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Declaiming Revolution (on AO3)
(and on lj)
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bracketyjack responded, as Ezar Vorbarra:Ezar's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd (on AO3)
(and on lj)
I replied, as Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan:
Cordelia's Reply to Ezar (on AO3)
(and on lj)
If anyone wants to jump in as Miles, remember: limericks!
January 30 2012, 19:31:52 UTC 3 months ago
*hat off*
January 30 2012, 20:28:55 UTC 3 months ago
January 30 2012, 19:54:35 UTC 3 months ago
*scribbles frantically*
January 30 2012, 20:00:25 UTC 3 months ago
*clears throat*
Jumping In
I've been told that my thoughts should adorn
This debate between Betan and Vor.
I've been called precocious
(And names more atrocious),
But I can't talk before I was born.
January 30 2012, 20:30:11 UTC 3 months ago
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January 30 2012, 22:10:55 UTC 3 months ago
January 31 2012, 02:21:31 UTC 3 months ago
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January 30 2012, 23:09:05 UTC 3 months ago Edited: January 30 2012, 23:09:57 UTC
down the timeline towards The Vor Game, but hey, it's late. And Gregor-in-my-head was obviously very drunk when he wrote it. On maple mead. Lots and lots of maple mead.
Oh, and this is my first vorkosiverse fanfic, though I've been reading the community for a while. Consider this my de-lurking contribution.
Kath
I cannot look upon my Barrayar,
my war-torn, tortured home -- my heart! -- with eyes
that disregard the past, that do not see
the lies and crimes that brought us, all us Vor,
each painful step along this path that will,
I hope, some day absolve our debt of lives.
How many Emperors have lived their lives
believing in this myth of Barrayar?
What right grants every power to /my/ will?
What madness has been seen by Horus Eyes
And yet been shrugged off by my fellow Vor:
the curse of these Vorbarra genes? I see
no answer for me there! I only see
repeated costs to come, and wasted lives
between my hands. The weight of all those Vor,
the world they represent, my Barrayar,
demanding all that's worst before my eyes
and breaking down my walls of self and will.
The future closes in, and come what will
it falls to me to change our course, to see
this system shattered if I can. What eyes
could justly watch and only bless the lives
of mutie terrors born of Barrayar:
the joke that is the flower of the Vor?
My counts, my peers, my family of Vor
have placed this burdened change within my will
and though it knows it not, my Barrayar
/will/ learn, and grow, and one day come to see
the strength that comes from strange and crippled lives,
the loves that live in ordinary eyes.
What answer's meet to unforgiving eyes?
The meek, the mutants, even us cursed Vor
have paid in countless thousands of lost lives
So ask of /them/ what is to be my will:
the hope that one day all that live might see
and share the dream I have for Barrayar.
A world that thrives and lives within my eyes –
so bid farewell to Old Vor Barrayar!
And what will happen next? What now? Let's see.
January 31 2012, 03:22:38 UTC 3 months ago
January 31 2012, 01:15:07 UTC 3 months ago
January 31 2012, 03:33:49 UTC 3 months ago
January 31 2012, 02:01:48 UTC 3 months ago Edited: January 31 2012, 02:04:43 UTC
Unfortunately, his poetry about this is sincerely awful.
Cruel rock beneath our future, those who came before
Honor sacrificed for Hope that mattered more,
Hoped they built a future clean and free of dread,
Honor lay in broken children, futures flung among the dead.
Honor's paradox, we were, we are, the Vor.
Shame and honor refined to one command, Obey;
Proud heads and bloody hands preserved all hope for a kinder day
For this we bled, broken warriors' empty honor sung
Stripped and starving in the plaza rebels emptier hung
We were Vor, we must be clean, we held no middle way.
Vor feared nothing but the thud of booted feet
We slaughtered children for a future we'd never meet
I am the mutie lord, for those who cam before and will come after me
Symbol and Warning of the world you hoped to see.
Vor have the troops, but our future has a fleet.
January 31 2012, 03:37:29 UTC 3 months ago
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January 31 2012, 02:17:33 UTC 3 months ago
jelloa sestina about the patriarchy!January 31 2012, 03:25:23 UTC 3 months ago
War is waged in words.
The snake swallows its own tail.
The stars bide their time.
