the real tragedy of the vorkosigan saga, like, the real true actual tragedy of the vorkosigan saga, is that lois mcmaster bujold wasn’t able to Predict texting back when she started it in 1986
because like, we haven’t seen enough of gregor for me to have any real sense of the miles-gregor relationship, but if i was miles, and i was in the Imperial Service, and the Emperor, he in whose name all my actions and orders are carried out, was That Guy I Grew Up With, and i had his personal number (and idk what their relationship is like but miles would have his personal number), it would just be a constant stream of BarrayApp messages like
“nearly suffocated in a tent buried under a meter of mud For You” [hypothermia selfie]
“found a corpse in the sewer For You” [selfie with pair of boots sticking out of sewage]
“stood naked in the snow at midnight For You” [hypothermia selfie #2]
“charged with high treason For You. again.” [handcuff selfie with middle finger salute]
#ivan made a group chat for the three of them#it’s called vorcousingans#they all block each other at least twice a week
this is amazing and also kyril island would be great if miles is just texting gregor the whole entire time. although knowing miles, he would not give any complaints, it would just be gregor asking aral every morning “is X normal” and aral being like “why is miles simultaneously not calling home but also pestering the emperor about his socks not being thick enough” …also but like, when miles asks ivan to spy on the secured computer for him, ivan posts screenshots of it into their whatsapp group, so when Illyan tells Gregor there’s a breach in security they need to fix, Gregor is all sagely, “yes, Ivan told me himself”. Ivan: I did not tell him? Gregor: I interpreted this as being on purpose, because otherwise you’re in trouble. Ivan: oh, right, cool, I absolutely reported the problem *thumbs up*
(Ivan, per acc, never bothers using the imperial access he has, but look, he’ll also never remember that Gregor lurks on all the group chats, so it all evens out)
okay also now that I’ve been thinking about this for a couple minutes, the idea of Gregor Vorbarra Lurks On Group Chats has *gotten to me*. He would be on so many group chats from his time at the Academy and eventually everyone would forget he’s on them or assume he’s left them, and it’s not like he says anything to remind them, but he absolutely reads them. Not immediately, he’s got them on mute, but he’ll bring them up to look at them for breaks between other things. And so he’s so very very very up to date on high level imperial business but also the most absurd minutia of imperial business. on one of the chats, someone says “huge emergency, lives are at stake, alert the emperor, the junior officers mess on the prince serg is out of coffee!!11!!!!” and they joke around about it, nbd, and then on the next shipment, there’s extra coffee with a note that it’s courtesy of the emperor, and everyone just assumes that someone forwarded it to someone’s cousin who put it in but NO ACTUALLY the emperor takes coffee orders these days.
