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Entry tags:
[OOC] [For Barrayar] Application
OOC
Name: Rho
Preferred pronouns: Feminine
Over 16?: YEP
Contact: katoptron @ plurk / ishidaaaugh @ gmail
Time zone: EST
IC
Type: OU
Name: Miles Naismith Vorkosigan
Canon: Vorkosigan Saga
Canon point: Mid-Memory (before the Simon shit starts going down in earnest)
Age: 30
Appearance: SHORT. BELLIGERENT. PERPETUALLY PREPARED TO PARTY.
Personality: Miles is a young man who has spent his life bashing his head against the limitations set for him. Fortunately for him he’s wildly intelligent, with a strategic mind unparalleled by anyone except maybe his father. Miles spent (and continues to spend) most of his energy in stubbornly proving himself capable of doing anything anyone says he can’t do. Putting a wall in front of him is like waving a red flag in front of a bull - his immediate instinct is to run headlong into it. It’s part of why he first decided he was going to join the Imperial Military Service in the first place, despite his physical limitations. Everything in his life told him that he wouldn’t manage it without severe nepotism (as had been traditional for Vor lords like him previously), so he insisted on making it in just like everyone else. And failing at it, only to come back with a mercenary army instead. Telling Miles Vorkosigan not to do something is the quickest way to get it done.
Much of this stems from the fact that Miles had to fight just to survive in Barrayar’s culture. Many people on his planet - including his own grandfather - viewed anyone with physical defects as being less than human and unworthy of using up Barrayar’s resources. His own grandfather tried to kill him at least twice, with a possible third incident prompting Miles’ parents to keeping their son accompanied by a bodyguard at all times. Miles is someone who has had to prove, over and over again, that he is worthy of existence. That leaves a mark after a while, in the form of some crippling self-worth issues. Of course, his parents were as supportive as possible, never laying expectations on him that they thought he couldn’t meet and giving him enough space to find whatever life might make him happy. But everyone else … Miles is so used to being on the defense that he’s made it all into a grand offensive strategy: strike first, make himself completely unable to be ignored, make himself into a hero that can buck the expectations people have for him. He has a lot of issues with not ending up as the monstrous, hunchbacked figured from Barrayaran fiction. Miles is fundamentally a good person, and twists himself around backwards to prove it sometimes.
Miles’ limitation-busting tendencies is another reason why Miles is as good of a strategist as he is. Having been surrounded by tumultuous politics and people who are likely to start out with negative prejudices towards him, Miles has a very acute sense of whether someone is trustworthy or not. He's an excellent judge of character - mostly, with a few exceptions - and moves to surround himself with talented people as quickly as he can. If Miles can’t do it, he’ll find someone who can. Make it happen anyway. And if he still can’t win, then it’s time to shift the battlefield onto ground that he can hold.
Unfortunately, when you’re used to thinking of everything as a battlefield, then everything you do become a battle tactic. Miles really isn’t used to making normal friends. He’s used to collecting people, or growing up with them; he feels the need to trick or trap people into wanting to be close to him. Completely ignoring the thought that he might just be worthy of friendship all on his own merits, without any of the manipulation. Miles likes to make his goals and his friends’ goals just happen to align to keep them as close as possible. This backfires SPECTACULARLY on more than one occasion. It’s ultimately the cause of Sergeant Bothari’s death in Warrior’s Apprentice: Miles, trying to impress his crush, puts Bothari face to face with the woman he raped, with drastic consequences. Later he tries to manipulate his future wife into spending time with him, also with drastic (but less fatal) results. This is the ugly side of Miles Vorkosigan: manipulative because he can’t quite trust himself to be a real person.
It probably comes as no surprise by now that Miles is a person of extremes. Wild, manic upswings are balanced out by massive downturns. Miles-the-thirty-year-old has mellowed somewhat over the years, but recent events have thrown him right back into turmoil. When he’s up, he’s pacing and throwing himself at wild goose chases, with no thought as to where that road is going to lead him. Being stuck in this time period an situation is both going to fuel this urge as well as give him quite a lot of trouble because of it. If he manages to entangle himself with a mission he’ll hurl himself into it with all his might; without it, he’ll be massively unhappy and spin his wheels. Probably some mixture of the two will be how he handles things in practice. Canon mates in the game will also help him focus himself, as they’ll likely need to band together to unfuck this timeline.
