Mar. 14th, 2013
City of Ariel || Permissions & Kinks
Mar. 14th, 2013 09:09 pmIvan is predominantly heterosexual, but he can be convinced to try out other partners under the right circumstances.
Yes: Bondage, toys, forced oral, double penetration, rimming, sensory dep, temperature play, group play, slave play, hard and soft impact, dubcon, sharing partners, size play, manhandling
Negotiable: Non-con, and anything else not explicitly stated her.
No: Vore, gore, scat, urine/watersports, menstruation, lactation, children/child play, infantalization, pregnancy, lactaion, furry, bestiality, fisting.
Yes: Bondage, toys, forced oral, double penetration, rimming, sensory dep, temperature play, group play, slave play, hard and soft impact, dubcon, sharing partners, size play, manhandling
Negotiable: Non-con, and anything else not explicitly stated her.
No: Vore, gore, scat, urine/watersports, menstruation, lactation, children/child play, infantalization, pregnancy, lactaion, furry, bestiality, fisting.
(no subject)
Mar. 14th, 2013 09:17 pm→ IC
□ Name: Lord Ivan Vorpatril
□ Journal:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thatidiot
□ Series: Vorkosigan Saga
□ Canon point: Somewhere in/around A Civil Campaign
□ History: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Vorpatril
http://vorkosigan.wikia.com/wiki/Ivan_Vorpatril
□ Personality: Everything you need to know about Ivan can be surmised from the fact that his family refers to him as “That Idiot Ivan.” Unless, of course, they’re speaking to him directly, in which case he’s referred to as “Ivan, you idiot.”
Apparently that’s not sufficient personality, so let’s look at why Ivan’s family refers to him thusly. To understand Ivan, it’s necessary to understand a fair amount Barrayaran politics, both familial and literal. Additionally, Ivan is influenced by Russian folk literature. His character is a play on the folk character Ivan the Fool. This kind of turned into an essay, I'm sorry.
Russian Folk Tales
The short version is that in comparison to his brothers, Ivan the Fool is considered young, gullible, and naive, but through incredible luck and happenstance, he comes out on top. This fits Ivan Vorpatril to a tee. His “brothers” (Gregor and Miles, I’ll get to that) are incredibly smart. Scary smart. And Ivan looks like an idiot because beside them, he kind of is. Because no one has ever asked him to be anything else.
Ivan is, for the first several books, essentially a foil for Miles. As such, he’s Miles’s opposite on several key points. Miles, despite his rank, has to carve out every inch of respect he receives from his countrymen, because of his mutation. Ivan, by contrast, has no rank (He’s not a Count and is only a lord by virtue of the fact that he’s in the line of succession. On Barrayar, this matters.) but he is tall, handsome, and everything a Vor lord is expected to be, including an officer in the Barrayaran military. Despite all that, he’s spent his entire life in Miles’s shadow. Miles is the smart one. Miles plots and schemes, and Ivan merely goes where he’s told.
He comes off as an idiot, because he’s never had to reach a logical conclusion on his own. He’s surrounded by people who can deduct at the speed of light, and (like a fool) he is content to have things explained to him, rather than making deductions on his own. In fact, he's pretty lazy and complacent -- both traits of a fool.
Compounding that is the offhand comment in Barrayar that Lady Alys had planned the (then infant) Ivan’s life all the way through military academy and the militaristic culture of Barrayar itself. Ivan, like all Vor boys, is army-mad, and that means following orders. Not making decisions, following orders. When I say Ivan has never been expected to make decisions, I do mean that literally.
The folk tale also references luck, and in this aspect, Ivan also resembles his namesake. Ivan is constantly at the right place at the right time, often managing to save his own life and others’ through sheer luck. For instance, as a cadet in the Imperial Academy, Ivan gets tricked into going AWOL in an attempt to murder him and frame Miles for treason. Ivan gets distracted by a woman, misses the official transport to go find Miles, and ends up having to make his own way there. As a result, instead of being murdered, he arrives in time to provide Miles all the details he needs to piece together the plot. (Miles, of course, then explains it to him.) Again, some ten years later, Ivan happens to intercede at exactly the right moment to stop Lord Dono Vorrutyer from being castrated, which has much larger ramifications that don’t really matter here. Again, however, right place, right time.
