#bujold

[unbizzarre]

Cetegandan concept sketches

Wanted to try my hand at Cetegandan clothing. Not sure how Gem differs from Haut, though I'm leaning towards Gem being more flamboyant, space-grabbing and structured (left and right) whereas Haut is flowy-er and layered, with some lab attire with a both aesthetic and practical bent.

In general clothing styles try to evoke imagery of flowers, petals, and delicate layering. I'm playing around with incorporating butterfly shapes in the silhouette. (see swallowtail sleeves on far left). While the garments are light and flowy, very little skin is left showing. The clothing style is an elegant synthesis of Grecian drapery and certain elements from historic Japanese, Chinese, and Korean garments. My muse was also inspired to create a similar feeling to some of my favorite Star Wars costume design sketches I've run across. I also really enjoy having folds radiating out from a central point, or folding out like petals above and below a belt/waistline. Will probably do more studies to further explore the variety of ceta styles I've imagined.

tbh i imagine cetagandan womens clothing is actually a bit less colorful. maybe more whites and creams. But I just had fun messin about with butterfly colors

OH HELL YEAH TIME TO CITE THOSE SOURCES! :::

these specific designs pull from and synthesise shapes I found in

Roberto Cappuci Haute Couture 1987 "angel of god" or "Andgelo d'Oro" (angel of gold) depending on which pinterst image I reference

and

this dress by Issa Hesso from the Rebirth Collection

starwars concept art I enjoy:

like fuck me this guys so good

you can find more by searching: iain mccaig padme amidala concept art

overall pretty happy with how these turned out :D! Feel like I successfully captured the space-elf-fairy vibes I was going for. If you notice any cannon clothing details I left out, or have your own creative ideas on how you imagine cetagandan cloting to look, feel free to leave a comment! I love hearing other people's insights :). Particularly curious how ceta clothing may have changed between occupation time period and modern miles-era ceta clothing. Given their heavily artistic bent I could imagine fashions may change wildly year to year decade to decade. But also given how long they live, perhaps the mainstream styles is actually less malleable? If so what are the common themes that are preseved?

thanks for reading!

[jghillegass]

You should have fallen in love with a happy man, if you wanted happiness. But no, you had to fall for the breathtaking beauty of pain. - Lois McMaster Bujold.

I think it's from Barrayar but could be Shards of Honor.

But damn near everyone of my otps.

[thirdwifeofriversong]

“It’s… a transcendental act. Making life. I thought about that, when I was carrying Miles. ‘By this act, I bring one death into the world.’ One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between.” - Barrayar, Ch. 17

This passage stands out after reading further Miles books. Cordelia did not, in fact, bring about one birth and one death as she had imagined. Instead, because of advanced technology, Miles experienced at least two of each. Two births — Cordelia’s placental transfer at five months and the “uncorking” of the uterine replicator at ten. In his late 20’s, Miles was killed, experienced death, then was revived (or, one could argue, born a third time) through cryo-revival. He then presumably dies a final time, perhaps after the series has ended (I’ve only read to “Winterfair Gifts”). Then we can consider Mark. Mark is a separate person, but he is a genetically identical clone made from Miles’s tissue samples as a young child — bringing Cordelia’s birth/death production to (arguably) four and three, though only of two humans. As is the case with much SF, advancements in technology serve to blur and expand our understanding of creation, life, death, and human experience.

[nerianasims]

"I proposed to my future wife at a dinner party of about a dozen people, thereby humiliating and enraging her."

"My future wife proposed to me at a legislative assembly in front of a few hundred people, thereby making me prouder and more happy than I'd ever been in my life."

[grison-in-space]

Oh man I just had the best crossover idea

"Miles Vorkosigan accidentally winds up in a scheming contest against ART."

[detournementsmineurs]

“Le Roi de Coeur” de Philippe de Broca (1966) avec Alan Bates, Geneviève Bujold, Micheline Presle, Françoise Christophe, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michel Serrault, Julien Guiomar, Pierre Brasseur, Adolfo Celi et Daniel Boulanger , mars 2024.

[sleepycatmama]

Lois McMaster Bujold has a new Penric story out!!!

I strongly recommend ALL of Bujold's fiction. She is my very favorite author. She's the one who wrote the Miles Vorkosigan series - I've started a post about those that gets reshared often.

The Penric stories are generally novella length, although at least one is novel length, as most of her earlier works were. The setting of the Penric books, the World of the Five Gods, starts with three novels. The first is Curse of Chalion. They are delightful. But you can also start with the Penric stories themselves. The first is Penric's Demon.

