wiseheart | So, it is party time again, folks!

Each year this time, we launch my virtual birthday party, which starts on October 1 and ends on October 9 at midnight, sharp. The goals of the party are to post as many comments and collapse as many threads as possible, on as many new pages as we can. It is always great fun, as you can see if you check out the similar entries of the last few years.

This year, I'll also throw the real party at mid-time - and post the recipes of all the food that will be there for you, so that you can all participate if you want to. Virtual food has no calories.

Fandom-related discussions are as welcome as the ones about coffee or chocolate (just to name a few favourites from previous years), and, of course, pictures and recipes of birthday cakes. ;)

So, drop by, tell your story, post your pics or silly poems, ask questions you always wanted to ask and have a good time!

Soledad, in excited expectation

Oh, and by the way, to provide birthday gifts hobbit-style, I've got a revived story and a Kansas 2 update for you.

Enjoy!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One needs to be invested in Miles & Simon (& Alys, & Gregor) for Memory to have its impact, I think.
Yes. It really builds on everything.

also, I didn't like the heterosexualising of Byerley, who I'd read as queer.
I'll probably have to reread at some point, because I still saw him as queer through it - just in a relationship of some sort with Rish. I may have been reading what I want into it, I know reading something for the first time I often miss things (one of the things that make rereading so much fun).

I must try to finish Sharing Knife -- before YT sign ups if possible, though I'm going to be frantically busy &/or away from home for much of that time.
*nods* Where are you at?
I should not say much about it, because spoilers, but the fourth book is very much my favourite.

I wish Rish had been male; I don't think it would have affected the story too much. It's certainly possible to continue to read By as bi, which I can tolerate.

There was a lot of talk at the conference in August abut how all of Bujold's homosexual/bisexual characters do one of die horribly; be Eeeevil; or Turn Heterosexual for Love.

With SK, I'm somewhere in the middle of book 2; I keep picking it up & putting it down again. Altariel, my Bujold-peddler, likes the last two books, as I recall.

I wish Rish had been male; I don't think it would have affected the story too much.
It would have changed the first parts a bit - Ivan's not seeing her as a threat etc, but I think it could have worked.

all of Bujold's homosexual/bisexual characters do one of die horribly; be Eeeevil; or Turn Heterosexual for Love
there are a few that don't, but oddly it seems to be more in the fantasy series that Vorkosigan: Umegat (in Curse of Chalion, and some in Sharing Knife (but spoilers)

Book 2 is slow paced for a lot, but the pace of the books picks up from there.

LJ ate my comment. Sigh. I think I said something like...

A slight & androgenous Rish that big military Ivan took for female could have been made to work, I think.

I'd forgotten Umegat. He doesn't get to die, but he does suffer terribly.

Looks like I need to plod through book 2 in anticipation of jam tomorrow...

/o\ for the comment eating.

A slight & androgenous Rish that big military Ivan took for female could have been made to work, I think.
yes

I'd forgotten Umegat. He doesn't get to die, but he does suffer terribly.
*nods*

I suppose Rish could be genitally male, or hermaphrodite, or agendered. A culture that can make kittens literally grow on trees wouldn't be tied to normative gender presentations.

That would certainly work, and count make for an interesting fic idea.

I really need to get into writing Vorkosigan; I read it a lot, but I've never quite dared to try my hand at so much as a drabble (and still haven't read Cryoburn, cos I don't want to read the end).

I've written it a couple of times, but not very successfully (and got burned by picking the wrong betareader for one of them).

I read Cryoburn without knowing the end, but I can see why you'd not want to read it. It is an interesting mystery before that, but the end is very sad.

I've pretty much given up using betas; almost all the ones I trust have essentially left fandom or have zero time/energy these days, and I find I disagree with readers I don't know as well more often than not. Also I tend to finish pieces of exchanges on (or after! -- you didn't hear that with your mod hat on) the deadline. I'd definitely need a canon picker for Vorkosigan (or Chalion).

I got spoiled for Cryoburn by clicking on a piece of fanfiction immediately after the book came out without reading the spoiler line (if there was one), and it so upset me I've steered clear of the book. I gather one can avoid the event by stopping a few pages off the end, but I don't know whether I've got that sort of discipline.

For some reason I find it really hard to mentally resurrect characters when canon kills them off, which it seems to do with my favourites with monotonous regularity. (Thank you JKR, Joss!)

I tend to try and use betas because I know they generally improve my stories - just I really didn't like a comment about how mathematicians/scientists didn't think a particular way.... which given that I have a maths degree I found rather annoying and inaccurate (given how many people I've known who would identify as one of these I don't think there is an overall different way of thinking when applied to life).

It is the very end of the book and afterward bit, but I think it would be hard to stop. I know I couldn't!

For me it really depends, some deaths I have no trouble ignoring by writing earlier or AUs, others throw me out of the fandom hard. It partly depends how much it works emotionally in the canon (ie most of the HP deaths seem far too formulaic and not dealt with well...)

I knew a lot of people who read maths & they're a diverse bunch, though they did tend to share a certain pedantry of speech.

I was very upset by the end of HP; it didn't completely throw me out of the fandom, but it stopped me rereading canon.

*nods*

I struggled with the whole of the 7th book - it just made so little sense (especially I just couldn't believe all the fuss about finding food in a summer/autumn countryside....) but the end really didn't work - so many random, oh this person died, but everything goes on exactly as if nothing had changed from the first book.

I quite liked HBP, especially once I'd been persuaded of the truth of Snape's sympathies, and then to find there was yet another mystical gizmo ... and, as you say, the epilogue was simply absurd.

*nods* Sudden new magical thing to look for with no warning was rather too much.

And tying it in to the cloak felt a stretch, as if JKR had looked around for objects introduced in book ?1 and tried to make them count in the climax.

Actually the cloak made the most sense to me - it was the randomly appearing without any mention other bits (eg if she'd included the tale in the first or second book, it would have made more sense.... but still been rather odd)

I get the impression the tale grew in the telling. I suppose JRRT simply revised The Hobbit to fit the new narrative weight the Ring needed to take.

So, it is party time again, folks!

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