Miles Vorkosigan alternate careers

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Miles Vorkosigan alternate careers

It's not exactly a secret that I hate Miles Vorkosigan being in the military, so for RL reasons I was thinking hmm could Miles instead become a doctor, and then followed up immediately with "absolutely he could not" and in fact I could not think of any position in a hospital that he would be suited for, but then I realized I was overthinking this.

Miles would be a great plumber. It's perfect for him. No boss, just clients, and he can pick the interesting jobs. It's bounded but also a place for creativity. He has to find out what the problem is and fix it. Because of his size, he may even be a better choice for certain jobs than other plumbers. He can pick his hours by picking the clients and the jobs, and then hyperfocus on a problem until it's over. If he wants, he can pack his schedule, or he can relax it. But he's not answering to anyone and people are grateful for his help because it's a problem they can't fix themselves, and it's also necessary: everyone will at some point require the assistance of a plumber.

The only problem is that there's no wonderful recognition and pride from his peers, unless we can get him to value the opinions of other plumbers, and then he can just brag about all the impossible disasters he fixed before breakfast. The sense of accomplishment is built-in, as in the sense of being valuable and needed.

And I feel like even Miles Vorkosigan would not find a way to commit treason whilst doing it.

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He'd be a great plumber.

As someone was told in a Hippocratic Oath spirit by my surgeon father never to go into medicine, the thought of Miles as a doctor makes me go cold!

Alternately, he'd be a hilarious penetration tester in security engineering...

As someone was told in a Hippocratic Oath spirit by my surgeon father never to go into medicine, the thought of Miles as a doctor makes me go cold!

He would be so bad. So bad. I don't think he could get through medical school but even if he could, he would be so bad as a doctor or any kind of professional providing patient care of any type. I can't even see him in research, he doesn't have the diligence or the patience.

Alternately, he'd be a hilarious penetration tester in security engineering...

He absolutely would!

Tbh he'd be terrific in stand-up comedy (I conjecture, as not-a-stage-performer-or-comedian) but I bet he'd hate having to do it!

I don't watch too much stand-up comedy; the current mode of it being observational comedy is something that's very very very hit or miss with me and usually a miss. Stand up routines that everyone really loves and says are funny I often find unbearable and extremely not funny at worst, and "uh, what's the joke here" and boring at best.

But I think they require a certain amount of self-awareness and willingness to laugh at yourself, that I don't know if Miles possesses. It would be great if he did, though. I think many of Miles's problems with how he sees himself and his drive to prove himself could stand for him to take a step back. "So here I was, seventeen years old and horny. No, hornier than that. No, even hornier. And I wanted to impress this girl who thought of me just as a distant friend. A good distant friend! But someone she spent summer vacations with, not a bosom friend. I wanted to be the kind of bosom friend that would be allowed to touch her bosom. So naturally I wanted to impress her. How this lead to me taking over a mercenary company is a long story. I've got 5 minutes. Let's do it."

I love the idea of Miles as a plumber, but I think he'd be happier as a journalist. He's quite good at creative presentation of facts. Of course he'd make his way into being a war correspondent, but I'm not at all sure he'd be able to avoid committing treason.

Journalism would be good, he's squirrely and persistent. Don't know how well he'd handle being edited, he would need to be convinced to respect the editor the way he does Illyan to accept any kind of criticism or changes.

Miles as a journalist would be brilliant, get fired a lot, and probably go to prison repeatedly, and make Aral's (and later Gregor's) life impossible. Therefore he wouldn't do it, unless you change the context completely - yes he makes Aral's life very hard in the military, but he does so as a consequence of trying to solve problems the Empire wants solved, not because Making The Government's Life Hard is literally the job. Ironically I don't think Aral-the-man would mind Miles doing investigative journalism to his government, but Aral-the-Prime-Minister would wish he'd wait and do it to the next guy.

I think he would be a great chef in a Michelin-type restaurant -- he has the insane work ethic thing and the control freakery, and I feel like he would also relish the celebrity-chef status that can accompany that.

That could work! A version of Miles who got really into food and wanted to feed other people. Maybe Piotr told him some story sometime about eating terrible food during the war and how some people did manage to make good food, and maybe Miles's hospital visits had him eating terrible food, or eating bad ration bars during his stint in Space Boy Scouts. So he might decide that he's going to learn how to cook to compensate, realize he's good at it, and break on through to the other side.

