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Five Les Mis Fusions I don't Know Canon Well Enough To Write More Of (Thankfully) (3/5)
In which I for once make a good life decision:
By choosing to re-read Pratchett's "Night Watch" instead of picking up the Brick.
But I can't write a fusion with this because it's just too easy. I mean, to start with, Night Watch basically is a Les Miserables fusion already. I'd been wondering at what point I became aware that Les Mis has had a small-but-active fandom all these years, because I've talked to a few other people who I thought would know and find them completely shocked, and now I'm suddenly thinking that I'm pretty sure I read this book back when it came out, then went and read all the Vimes/Vetinari, and when that ran out [far too quickly], I went and looked for Javert/Valjean.
Not that the ships are at all the same, but -- well. Vimes on the barricade has Grantaire's alcoholic cynicism and Enjolras's obsessive love of country and charismatic leadership and Javert's copper's ethic and tarnished but unshakeable faith in the primacy of Law and uncontrolled urge to sass authority and perfect dramatic timing and Valjean's sullen anger and paternal benevolence and socially awkward class mobility and expansive compassion and Bahorel's boiling violence and Marius's loving wife and happy ending and etc, all mixed up together into everything that is fandom catnip for me and kicking ass with competence. And frankly that explains so much of how I've been reacting to Les Mis fandom. And I got a bunch more of the direct references this time and I kind of want to read the Brick just to find out how many more there are.
Anyway, the problem here is that there are too many possibilities and I can't pick just one. (I know, I had the same problem with Highlander and just went with all of them, but I can't do that every time.)
There's the one I played with first, with minimal direct crossover elements, where Elderly!Steampunk!Combeferre is playing with a time machine and accidentally sends one of his old friends back to a few days before the night of the barricades (perhaps badass grown-up Gavroche?) And he gets adopted by Musichetta-the-seamstress-who-is-
But then it is also SO TEMPTING to just write Les Amis as one of the groups manning the barricades of the Republic of Treacle Mine Road. (Would they be students at Unseen University in this version? Why does that image simultaneously terrify and enthrall me?) Bahorel would get his eggs! :D So much other amazing possibility! Although I think want I most want out of this version is Enjolras and bb!Vetinari being VERY INTENSE at each other about politics in Snapcase's Ankh-Morpork, and then not having any sex at all. Ever. (I actually have had all sorts of THOUGHTS about the political philosophies underlying much of Discworld for a long time, it kind of needs an Enjolras to be intensely republican about it, so much.) Meanwhile, wizzard!Grantaire tries to pick up Young Vimes at a tavern, but ends up just getting him very drunk while listening to him rant about his love for his bitch of a City, and begins to suspect he has a Type.1
But of course there's also the swirly portal type of crossover, and hey, this book comes with a swirly portal built in! Sure, in canon it's through time and space rather than between universes, but it's also in the Library of Unseen University, which is connected by L-space to all other libraries everywhere in the multiverse, so it's not entirely impossible that the Librarian might have picked up a certain brick-like tome and attempted to use it to stabilize something and accidentally made a connection?
Maybe Vimes fell through to the Paris insurrection instead of the Ankh-Morpork one! And pointed out to the barricade boys that they were DOING IT WRONG. And then made everything better. And then Combeferre gets to do steampunk mad science to send him back.
Or maybe Javert jumped into the Seine but landed on the Ankh! And bounced, of course. Although I think in this version I'd want him to fall into modern-era Ankh Morporkh instead of barricades-era, because I want him to end up annoying Vimes so much that he gets put on Moist von Lipwig's security detail, because that would be hilarifying and full of sass. And gets adopted by Lady Sybil, which he would handle both much better and far, far worse than Vimes did. (Or hell you could do this one without the swirly portals and just write Vimes as Javert's superior in the Paris Police, which would be equally hilarious really.)
There, I have written almost as much in bunnies for this as I did in actual fic for the others. :P Now why hasn't any of this been written yet? *sighs*
1This is probably The One I Am Most Likely To Actually Turn Into Something I Could Post To AO3, but we're back to actually needing to learn about Enjolras's political philosophy. And figuring out how the city government of Ankh-Morpork actually works.2
2 Screw it. Fine:
(..also can I just note for those of you trying to figure out Javert's timeline that Vimes' timeline is impossible? The Ankh-Morpork novels contradict each other incessantly, and that's even without the parts that involve time travel.)
By choosing to re-read Pratchett's "Night Watch" instead of picking up the Brick.
But I can't write a fusion with this because it's just too easy. I mean, to start with, Night Watch basically is a Les Miserables fusion already. I'd been wondering at what point I became aware that Les Mis has had a small-but-active fandom all these years, because I've talked to a few other people who I thought would know and find them completely shocked, and now I'm suddenly thinking that I'm pretty sure I read this book back when it came out, then went and read all the Vimes/Vetinari, and when that ran out [far too quickly], I went and looked for Javert/Valjean.
Not that the ships are at all the same, but -- well. Vimes on the barricade has Grantaire's alcoholic cynicism and Enjolras's obsessive love of country and charismatic leadership and Javert's copper's ethic and tarnished but unshakeable faith in the primacy of Law and uncontrolled urge to sass authority and perfect dramatic timing and Valjean's sullen anger and paternal benevolence and socially awkward class mobility and expansive compassion and Bahorel's boiling violence and Marius's loving wife and happy ending and etc, all mixed up together into everything that is fandom catnip for me and kicking ass with competence. And frankly that explains so much of how I've been reacting to Les Mis fandom. And I got a bunch more of the direct references this time and I kind of want to read the Brick just to find out how many more there are.
Anyway, the problem here is that there are too many possibilities and I can't pick just one. (I know, I had the same problem with Highlander and just went with all of them, but I can't do that every time.)
There's the one I played with first, with minimal direct crossover elements, where Elderly!Steampunk!Combeferre is playing with a time machine and accidentally sends one of his old friends back to a few days before the night of the barricades (perhaps badass grown-up Gavroche?) And he gets adopted by Musichetta-the-seamstress-who-is-
But then it is also SO TEMPTING to just write Les Amis as one of the groups manning the barricades of the Republic of Treacle Mine Road. (Would they be students at Unseen University in this version? Why does that image simultaneously terrify and enthrall me?) Bahorel would get his eggs! :D So much other amazing possibility! Although I think want I most want out of this version is Enjolras and bb!Vetinari being VERY INTENSE at each other about politics in Snapcase's Ankh-Morpork, and then not having any sex at all. Ever. (I actually have had all sorts of THOUGHTS about the political philosophies underlying much of Discworld for a long time, it kind of needs an Enjolras to be intensely republican about it, so much.) Meanwhile, wizzard!Grantaire tries to pick up Young Vimes at a tavern, but ends up just getting him very drunk while listening to him rant about his love for his bitch of a City, and begins to suspect he has a Type.1
But of course there's also the swirly portal type of crossover, and hey, this book comes with a swirly portal built in! Sure, in canon it's through time and space rather than between universes, but it's also in the Library of Unseen University, which is connected by L-space to all other libraries everywhere in the multiverse, so it's not entirely impossible that the Librarian might have picked up a certain brick-like tome and attempted to use it to stabilize something and accidentally made a connection?
Maybe Vimes fell through to the Paris insurrection instead of the Ankh-Morpork one! And pointed out to the barricade boys that they were DOING IT WRONG. And then made everything better. And then Combeferre gets to do steampunk mad science to send him back.
Or maybe Javert jumped into the Seine but landed on the Ankh! And bounced, of course. Although I think in this version I'd want him to fall into modern-era Ankh Morporkh instead of barricades-era, because I want him to end up annoying Vimes so much that he gets put on Moist von Lipwig's security detail, because that would be hilarifying and full of sass. And gets adopted by Lady Sybil, which he would handle both much better and far, far worse than Vimes did. (Or hell you could do this one without the swirly portals and just write Vimes as Javert's superior in the Paris Police, which would be equally hilarious really.)
There, I have written almost as much in bunnies for this as I did in actual fic for the others. :P Now why hasn't any of this been written yet? *sighs*
1This is probably The One I Am Most Likely To Actually Turn Into Something I Could Post To AO3, but we're back to actually needing to learn about Enjolras's political philosophy. And figuring out how the city government of Ankh-Morpork actually works.2
2 Screw it. Fine:
May 25th, in the second year of the patricianship of Lord Snapcase:
It was well past curfew in Ankh-Morpork, and two young men emerged from one of the small, private back rooms of the Bunch of Grapes tavern. One wore the skin-tight black uniform of a student at the School of Assassins, designed to fade right into the shadows, and he moved with the ruthless self-control of one trained in that profession, although his head of tousled curls, sun-golden even in the grimy light of the tavern, were rather the opposite of inconspicuous.†
His companion might, also, have been a student of the school, given the same sleek and deliberate way he moved, but rather than the skintight blacks of the school uniform he was wearing an utterly nondescript suit of clothes. It was neither very loose nor very fitted, and could have belonged to a slightly shabby nobleman or a slightly prosperous peasant, had anyone been willing to pay attention to it long enough to wonder; and it was in several shades of mossy, rusty, brownish and grayish black that, unlike pure black, actually did blur into the shadows. In fact, the only thing about his dress that was in any way noticeable was the sprig of blooming lilac that was pinned to the collar of his jacket.
