Bittercon: "I'm So Special"

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For those on my flist not able to join oursin and brisingamen at Wiscon, or who did not go and have fun at Kalamazoo (or even those who did!) but who would like to participate in a Con panel, there is lively discussion at papersky, sartorias and katenepveu and others coordinated in the community bittercon. Here's my panel topic

Comments

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Brekke refuses to Impress again after Wirenth is killed by Prideth.

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Right - I'd forgotten her. That subject - what happens when the imprinted animal/whatever dies - is touched on in most of the works. I think there are several instances of it in Lackey, for example. In the early Jennifer Roberson series about - is it the Cheysuli? - that becomes an important plot point as I think I remember that the human dies or goes mad with the death of his/her totem animal.

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I haven't read any Roberson, but Lackey has only one Unchosen: Tylendel, and even he gets a second chance, though not as a Herald. In His Dark Materials, sundered children become like ghosts...

It's an interesting point.

Ooh, here: The Hallowed Hunt isn't shameful escapist brain-candy.

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But Tylendel was chosen in the first place, wasn't he? Then gets a special job when his Companion dies iirc.

I suppose you could call whatsisname the engineer in that last series of Valdemar books an "Unchosen" but he has special skills that make him part of the elite group. I think I remember one short story either by Lackey or by a fanfic writer, in one of the Valdemar story collections, about a woman who does not get chosen, and it was actually one of the more powerful in the collection.

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He was Chosen and then repudiated by his Companion, who then did "suicide by wyrsa". He went insane and hung himself. Then he's reincarnated as Steffan the bard.

Keren's twin brother Teren wasn't Chosen till he was an adult; she was Chosen at the normal age.

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oops, yes - I'd gotten him muddled. As you guessed, I was confusing him with Teren, and then got him wrong, too. Middle age :( it does fearful things to your brain...