*bricked*
January 31 2012, 03:38:46 UTC 3 months ago
3 months ago
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January 31 2012, 03:48:46 UTC 3 months ago
I'll hold the reins. No horse will veer from true:
no slacking trace to round the nearing pole
nor speeding rim to graze and risk one prole
or Vor or subject old or conquered new
without cause more than just. And if a few
resist your bit I'll weep and curse that old
unshaken oath, but wield your whip. My soul---
No. That were luxury. I hear and do.
Though here's no blessed golden child king,
no easy salve, no medic for the scars
you wrought, my liege, and I, if hope there be,
for even stagnant misery surviving,
I swear it stays.
You, boy, be Barrayar.
Your smile's for your mother: frown on me.
January 31 2012, 04:10:27 UTC 3 months ago
Well done!
3 months ago
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January 31 2012, 08:01:04 UTC 3 months ago Edited: January 31 2012, 08:18:54 UTC
A Most Secret Transcript [PG] Miles, Ivan
on the One-Year Anniversary of the Death of Viceroy Count Aral Vorkosigan
Hey, Ivan, you heard this one?
There once was an Emperor named Ezar,
who planned to make Vor last forever.
He ruled with an iron fist,
but in the end – what a twist!
He gave his only heir to be raised by my Da.
(indistinct murmur)
No, that’s … that’s the funny part. Counts and Lord Auditors and Emperors and it looks, it looks like we run the planet, the whole Empire. Don’t, though. S’illusion. Mother knows. And Gregor, better ‘n anyone.
Pass the bottle back. You don’t even like maple mead.
Vor’s not any old mass hallucination, though. It’s a frog.
See, on Earth, they say if you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps right out. But if you put it in a pot and slowly heat up the water, the frog will boil with a smile on its face.
Don’t look at me like that, Ivan, I never tested it out! I’ve never even seen a frog, in person. In froghood? It was one of the stories Da used to tell. And that – that’s the point. The Vor. They were his frog.
In Granda’s day they called it treason;
now transmuted by Barrayaran honor and Betan reason
to just another compromise debated in Council.
It took a mother’s love, and a father’s too,
Maybe a mutie lord or two.
Industry, education, and uterine replicators for all!
(I suspect that gender imbalance was my mother’s touch of genius. Do you know how many Vor men have married smart, rich, gorgeous prole women in the last few years?)
Have a lord who is a clone. A lord who was a lady.
A Komarran Head of Komarran Security.
Why not a Komarran Emperess?
(It’s true love for Gregor, Ivan, I know it is, but how could he look at her and not see the political ramifications in that beautiful smile?)
The Cetaganadans couldn’t tear Barrayar away from the Vor with nukes.
My Father the Count almost polished them off within one generation,
and they never even saw it coming.
(Shove off, Ivan, I'm fine. I've done some of my best plotting while flat on my back.)
I salute you, Da! It was a brilliant strategy.
Gregor and I’ll finish the job for you.
It just needs a few explosions to push it all over the cliff.
I’m sure I can come up with something good…
January 31 2012, 08:43:36 UTC 3 months ago
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January 31 2012, 15:32:12 UTC 3 months ago
Emperor Ezar
Saw implications cast out rather far.
But I swear on Vordarian's head
It's a good thing for him he's safely dead.
Regent Aral
Appears in political cartoons as both dull and feral.
The worst
Is that they're only wrong about the first.
Padma
...There isn't a rhyme for Padma.
It's a shame.
Something like "idiot" ought to rhyme with his name.
Captain Cordelia
Would like to amelior-
Ate the backward feudalism of our caste.
I hope she's noticed changes like that don't happen very fast.
Kou
Got through.
It was rough.
But that's enough.
Captain Simon Illyan
Carries around secrets above a billion.
I wonder what it's like
To be the proverbial boy keeping his finger in the dike.
Kareen
Was rarely heard and mostly seen.
In justice, we'd serve her turn
By giving her words to burn.
Count Vorhalas
Keeps an honest palace.
But there's too much quiet in its shade.
I wonder if he'd trade?
Sergeant Bothari
Doesn't choose his own quarry.
It's clearly best
That he be properly jessed.
Piotr Pierre
Can't die. He doesn't dare.
It's the wrong ground to hold.
But it's impossible for a Vorkosigan to be told.
Emperor Gregor
Is too high Vor to be a beggar.
But he finds a crumb
And licks it off his thumb.