To some extent, Ivan is also a Shakesperian fool, telling truth to power (Miles and Gregor.) I’ll get into that below.
Barrayaran Culture and why it makes Ivan Ivan
As I mentioned above, Barrayar is very militaristic, and Ivan is only a captain (relatively low, on the hierarchy. At one point he gets assigned to his mother, who has no military rank at all.) Where he really shines is on an interpersonal level. On Barrayar, Aunts and Uncles are afforded the same respect and rights as birth parents. This is especially true for Ivan, Miles, and Gregor (all cousins of varying degrees), who were essentially raised by the same people. The Vordarian Pretendership left Gregor orphaned entirely and Ivan without a father. As a result, Miles’s parents and Ivan’s mother all co-parented. (It’s a very Betan mindset in a very Barrayaran setting.) To that end, Miles, Gregor, and Ivan are all more like foster brothers than cousins.
But it’s more complicated than that, because while all three are very close personally, there’s a political side to their relationship as well. Gregor is Ivan’s liege and Miles is often his commanding officer or the Emperor’s Voice, which means Ivan is usually at both of their beck and call. Although he’s often unwilling to be dragged into their schemes, he literally has no choice if he receives an order from either of them. It goes both ways -- they have as many responsibilities to him, their subordinate and vassal, as he has to them. This is something on which Barrayaran protocols are very strict and all of them take it very seriously. While personally, the three may grant each other a great deal of slack, professionally they have to function within their cultural demands, and it leads to a relationship that has a constantly shifting power-dynamic. Ivan is free to speak more freely to them than others are, as I mentioned above, and he often hits the hard truths. (Sometimes unintentionally. Often just to be an ass.)
The point of this is to highlight that, for an “Idiot,” Ivan is amazingly adept at navigating the incredibly complex social strata that is Barrayar. In fact, he may be one of the best alive, a trait he learned from his mother. Ivan can integrate into nearly any society seamlessly, from a mercenary corps to the Council of Counts, despite being, by Vor standards, a nobody. When Miles and Gregor try to rope him into one of their schemes, he often wails and carries on, listing everything he’s done for them and how much of a burden it is on him, repeating at length, “I don’t want to be involved!” While it may make him appear stupid or ineffectual, in reality, it’s another subtle manipulation of the Vor caste system. He’s powerless to resist an order from them, but he can make them feel like shit about it -- both as family, and as their vassal. Sometimes this tactic works. Sometimes it doesn’t; it mostly depends on how sincere he is. Gregor and Miles have a sadistic sense of humor and Ivan is their favorite scapegoat.
However, the fact remains that he’s very adept at manipulating the system itself, not just his family. Going back to Dono’s attempted castration, Ivan not only prevent the physical attack, he is the one who realizes that because of the nature and setting of the attack, it can be useful to their cause. He plays on the ancient Vor traditions of honor and hosting guests to bring over staunch conservative support to Dono’s side. This is not only a minor miracle, it accomplishes a feat Miles has been struggling to achieve practically the entire book. Again, in this book (after Ivan is duped into making a promise he doesn’t want to make) he realizes he can keep his honor and his word and undercut Miles if he alerts certain others’ to the subject Miles is trying to hide. He plays the letter of the law and social expectations to twist the situation to his advantage, and he does this as naturally as breathing. At times, his depths surprise even Miles, especially as they’ve grown apart and Ivan has adopted a mantra of “What Would Miles Do?”
As I mentioned above, Barrayaran families are big, and there’s a network of meddlesome extended family (Aunts and Cousins) that plagues every Vor. That said, Ivan is incredibly close to his family, parental stand-ins and cousins alike. Since he was fatherless, Miles’s father, Aral, was at one point asked to give him The Talk. That brief encounter remains one of the most traumatizing experiences of his life. That said, at times he willingly seeks out Aral’s wife, Cordelia, for sex advice. (It also goes badly. There’s a theme, here, everyone likes to make Ivan freak out.) Despite constantly being picked on by his extended family, however, Ivan is incredibly devoted to them. Even as a young man, when he was much more crass and self centered, Ivan showed a surprising amount of empathy when he got into the Imperial Academy and Miles didn’t. Granted, it was badly expressed with poor teenage decisions, but it was there. Ten years later, when Miles’s military career implodes, Ivan is the one who sits suicide watch and alternately coaxes/bullies Miles out of his depression. It’s not an exaggeration to say his world revolves around his family, even though he’s just “that idiot”.