The downswings, though, are deeply unpleasant. The downside of being a master strategist means that Miles takes his all of his mistakes exceptionally hard, no matter how difficult they would have been to prevent in the moment. Enough guilt weighing him down and Miles goes into a tailspin that takes a very long time to recover from. Sometimes the two sides of his personality mix in alarmingly destructive ways. When Miles was younger, he reacted to rejection by his peers by going out, riding the wildest horse he could, and having the worst accident he possibly could. Other incidents have prompted suicide attempts of varying severity. Miles can be keenly self-destructive when he wants to be. His saving grace is that he rarely wants to drag anyone else down with him; wanting to save others is what often what drags him back up out of his funks. In this game, focusing on the peril of the situation - and making sure Barrayar doesn’t get taken over as a result - is going to be his saving grace.
Miles takes oaths and loyalty incredibly seriously. Part of this is due to the Vor culture, which is based on oaths of fealty; a Vor’s word is binding. Vorkosigans take particular pride in that, so a promise made by Miles is a promise made unto death. This does not mean Miles won’t find loopholes … His reports back to Gregor and his superiors as a member of ImpSec have a number of very interesting omissions most of the time. But never an outright lie. (Until a later book, anyway, and that is an unmitigated disaster.) He also shows exceptional loyalty to taking care of the people he’s responsible for. His first concern after a successful mission with the Dendarii is to make sure medical expenses are paid for - up to and including a new face for a soldier who’d had her face melted off during one of his missions. He’ll be a good count one day. If he can get over the death of Admiral Naismith, maybe…
Both Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith are vitally important aspects of himself. Vorkosigan, Miles’ desire to be a productive part of his society and ultimately make it better for people like himself; Naismith, Miles’ expansive and limitless potential, pushed beyond all reasonable limits. Those around Miles comment that being Naismith is being more of himself than Vorkosigan normally allows himself, and that’s true. Naismith is all the extremes of Miles’ normal personality dialed up to eleven. Naismith is also a personality that is permitted to take all the risks that Vorkosigan usually can’t. It’s an adrenaline rush that Miles finds addicting - and which eventually led to very bad decisions. Now, freshly torn from his Naismith identity and hurled into a completely new environment, Miles is probably going to be making more of those bad decisions, somewhat balanced by his concern for not screwing up the timeline too badly. Inevitably he’s going to get in over his head and then things will really get interesting …
Background/AU details: The wiki entry provides a pretty decent overview. I’m happy to expand as needed.
Strengths & weaknesses:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Depowering/humanization: None required.
Placement preference: Barrayar. If Miles is placed with Cetaganda, he’s going to be an absolute thorn in his sides and actively sabotaging/looking for a chance to defect.
Character goals: Miles’ primary goal is going to be survival. This is a supremely shitty time period to get trapped in, and his fear of messing up Barrayaran history is going to mute his activities as first. His secondary goal is going to be to try to find a way to undo - or at least stop - the effect that’s dragging in all these interlopers. Clearly a Cetagandan plot to undo an invasion gone wrong. And when the first results in frustrated mania and the second in plain old failure, he’s going to do everything he damn well can to make sure Barrayar kicks Cetaganda off their planet. Whether Piotr or the others want him helping or not. This is probably the point he would confess being from the future (very, very carefully) if the secret isn’t out already.
Sample: TDM thread!
Name: Rho
Preferred pronouns: Feminine
Over 16?: YEP
Contact: katoptron @ plurk / ishidaaaugh @ gmail
Time zone: EST
IC
Type: OU
Name: Miles Naismith Vorkosigan
Canon: Vorkosigan Saga
Canon point: Mid-Memory (before the Simon shit starts going down in earnest)
Age: 30
Appearance: SHORT. BELLIGERENT. PERPETUALLY PREPARED TO PARTY.
