jack

Recently Liv linked to a discussion about hat-sorting[1] Vorkosigan Saga characters. I was really interested, although also interested to see I often disagreed.

The houses

First, some clarifications on how I see the houses as Rowling seemed to intend them or how they make the most sense, rather than as they come across in the books.

Gryffindor is the "good" house, but if you eschew a moral judgement, you can say they're defined by bravery/impulsiveness and loyalty/dogmatism.

Slytherin is the "evil" house, but if you eschew moral judgement, you could say they're the house of ambition and forming social alliances. I think "in-group-ness" can be very slytherin, but I don't think it has to be racial-based even though that was the primary division represented at the time Harry Potter was at school.

Ravenclaw is easy: good or bad, they're motivated by understanding.

Hufflepuff is often seen as the "other" house, but that's unfair, they seem defined by reliability (seen positively as loyalty or trustworthyness or negatively as ploddingness) and nurturingness. You can have bad-ass hufflepuffs, see below :)

[1] what's the appropriate verb here?

Miles Vorkosigan

Someone said that Miles was Gryffindor and Naismith was Slytherin. I think that's backwards: Naismith is the most charge-in-and-damn-the-consequences part of Miles, if anything, even more devoted to "do the right thing at all costs" than Miles is. Hence Gryffindor.

Whereas Miles is good, but he's ambitious good. He doesn't just want to do something good, he wants to change the world for good. He talks everyone into his way of doing things, and makes friends with everyone[2]. Ambition, networking, and silver-tongue, that is so Slytherin in a good way.

[2] I thought Slughorn was a missed opportunity, because he tries to make friends, but is way too slimy. I think it still counts as Slytherin if you make lots of friends and genuinely like them.

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I 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 :)

I've been rereading the Vorkosigan series. I *do* love them, but had a variety of extra impressions:

* In Shards of Honor it's strange to have commanding officers called "Naismith" and "Vorkosigan" who are different :) And lovely to see all the Mayhews and Talas and Hovises and wonder if they're the same ones as later.

* She is very good at showing both sides of something, which many authors mess up. You feel equally exasperated with Barrayarans and Betans without ever getting the "and now from the other point of view just for the sake of it" feeling so many authors cause. Bothari, Vorrutyer, Vordarian, Piotr all do awful things, two and a half are definitely villains, but Cordelia still empathises.

* And later on Tien and Ekaterine. Tien was an ass, but was entirely human; you can see yourself being him. And certainly being her. And the relationship obviously evolved naturally to that point from flaws, mainly in him, but also a lot of "it just happened". It's so much more subtle to show bullying where the victim's self-perception is warped and rationalised than when the victim is beat up a lot.

* The technology is mostly done with craft too, though you could still poke holes at a lot of things. Cf. Genre Killing Ideas. Fast penta is a great tool, it cleans up a plot of all the "but what if they're lying" red herrings, whilst still allowing plenty of mystery because the important people are immune.

* But some things niggle me. In Mountains of Mourning, Miles gives his word to limit his interrogation of $charcter, avoiding his inplicating $othercharacter, and allowing Miles to solve the murder elegantly logically. Wouldn't it be more elegant/safer to ask the questions *before* fast penta, and then just repeat them?

* For crying out loud, it's a good point that everyone has Vorsomething, but for the ease of the readers I wish it could have been Vor Something instead. I appreciate this was probably partly deliberate and partly established in the first book and locked in.

* At one point they list the heir to the heir to the heir to the heir to the heir to the heir of the emporer. But surely inheritance doesn't work like that: your second in line isn't necessarily your heir's heir. I guess you could try to kill everyone in the right order like dominos :)

* Miles has an idiosyncratic reaction to fast penta. But it does seem to have a pronounced effect; it would still seem worth trying it if trying to interrogate him. Though I think it barely came up.

* Finally, it's funny. I was so pleased Miles found Ekaterine. They seemed right, and it seemed inevitable Eli and Miles couldn't last. Sharpe and Teresa/his final wife should seem parallel, but there I found it disappointing he couldn't have kept Teresa. Is there a difference in the characters or a difference in me?