The final part of Barrayar that influences Ivan is Barrayaran culture in general. Although recently it’s become more progressive, in the past, Barrayar was conservative, isolated, and had very definite thoughts on things like women and the disabled. Because of his exposure to Miles, Ivan is much more galactic than even progressive Barrayarans. In theory. Miles has taught him that you can’t judge a person based on their physical limitations, and he’s learned the very hard way that women are totally capable of defending themselves. (Another childhood friend of theirs, Elena, was a frequent victim of Ivan’s as a teenager. He attempted to grope and pressure her, until she gave him a sturdy kick in the balls. He’s treated women with much more respect since then, and I do think he’s generally come to realize why that behavior is not okay. In A Civil Campaign, he even advocates for a woman’s right to chose her partner. Granted, it’s only because he wants a shot with the woman Miles has claimed, but it’s an enlightened argument nonetheless.) Ivan’s tolerance, however, only extends to the big picture. When it comes to his life and his family, he becomes very conservative again. For instance, when he discovers his mother, who has been widowed for 31 years, is seeing a very appropriate man, he freaks out. When he discovers an old lover of his has had a sex change operation, he freaks out. There’s a pattern, here: Ivan is a progressive, and he goes along with Miles and Gregor’s galactic ideals, but don’t bring that crap into his house, okay, it’s just weird.
Everything else.
That’s what’s going on in Ivan’s head and how his culture and literary influences affect him. On the surface, though, he’s still (and always will be) That Idiot Ivan. He’s a lovable buffoon, but someone of no real consequence. He’s charming with the ladies, but kind of a dolt. Still kind of a Nice Guy. Affable, easy-going, and seemingly worthless, he’s the kind of person no one pays much mind to. In return, he doesn’t seem to pay much mind to anyone else.
Don’t be fooled, though. Ivan sees more than he lets on, and he doesn’t mind being underestimated. He also doesn’t mind taking revenge for slights and he has the same wicked sense of humor as his entire family. Especially now that he’s grown apart from Miles, and started making more decisions on his own, he is, in and of himself, a force to be reckoned with.
□ Age: 31
□ Gender: Very male.
□ Appearance: Again, Ivan is a foil to Miles. That means he’s basically the Barrayaran ideal. Tall, muscular, with brown hair, strong features, and a chiseled jaw. He’s frequently described as looking good in a uniform. I’m using James Marsden as a PB.
□ Abilities/Powers: Luck. Really, I feel like this belongs here, because Ivan is a lucky dude. It started, literally, at birth, when Cordelia intervened precisely in time to save his life. It’s continued through the years. If there’s a right place, Ivan will be there on schedule.
He’s smart, all members of the Vorkosigan extended family are. He doesn’t always put the puzzle together, but he does catch all the pieces. It’s more about him not making an effort than him truly being stupid.
□ Personal Items:
3 uniforms
□ First Person Sample: http://dear-mun.dreamwidth.org/6866957.html?thread=216163597#cmt216163597
□ Third Person Sample: Ivan happens to actually like women. All parties involved, informed consent, yadda, yadda -- over the years, Aunt Cordelia and her Betan tendencies (he knows the ones, the ones his motherof all people chose to echo, and that’s just wrong. Everyone else sees Lady Alys as this untouchable patron of Vor virtue, the Emperor’s hostess, and he has to hear about drinks with fruit on sticks --)
The thing is, if they want him to have sex, they don’t have to push the hard sell. Ivan likes sex. He’s on board. But the chip, the kidnapping, it’s all a little more Jacksonian than Betan. He doesn’t need Miles to tell him that. And he gets what that means.
It means there’s something hinky going on. Years of trailing after Miles have left him with a sharply honed sense for when things are hinky. He can smell it in the air. It has the smell of Miles and Miles’s bullshit.
