TODAY I AM A DARKOVER BOOK

[snarp]

COMYN LORD: I am so angry and celibate! It has something to do with my psychic powers.

HIS DAD: Cry moar. You are going to be a warrior and awesome and give me millions of awesome grandchildren because I have inadequacy issues.

COMYN LORD: I hate you, father! I fantasize about killing you with such eerie vividness that I must flee the room to rest my burning forehead against the cool stones of the corridor wall, terrified by how near I have come to patricide this day.

HIS DAD: (That is normal on Darkover.)

COMYN LADY: HI I’M HERE FOR THE ARRANGED MARRIAGE

COMYN LORD: You are so impossibly beautiful and innocent that I cannot bear even to look at you with my impure, lustful eyes.

COMYN LADY: (That is normal on Darkover.)

COMYN LORD: Women in your family tend to die in childbirth, and children in my family tend to go mad when their psychic powers develop at adolescence, and you’re a the Keeper of a Tower and psychologically conditioned to kill men who lust after you.

COMYN LADY: I am also your first cousin.

COMYN LORD: Alas, though we are madly in love already, we cannot possibly consummate our marriage.

COMYN LADY: Even though we’re telepaths, and that will eventually drive us mad?

COMYN LORD: Yup. It’s pretty crazy how often this exact situation arises on Darkover, isn’t it?

COMYN LADY: Yeah, I don’t even know.

SLIGHTLY OLDER COMYN LORD WHO LOOKS JUST LIKE THE HERO EXCEPT MEANER: I just did something! Something wicked and unnatural!

COMYN LORD AND LADY: *accidentally have sex due to wicked-and-unnatural-related stress*

COMYN LADY: I’m pregnant with your baby! It may be a monster. It may also be the promise of a better future, depends on the book.

SLIGHTLY YOUNGER COMYN LORD/LADY WHO HAS SUCH POTENTIAL: I just did something! Something selfish and ignorant!

HIS DAD AGAIN: It’s my fault because I raised him/her wrong, but I don’t realize it.

COMYN LORD: I dare not raise my voice to my father - his heart is weak, and it would kill him.

COMYN LADY: *miscarries due to selfish-and-ignorant-related stress*

COMYN LORD: DADDY I AM REPLACING YOU WITH AN AUNT FROM A GEORGETTE HEYER NOVEL

HIS DAD AGAIN: *is killed by his weak heart*

SLIGHTLY OLDER COMYN LORD: Say, have I mentioned that I am a sexual deviant in some manner? Maybe I’m a pedophile, or I keep nonhuman sex slaves. I could be into wife-swapping? Definitely bondage. Probbbably not a furry.

COMYN LADY: There was a furry one time, but I don’t think that ever actually got explained.

SLIGHTLY OLDER COMYN LORD: Oh, yeah. That was weird.

COMYN LORD: He was like, a cat, right? Was Bradley already hanging around with Mercedes Lackey then?

COMYN LADY: No, too early. Lackey must have gotten the idea from her.

SLIGHTLY OLDER COMYN LORD: It is not inconceivable that both arrived at the evil catman idea independently. Anyway, my point was that you can tell I’m evil because of the sex stuff. Let’s have a final battle now.

COMYN LORD AND LADY JOIN FORCES AND FORM A BAND THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN, AND THEY CALL THEMSELVES SOMETHING TOTALLY DUMBSHIT, LIKE “THE FORBIDDEN TOWER.”

SLIGHTLY OLDER COMYN LORD: I see the error of my sexy ways. It is notable that I have already produced many more children than the two of you ever will, so ensuring a robust population of villains and men with inadequacy issues with which to populate later books. *dies*

SLIGHTLY YOUNGER COMYN LORD/LADY: *is maybe also dead*

COMYN LORD: …so, my psychic powers tell me we will have a baby someday, so we had better get on that. Even though tragedy lays in our child’s future!

COMYN LADY: We will live happily ever after until we are slaughtered in the events of a later book.

SPACESHIPS: (There were also spaceships in this book.)

-

Possibly Also Relevant To Your Interests: Anne Bishop.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

Comments

[snarp]

I did! I should have worked that in.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

You left out the hermaphrodites and the Dry Towners and the Ya Men and Port Chicago on the part of Darkover that never gets mentioned which is everything to the north of the Wall Around the World.

I stopped reading them in the late 70's they seemed to have changed a bit since then.

[patgund.livejournal.com]

I spent way the hell too many teenage years reading these books (at least until "City of Sorcery", which was so GODS AWFUL I couldn't stand reading any of it again.

You hit it dead on.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

It is. There's an MZB-authored short story in one of the anthologies where the entire plot is, literally, Regis and Danilo Have Issues Surrounding Having Sex Because Dyan Ardais Was So Creepy and I swear it set me up for an entire lifetime of slash fanfic because it is this ludicrous hurt-comfort-id fest and it's just epic, you have to see it to believe it.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

And I'm here from her linking to his link. We must accidentally have sex now due to wicked-and-unnatural-related stress.

[spiffikins]

oh I think I read this one!!!

[azurelunatic]

*giggle*

The chains of linking that brought me here (more than one) all originate with james_nicoll.

(just a drop in from a link chain)

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

God, this is SO TRUE.

I look forward to the Hasturization. Eventually.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Oh my, that's so spot on.

Ysabett

[(Anonymous)]

You nailed it exactly! But I still love the books for what they are; good pulp science fantasy, not high art.

[snarp]

I must find that and read it immediately.

[archangelbeth]

The Dry Towners are totally recycled from a prior book of hers which is now available on Project Gutenberg: The Door Through Space.

Totally. Recycled. Entirely.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link I like her early stuff.

[schneefink]

I kept trying to figure out which book it was until I finally realized that oh wait, it´s all of them.
:D

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I came over here to see if any of the ones I have were discussed, and what do you know! I have this one. How is it as far as comprehensibility to someone who hasn't read Darkover before?

[snarp]

Pretty comprehensible, I think. In the ones I've read, Bradley's been very good about inclueing, so I suspect you can start pretty much anywhere.

(Except maybe Sharra's Exile, which is the sequel to Heritage. Most of her duologies don't actually require that you read the first book to understand the second. But if you read Exile without Heritage, you may understand what's going on, but I think you will be very puzzled about whether you care.)

[obsession_inc]

...oh my dear God, I love you.

[blktauna]

Blahahhahahahahahaaaa <3

[moizissimo]

Aah! I never read the books because I could never get the first couple from the local library... Now, I think I have to try a few. :D

You win teh interwebs

[(Anonymous)]

All of this. Definitely. Also the Terrible Terrans at Port Chicago who, despite the fact that there is nothing significant on Darkover to exploit (who the HELL would even consider attempting to work with those psychotic psychics? It'd be like juggling with balls of nitro-glycerin) are always attempting to take over and exploit Darkover.