#the vorkosigan saga
✰books i love: the vorkosigan saga by lois mcmaster bujold
reputation is what other people know about you. honor is what you know about yourself.
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I appreciate knowing that Bujold’s editor tried to convince her not to make Mark fat and she refused.
“What if he’s, like, triangular instead? He can bulk up to be different from Miles.”
Nope! He’s just fat!
“But this is science fiction, there can’t be fat people. Unless they’re villains.”
This one’s a hero!
“But there’s probably science to fix that in the future.”
Oh, good point.
“You agree now? You will not make your readers wrestle with the concept of a fat sympathetic character?”
What? No. I’m going to include a specific mention of metabolic adjustment treatments to make it explicitly clear that Mark is spherical of his own free will.
[And then the cover artists promptly pretended otherwise, like they pretended Miles was six feet tall and ripped instead of 4'11" and hunchbacked, gosh these are some of the worst covers I’ve ever seen]
There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That’s soul destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.
Aral Vorkosigan, A Civil Campaign aka what I just realized Crowley’s deal with unwanted commendations reminded me of this whole time
This week’s Jewish character of the week is: Mark Pierre Vorkosigan
(He had no father. His mother was a uterine replicator. Cordelia, who had given him half his genes, was Jewish, but she had never carried him. Was that enough?)
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