[vorkosiverse] Just over here cackling again at Bel's sense of humor

Bel: /PUNS
Bel: /deadpan corrects an annoying person's grammar in the middle of a briefing
Bel: /cheerfully offers to blow the bad guys up if it'd be more convenient

Bel: /holds an undercover persona so well Miles genuinely can't tell where they stand about the situation... because his reaction is hilarious
Bel: /doing a corpse impression for science, flops over the side of the crime scene to make it more realistic

Bel responding to "my mother was Betan" with "what a coincidence, so was mine" while presenting openly and obviously as Specifically Very Betan the whole time is the absolute height of humor and I will laugh at it forever.

I love Bel so much

Highest of fives. Bel is such a good character and I have so many feelings about them.

The canon is full of fantastic disasters and Bel's the one I relate to the most.

.....Post-fleet Bel asking [character] endless bizarre questions about Barrayar and Barrayarans EVEN THOUGH THEY SERVED WITH BAZ AND ELENA FOR YEARS

As hard as I was burning out in the latter few months I was in Sav, Bel's one of the characters I'm proudest of having played

also lbr the humor is absolutely necessary because Bel's story would be so sad without their ironic commentary on everything

couldn't be themself on Beta, twenty-five years of galactic prejudice and microaggressions and never getting to make permanent connections outside the fleet, battle trauma and career-ending disaster, privacy-culture communication problems made worse by having to keep interplanetary-diplomacy secrets too

that low point on Beta for the last time was just... so low

Au/Ra, Alan Walker - Ghost (Official Video)

basically this except in a happily churning first-world hamster-wheel environment to which they just couldn't connect at all anymore

(even if the political environment had managed to get better than when they left )

sometimes I have to fade

I relate to this more than is healthy (among other things I'm working on in therapy) and it's so FRUSTRATING.

Not to mention how much Bel did over the years to fill those spaces. Pets, culture, tourism, history, anthropology, the arts, pouncing on every opportunity to make some kind of difference, daring rescues our specialty. But they couldn't be Miles.

There's so much meta about this but I just want to have Bel cracking wicked jokes with people who appreciate them, darnit. >|

(There's more continuity and more flail, but I'm being intentionally vague because I know Certain Folks haven't read the books. XD)

But it's a good thing Nicol came into Bel's life, because twice as many hugs is exactly what they need.~

...aLSO

BEL IS SO PROUD WHEN THEY CAN TREAT SOMEONE TO A NICE EXPERIENCE

(IN THE SAME WAY AS A TERRIBLE PUN THEY'VE BEEN SAVING UP FOR SOMEONE WHO CAN APPRECIATE IT)

BEL'S SO HAPPY WHEN SOMEONE THEY LIKE IS HAVING A NICE TIME AND I HAVE MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THAT~

Ram's the same way

a character type? eh? why would I have one of those

I can't canon-review until I find my kindle charger (I have so many notes highlighted in there) but when I do I'm going straight to the part where Miles WITH PERFECT SERIOUSNESS tells Bel all about the tragic story of how he was brought up as his own clone WHILE BEL KNOWS HIS REAL BACKSTORY THE ENTIRE TIME AND NEVER LETS ON.

~reflexes~

OH NO I was going to say Bel is all three but that Betan sincerity-feels-invasive thing gets in the way of the first one

mmmmmmmmm that tight-packed New York generation-ship-mentality thing that probably lent to Beta's hypocritical arms-dealing-is-fine-tho xenophobia

lol jk! we never condoned any of that! we're not responsible for what anyone does with this super-cool arms race we're at the technological apex of! we appreciate all life! so sorry if you misinterpreted our intentions! especially Steady Freddie's! because we definitely didn't vote for him! but wouldn't dream of interfering with the free market of ideas! c:

you can nope out of a mess like that but it takes a while to get it to nope out of you

Bujold really, really nailed that particular systemic flaw

and I'm not even sure if she meant Bel (who grew up through all that just a little bit later than Cordelia) to still have traces of it but it does come through

the other two come through loud and clear though