Not albums, but I do have a current top 5!

(not in order)

Antebellum
Copenhagen
Daughter
Drought
Stray Italian Greyhound



Any of her songs you think I should give a listen/relisten?

My Cordelia meta is just generally "wow, I do not understand Cordelia". Like, to write a character, I have to "hear their voice" or something, I have to know how they'd react, how they feel, why they do what they do. I don't have that with Cordelia at all, at all, and her last book only made it worse.

One thing, though, that stood out to me on a recent canon review, and that if you've read Barrayar you've seen more recently than I have, is how not-commited to staying on Barrayar she is. It kind of just happens to her? Like, if Aral hadn't become Regent, and there hadn't been a war after that killed Aral for not being the Regent, it seems... kind of reasonable to think that she, Aral, and Piotr Miles might have moved off planet, or Cordelia might have gone back to profesional astrocartographying, even with her bridges fully burned with the Betans.

Which makes me long for someone who does understand Cordelia to write a fic where Cordelia is the one who becomes a mercenary admiral, Aral gets to live his dream of not killing people professionally, and Piotr Miles doesn't feel like he is buried under the Great Man Theory Of History.

I understand Alys a lot more than I understand Cordelia, which, uh, isn't hard (Cordelia never asked Aral... okay, moving on.) But Alys I can understand because she's a product of her culture and circumstances. Also we barely see her, so that helps. ;) The most wtf thing Alys did was in that dinner party in CVA, that part I can't deal with. But Alys is a lot like Piotr: she wants grandchildren. Piotr's not shown being as pushy to Aral as Alys is to Ivan, but, well, Piotr did manage to get Aral married once already.

If Ivan had just gotten married at 20 and had a really messy divorce...

(I forgot who floated Piotr/Alys, it may have been you? But it would be terrifying and also probably work.)

I am not sure the plot relevance that needs to get across, but my current thoughts on Alys and power re: Ivan is the push/pull between needing to be close enough to Gregor that the protective halo also protects him, but also not being too close that Gregor thinks Ivan is a threat and murders him. Ivan being "the idiot" is an instruction to Ivan, yes, but it's also a reassurance to Gregor.

They're really not clanless, though. They have more to do with the Vorpatrils than I'd think they would, considering Falco even sent armsmen to Ivan's entrance exam. Ivan's oath is to the Vorpatrils, even though it'd make more sense for him personally to have it to Gregor. Ivan's main connection to Aral seems more casual, in that Alys expected Aral to step into a fatherly role (which Aral didn't do). Miles in Cetaganda indicates that he thinks of himself in the main line and Ivan in the cadet line, which is true in abstact, since Ivan is in a very cadet line of the Vorpatrils, but Ivan is in nowhere near any cadet lines of the Vorkosigans. He's closer to the Vorbarras than Vorkosigans, unless Alys herself is a Vorkosigan, which would be an interesting thought experiment, but isn't borne out anywhere. Ivan is treated as a somewhat member of the Vorkosigan family on a casual basis on behalf of Aral's relationship with Padma, and Aral would give the Countship to him if all Aral's kids died, based on sentiment, essentially. But Ivan's talk about letting the clan down... Ivan does not actually seem to be a member of the Vorkosigans. But he sure actually is a member of the Vorpatrils. He's such a member of the Vorpatrils, and Alys has such standing with the Vorpatrils, that Falco refuses to give Ivan a divorce that both he and his wife want, just because Alys doesn't want it. Which was sure a thing I'm never gonna get over, because denial of divorce is an issue in my culture, and Alys refusing to let him get divorced is something I have to make sure doesn't become a moral event horizon issue for me, since it's apparently not a big deal in that culture.

And Padma didn't die because he didn't have a clan, he died because he did have a claim on a clan, and it was the Vorbarras. But he was likely as much a Vorpatril as anyone, considering the kind of standing his wife and son ended up having. And why not, because why wouldn't the Vorpatrils want to have Prince Xav's grandson? He's useful.

And I'm not sure why they'd ever force Alys out? This isn't a Regent or Prime Minister situation. Alys has no formal power. Alys wasn't working in an Empress role, she was working in a hostess role. She can step back from hostessing and do more on the backend. She can continue doing any liasioning for ImpSec that she's been doing. Because she's in the background with no formal power, she can shift. If she was working against Gregor, then yeah, sure, why not try to get rid of her, but she's not. And she's not in any position where she'd need a figleaf of promoting her out of the way. She could just stop doing the job and there wouldn't be any issue. Why would they exile her or put her under house arrest? She's not their enemy.

