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May. 27th, 2016 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pensnestThis cat watching a horror movie looks… pretty much the way I would look watching the same movie. Poor little pusskin!
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If this horse were a man, he would adorn the covers of *all* the romance novels that weren't about Marines.
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And now, a word about Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen.
There was an interesting discussion recently—I cannot for the life of me remember whose journal I saw it in, though I know I got there viacathexys—about the book, and one of the things that came up was the really excellent fanfic by Dira Sudis called Everything That You Can Keep. It's Aral/Arkady.
It's a strange case. This is a fanfic story which precedes the canon (sorta—LMB had buried little nuggets of possibility in the text, but hadn't examined them until GJ&RQ), and picks up on something that was certainly there but very discreetly so, and not generally noticed. In both cases, Aral desires his secretary (Jole is Oliver in canon, Arkady in the fan story) and begins a romantic/sexual relationship with him.
In the book, Cordelia recalls finding that her husband and Jole had already begun their relationship when she returned from a trip. And Jole declines to explain exactly how they managed to begin. (I… kinda wonder whether LMB hadn't actually worked it out. I mean, it's not actually *necessary* that we know, but…)
In the fanfic, Cordelia plays a major role in facilitating the relationship. To me, this is far more plausible. In fact, I can't imagine two honour-filled Barrayaran men, one of whom is dizzyingly senior *and* famously married to a somewhat formidable woman, and the other of whom works for him, would have been able to figure things out for themselves at all. Dira Sudis imagined a very carefully run secret network designed to keep homosexual Barrayaran men safe from the world around them, plus some extremely Betan conversations. Wonderful stuff.
For me, the fanfic version is *better* than the canon. Vorkosigan fanfic has some really, really quality stories which are (to my mind) alternate timelines, but this one is more believable than what we are shown in the books. I love the books enormously and would never have expected such a thing, but it really seems to me that the fanfic is truer to the characters than GJ&RQ on this point.
If you've read both, what do you think?
*
If this horse were a man, he would adorn the covers of *all* the romance novels that weren't about Marines.
*
And now, a word about Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen.
There was an interesting discussion recently—I cannot for the life of me remember whose journal I saw it in, though I know I got there via
cathexys—about the book, and one of the things that came up was the really excellent fanfic by Dira Sudis called Everything That You Can Keep. It's Aral/Arkady.It's a strange case. This is a fanfic story which precedes the canon (sorta—LMB had buried little nuggets of possibility in the text, but hadn't examined them until GJ&RQ), and picks up on something that was certainly there but very discreetly so, and not generally noticed. In both cases, Aral desires his secretary (Jole is Oliver in canon, Arkady in the fan story) and begins a romantic/sexual relationship with him.
In the book, Cordelia recalls finding that her husband and Jole had already begun their relationship when she returned from a trip. And Jole declines to explain exactly how they managed to begin. (I… kinda wonder whether LMB hadn't actually worked it out. I mean, it's not actually *necessary* that we know, but…)
In the fanfic, Cordelia plays a major role in facilitating the relationship. To me, this is far more plausible. In fact, I can't imagine two honour-filled Barrayaran men, one of whom is dizzyingly senior *and* famously married to a somewhat formidable woman, and the other of whom works for him, would have been able to figure things out for themselves at all. Dira Sudis imagined a very carefully run secret network designed to keep homosexual Barrayaran men safe from the world around them, plus some extremely Betan conversations. Wonderful stuff.
For me, the fanfic version is *better* than the canon. Vorkosigan fanfic has some really, really quality stories which are (to my mind) alternate timelines, but this one is more believable than what we are shown in the books. I love the books enormously and would never have expected such a thing, but it really seems to me that the fanfic is truer to the characters than GJ&RQ on this point.
If you've read both, what do you think?