Tag Archives: Diverse Cultures Celebration Team

Dragon Ship – Chapter 26

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Bechimo

In which Theo introduces Kara to her ship and crew.

I’ve been passing up several opportunities to comment on earlier, more subtle hints, but it’s pretty obvious now that there’s something going on between Theo and Kara. Good for them, though it’s not entirely consistent with the way their friendship was depicted in Saltation.

Perfection, the ship Asu is serving on, is now revealed to have the full name Asu Perfection. Or is “revealed” the wrong word? The obvious assumption is that its crew habitually shorten the name, in the manner of Shan and the crew of the Passage, but another possibility is that the ship was actually renamed to recognise a member of the Diamon family taking charge.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 28

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Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which there are conversations on the way to dinner.

Luken’s reassurance to Theo – “You are among kin, now, and the House will be vigilant for you” – has, I think a double meaning. On one level, it’s the same thing people have been saying ever since she was invited to guest, that the house has good security and she’ll be protected from physical danger; on another level, I think it’s a reminder that as her kin it’s within their melant’i to protect her from the less obvious dangers attendant on making a social error.

It belatedly occurs to me that Jeeves has lately been referred to only as the head of house security, and not as a butler; of course this makes sense, since Trealla Fantrol no longer has need of a butler and at Jelaza Kazone the job is already ably filled by Mr pel’Kana.

It’s said of Luken that he is “grandfather to no one in this room”, which is less definite than I thought I remembered, leaving open the possibility that he has grandchildren elsewhere. One thing we can say about them, if they exist, is that they’re not counted as children of Korval, or they’d have appeared on a roster by now or been mentioned somewhere in all the arrangements resulting from the declaration of Plan B; perhaps their parent, Luken’s child, married out of the clan.

The scene with Pat Rin and Penn at the end seems like a bit of abrupt shift after the rest of the chapter, but I notice a thing which ties the scenes together (apart from them presumably happening on the same evening): the one scene has Theo remembering to be polite among Liadens by not shaking hands, and the other scene has Pat Rin remembering to be polite among Terrans by shaking hands.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 23

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Bechimo

In which Theo and Bechimo come to an agreement.

It’s a good thing for Theo (and, as she reminds us, Win Ton) that Bechimo agreed with her reasons for venturing out into the dangerous universe again. There doesn’t seem like there’s much she could have done if he hadn’t.

One hundred twenty-six years is a long time to be waiting in an empty patch of space with nobody to keep one company. Though perhaps, when it comes down to it, not that much worse than the other three hundred plus years spent waiting in more occupied patches of space with nobody to keep one company. When we get reminded how long Bechimo‘s been waiting for Captain and crew, the wonder is maybe that he’s not even less well-adjusted than he is. It’s probably a testament to how much care the Builders put into adjusting him in the first place.

Tomorrow: “Hidden Resources”, then “Kin Ties”, “Code of Honor”, then back to chapter 24.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 20

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Bechimo

In which Theo has questions for Bechimo.

Yes, Theo, all of the above. Good luck with that.

Theo’s dubious, but we know from the prequels that it is possible in this setting for ships to travel from another universe into this – though not easy, which may explain why Bechimo‘s discoveries are always in pieces. Or, since Bechimo‘s also correct about the catastrophic event, it could be that they were in pieces already when they left their original universe.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 3

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Jelaza Kazone
Liad

In which Delm Korval considers Theo’s problem.

Not sure what to make of Theo thinking that Val Con looks familiar for some reason other than resembling their father. She hasn’t met any of the other relatives yet, and I’m pretty sure she’s never seen his mother — or has she? They talked about the Caylon at the Academy, but I don’t remember if it was ever mentioned them having pictures of her. (And of course if that’s it Theo wouldn’t be able to place the resemblance, because nobody’s mentioned to her who Val Con’s mother is.)

As for her assessment of Val Con as biddable and lacking in spark, it’s a choice between politely suppressed laughter and a wide-eyed Bugs Bunny “She don’t know him very well, do she?”

Until Val Con mentioned it, I don’t think I’d thought about the fact that Korval doesn’t just have its house and Tree to get off-planet, but all of the many ships it’s collected over the years (those that aren’t elsewhere already). I suppose it will have to allow its several shipyards to be seized – unless they’ve already been sold off or otherwise passed into other hands – but Korval never leaves a ship behind.