And he’s talking to himself, so things have officially gotten weird. What would Miles do, here? (Probably climb the tallest woman he could find like an oak tree.) Start sorting things out. Draft a map, section out the city into districts. Shake out the useful people from the worthless ones. Start an insurrection. They’d never know what hit them.
But Ivan isn’t Miles, and he’s not a perfect mirror. He’s not drafting a map as he wanders (though he is taking note of landmarks, where he turned.) He’s just sight seeing.
He was an Imperial Cadet. He’s been to Beta Colony. If they want to shock him, they’re going to have to work a little harder.
□ Name: Lord Ivan Vorpatril
□ Journal:
thatidiot□ Series: Vorkosigan Saga
□ Canon point: Somewhere in/around A Civil Campaign
□ History: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Vorpatril
http://vorkosigan.wikia.com/wiki/Ivan_Vorpatril
□ Personality: Everything you need to know about Ivan can be surmised from the fact that his family refers to him as “That Idiot Ivan.” Unless, of course, they’re speaking to him directly, in which case he’s referred to as “Ivan, you idiot.”
Apparently that’s not sufficient personality, so let’s look at why Ivan’s family refers to him thusly. To understand Ivan, it’s necessary to understand a fair amount Barrayaran politics, both familial and literal. Additionally, Ivan is influenced by Russian folk literature. His character is a play on the folk character Ivan the Fool. This kind of turned into an essay, I'm sorry.
Russian Folk Tales
The short version is that in comparison to his brothers, Ivan the Fool is considered young, gullible, and naive, but through incredible luck and happenstance, he comes out on top. This fits Ivan Vorpatril to a tee. His “brothers” (Gregor and Miles, I’ll get to that) are incredibly smart. Scary smart. And Ivan looks like an idiot because beside them, he kind of is. Because no one has ever asked him to be anything else.
Ivan is, for the first several books, essentially a foil for Miles. As such, he’s Miles’s opposite on several key points. Miles, despite his rank, has to carve out every inch of respect he receives from his countrymen, because of his mutation. Ivan, by contrast, has no rank (He’s not a Count and is only a lord by virtue of the fact that he’s in the line of succession. On Barrayar, this matters.) but he is tall, handsome, and everything a Vor lord is expected to be, including an officer in the Barrayaran military. Despite all that, he’s spent his entire life in Miles’s shadow. Miles is the smart one. Miles plots and schemes, and Ivan merely goes where he’s told.
He comes off as an idiot, because he’s never had to reach a logical conclusion on his own. He’s surrounded by people who can deduct at the speed of light, and (like a fool) he is content to have things explained to him, rather than making deductions on his own. In fact, he's pretty lazy and complacent -- both traits of a fool.
Compounding that is the offhand comment in Barrayar that Lady Alys had planned the (then infant) Ivan’s life all the way through military academy and the militaristic culture of Barrayar itself. Ivan, like all Vor boys, is army-mad, and that means following orders. Not making decisions, following orders. When I say Ivan has never been expected to make decisions, I do mean that literally.
The folk tale also references luck, and in this aspect, Ivan also resembles his namesake. Ivan is constantly at the right place at the right time, often managing to save his own life and others’ through sheer luck. For instance, as a cadet in the Imperial Academy, Ivan gets tricked into going AWOL in an attempt to murder him and frame Miles for treason. Ivan gets distracted by a woman, misses the official transport to go find Miles, and ends up having to make his own way there. As a result, instead of being murdered, he arrives in time to provide Miles all the details he needs to piece together the plot. (Miles, of course, then explains it to him.) Again, some ten years later, Ivan happens to intercede at exactly the right moment to stop Lord Dono Vorrutyer from being castrated, which has much larger ramifications that don’t really matter here. Again, however, right place, right time.
To some extent, Ivan is also a Shakesperian fool, telling truth to power (Miles and Gregor.) I’ll get into that below.
Barrayaran Culture and why it makes Ivan Ivan
As I mentioned above, Barrayar is very militaristic, and Ivan is only a captain (relatively low, on the hierarchy. At one point he gets assigned to his mother, who has no military rank at all.) Where he really shines is on an interpersonal level. On Barrayar, Aunts and Uncles are afforded the same respect and rights as birth parents. This is especially true for Ivan, Miles, and Gregor (all cousins of varying degrees), who were essentially raised by the same people. The Vordarian Pretendership left Gregor orphaned entirely and Ivan without a father. As a result, Miles’s parents and Ivan’s mother all co-parented. (It’s a very Betan mindset in a very Barrayaran setting.) To that end, Miles, Gregor, and Ivan are all more like foster brothers than cousins.
But it’s more complicated than that, because while all three are very close personally, there’s a political side to their relationship as well. Gregor is Ivan’s liege and Miles is often his commanding officer or the Emperor’s Voice, which means Ivan is usually at both of their beck and call. Although he’s often unwilling to be dragged into their schemes, he literally has no choice if he receives an order from either of them. It goes both ways -- they have as many responsibilities to him, their subordinate and vassal, as he has to them. This is something on which Barrayaran protocols are very strict and all of them take it very seriously. While personally, the three may grant each other a great deal of slack, professionally they have to function within their cultural demands, and it leads to a relationship that has a constantly shifting power-dynamic. Ivan is free to speak more freely to them than others are, as I mentioned above, and he often hits the hard truths. (Sometimes unintentionally. Often just to be an ass.)
The point of this is to highlight that, for an “Idiot,” Ivan is amazingly adept at navigating the incredibly complex social strata that is Barrayar. In fact, he may be one of the best alive, a trait he learned from his mother. Ivan can integrate into nearly any society seamlessly, from a mercenary corps to the Council of Counts, despite being, by Vor standards, a nobody. When Miles and Gregor try to rope him into one of their schemes, he often wails and carries on, listing everything he’s done for them and how much of a burden it is on him, repeating at length, “I don’t want to be involved!” While it may make him appear stupid or ineffectual, in reality, it’s another subtle manipulation of the Vor caste system. He’s powerless to resist an order from them, but he can make them feel like shit about it -- both as family, and as their vassal. Sometimes this tactic works. Sometimes it doesn’t; it mostly depends on how sincere he is. Gregor and Miles have a sadistic sense of humor and Ivan is their favorite scapegoat.
However, the fact remains that he’s very adept at manipulating the system itself, not just his family. Going back to Dono’s attempted castration, Ivan not only prevent the physical attack, he is the one who realizes that because of the nature and setting of the attack, it can be useful to their cause. He plays on the ancient Vor traditions of honor and hosting guests to bring over staunch conservative support to Dono’s side. This is not only a minor miracle, it accomplishes a feat Miles has been struggling to achieve practically the entire book. Again, in this book (after Ivan is duped into making a promise he doesn’t want to make) he realizes he can keep his honor and his word and undercut Miles if he alerts certain others’ to the subject Miles is trying to hide. He plays the letter of the law and social expectations to twist the situation to his advantage, and he does this as naturally as breathing. At times, his depths surprise even Miles, especially as they’ve grown apart and Ivan has adopted a mantra of “What Would Miles Do?”
As I mentioned above, Barrayaran families are big, and there’s a network of meddlesome extended family (Aunts and Cousins) that plagues every Vor. That said, Ivan is incredibly close to his family, parental stand-ins and cousins alike. Since he was fatherless, Miles’s father, Aral, was at one point asked to give him The Talk. That brief encounter remains one of the most traumatizing experiences of his life. That said, at times he willingly seeks out Aral’s wife, Cordelia, for sex advice. (It also goes badly. There’s a theme, here, everyone likes to make Ivan freak out.) Despite constantly being picked on by his extended family, however, Ivan is incredibly devoted to them. Even as a young man, when he was much more crass and self centered, Ivan showed a surprising amount of empathy when he got into the Imperial Academy and Miles didn’t. Granted, it was badly expressed with poor teenage decisions, but it was there. Ten years later, when Miles’s military career implodes, Ivan is the one who sits suicide watch and alternately coaxes/bullies Miles out of his depression. It’s not an exaggeration to say his world revolves around his family, even though he’s just “that idiot”.