January 31 2012, 15:50:35 UTC 3 months ago
Spends her days in a splendid palace.
Dove-grey silk, quiet efficiency, air of hauteur:
Surely we could not survive without her.
3 months ago
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January 31 2012, 17:21:51 UTC 3 months ago
--
Found Scrawled in a Restroom Stall, somewhere on Beta Colony:
Higgeldy-piggeldy
Aral Vorkosigan
Was handed his ass by a lass of our Force
Then she hit Steady Freddy
Buy I didn't vote for him
As far as I see, she's no cause for remorse
---
. . . send help.
January 31 2012, 17:37:39 UTC 3 months ago
(Think you mean 'but' rather than 'buy' there, though.)
3 months ago
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January 31 2012, 19:25:18 UTC 3 months ago
Here am I; I'm Lady Alys
I am Commander of this palace.
I rule this vast imperial pile
What I don't do isn't style.
February 2 2012, 04:53:31 UTC 3 months ago
3 months ago
February 1 2012, 05:18:26 UTC 3 months ago
They say of you, milord, that in your youth
You spoke of revolution to your friends
That lies were never better than the truth
And means were never justified by ends
I wonder now what happened to that man
Whom age has hardened, mostly for the ill
Who loved and spurned so many of my clan
And chained his reason to a dead man's will
We had such hopes of you and of your wife
But women's troubles never troubled you
You piously avoided all such strife
What was undone is left for me to do
So look for me when your peers next assemble
I tell you, son of Piotr, you will tremble
February 1 2012, 05:22:45 UTC 3 months ago Edited: February 1 2012, 05:25:18 UTC
poems to be sung
OK, you guys, I don't have any Vor poetry, but I do have a bunch of Vor songs:* A Civil Campaign Suite
(In 2000 I wrote a short song for Enrique and another for Mark. While rereading the book in the summer of 2002 I thought of providing a song for each of the POV characters: Miles, Ekaterin, Mark, Kareen, and Ivan.* Enrique already had one, and first Dono, then Lady Alys, insisted on joining in.
Here they are, arranged in the order of appropriate moments in the plot. Page references are to the Baen paperback first printing.
*Ivan: "Why am I always last?"
Ekaterin: "Because this story is about pairing off. Get yourself a fiancée --"
Kareen: "-- or an option --"
Miles: "-- or at least a steady girlfriend --"
Lord Mark: "-- and then you'll get your mother off your back, too."
All four: "It's all your fault!"
Mark the filker: "Besides, you get the first song. Move it, you're on!")
Followed on the page by the songs.
Also
*Count Vorvlacesav (Barrayaran version of Good King Wenceslas, that Eric Oppen started & I finished), and
*a shortie Winterfair Gifts that I wrote before the story came out, heh heh!
February 1 2012, 05:31:14 UTC 3 months ago Edited: February 1 2012, 05:34:10 UTC
Oh, I forgot about this one
Ferdinand Feghoot in Vorkosigan Surleau© 2000
Although Ms. Bujold has not yet chronicled the fact, the famed space-time adventurer Ferdinand Feghoot was a good friend of Aral Vorkosigan, and was something of an honorary uncle to young Miles and Gregor. He appeared less frequently in their adult lives, but on one memorable occasion he hosted them to dinner while staying at Vorkosigan Surleau. The meal featured galactic ingredients and recipes he had collected in his travels and was prepared by Ma Kosti after she had satisfied herself that they were worthy of her kitchen.
Over an after-dinner liqueur Miles remarked, "It was all fantastic, but that pâté de foie gras was completely outside my experience. Where in the galaxy did you find such a... such an exquisite mingling of flavors, colors, textures, ... even temperatures? It was the sauce, wasn't it?"
"Ah," Feghoot smiled, "that really is something special. It's rarely encountered outside the Imperial household."
Gregor's eyebrows rose. "Uncle Ferdie, have you been suborning my staff? How is it that I have never tasted this culinary miracle before tonight?"
"Oh, no, no," said Feghoot, "I didn't mean your household. That sauce for the goose is sauce Cetaganda."
February 2 2012, 05:55:52 UTC 3 months ago
A double dactyl
Barrayar, Barrayar,Aral Vorkosigan,
father of twins (with his
Captain and bride):
both of them triumphs of
biotechnology,
one short and manic, and
one short and wide.
February 2 2012, 06:01:10 UTC 3 months ago
3 months ago