Saltation – Chapter 33

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Primadonna
Alanzia Port

In which an expected package comes in an unexpected shape.

It’s been two years since Theo left Eylot to start working with Rig Tranza, and in that time she’s visited nineteen planets, which might mean that they’re averaging one-and-a-quarter months between planets, or more likely that they’ve got a regular patch of space and have visited some of those planets more than once. Or else the wording “set foot on” is significant, and they’ve visited additional planets that Theo’s foot didn’t get to meet.

Two years is significant, too, because Eylot said that after two years they might possibly consider letting her back into Anlingdin Academy if she grovelled enough. She doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to go and find out if that was true.

Landed Alien

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In which Kara ven’Arith takes a very long tenday tour.

I take note of the way Kara’s mother and Kara’s delm are always mentioned in this story in the same breath, and the way those mentions are worded, and in addition consider the similar mention of Kara’s mother early in Saltation, and the conclusion I draw is that this is one of those Liaden melant’i situations where “mother” and “delm” are two hats worn by a single person but spoken of separately because the same person might be required to consider a situation differently depending on which set of eyes she’s regarding it with.

The Station Master is another addition to the list of characters for whom the authors of have chosen not to provide gendered pronouns. I might not have found it worth mentioning, but that there’s a sentence near the end of the story which attracted attention by going somewhat out of its way to avoid a pronoun.

Tomorrow: Agent of Change

Saltation – Chapter 30

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Administrative Hearing Room One
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo is pushed out of the nest.

I’m not sure which is a less fair event to claim as evidence of Theo’s “continued association with violent activity”, the one where she was attacked unprovoked or the one where her entire “association” with the activity was to get out of the way as it went past and do her level best not to get involved. I’m inclined to think the latter, with the additional note that the actual violence on that occasion was being done by official representatives of the lawful authorities, which makes it particularly unfair for those same lawful authorities to count it as an inappropriate event to be involved with.

(Although… was it these same authorities? There’s clearly been a shift in power since then, and it may well have gone as far as a complete change of government. We never did find out what cause Hap Harney was a martyr to; for all we know, the people who are now tarring Theo with his death were his people.)

Either way, they’re definitely being disingenuous in claiming the general unrest as justification for tightening their grip on things, considering who the actual restless people have been.

Saltation – Chapter 29

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Anlingdin Piloting Academy
Eylot

In which Theo goes for a walk.

It’s approaching the long break, and the prospect of working at Hugglelans again, so it’s a whole year since chapter 20. A school year, that is, which is not a great deal of help for fixing the timeline without an idea of how the Anlingdin year lines up to the Standard Year.

I’m not convinced Theo’s solution to the problem of next year would have answered the case: moving out of the main quad into the DCCT dorm would have removed her from the immediate vicinity of the parochial and suspicious, but it would have only made things worse in the long run by making her seem to align herself with Them against Us. I suppose, had things been otherwise, it might have served to delay matters enough for her to finish her schooling. Might have. And the attack on DCCT makes it pretty clear that things are not that kind of otherwise.

Healer el’Kemin’s little exposition on the uses of vya expands our knowledge of it somewhat. We had known that it was used to stimulate passion, but previously we had only seen it used to stimulate passions of one particular kind. (And, come to think of it, the information that it has more varied applications offers a new angle on Aito-who-always-wears-too-much-vya.)

Saltation – Chapter 28

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Armorer’s Forge
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo doesn’t believe in local politics, but local politics believes in Theo.

So, of course, as soon as I remarked on the large time skips between chapters they stopped happening, and every chapter since then has flowed directly into the next. But there are a few reminders in this chapter of how much time has been skipped.

One is that Theo and Asu have long since moved out of their first-year berth in Erkes Dormitory and into a two-person suite elsewhere on campus, which explains why there wasn’t anything in Chapters 22 and 23 about the new student who was going to move into Suite 302 to replace Chelly: apparently that part of Theo’s school career got skipped entirely. I had wondered about that.

But, you know, the odd thing is that the dateline at the top of Chapters 22 and 23 still says Erkes Dormitory, Suite 302. And, because there really haven’t been any time skips since, that may have been many chapters ago but in story terms it was literally only yesterday.