melannen | okay posting again anyway

You guys, you guys, you remember the Cordelia Vorkosigan Flimsy Dolls, right? And if you followed the comments, you may have seen me and

sara and

carmarthen discussing the politics of the Vorhartung Castle Gift Shop, and how somebody should write that story?

Well,

miss_lanyon wrote it! As a sequel to Ship Duty, already one of the best recent Vorkosigan fics out there, no less! And you should all go read it because it's brilliant and it's everything it should be. There are old Vor ladies! And stuffed Stegosauri! And Byerly being competent! And Ivan being traumatized by pictures of his mother in her underwear! And discussions of white collar crime and accounting! And many other wonderful things!

A Charity Case: In which Byerly gets a job, Ivan fills in for his mother, the Emperor polishes his retail skills, and the Vorhartung Castle Gift Shop ladies embezzle every mark.

Also, everybody, seriously, you should totally get in the habit of throwing all the random plot bunnies you have out in the open, because I have been doing that, and people keep writing the darn things. It is making my given/recieved ratio on AO3 look completely out of whack, but I don't care, because they are all awesome stories. This is fandom doing what fandom is for! (That is, providing me with a custom drip-feed of the stories I need in my life with minimal effort on my part. ...I mean, um, building new heights of creativity through collaboration and conversation and an ethic of openness of ideas. Yes. that.)

(Now somebody needs to write me the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane AU set in the Study in Emerald universe. In which Peter is of course a distant descendant of royalty down several lines. Go on. You know you want it now too.)

ETA: btw,

terajk is still writing heartwarming Ranma + Ryoga + Akane fic, if you were wondering.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I always thought it would be cool to have an Idea Swap community or something like that, where people could post ideas (original or fanfic or whatever) that they weren't planning to use personally. I get oodles of ideas. Occasionally I get some that I just look at and think, "Not addressed to me. Clearly I got someone else's Muse Mail."

I actually think there is a DW comm for that, but for the life of me I can't remember what it's called, and I never got around to joining (it was a little bit too high-traffic, and being around large numbers of wild plot bunnies is dangerous for me.) If I find it I'll let you know!

Those fics were excellent, thanks for the recs. It's clearly time that I start reading this Vorkosigan Saga thing that somehow keeps popping up on the radar, but it looks like there's a lot of books with a somewhat fuzzy timeline. If I may ask for another rec, what book would you say people should start reading from?

The timeline isn't all that fuzzy, it's just that they were published out of chronological order, but nobody much recommends publication order for this series.

I would start with either Shards of Honor, the first book chronologically (or the anthology Cordelia's Honor with the first two books, which is sometimes easier to find now). There's a time-skip between Cordelia's Honor and the next one, The Warrior's Apprentice, which centers on Cordelia's grown son like the rest of the series, but the Cordelia books really should be read too.

I read them completely out of order of course. If you want to start at the end, Mirror Dance (which is sort of the beginning of the cycle in which Miles grows up) also makes a good starting point.

As you may or may not know, the Barrayar books are all available as legal, freely distributable ebooks. my old Barrayar intro post links to a good source for them.

Thank you, that helps!

the Barrayar books are all available as legal, freely distributable ebooks

Those e-books were actually how I first heard of the series, I think, but it had drifted to the back of my mind. Will start with those and see if I should start shelling out for a million-book series ;)

I clicked the link in your post for downloading the Barrayar books, and I only see download for Cryoburn. Did that person change the page or something? I'd love to find the earlier books Kindleable. (I've got Warrior's Apprentice, but that's all I've found.)

Cryburn is splashed all over the place because they were originally distributed on CD as a promo for Cryoburn (so they get referred as the Cryoburn CD which is confusing now that I think about it.) If you click on the link to view the CD, you'll see options in the sidebar to view/DL all the individual books except Memory, under the titles of the omnibus editions (Cordelia's Honor, Young Miles, etc.)

And yes the web design there is terrible but I'll take whatever Baen wants to give us!

Plot-bunny swaps are indeed fabulous. Also, thank you for your Vorkosigan suggestions, because I really should read that series. (All the awesome characters with disabilities! Acts of badass! Yay!)

Vorkosigan series is pretty awesome! As is people writing my plotbunnies! :D

I KNOW I am so excited omg. I wish I could get properly into Vorkosigan fanom, because it makes the best things. (And your plotbunnies are the best bunnies.)

I think part of the reason I hang around so many small-to-mid-sized fandoms is that so many of them seem to have only good writers in them! Vorkosigan being a case in point, yes, all of their things are the best.

*nods* Vorkosigan fandom is a whole mindboggling level of good.

I think the odds for All Good Writers are better with book fandoms, though. I need to get back into book fandoms. :D For some reason, though, Vorkosigan doesn't inspire me to write, although I happily devour all the fic.

Oh neat, this rec sounds awesome!

BTW, I've finally moved over here for good. Missed seeing you around, I'm sorry I haven't followed very much. (Too many things people have moved to, can't keep up with FB, Twitter, here, LJ, + blogs, gack!)

Where is it that you've been posting plot bunnies?

It's looking like several of my remaining LJ friends are finally thinking of moving over here! Yay! (except not, because what LJ did was terrible, what were they thinking? Memes over there have got to be completely unusable at this point. No comment preview??)

Anyway I didn't expect anyone to follow me here, but it will be great to see you around again!

(I've been posting plot bunnies every now and then on the journal, mostly under a fannish:bunnies tag, but I don't always feel like tagging...)

okay posting again anyway

Yes...

Re: Yes...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject