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Hypothetical crossovers meme
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ellen_fremedon has started a meme, which is terribly dangerous but too tempting for me to ignore, so here:Let's play the Hypothetical Crossover game! Name any two (or more) fandoms you know I'm familiar with*, and I will tell you how I would, hypothetically**, cross them over!
Take the meme, spread the meme, do the meme, love the meme.
*Fandoms I'm familiar with: written on AO3 (expand full list), tagged on DW (under fandoms: , though note my DW tags are a mess atm); marked 'read' on LT: SF and YA, comics (and art), everything. (If you want to be particularly evil, you can give me two fiction fandoms + a nonfiction book and I will mash all three.)
**I thought about saying that you can't name a pair of fandoms about which you know I have already a) written, b) hypothetically discussed, or c) declared I am not writing, but nah. Just, if you give me one of those, you deserve what you get in return!
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Now that there is planetwide vid broadcast, there's a steady trickle of comedy shows going, though, mostly sketch comedy, broad slapstick/traditional folk storytelling, really dumb sitcoms, and the sort of celebrity interview shows where the comedy is kind of an afterthought, but it's all heavily censored by Impsec for political or subversive content.
Eventually a bunch of young comedians, most of them graduates of the comedy club at UVS, get together, swapping smuggled off-planet comedy vids and muttering about censorship and authoritarianism. Somebody has the idea (terrible, terrible idea) for them to start secretly making, and distributing to friends only, a political satire show, just to prove that they *can*. It's not even outright subversive, more just gently poking fun at the foibles of the Counts, the ministries, and the High Vor.
It accidentally becomes wildly popular, with bootlegs of the monthly episodes being distributed across the planet and showing up on the 'nets, somehow, within hours of final edits. There is panic and dismay among the comedians, because after all they hadn't taken much trouble to disguise their identities, but a core group of closet revolutionaries convinces them to keep going, fuck the man.
What happens next depends on when in Barrayar canon you actually decide to set it, ranging from "Duv Mitchell accidentally becomes a leading public figure in the early days of Mad Yuri's War and somehow winds up on Emperor Ezar's council of advisors" to "Gregor laughs until he cries and tells poor Allegre 'Let's see what happens'.
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Aral's trolling the Empire again, I see. ;)
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But yes!
At some point Illyan starts attending some of the comedy club's live shows, and apparently completely sincerely (???) complimenting them on their work. They continue to freak out. Simon smiles mysteriously. Aral grins and him and congratulates him on finally discovering the joys of quietly subverting the government he himself runs. :D
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IT SHOULD.
And Illyan's guards! They are these young impressionable but pretty much overtrained for the job. They are expecting people to come at him with, like, energy weapons or steel daggers. And their training says, "okay, and here's subversion and other stuff!" And they're like "we're guarding the goddamn batman, no one is going to subvert him, they're going to fucking shoot him." So whatever.
And then those young impressionable just-the-right-age-for-the-target-audience are basically forced to watch this stuff FOR THEIR JOB. And on the one hand, Simon Illyan is in the audience, oh noes. But on the other hand, hey, he's brining in more fans!
Cordelia's helping distribute this off-world. Komarr hearts it very much.
And then one night at the comedy club, Duv Galeni shows up. And sees Illyan.
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...and then Simon assigns him to the (extremely low-key) 'recruit them for Impsec' project, which is basically just Aral's attempt at salving his overdeveloped sense of responsibility, because Simon and Aral both agree that having the satire show out there is doing more good than harm, but Aral is oversensitive to the risk that he will accidentally introduce full civil rights and a free press before Gregor reaches his majority. So: let them keep going under the premise that it's a security operation to turn them into a propaganda outlet.
But nobody bothered to explain that part to Duv, so he actually recruits some of them, and then Simon has to figure out what to do with them. (This is something of a recurring problem for him, tbh.)
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And Duv has studied propoganda techniques in the past as part of his disserattion and he has Thoughts on how much they sucked and how transparent they were. So he sits down and tries to write better ones. And he is very good at bitter, biting sarcasm, which translates well.
So the propoganda ends up being even more subversive, because no one's trying to be. They overcorrect into What Do You Mean Stephen Colbert At The Correspondant's Dinner.
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Somewhere around this point, the fans of the show start wondering how the hell they're still getting away with it, and why hasn't ImpSec arrested everyone? So there are all these conspiracy theories out there about how they were kidnapped and brainwashed, or they'd been working for the government all along, or it's a Cetagandan plot (no this one doesn't make sense even to them) and the show's been government propaganda all along.
Thus Duv (Duv Mitchell, not Duv Galeni, although Galeni's the one who has to sell it to Simon) convinces them to do an All Propaganda Special Episode, wherein they tearfully confess they're working for Impsec, flash up "subliminal messages" that say OBEY every three minutes, and do such terrible patriotic routines that it goes all the way around from unfunny to hilariously bad to propaganda again.
It's widely considered their best episode yet and leaves everybody completely confused, but the eventual consensus is that nobody (especially Simon...) cares if they're ImpSec as long as they keep being that funny.
They do an ALL PROPAGANDA LIVE TOUR SPONOSORED BY BARRAYARAN IMPERIAL SECURITY on Komarr and sell out...they win an award in absentia at the Betan Comedy Festival. The Cetagandans can't figure out how they're doing it. This is not how propaganda is supposed to work, dammit!
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And I have a sneaking suspicion Steve Rogers is involved in this somehow. ;)
And the Cetagandans are all confused because art, goddammit. Art.
And the Betan government wonders if they should be funding this. There's totally Betan funded Radio Free Barrayar going on. "No, we're not bankrolling this." "?? Who is??" "Uh, it seems like it's their security service." "... ... ... ???!!!" "We think it's because this way it's easier to keep an eye on the threat." "They're the ones *creating* the threat." "We know. We're hoping they don't." "Damn, this is an amazing Xanatos gambit."
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I suspect the Betan intel people assigned to Barrayar spent most of the Regency just being confused, even moreso than they're usually confused by what Barrayar has instead of a proper government with proper politicians. "What... what are they doing? Are they doing that on purpose? Why would they do that?" A hundred years or so later, an elderly Cordelia forgoes a memoir and instead just publishes an annotated version of the declassified Betan analysts' reports from the period, which becomes an instant comedy classic in its own way. :)
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Ha ha ha yes. The marginalia there would be amazing. I imagine "you're overthinking this" showed up a lot.
Barrayar: even more confusing when they're not trying to be. Aral thought X was painfully transparent? TOO BAD, the Betans thought he was faking them out. And the Cetagandans thought he was mocking them. Which, yeah, he probably was.
I think the Regency confused the hell out of everyone. The Butcher of Komarr... steps down? Voluntarily? On a planet that thinks peaceful transitions of power is a kind of candybar? o.O?
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"I don't see class. People tell me I'm Vor and I'm believe them because I own a handgun."
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(I suspect Vorbert is not one of the core comedy group, he's a "special guest" they bring on sometimes to talk about Vor culture. Like The American on the Bugle. He always has his face blurred out to hide his real identity, but rumours abound that he's a real High Vor, maybe even a count's heir or something!)
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Ahaha, OMG, yes!
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OTOH, if Duv isn't ImpSec and is undergrad/grad at this time, it works. ;)
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Best throwaway line ever.