And then he could be the kind of celebrity chef who suddenly declares that his award-winning restaurant Denarii is going to close without notice, and then opens some strange pop-up restaurants over the city before opening a new permanent place Auditory that has no menu overlap at all with Dendarii. Because of the need for reinvention and avoiding being predictable.

And then he probably ends up on Space Food Network, which reminds me that at one point I did start a random fic with the idea of the Betan Gastronomical Survey, where Cordelia would be the host of a travel food show of that name and meet Aral before the war, and that didn't work for obvious reasons (I know nothing about food, and would need to know a lot about Russian food and Russian/French/Greek/English fusion), but I do love Betan Gastronomical Survey.

Or maybe when he was stuck at home recovering one time he imprinted on the cook instead of Bothari, and just stayed in the kitchen all the time! I feel like Cordelia would encourage that kind of thing. And yes, he obviously starts and stops restaurants at whim, and no one understands why he won't just keep a good thing going. And then someone important will be poisined at his restaurant and that's where the treason charge comes in.

The Betan Gastronomical Survey, though, is a brilliant idea.

Or maybe when he was stuck at home recovering one time he imprinted on the cook instead of Bothari, and just stayed in the kitchen all the time!

Definitely much healthier for Miles!

I love this and I am hungry now. :p

My first thought to this was electrician, because does plumbing really have that many *weird* problems.

But then I realised no, clearly he'd be writing code. He could even get tapped by ImpSec and sit in his little room with nine screens and fridge full of drinks he should have stopped drinking five days ago, Miles have you slept this week at all, and he would be relentless at hunting down typos and errors in the code and he'd write entirely new programs with coding language he invented so he could do this one thing in three hundred lines of code instead of three hundred and nine, this is so much better and more efficient.

And it would allow him to babble about his work and literally no one would understand him, so he could still have a high clearance level. He could still sometimes save the world, save Gregor's life (there was a security scanner on the doors of the palace with a really weird and obscure weakness that could have been exploited! And Miles fixed it right before some teenager in his basement got to exploit it (who is now being recruited for ImpSec IT school.)

Miles is constantly battling with the Cetagandan IT hackers and thwarting them, and the Cetagandan IT folks HATE Miles so much and have introduced Miles' nickname into their lexicon. ("Why did your code fail? Captain Naismith stopped me. Why did you forget to buy bagels for breakfast? Captain Naismith stopped me.")

The one time Ivan gets sent to Cetaganda, Miles begs/tricks his way onto the trip and visits everyone and is so cheerful and friendly and when he gets home the Cetaganda IT folks start finding little Easter eggs and they go completely bonkers. HE WAS HERE. ON OUR PLANET. And they debate for years if it was Vorpatril, Vorkosigan, or that so-called batman traveling with them being all unobtrusive (Miles was forced to take a bodyguard with him, just in case.)

And of course it would be seen as an appropriate career for someone with Miles' physical limitations, back when he was a kid getting into it.

Ivan would constantly nag Miles to fix his credit rating so he can trade in his aircar for a newer model.

The hallmark of Miles's easter eggs is some random quotes from some Barrayaran kids show, which is why Cetagandan wikipedia has an article on it at all.

The important part of all this is that everyone who knows Miles can still yell about whatever he's doing, and also get all the headaches (mostly Simon) and be proud but unable to tell anyone what he actually did (because the ones who would understand coding-speak already know about it.)

I feel like Ekaterin is a gamer and Miles is the first person who really supports her gaming habits (she likes the games where you blow shit up, and shoot people, and this is considered inappropriate for a Vor Woman.)

Nikki is the oddball child who likes plants and wants to be outside, mom, don't be weird dirt all over the rug isn't going to hurt anyone.

Ivan got ship duty, and is standing over to one side wondering if anyone knows about the invasion fleet he defeated single-handedly? Mostly by accident, but he still did it? Does he *want* everyone - or anyone - to know? Probably not. He's out in space flying fighter ships and captaining a warship and he keeps insisting it's all boring as hell, no really, what yeah there was a couple weeks of hand-to-hand combat but nothing to write home about???

Ivan, if you let them know you're competent, they'll never let you live it down!

This is amazing and I love it

I love it.

