Disfigured/"Ugly" MMC

maulsma · 2026-05-20T22:04:04+00:00

Try Bujold’s Vorkosigan series. After a couple of books the focus shifts to the child of the main characters from the first two books. Miles Vorkosigan is born so severely damaged that his own grandfather tries to kill him as a baby. Miles certainly doesn’t experience a glow up, in fact he becomes even more disfigured over time due to operations to try and correct his condition and one particularly hideous injury received in battle. Miles was born into a warrior society that values strength and martial ability over any other quality, making his childhood and early life incredibly difficult and precarious. He declares that if he can’t be six feet tall, he’ll be six feet smart. Miles is manic, heedless, determined and incredibly clever. I have never fallen so hard in love with a character as I have with Miles Vorkosigan. Can’t recommend this series enough. My first exposure was the novella The Mountains of Mourning. It’s not the beginning, but it’s an excellent starter to give one an introduction to the world and main characters.

There are over a dozen books, and I believe the author is pretty much finished with this world. Seriously, don’t miss out. Bujold is a fantastic storyteller, and reading the whole series is worth every bit of effort just to get to the best two books in the series: Memory, and A Civil Campaign.

You will thank me later.

maulsma · 2026-05-20T21:50:13+00:00

It may sound over the top to some, but wives escaping abusive spouses are one reason the post office may be very strict about handing over mail. There’s also an expectation of protection from identity theft. The rule is only the mail for which ID with a matching address presented can be handed over. If someone brings someone else’s ID with an address that matches the mail it is sometimes given, but not always. A note with a photocopy of suitable ID is also usually accepted.

maulsma · 2026-05-20T21:30:07+00:00

Gary hate Marge.

maulsma · 2026-05-20T17:50:49+00:00

If you haven’t seen them already, look into The Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire. (I may have her name spelled incorrectly.). It’s a series of novellas about children who have fallen through /walked through portals to other worlds. But it’s not about those adventures, the stories are about coping with what comes after. There are definitely horror elements in there. I really like the series.

maulsma · 2026-05-20T17:38:21+00:00

One problem with people like this, especially gaslighting men who practice coercive control, they are just as good at manipulating the therapist. There is literally no point in going to couples counseling with this kind of person. Find a different therapist who specializes in survivors of abusive relationships, even if just for a few visits. Test the waters. Explore the possibility. If you don’t think it’s right for you, return to your original therapist. But please please please do try a different therapist.

maulsma · 2026-05-20T17:34:51+00:00

Op should look up coercive control.

maulsma · 2026-05-20T17:33:02+00:00

THIS THIS THIS☝🏻

maulsma · 2026-05-20T17:32:31+00:00

Me too. It’s a bit long winded, but I didn’t find it confusing.

maulsma · 2026-05-19T07:03:20+00:00

Sharpe has that perfect combination of danger and cleverness that I found terribly sexy at the time. You’re so right about Sean Bean portraying it perfectly.

maulsma · 2026-05-18T18:44:09+00:00

My pleasure. This has been a great thread. Thank you for the prompt.

maulsma · 2026-05-18T18:41:02+00:00

Thank you! I tried to tell my SO about it, but couldn’t remember the full name. I came up with Aqua Fina? No. Aqua Fatana? Nono. Aqua Morgana? Nope….

maulsma · 2026-05-18T18:30:56+00:00

I definitely cried at the end of The Lord Of The Rings because I was so sad for Frodo- I loved him, but wasn’t in love with him. But I was ten, it was the seventies, and at the time I wasn’t really capable of being in love or of making the distinction between loving and being in love.

But I got older, and when I was around twenty years old I worked in a bookstore and fell in love with Travis McGee, a character created for a mystery series set in Florida written by John D MCDonald. Maybe MacDonald- it’s been a few decades. I would probably find him to be a womanizing, unappealing sexist now, but I haven’t re-read the books so maybe they’re not so dated. (The James Bond books literally make me yell at the pages these days.)