They are all books that I eagerly await, I make loud squeeing noises when I see they're out, I immediately buy the ebook, and whatever else I was reading gets set aside. I reread the whole series now and then, as with all Bujold, there's more delight to be found on reread.

[fairandfatalasfair]

I feel like the Sharing Knife books suffer a bit from trying to be a romance and a fantasy adventure story at the same time and not really committing to either, and also from the lower plot complexity of a lot of Bujold's later books, which makes them a slower and less gripping read in some respects. Add on the fact that the main couple of the romance has such a wide age gap, which I think a lot of people who would otheriwise like them are wigged out by, and I think the result is that they have a notably smaller following than her other big series.

Which is a shame, because the *worldbuilding* on these books is fucking fascinating. There is something *so* juicy about the Lakewalker's communal inheritance of duty and sacrifice, the way that it's both real and practical and deathly serious in some ways and sort of half-heartedly kept to out of allegiance to tradition in others. (The patrols are real but the tents are sort of... rules-lawyered). The anguish and tragedy of fighting a generations-long deadly war on behalf of a community that's as likely to cut your throat as not if they catch you alone, and the way that tragedy comes out in isolationism and resentment and contempt and a thousand other very real, human little nastinesses. The way that sharing shapes the culture, the absolute contempt that the lakewalkers feel for a 'wasted' death, and the way that sacred sacrifice is twisted and warped in their neighbours' understanding into necromancy and cannibalism precisely because it's too sacred and secret and painful to explain properly.

It's such a deep, rich, layered, real-feeling culture, and the way it clashes against the very different culture of their farmer neighbours feels so genuine and makes me want to dig my hands into it and play. But it feels like a harder series to sell people on than her other ones.

[wipbigbang]

This is Round Two of the Artist Claims for the 2023 round of WIPBB. You may claim up to three fics this round. If you want only one fic, please fill out the form once with your top choices. If you want two fics, fill out the form twice with your first choice in the first form submission with one unique ID and the second choice in another submission with a different unique ID.

The form is located at https://forms.gle/ES2D3d2mTG1nU4Pk6.

Round two of the art claims will go on until July 1st. A partial list of available fandoms are below:

Voltron: Legendary Defender

Wheel of Time

Word of Honor

World of the Five Gods (Bujold)

炎炎ノ消防隊 | Enen no Shouboutai | Fire Force (Manga)

老九门 | Old Nine Gates (TV)

[unbizzarre]

VORKOSIGAN DINNER PARTY SCENE (wip)

“My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost.”

Work in progress. The dinner party scene in “A Civil Campaign” from Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga. Characters from left to right are: Ekaterine Vorsoisson, Captian Koudelka, Olivia Koudelka, Dono Vorrutyer, Alys Vorpatril, Miles Vorkosigan, and Enrique Borgos (under the table)

This is a drawing of my friend’s favorite scene in the vorkosigan saga! I personally found this book to be the most stressful to read in the entire series the first time I read it, but that was mostly just cuz I take a lot of damage from secondhand social anxiety for fictional characters. On a second read of the book I was a lot less stressed able to wholeheartedly enjoy this scifi comedy-of-manners for the delightfuly intricate social and politicial clusterfuck it is 🥰.

Second image is early planning for the piece trying to figure out where the hell everybody was supposed to be seated. Goddamn was that a logic puzzle!

[cactusspatz]

Yuletide recs, Pt 1

MY GIFTS

An embarrassment of riches this year!

step by step (planet by planet) [Ethan of Athos] - a Yuletide Madness treat! Charming little bit of pining with Ethan being oblivious, set in the gap between Kline Station and returning to Athos. (Ethan/Terrence)

On the Threshold [Biggles] - delightful AU where an injured von Stalhein shows up on Biggles’s doorstep, and Biggles is very Biggles about it. I am extremely for the ‘bad guy goes to his honorable enemy for help (and is not disappointed)’ trope, and this one was executed perfectly. (Biggles/von Stalhein)

The Arrangement [Biggles] - in which von Stalhein ventures out into a storm to get Biggles medicine. Lovely h/c. (Biggles/von Stalhein)

RECS

I tend to go by fandoms when I binge Yuletide, and also I slept until 1 (I think I’m still run down from my horrible cold last week), so it’s just The Goblin Emperor/Witness for the Dead fic today.

it gets okay to praise the day - beautiful tag to The Grief of Stones, with some much-needed comfort and healing for Thara, and some clever resolution of a few plot threads, and a brief and lovely appearance by Maia. (Thara/Iana)

dear fellow traveler - nifty story that starts with an academic piece about a tradition of the emperor crossing the Wisdom Bridge, and then increasingly closer POVs peeling back to the truth of how it started. A great look at the future of Maia’s reign from several vantages. (mostly gen, background Csethiro/Maia)

Need To Know - in which Csethiro tracks down Maia after the assassination attempt, with all of her fierce cleverness at work. Great POV for her. (Csethiro/Maia)

COMMENTS

And finally, my comment total for @justleaveacommentfest was 11.

