsibility and shared values. Beck totally gets Bujold's humanism and her value system and her romance. She excels at writing this aspect of Miles and Gregor's relationship, at making it a focus, and successfully puts a romantic gloss on it.


This could get long, so I will list everything else Beck does wonderfully right:

--Ivan. He's less stupid/faux-stupid here, but he was moving that way in canon anyway, and Beck makes his growing responsibility work. I love Ivan, she loves Ivan, it's all good.

--Miles and Ivan. Aren't they the most enormous fun? And they have the kind of cousin closeness that can be as close as brothers without quite being brothers. Beck really digs that, and though it's a little more dramatic and less funny than Miles and Ivan in canon, it's still wonderful.

--Ekaterin. Hah! I love this. I love this! How often will you see the canon love interest the fanfiction author is setting aside get a role this good? Beck obviously loves Ekaterin, she even loves Ekaterin and Miles. When Ekaterin shows up, Beck not only establishes them as close friends and has Ekaterin as a major character, she makes it clear that they share the attraction they did in canon, that Ekaterin and Miles would still have worked here--Miles just ended up with Gregor first. No, "Oh, we're just friends," or "sure I loved her, but she died, and I'mma move on to the slash now," or infidelity, or any of the nastier fates of romantic rivals in fanfic written by people who are less appreciative of the source material**--this is simply an alternate universe where things happened differently, and her Miles and Ekaterin are so close to the satisfaction of the canon version that I even don't miss that romance in this fic.

(You'll never guess who Ekaterin ends with...oh, okay, yes you will. She hooks up with Ivan, and it's plausible, because Ivan's grown up, and it's really sweet, and the two couples make a lovely family unit composed my favorite characters, emotionally intimate with each other and physically proximate for happy ending d'awww.)

--Alys. I would think it would be tough to get her nuances right, but Beck does it, and it helps to keep the feel of the Barrayaran setting properly wide and complex.


I am not sure about including Aral and Cordelia on that list, although they're prominent in What Passing Bells and I enjoy them there, I questioned at times whether they would really follow the course Beck lays out for them. I'm not sure I disagree, either; it's just harder to picture. And the scenes of Miles and Aral and Cordelia as a united family are total fanservice to me.

You won't see much of the galactic cast, and people like Mark and Illyan are essentially there only in cameos. Though I like all of Bujold's characters, I am okay with this, because Beck does right by them when they do cameo, and she's concentrating on my favorites. XD

So! Highly recommended with some caveats. This is purely derivative fanwork; at no point can it ever claim to surpass or even build on the amazingly awesome source material, which would really be a tall order;*** it's more of a case of a reasonably good imitation of genius. And again, although the flaws are big flaws, Beck's a good enough writer to keep you going despite them, when in the hands of a lesser writer, you wouldn't even be tempted to continue. Read these when you've read all the Vorkosigan books so many times you can recite all the dialogue, but you're desperate to read a good Vorkosigan story.****


*You'd be surprised how much this will not tick you off when you read Ethan of Athos. While the planet Athos was obviously settled by religiously fanatic, misogynistic, homosexual male separatists, their descendants are pleasant, peaceful farmers with surprisingly healthy attitudes towards reproduction, even if they do all think women are scary aliens and don't want to leave their planet. The remaining misogyny is only a lingering remnant--the kind of thing you're taught in Sunday School but never really believed, even though you never really questioned--buoyed by lack of exposure to women. It's rather harmless, and in the gentle, peaceful Ethan, forced to leave the planet on a Quest for New Ovaries, it's positively endearing, especially once he meets Elli Quinn. Nobody's prejudices survive Elli Quinn. Barely anybody survives Elli Quinn at all.

**Or where the source material is less worthy of appreciation. I'm not saying I always mind. This is just a rare exception, and in this context, a very welcome one.

***In contrast, while I was reading Dorothy Sayers and realizing how heavily Bujold drew on her style and characters, I was always impressed by how Bujold built on what she borrowed. That's a case of a phenomenal writer being inspired and influenced by a phenomenal writer, and creating a different thing that is just as good.

****Alternatively, you can read Dorothy Sayers at this point, but you may end up with the same problem in the long run, and she's not even around to eventually produce new books.

I'd like to introduce you to this guy I know. His name is Peter Wimsey. Lord Peter Wimsey. Lord Peter Bredon Death Wimsey. Yes, you read that right: his middle name is Death. He is the most awesome fictional detective ever. Yes, I do love Arthur Conan Doyle; I own a complete Sherlock Holmes omnibus. And I have read the brilliant, mean Tey, and the clever, prolific Christie, and what-have you, but Lord Peter Bredon Death Wimsey is better then 'em all.

I have met the books of Dorothy Sayers, and we get along very well indeed. Weirdly, they were brought to my attention by my dear friend Sarah when I was complaining about how judgmental Tey and Christie are, and she commented that Sayers was like that too, and described Lord Peter Bredon Death Wimsey in the sort of detail bound to result in a long list of library requests. I say weird, because actually, Sayers really isn't very judgmental at all. She's not even very elitist, which is an amazing thing in someone who had apparently read the entire canon of English and French literature, circa 1920 something. She seems to be that holy thing that is the educated intellectual who embraces a wide experience of human existence; she knows not all people are like her, or could be like her, and she accepts that. And writes a cracking good murder mystery, to boot.

Sayers, like Heyer, seems to have been a major influence on Lois McMaster Bujold, for those of you who have read the Vorkosigan books: each time I cracked open one of the Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane mysteries, I was reminded of Miles and Ekaterin. It's not a direct lift or anything, but Miles Vorkosigan is hugely a character of Peter Wimsey's imprint: a fantastic, idealistic authorial ideal. Not a self-insert or a self-gratification, neither tragic nor undamaged, but some kind of fiction-writer's imagining of a very good, very entertaining person.

On a slight side note, I was reminded, whilst reading Gaudy Night of Caroline Stevermer's A College of Magics, so if you like one, you might like the other.

Lord Peter Bredon Death Wimsey, more commonly known as Lord Peter Wimsey, is an early-to-mid-20th-century English aristocrat who was educated at Oxford, went to fight in the Great War, got blown up and mentally fucked up in the Great War, came home, puttered around in London with his wicked cool photog manservant Bunter, collectin' first-edition books and detectin' for a hobby, and dropping his g's whenever it seemed most appropriate. Eventually, he met Harriet Vane, who was also educated at Oxford, wrote excellent murder mysteries, and was Peter's equal in every way except possibly in the atmospheric droppin' of g's.

The books are many and lovely. The most common recommendation for Peter/Harriet awesomeness is to start with Strong Poison, in which Peter meets Harriet and saves her from hanging from a false murder charge, and continue on with Gaudy Night, in which they hook up, and, with its Oxford setting, prompted author Jill Patton Walsh to attend said university. Personally, I would recommend starting with Whose Body?, the first Wimsey book, which establishes Wimsey and that most excellent manservant, Bunter, continuing on with Strong Poison, then Have His Carcase, which establishes Harriet better than Strong Poison, has many cool textual tricks and jokes, and gives you a really excellent Peter/Harriet rhythm, and finishing up with Gaudy Night, keeping Busman's Honeymoon for dessert. Busman's Honeymoon, which details Peter and Harriet's wedding and honeymoon, started life as a play, and shows it in the setting and structure. It is probably superfluous, but it is lovely, and deeply, profoundly, romantic.

Another side note: Sayers wrote contemporary settings. Her shell-shocked veteran of World War I would have been based on the real veterans of World War I surrounding her; the slowly creeping, pervasive dread of the war to come must have been reflective of the real creeping, pervasive nightmare of another hideous war that haunted England in the 1920's and 30's. She doesn't dwell on it greatly, but I could not get away from that thought while reading her books, and consequently, I'm sort of fixated on that whole period of history. Christie's rather fun, Tey is intelligent and occasionally, really profound, and not just cynically cruel, but on the whole, I prefer Sayer's vision of humanity: knowing, open-eyed, but kind. And her prose is crackin' good.

P.S. The BBC adaptations of Strong Poison, Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night are excellent, and absolutely worth watching if you like to see good book-to-screen-adaptations, but do read the books first.

I finally finished The Baroque Cycle. After about three months, with two short intervals to knock off a dozen or so fluffy Georgette Heyer Regency romances and half a dozen odd murder mysteries by Josephine Tey (just to clear my palate), I have finished reading ALL TWO THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN PAGES OF IT thank you herongale.

It's one of the best books I've ever read, period, hands down, no qualifications and no genre classifications. I recommend it to anyone who likes to read. Don't be scared by the page count; it's got a slow start, but within a few chapters, you'll be too caught up in the joy of Stephenson's prose* to even notice.

And now I go to read the earlier, yet chronologically later Cryptonomicon, which is a wussy thousand something pages, and I can probably knock off in under two weeks. HAH.

*He uses the word palimpsest. Repeatedly. People have been justly canonized for lesser accomplishments.