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jackI was reading Komarr (Miles Vorkosigan) *again*. I know they're often dismissed as space opera, but I find something more to like every time I read them.
* Budding authors are often given the advice to make characters have flaws. That's a reasonable first approximation to good advice, in that characters without flaws will tend to be boring, but leads to making a list of virtues and flaws. What's most adorable and realistic is traits that are *both*.
Miles is a reasonably good example, LMB even says his first book was partially defined by Miles' triumverate of defining sins.
What do you like about him? Impulsiveness. What do you hate? Impulsiveness.
* Or alternatively, stubborn optimism, that he *will* make things go right whatever, and pushes through everything he allowes himself to really want to reality without much respact for the laws of the possible. Yet, how is this different to Tien Vorsoisson? Tien also rolls the dice aiming for the win, but mucks it up every time. Is he just incompetent? That means we like people who are gifted with skill, which is understandable, but doesn't seem fair. Does he fixate on one thing, when he should be solving something else? That could be it. As sonic repeatedly enjoins me, you can do worse than take Mile's attitude to life, even if to even LMJ he's wish fulfillment :)
* I need to read Dreamwaever's biographies again. What happened to LMJ that she always writes women who are browbeaten into staying in boring relationships? Tien is interesting; he doesn't *intend* to be evil, his mistakes and weaknesses just always fall on Ekaterin. But he's realer for it, though I know of people who are that deliberately evil :(
* Ekaterin says she could always be goaded by accusing her of nagging, or being disloyal, or naive. My goads are ignorance and stupidity, I think. It should be a meme: "What is your most besetting sin? Not that which you are most prone to, but that which you most fear and are most careful to flee from?"
ETA: Yeesh, that was a lot of posts. A lull at work, a release of tension, and I'm pouring out :) Yesterdays two were enough to eat half my morning replying. Maybe no-one will be online at the weekend :)
* Budding authors are often given the advice to make characters have flaws. That's a reasonable first approximation to good advice, in that characters without flaws will tend to be boring, but leads to making a list of virtues and flaws. What's most adorable and realistic is traits that are *both*.
Miles is a reasonably good example, LMB even says his first book was partially defined by Miles' triumverate of defining sins.
What do you like about him? Impulsiveness. What do you hate? Impulsiveness.
* Or alternatively, stubborn optimism, that he *will* make things go right whatever, and pushes through everything he allowes himself to really want to reality without much respact for the laws of the possible. Yet, how is this different to Tien Vorsoisson? Tien also rolls the dice aiming for the win, but mucks it up every time. Is he just incompetent? That means we like people who are gifted with skill, which is understandable, but doesn't seem fair. Does he fixate on one thing, when he should be solving something else? That could be it. As sonic repeatedly enjoins me, you can do worse than take Mile's attitude to life, even if to even LMJ he's wish fulfillment :)
* I need to read Dreamwaever's biographies again. What happened to LMJ that she always writes women who are browbeaten into staying in boring relationships? Tien is interesting; he doesn't *intend* to be evil, his mistakes and weaknesses just always fall on Ekaterin. But he's realer for it, though I know of people who are that deliberately evil :(
* Ekaterin says she could always be goaded by accusing her of nagging, or being disloyal, or naive. My goads are ignorance and stupidity, I think. It should be a meme: "What is your most besetting sin? Not that which you are most prone to, but that which you most fear and are most careful to flee from?"
ETA: Yeesh, that was a lot of posts. A lull at work, a release of tension, and I'm pouring out :) Yesterdays two were enough to eat half my morning replying. Maybe no-one will be online at the weekend :)
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Date: 2006-04-21 05:20 pm (UTC)I like many Vorkosigan-like books, but I can see how someone could object. I think the plots and universe and history and characters are very well thought out, but people will condemn it as: unrealistc; or as being able to just as well be written as a western; or a non-scifi-book having done it better and this is just reprising; or it's a silly mix of running around action that doesn't have to make sense because the physics is made up to justify it and cliche characters.
But to me the characters seem wonderfully painted, every time you look you see new nuances. But then, maybe I'm reading into it; that's what we did with startrek, basically.