Miles as a plumber is delightful! I think "electrical engineer" might also work (even more ways to risk your life, which Miles might enjoy).
And I feel like even Miles Vorkosigan would not find a way to commit treason whilst doing it.
...come on, you KNOW these have to be famous last words ;)

LOL sad but true

I dunno, Miles is really talented at figuring out ways to accidentally commit treason.

I think it would have been interesting if Aral and Cordelia had sent him off to do a tour of the district, instead of to Beta Colony. Start with the inaccessible bits and do it by horse. Get to know the people on the ground. I think it would have focused him on the needs of the district and he could have thrown himself at the problems of rural poverty and stuff like that. That would have been a very interesting non-military career for Miles.

ngl that's my ideal for Miles and I wish it had happened. It gets him out of the way of being used against Aral (probably that's what Aral was intending by shoving him out to Beta Colony, except then Miles went off script) and it lets him really see what being Vor means, since at that point in his life, he's so overwhelmed with his own pain and anger and frustration, and isn't ready to hear that actually he doesn't know what it's like to be a mutie in the district, he just knows what it's like to be mutie and Vor. I think he could get really invested, at that point in life, in helping all the muties who are abandoned in Vashnoi, whereas once we get to Flowers, he's been convinced around to the other way of things and it's no longer so close to him that Piotr wanted to murder him, that he feels like the murderous parents should not face any legal consequences. I do not think that Miles at 17 would agree with that.

Yes, absolutely! I think Miles would have hated it at least to start, and been really dramatic about how awful things were, and then ... gotten hooked. Because he is so well placed to make a difference on so many different axes, but only if he's there and doing the work and seeing what it's actually like and being seen by the people of the communities.

Somewhere in scrivener I feel I have a start of this and now I'm doing a deep dive and finding other stuff but not this, oh well. But yes. This would be such a great place for Miles to be Miles.

this is an extremely delightful prospect and I'm very much enjoying it and the comments!

(Miles should not be a lawyer for obvious reasons.)

It's so amusing to me that him being a lawyer was actually floated in canon. Miles has never met a law that he is interested in following.

Hi, hello, a friend linked me to this post, and I am INTRIGUED.

I love the idea of Miles as a plumber!

This is less a career and more of a calling (at least on Barrayar), but I think Miles could make an extremely effective community organizer/activist. He’s extremely good at communicating with people and motivating them to work together as a group, and it would give him a lot of scope to think strategically and come up with brilliant sideways moves his opponents never see coming, and also to do a lot of visible grandstanding and accidentally (or purposefully!) commit treason a million times over.

Basically, I want the AU where Miles makes it his mission to do what Aral says is contrary to his own oaths— doing his level best to gut imperial power and return it to the hands of the people—and then also being instrumental in founding a disability rights movement on Barrayar. I don’t think this Miles would go for political office, but if he ever ended up there, he’d be the elected official who helps protesters break into the building and disrupt the legislative session.

Hi! I think if he does that, he's gonna have to be real careful, but if he starts doing disability stuff at the district level, well, that's his own right as Lord Vorkosigan ;)

Could Miles Vorkosigan whip the whole union into shape to win the recognition of his plumbing peers? He could be the union president? Idek.

Cordelia would be proud. I feel Aral would want to be proud but still be aghast and concerned. But also proud.

Miles would definitely enjoy careers where he can point to something concrete and go, "I did that!" Whether it's a Cetagandan empress or a great welding job (and I think he'd be a GREAT welder; it combines danger, hands-on activity, and problem-solving), Miles likes seeing results. Especially if he can arrive at them by methods that baffle and astound everyone. :D

Interesting that everyone agrees Miles would be a terrible doctor, considering that Miles' disabilities are modeled after a doctor whom the author knew.

For me at least it's not his disabilities that makes me say that. It's his personality.

Oh, I agree! The author even says that she took Miles' personality/his "catalyst" properties from some other person she knew. I just think it's funny that a real-life doctor was a major inspiration for the character and yet he's a terrible fit for a medical career. :D

Plumber treason: he gets into a contest with the one other Vor coworker involving cutting pipes with two torches and a supervisor he's pissed off tries to make a case that it's technically a duel with the two swords.
Alternately, they're working on the Residency (because he's Vor and nepotism and he has a clearance or whatever) and he uncovers a Plot and accidentally does a treason technicality in the course of exposing it.

Poor Miles. :P

He's competent at plumbing vs. bug butter, I could see that path! Poor Ivan would inevitably catch claustrophobia in an even more horrifying way...

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