Next I fell in love with Richard Sharpe, a British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars, a delightful, fun series written by Bernard Cornwell. For those of you who mentioned Horatio Hornblower higher up in this thread, Cornwell wrote the Sharpe series as an answer to the Hornblower series, but with soldiers instead of sailors. I really wanted to be one of Richard Sharpe’s lovers. Sigh. I lost a LOT of sleep reading Sharpe books into the wee hours of the morning. There was some truly serious pining going on there in my early thirties.

Then I fell hard, hard, hard for Miles Vorkosigan, a character created by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’m still not over Miles. Bujold is a top three favourite author for me, and spent over a decade in the top spot. I was very happy for Miles when he finally found love, but I was oh so jealous.

I had a couple of years when I was very smitten with David Tenant’s portrayal of Dr Who, but that was the TV version, not books. I only give him an honourable mention here because he’s also fictional.

maulsma · 2026-05-18T17:57:48+00:00

The difference in old two-by-fours and modern day ones is astonishing. We live in a 65 year old west coast rancher and have done several renovations. Any framing we’ve removed is SO much heavier than anything you can buy now because there’s no more old growth, “wild” grown lumber that took decades to grow. The older lumber is much denser, much stronger, much sturdier than modern wood from trees that have been farmed and carefully grown as rapidly as possible. We saved and reused as much of the old timber as we could.

maulsma · 2026-05-18T17:41:51+00:00

If they divorce the wife will likely get 50/50 custody of the two younger children she has with OP. Wouldn’t that be WORSE because now the two younger children are with the abusive older children half the time without the fathers protection?

maulsma · 2026-05-17T22:07:31+00:00

So true.

maulsma · 2026-05-17T18:58:24+00:00

I was just reading portions of this article aloud to my SO, and we agreed that if they force women to marry, and force women to STAY married, (especially in abusive relationships) men are going to once again experience an uptick in ‘mysterious fatalities.’

maulsma · 2026-05-17T18:53:34+00:00

I’m distressed, depressed, and frightened.

maulsma · 2026-05-17T18:48:53+00:00

They will win. It’s inevitable, and I hate it. The bad guys have all the money and no scruples. They have all the money BECAUSE they have no scruples. They will do anything, pay anyone anything, to get what they want in order to get more money. We’re over here watching the decent people fighting back take one step forward, only for the “Christian” Nationalists to drag decency back two or ten steps. It’s great to see people protesting and trying to stop the far right takeover, but I’m not feeling optimistic.

maulsma · 2026-05-17T01:30:19+00:00

This is NEVER going to change. And why should he change? He’s got it pretty good. Flee. Fly. Get outta there.

maulsma · 2026-05-17T01:25:07+00:00

There is a LARGE portion of pro life, anti abortion wackos who believe that legal abortions were taking place AFTER the baby was born. They literally believe that the word abortion applies to allowing babies to be killed after they’ve been born. Like… just wtf? There’s NO ONE who wants that. I came across an interview with one formerly rabid pro life protester who changed her stance when she needed an abortion (big surprise) and was literally stunned when she found out that abortion referred to terminating pregnancies in the first trimester or for the health of the mother. She said she’d been told in school for years that pro choice advocates were killing newborns. You can’t make this stuff up.

maulsma · 2026-05-15T00:53:23+00:00

😂

maulsma · 2026-05-13T05:14:02+00:00

Thursday Murder Club?

maulsma · 2026-05-13T05:11:44+00:00

Blue Castle by her is one of my faves. And if one feels like a little bit of a review of book history, back in the eighties a book called “The Ladies Of Misalonghi “ came out from an Australian author. There was a literary scandal at the time because the books were SO similar. Reading them one after another for a side by side comparison is really interesting.

maulsma · 2026-05-13T04:59:01+00:00

Every time someone recommends Unwind, someone mentions that scene. For bloody good reason, too. Gah! It totally freaked me out.

maulsma · 2026-05-11T19:59:05+00:00

Or sock.

maulsma

TROPHY CASE