Personality: Miles is a young man who has spent his life bashing his head against the limitations set for him. Fortunately for him he’s wildly intelligent, with a strategic mind unparalleled by anyone except maybe his father. Miles spent (and continues to spend) most of his energy in stubbornly proving himself capable of doing anything anyone says he can’t do. Putting a wall in front of him is like waving a red flag in front of a bull - his immediate instinct is to run headlong into it. It’s part of why he first decided he was going to join the Imperial Military Service in the first place, despite his physical limitations. Everything in his life told him that he wouldn’t manage it without severe nepotism (as had been traditional for Vor lords like him previously), so he insisted on making it in just like everyone else. And failing at it, only to come back with a mercenary army instead. Telling Miles Vorkosigan not to do something is the quickest way to get it done.
Much of this stems from the fact that Miles had to fight just to survive in Barrayar’s culture. Many people on his planet - including his own grandfather - viewed anyone with physical defects as being less than human and unworthy of using up Barrayar’s resources. His own grandfather tried to kill him at least twice, with a possible third incident prompting Miles’ parents to keeping their son accompanied by a bodyguard at all times. Miles is someone who has had to prove, over and over again, that he is worthy of existence. That leaves a mark after a while, in the form of some crippling self-worth issues. Of course, his parents were as supportive as possible, never laying expectations on him that they thought he couldn’t meet and giving him enough space to find whatever life might make him happy. But everyone else … Miles is so used to being on the defense that he’s made it all into a grand offensive strategy: strike first, make himself completely unable to be ignored, make himself into a hero that can buck the expectations people have for him. He has a lot of issues with not ending up as the monstrous, hunchbacked figured from Barrayaran fiction. Miles is fundamentally a good person, and twists himself around backwards to prove it sometimes.
Miles’ limitation-busting tendencies is another reason why Miles is as good of a strategist as he is. Having been surrounded by tumultuous politics and people who are likely to start out with negative prejudices towards him, Miles has a very acute sense of whether someone is trustworthy or not. He's an excellent judge of character - mostly, with a few exceptions - and moves to surround himself with talented people as quickly as he can. If Miles can’t do it, he’ll find someone who can. Make it happen anyway. And if he still can’t win, then it’s time to shift the battlefield onto ground that he can hold.
Unfortunately, when you’re used to thinking of everything as a battlefield, then everything you do become a battle tactic. Miles really isn’t used to making normal friends. He’s used to collecting people, or growing up with them; he feels the need to trick or trap people into wanting to be close to him. Completely ignoring the thought that he might just be worthy of friendship all on his own merits, without any of the manipulation. Miles likes to make his goals and his friends’ goals just happen to align to keep them as close as possible. This backfires SPECTACULARLY on more than one occasion. It’s ultimately the cause of Sergeant Bothari’s death in Warrior’s Apprentice: Miles, trying to impress his crush, puts Bothari face to face with the woman he raped, with drastic consequences. Later he tries to manipulate his future wife into spending time with him, also with drastic (but less fatal) results. This is the ugly side of Miles Vorkosigan: manipulative because he can’t quite trust himself to be a real person.
It probably comes as no surprise by now that Miles is a person of extremes. Wild, manic upswings are balanced out by massive downturns. Miles-the-thirty-year-old has mellowed somewhat over the years, but recent events have thrown him right back into turmoil. When he’s up, he’s pacing and throwing himself at wild goose chases, with no thought as to where that road is going to lead him. Being stuck in this time period an situation is both going to fuel this urge as well as give him quite a lot of trouble because of it. If he manages to entangle himself with a mission he’ll hurl himself into it with all his might; without it, he’ll be massively unhappy and spin his wheels. Probably some mixture of the two will be how he handles things in practice. Canon mates in the game will also help him focus himself, as they’ll likely need to band together to unfuck this timeline.