And Ivan having kids bringing more heir options is exactly the problem that Ivan already has. Considering Ivan's problems in life, I wouldn't be shocked at all if he wanted to opt out of it on behalf of any kids. Which, well, he did by marrying a Cetagandan. I think Alys is aware that "running out of heirs" means either her son becomes Emperor (very dangerous) or someone murders her son to clear a path for someone else becoming Emperor (exactly what happened to Padma). This isn't resolved by Ivan having kids, it just makes it worse.

OKAY BUT I ACTUALLY HAVE FEELINGS although to be frank I'm not sure I can remember any of them. But anyway, they shouldn't be hard, and also one of the ones on my bathroom mirror is possibly breaking and probably I could fix it, but I feel, as a renter whose rent keeps going up while the landlord is not putting extra value into the place, those things are not worth my time and effort of either doing it myself or of trying to get the landlord to reply to my emails. The most unhinged hinges in my life are the folding closet doors in the hallway that won't stay shut, and aren't attached at a second point, so they also SWING, it is very annoying and one of these days I'm going to get annoyed enough at them to take them down and leave them randomly in a corner. Like, they actively obstruct my movements when I've got the laundry going. One of these days I'm gonna have Enough and down those doors are coming.

Thanks for bringing this in from tumblr, the new activity page is just not... working great. (well, it's better than it was, which was it wouldn't load for, uh, two weeks maybe? It was a long time.)

In honor of the Ask A Manager question today about a dude who wants to be called Lord $Name at work, I'm gonna tell you just some stuff about That Time Petya Went To Earth College.

Which was probably a graduate program, although I don't think it was a doctorate. I am not certain of his specialty but frankly, he wasn't either when he started. He was just SO VERY BORED on Earth (every single person, including Petya, knew he was shoved into a Do Nothing job in a service that has the well-deserved reputation of being the place you shove people who are too well-connected to discharge but aren't actually good at anything; Petya resents this but understands it; after the last few generations of Vorkosigans, and what with the age that Gregor is, no one wants another war hero Vorkosigan to breathe down another Emperor's neck, Petya is not allowed to have a decorated career, he's not allowed to be his ancestors, it's a waste but Petya is politically aware of it enough to understand it, and maybe it'd've been better for him if he wasn't? But anyway, point is, Petya was bored as fuck on Earth.)

And so what does Petya do on Earth? Well, he can't just fuck every random junior officer who stops by, although, tbf, probably he tries. :P So he goes to school because why not. He's not taking a full courseload, because he *does* have a day job, even if that day job is along the lines of "I bring the coffee to the people who spend hours negotiating minor details in extradition policies that then never got into effect", along with the fair share of "someone needs to read over the memo we got sent after some Barrayaran tourist pissed someone off, and summarize it for morning briefing, and hey, Petya, you have nothing else to do with your life".

Anyway, he goes to university. Which is an Amazing Experience of Growth, probably, because no one there knows who or what he is, except he's some Barrayaran military officer taking extra credit or whatever, and Petya never wears his uniform to class, so even that part is academic.

He probably meets some Barrayaran expat or another who is all "um. Aren't you a Vorkosigan? Which one are you?" and Petya's like "I am exactly the one you think I am" and the other person just o.O at him, like, what are you doing here?????? Also, didn't you already go to college? Doesn't the Barrayaran military have advanced education?

Petya: it sure does, but I'm on Earth, so I'm taking advantage of Earth opprtunities! *charming smile that fails because he is not charming*

And Petya's on Earth long enough to graduate, and no one later thinks much of it, it's just some intergalactic student, right?

Except in the universe where Aral gets assassinated and Petya gets sent home really quickly with mostly just the clothes on his back, and a term paper he never does finish. Because that's the universe where Petya, at age 26, ends up the Regent of Barrayar.

And back on Earth, people in the class are just like "oh, guess he dropped out" and then some time later, mentions it to someone who knows about Barrayar, whose reaction is YOU WENT TO GRAD SCHOOL WITH THE GODDAMN LORD REGENT OF A THREE PLANET EMPIRE????

Which is how they find out that his family being "in politics" and him going home "because politics" meant he got shoved into the top job. Huh. Weird.

That last timeline is a good timeline! I promise! ;) Okay, I feel all timelines are good timelines, but that's also the one where Miles grows up on Beta, if that helps?

Yup. I learned from Ask A Manager today that "buying a lordship" aka buying a piece of land and getting a paper that you can call yourself a lord is a thing that some people do. Which, uh. Okay, sure.

hey, it's as legit as any noble title

Sure! Any of it in particular, or just, like, commentary on doing that pairing at all?

