(no subject)

[owl]

I have been browsing the LMBujold list.

Have discovered that some readers think

• Gregor doesn't care all that about Miles (or that it's all tell-not-show in the books) because he doesn't haul him out of his woe-I-have-been-booted-from-the-military funks in WA and Memory


• Ges and Serg weren't, well, I suppose 'lovers' is kind of inappropriate, but anyway


• Donna/Dono isn't bi (and was all along)


• Elli is more interesting a character and more worthy of Miles than Ekaterin is

I don't think there's anyone going with e) All of the above, but you never know.


(My responses in order: take a closer look at the plot of those two books, no-brainer, Countess Vormuir springs to my mind, and ok, did you get the Beijing editions?)

Comments

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Donna/Dono isn't bi (and was all along)

Is anyone arguing that s/he started out fancying men, but ended up considering the merits of women after sleeping with Ivan?

I actually like both Elli and Ekaterin, though I do think Elli's behaviour with regard to wedding presents was staggeringly tasteless. I think my slight preference for Ekaterin may be that I haven't actually met anyone who's had total facial reconstruction surgery, but I have met people who've been in relationships with the likes of Tien Vorsoisson.

Re Gregor and Miles, does it not occur to people that apart from when he's suddenly being caught on the exposed 'kidnapping small boys is not a good idea' nerve, Gregor is generally busy being an Emperor?

[coughingbear]

Re: Gregor and Miles, absolutely. Also, in Memory, as soon as a way becomes clear for Gregor to give Miles something useful and constructive (for both M & the Empire) to do, he takes it.

[owl]

Yes, Miles should really have been court-martialled. Instead of which, he gets promoted :-P
But I can't see Gregor throwing Miles into a bath of ice-cubes. If G. had appeared at that both, iles would probably have died out of sheer avoidance. And after the dressing-down Gregor does do a sort of older-brotherly 'okay, you're tacitly forgiven; come and meet my girlfriend?' which is rather sweet.

Why do I not have a Gregor icon?

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to think now whether any of the covers have Gregor on.

[owl]

None of mine do. That probably is why.

[owl]

Is anyone arguing that s/he started out fancying men, but ended up considering the merits of women after sleeping with Ivan?

That was one of the few theories that I didn't see. I was just reading along about 3 years after the fact going, "Occam's Razor?"

Yeah, it would take quite a lot of cultural context to make the cat blanket acceptable (although, did they actually get round to doing it on the blanket or did Miles just think about it a lot?)

Re Gregor and Miles, does it not occur to people that apart from when he's suddenly being caught on the exposed 'kidnapping small boys is not a good idea' nerve, Gregor is generally busy being an Emperor?

Yeah, that's what he keeps Ivan for. Plus, by the time Miles fails the Academy entrance, Vordrozda has been working over Gregor for months according to Cordelia, which you can bet included detaching him from the Vorkosigans, and in Memory he's just given Miles the sack and is pretty cross with him. And he did ask him or lunch.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

So were they seriously arguing that that line about Dono having an unfair advantage with women was just because he used to be one? Because I can't say that was how I read it, though my brain may have been unduly tuned to the Smut Channel by the naked-Roic-and-bug-butter scene.

I do hope the cat blankets were hypoallergenic. I threatened to make one out of Jellica this morning when I discovered she'd thrown up in my shoe. Fortunately it was a Croc and they're washable.

[owl]

Some people were arguing that s/he got her sexuality rewired on Beta as well, or that s/he fancied whichever sex s/he wasn't at the time, or that Olivia's gay and it was a political marriage....

Bad Jellica! Last week Murphy got shut into the utility room and did the other on my shoes, sadly non-washable.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Even given that the Betans could rewire someone's sexuality, which I don't suppose is any more improbable than the existence of FTL drives, I'm not convinced that Donna would have passed the barrage of counselling and psychological tests that you probably have to go through beforehand.

Bad Murphy. Wasn't there a patch of utility room floor available?

[owl]

I suspect he may have wanted to hide it under the shoe.