[franticbindings]

Blessed Iroki is always wearing a “Fish Want Me, Demons Fear Me” hat, Bujold just never mentioned it.

[kitewithfish]

Reading Meme for Jan 4 2023

What I've Read

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System ( Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong) Vol. 3 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù with Faelicy (Translator) - This seems to have been the end of the real arc of the story, and it landed in a good and very tropey place. 

if you were a mythical thing by Kangofu_CB - MCU and Marvel Comics (Hawkeye, mostly) - 74K - https://archiveofourown.org/works/42952029 - Bucky/Clint - This is pretty cute and fluffy. Werewolf au without omegaverse elements. Clint Barton, not a superhero, gets in trouble with the Ukrainian mob and flees to a small town where everyone is really, really nice and people keep sniffing him? The werewolf element is cute - I vaguely wanted a little more angst because I love angst related to keeping secrets and this fic was just like, Nah, that's not what we're here for. 

Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold - I am legitimately annoyed by how long this took me to read! I bought this book two years ago and just looked at in my stack and didn't read it! But someone on DW read it recently, mentioned that the dynamic between Penric and the demon that inadvertently comes to share his body is really similar to Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote, and welp, here I am, I love this and I bought the next four novellas because my library system doesn't have them all as ebooks. (It was a gift card to Barnes and Noble and I want Lois to have some walkin' around money.) 

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers - Also a book that I had been sitting on. The first book with these characters, A Psalm for the Wild-Build,  came at a deeply needful time and was a great read for the book club. I have a vivid memory from the summer of 2021 of sitting on the back porch in the sun and feeling like the world wasn't doomed. I will love Becky Chambers forever for that book, and this one is a worthy successor. It's calm and introspective and gentle with the foibles of sentient minds. 

What I'm Reading

let the river run by Astolat - A Robb/Jaime/Brienne fic about finding a man worth fighting for. This is literally just pure fealty fic. 

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong) Vol. 4 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù with Faelicy (Translator) - I think this is a collection of short stories with main and side characters from the main series of this. It's goofy and fun. 

The World We Make by NK Jemisin (Great Cities 2) - I love this unabashedly so far. 

Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film by Lee Clark Mitchell - slightly on hold 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson - Slowly What I'll Read Next Gideon the Ninth

Library books in the house: Tiger's Daughter - K Arsenault Rivera - Will abandon, library called it back The Book of the Unnamed Midwife - Meg Elison The Uncle's Story - Witi Ihimaera - information I gathered from elsewhere suggests this is even gayer than I thought 

Owned and need to read: Frey Marske's A Restless Truth, and Susanna Clarke's Pirenesi California Bones, Raven Song by IA Ashcroft, Kraken's Sacrifice by Katee Robert, Even Though I Know the End by CL Polk, True Colors by Karen Traviss, At The Feet of the Sun by Victoria Goddard, Tamryn Eradani's Enchanting Encounters Books 2 and 3, Like Real People Do by EL Massey, Tom Stoppard, invention of love.

Tags:

[othercat2]

Just Finished Masquerade in Lodi

Which is one of the Penric and Desdemona novels by Bujold, which is a series in her Five Gods setting. And I was reminded how saints of the bastard who have the ability to remove demons do their job.

They kinda "eat" the demon. (Technically. The demon doesn't get digested so much as siphoned back to the Bastard's hell. Via the mouth, which is sacred to the Bastard.) When I finally get around to continuing my Bleach/Five Gods crossover "The Paladin and the Strawberry" I'm going to have to have Shiro/Ichigo react to Ista performing an exorcism.

Their reactions will be Hilarious.

[detournementsmineurs]

Geneviève Bujold et Micheline Presle dans “Le Roi de Coeur” de Philippe de Broca (1966), mars 2024.

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

"The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present - they are real."

Aral Vorkosigan, The Vorkosigan Saga, Lois Mcmaster Bujold