And Baby Makes Three! That was fun to write. I wrapped it up earlier than I probably should have due to RL stuff, I still had some time left in the trope bingo deadline, but I needed to wrap it up in case Things happened that would make me probably miss the deadline. And so I cut Ivan and Gregor's marital fight. It was gonna be the start of part 5, but it needed heavy revision and also it was Angst and also Gregor's Childhood Trauma, which isn't necessarily in the theme of the fic, so it just got completely cut.

The idea was, Ivan and Gregor had a fight about Gregor not wanting to let Leo have favorite things. Because of Gregor's trauma about being 5 and his mom dying and his house burning and probably losing stuff, and Gregor might have fixating on losing Steggie and the like, as a microcosm of the grief of losing his mother. And so if Leo doesn't have favorite toys or clothes or anything, he can't be sad when something happens to them.

And this to Ivan. Who was born after his father was murdered. Ivan knows a background kind of grief permeating everything in his childhood, but if Gregor tries to tell him that he doesn't know what it was like, well, 1) he's right, but also 2) he's wrong.

And Ivan's like, well, first of all you don't want him to not have favorites, and if either or both of us die, you do want him to be sad and mourn us, you just don't want him traumatized, but none of this will help.

And it never got into good shape but, yeah, it was along the lines of "Ivan and Gregor have similar enough backgrounds and Ivan's mother helped raise Gregor, they're similar enough and Ivan's enough of a shrug-it-off-and-agree kind of guy that they don't have huge differences of opinion on raising a child until the moment they absolutely have a huge difference of opinion on raising a child."

Which didn't necessarily fit into the theme, so it was fine that I cut it.

Other DVD commentary: Leo was originally named Leonid, after the meteors, because that's a space name and this is a space fandom, and bonus points, Leonid is also a human name. Except that Leonid in terms of Russian names makes me think primary of Leonid Brezhnev and I wanted to avoid, if anyone else had that assosciation too, of making it seem like I named this kid after him. ;) And since the canon chopped names down to Xav and Serg, why not chop Leonid down to Leo, which hey, is the name of a constellation, yay space fandom.

But that also had the risk of someone going "did you name this kid after Leo DiCaprio". So between the risk of a Soviet politician and that guy from Titanic, I picked the second one. :P

Also also: Lady Polina had assured Ivan that they couldn't start Leo's parties too big or there'd be nowhere to go from there.

This is subtweeting the last in person meeting my department did where they did, like, congratulations to various people and accomplishments, and it was a long line of them, and you were supposed to clap after each one, and FAR TOO EARLY, some people decided to give a standing ovation. And so, naturally, they then. Had to give a standing ovation. To everyone who came after. And it had to escalate.

Me, in the back of the room, having already cried in the bathroom that day, with three heating pads stuck onto my back, sitting down: *roll eyes*

:D it's hard figuring out what Ivan Vorpatril of all people would actually fight about, y'know? Especially with Gregor.

Alas, my current bookmarking scheme started way too recently to get much Harry Potter reading, especially since that was mostly on random sites whose site layouts I can remember, but not the sites nor the names of the fic (except, notably, Telanu's tea series). Novel-length recs I've got are likely ones you've read, such as Cartographer's Craft and The Sum of Their Parts.

Although the last one does lead me into the squib!Harry fic, since it's a Dark Lord/Very Powerful Harry Potter fic. And I love myself some Dark Lord Harry Potter fics, don't get me wrong. But it did occur to me that I have seen very very very many fics where Harry is very powerful, and I hadn't seen much/any where... he wasn't. And the enduring squib fic I always remember is An extract from "The Witch’s Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, and Baby Care", by Alarica Rosier. Chapter Nine: What if my Baby is a Squib? by Nineveh_uk, which kinda goes "yeah, they're murdering all the squib babies". So that was a very heavy influence.

(Also the word "squib" itself is one of those "worldbuilding happened later" bits; Neville refers them as muggles in the first book when describing his own experiences.)

Squib!Harry is a lot of me working through my feelings about the bais yaakov movement, down to the squib teachers being the same as that one amazing, very knowledgable female teacher I had in high school, who was in a teaching line from Sora Schenirer, who was fantastic... and would never be teaching at a boy's high school yeshiva. It was this, like, universe of female learning where you can also see all the limits and ALSO its progressiveness, because the bais yaakov had better academics than the other girls high school option, which would also suspend you if they saw you hanging out with a boy you weren't related to.

And it's just, like, working through all my pain and trauma that came from attending that school. Because that school was traumatizing in a lot of ways. It's interesting to me how many people read that fic as a metaphor for disability, when it's a metaphor for feminism.

I'm not chassidic. My world is all two income families, except in the cases when it's only one income because the husband is in kollel, and my vague impression is that chasidim are not dissimilar from misnagdim in this. Every girl in my class had a mother with a job. Several of them were doctors.