The final part of Barrayar that influences Ivan is Barrayaran culture in general. Although recently it’s become more progressive, in the past, Barrayar was conservative, isolated, and had very definite thoughts on things like women and the disabled. Because of his exposure to Miles, Ivan is much more galactic than even progressive Barrayarans. In theory. Miles has taught him that you can’t judge a person based on their physical limitations, and he’s learned the very hard way that women are totally capable of defending themselves. (Another childhood friend of theirs, Elena, was a frequent victim of Ivan’s as a teenager. He attempted to grope and pressure her, until she gave him a sturdy kick in the balls. He’s treated women with much more respect since then, and I do think he’s generally come to realize why that behavior is not okay. In A Civil Campaign, he even advocates for a woman’s right to chose her partner. Granted, it’s only because he wants a shot with the woman Miles has claimed, but it’s an enlightened argument nonetheless.) Ivan’s tolerance, however, only extends to the big picture. When it comes to his life and his family, he becomes very conservative again. For instance, when he discovers his mother, who has been widowed for 31 years, is seeing a very appropriate man, he freaks out. When he discovers an old lover of his has had a sex change operation, he freaks out. There’s a pattern, here: Ivan is a progressive, and he goes along with Miles and Gregor’s galactic ideals, but don’t bring that crap into his house, okay, it’s just weird.
Everything else.
That’s what’s going on in Ivan’s head and how his culture and literary influences affect him. On the surface, though, he’s still (and always will be) That Idiot Ivan. He’s a lovable buffoon, but someone of no real consequence. He’s charming with the ladies, but kind of a dolt. Still kind of a Nice Guy. Affable, easy-going, and seemingly worthless, he’s the kind of person no one pays much mind to. In return, he doesn’t seem to pay much mind to anyone else.
Don’t be fooled, though. Ivan sees more than he lets on, and he doesn’t mind being underestimated. He also doesn’t mind taking revenge for slights and he has the same wicked sense of humor as his entire family. Especially now that he’s grown apart from Miles, and started making more decisions on his own, he is, in and of himself, a force to be reckoned with.
□ Age: 31
□ Gender: Very male.
□ Appearance: Again, Ivan is a foil to Miles. That means he’s basically the Barrayaran ideal. Tall, muscular, with brown hair, strong features, and a chiseled jaw. He’s frequently described as looking good in a uniform. I’m using James Marsden as a PB.
□ Abilities/Powers: Luck. Really, I feel like this belongs here, because Ivan is a lucky dude. It started, literally, at birth, when Cordelia intervened precisely in time to save his life. It’s continued through the years. If there’s a right place, Ivan will be there on schedule.
He’s smart, all members of the Vorkosigan extended family are. He doesn’t always put the puzzle together, but he does catch all the pieces. It’s more about him not making an effort than him truly being stupid.
□ Personal Items:
3 uniforms
□ First Person Sample: http://dear-mun.dreamwidth.org/6866957.html?thread=216163597#cmt216163597
□ Third Person Sample: Ivan happens to actually like women. All parties involved, informed consent, yadda, yadda -- over the years, Aunt Cordelia and her Betan tendencies (he knows the ones, the ones his motherof all people chose to echo, and that’s just wrong. Everyone else sees Lady Alys as this untouchable patron of Vor virtue, the Emperor’s hostess, and he has to hear about drinks with fruit on sticks --)
The thing is, if they want him to have sex, they don’t have to push the hard sell. Ivan likes sex. He’s on board. But the chip, the kidnapping, it’s all a little more Jacksonian than Betan. He doesn’t need Miles to tell him that. And he gets what that means.
It means there’s something hinky going on. Years of trailing after Miles have left him with a sharply honed sense for when things are hinky. He can smell it in the air. It has the smell of Miles and Miles’s bullshit.
And he’s talking to himself, so things have officially gotten weird. What would Miles do, here? (Probably climb the tallest woman he could find like an oak tree.) Start sorting things out. Draft a map, section out the city into districts. Shake out the useful people from the worthless ones. Start an insurrection. They’d never know what hit them.
But Ivan isn’t Miles, and he’s not a perfect mirror. He’s not drafting a map as he wanders (though he is taking note of landmarks, where he turned.) He’s just sight seeing.
He was an Imperial Cadet. He’s been to Beta Colony. If they want to shock him, they’re going to have to work a little harder.