Gee, what a good idea...

[branchandroot]

So, the issue having come up in my circle, I was gearing up to make a trigger map of Bujold's Vorkosigan books and solicit thoughts from my reading list.

And then I made the mistake of mentioning this to my spouse-the-librarian.

Who promptly said that it should be a Bigger! project, encompassing, really, all of literature, and wouldn't a user editable database, possibly using the Library Thing api as a base for this, be good, gee what a good idea for a sabbatical project!

So, real soon now, I will be asking my reading list to contribute trigger categories to seed this thing with, since, for maximum coverage, it should be heavily front loaded and the free-form tagging used to supplement that.

But for now, I do want to do up Bujold. So. Here are the ones that leap to mind for me.



Shards of Honor: Rape (does not occur onscreen, but it's a close call and the build up is explicit)
POW abuse (especially women)

The Warrior's Apprentice: Torture (brief passage, but sharp)

The Vor Game: Rape (not on screen, but explicitly referred to)

"The Borders of Infinity": Incarceration (the setting of the story is a fairly intense pow prison)

Mirror Dance: Eating disorders (almost half the book)
Torture (crosses with the eating disorders)
Rape (off screen and past, but explicitly spoken of)
MPD (not trigger material, I don't think, but something I'd surely want the vulnerable to be prepared for)

Memory: Suicidal depression (brief but intense)

Komarr: Domestic abuse (first half of the book)

A Civil Campaign: Child Custody issues (an issue throughout the book)


What else?

Comments

[flourish]

"Labyrinth" involves Miles having sex with an underage person who I would personally categorize as a "child." I'm not sure that I blame him, but it could definitely freak some people out.

[flourish]

Oh, and A Civil Campaign brings up Mark's body image issues again, which could be triggery for some people (overeating on bug butter - this was brought up to me in damned_colonial's post and was a great point).

It might be worth warning for Shards of Honor including scenes of forced therapy/committal. I know that might be a little weird, but it actually affected me more than almost anything else in the series. Cordelia's inability to break free from the various therapists who just Don't Understand What Is Going On is pretty damned horrifying.

[tel]

...and that reminds me of the waterboarding torture that shows up twice in Shards.

[krait]

Cordelia's inability to break free from the various therapists who just Don't Understand What Is Going On is pretty damned horrifying.

Oh, I agree! *shudders* I found that whole thing so intense I could barely lift my eyes from the page, I was so desperate for her to find a way out, and I'm pretty trigger-free.

[tel]

With Taura, at least, it's reasonable that she's mentally accelerated as well as physically. Unlike the situation in Mirror Dance, where it's pretty clear that Miles is actually having some sort of sexual contact with a ten-year-old.