The downswings, though, are deeply unpleasant. The downside of being a master strategist means that Miles takes his all of his mistakes exceptionally hard, no matter how difficult they would have been to prevent in the moment. Enough guilt weighing him down and Miles goes into a tailspin that takes a very long time to recover from. Sometimes the two sides of his personality mix in alarmingly destructive ways. When Miles was younger, he reacted to rejection by his peers by going out, riding the wildest horse he could, and having the worst accident he possibly could. Other incidents have prompted suicide attempts of varying severity. Miles can be keenly self-destructive when he wants to be. His saving grace is that he rarely wants to drag anyone else down with him; wanting to save others is what often what drags him back up out of his funks. In this game, focusing on the peril of the situation - and making sure Barrayar doesn’t get taken over as a result - is going to be his saving grace.
Miles takes oaths and loyalty incredibly seriously. Part of this is due to the Vor culture, which is based on oaths of fealty; a Vor’s word is binding. Vorkosigans take particular pride in that, so a promise made by Miles is a promise made unto death. This does not mean Miles won’t find loopholes … His reports back to Gregor and his superiors as a member of ImpSec have a number of very interesting omissions most of the time. But never an outright lie. (Until a later book, anyway, and that is an unmitigated disaster.) He also shows exceptional loyalty to taking care of the people he’s responsible for. His first concern after a successful mission with the Dendarii is to make sure medical expenses are paid for - up to and including a new face for a soldier who’d had her face melted off during one of his missions. He’ll be a good count one day. If he can get over the death of Admiral Naismith, maybe…
Both Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith are vitally important aspects of himself. Vorkosigan, Miles’ desire to be a productive part of his society and ultimately make it better for people like himself; Naismith, Miles’ expansive and limitless potential, pushed beyond all reasonable limits. Those around Miles comment that being Naismith is being more of himself than Vorkosigan normally allows himself, and that’s true. Naismith is all the extremes of Miles’ normal personality dialed up to eleven. Naismith is also a personality that is permitted to take all the risks that Vorkosigan usually can’t. It’s an adrenaline rush that Miles finds addicting - and which eventually led to very bad decisions. Now, freshly torn from his Naismith identity and hurled into a completely new environment, Miles is probably going to be making more of those bad decisions, somewhat balanced by his concern for not screwing up the timeline too badly. Inevitably he’s going to get in over his head and then things will really get interesting …
Background/AU details: The wiki entry provides a pretty decent overview. I’m happy to expand as needed.
Strengths & weaknesses:
Strengths
- Brilliant
- Determined
- Ridiculously charismatic
- Tactician
- Strong leadership
- Loyal to a fault
- Compassionate (when he can see past the end of his own nose)
- Creative/adaptive
- Works his fucking ass off to get done what needs to get done
- Skilled with horses and light weaponry
- Vor lord … not that that’s very helpful right now
Weaknesses
- Manipulative
- Self-centered
- Prideful
- Stubborn beyond sanity
- Bipolar; his methods of coping with this range from positive (sinking his mania into worthwhile endeavors) to quite negative (extreme risk taking, depressive episodes)
- Obsessive
- Abysmal self esteem, coupled with a constant need to prove his own worth
- Adrenaline junkie
- PTSD, courtesy of Dagoola IV
- Physically frail (though his bones are synthetic now) and very short
- Periodic seizures
- Problems just multiply instantly around this guy
- May, in fact, be a literal hurricane
Depowering/humanization: None required.
Placement preference: Barrayar. If Miles is placed with Cetaganda, he’s going to be an absolute thorn in his sides and actively sabotaging/looking for a chance to defect.
Character goals: Miles’ primary goal is going to be survival. This is a supremely shitty time period to get trapped in, and his fear of messing up Barrayaran history is going to mute his activities as first. His secondary goal is going to be to try to find a way to undo - or at least stop - the effect that’s dragging in all these interlopers. Clearly a Cetagandan plot to undo an invasion gone wrong. And when the first results in frustrated mania and the second in plain old failure, he’s going to do everything he damn well can to make sure Barrayar kicks Cetaganda off their planet. Whether Piotr or the others want him helping or not. This is probably the point he would confess being from the future (very, very carefully) if the secret isn’t out already.
Sample: TDM thread!