Despite their flushed faces and general appearance of two people who have been engaging in intense, passionate exercise, they had not been doing what the small back rooms of the Bunch of Grapes were usually used for. They had, rather, been arguing politics, a discussion that was winding down without agreement as they closed the cubicle behind them.
"I still maintain that none of what you are proposing is right," said the one with the blond curls.
"You're still convinced that my plan won't work? You think I'm wrong?"
"I don't think you're wrong, I believe you're wrong, which is all the difference-" he began, and then fell silent, noticing for the first time that the main saloon in the Bunch of Grapes was not yet empty, despite the early hour of the morning: there were two more young men sharing a table in one corner, both rather the worse for drink.
The man wearing the lilac sighed, and said, "You handle yours, and I'll handle mine?"
One of the men at the table might have at some point been a student at Unseen University, as he was wearing what had once been academic robes and a sequined conical hat, although at this point in its lifespan the hat was mostly shapeless, and though it might have once said "WIZARD" on it in gold, the W, I, Z, A, and D had long ago fallen off, leaving only the capital R.
The other man was, judging by the dented helmet that had rolled under a nearby table, an officer in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. He seemed to have been crossed in love, because as he sagged lower over the table, he was slurring something about a lovely but cruel lady. "She raises you up, and she makes you feel like you're the - the most important thing in the world, but then she - pointy things, women have them two of them--" he made a descriptive gesture with unsteady hands-- "Heel! She grinds you down with the pointy heel of her cap - crapri - she can't make up her damn mind -"
"She'll never love you back, you know," said the wizard with the R, wrapping a hand moodily around a mostly-empty bottle of Bearhugger's Finest. "Ones like that - they can't - they're too -" he thought about this a second, then finished off the bottle. "I should know!" he added triumphantly, and then folded slowly over with his face landing flat on the table (luckily, it was the sort of face that was unlikely to be made any worse by such treatment.)
"Right, Corporal," said the student with the lilac, pulling the watchman upright by his shoulders. "I think it's time we get you back to your nice little room above the candlemaker's, don't you?"
The Watchman looked blearily up into his face. "She does love me, though," he said resolutely. "I know. I can feel it. In my boots."
"I shan't be so foolish as to argue," said the student. "Do you think you can get those boots under you, or will I be carrying you tonight?"
The corporal managed to sway his way to something resembling an upright position, with a lot of extra support from his companion, and they went slowly out of the tavern, the watchman leaning heavily on the other as he wove his way into the street. Just before they were out of earshot, one might have heard the watchman saying, in some confusion, "Have we met? I think I've seen you--" and his companion answering, dryly, "I can't imagine where."‡
Left alone in the dark tavern, the man with the blond curls turned to his friend and said, "I didn't know you were such a good friend of the police."
R sat up and snorted. Despite his earlier performance, he seemed far less impaired than his drinking companion had been - but then, his friend thought with some asperity, he'd had more practice.
"I looked for the one person in the room who seemed, by appearances, to have the least possible in common with you, and bought him a drink," R said. "I ended up with a crypto-republican who's obsessively, near-sexually fixated on the city and suffering from post-revolutionary depression."
Neither of them commented on the fact that the policeman had also worn the lilac. They hadn't been there, and so they didn't speak of it.††
The student assassin considered this for a minute, and then said, "Has anyone ever told you that you have deeply tragic taste in men?"
R turned to him with a half-smile. "And how was your date?"
He sighed. "He wants to make this city function. He's going to make everything run so smoothly that there will be no one left who cares enough to fight for justice."
"Yes," said R, "but how was your date?"
He smiled, at that, and it was a smile that could light even the back room of an Ankh-Morpork tavern. "Lovely," he said. "He's going to bring a Thud! set next week."
"Ankh-morpork variant‡‡?" R asked.
"Of course," said his friend. "What else is worth playing?"
† He was also sometimes known to wear, over his Assassin blacks, a vest of a peculiarly distinctive screaming red. But then, the black catsuits weren't particularly well-designed for camouflage anyway. And his idea of a proper inhumation was less likely to involve knives in the dark than cheering crowds and people being strung from lamp-posts. His instructors rather despaired of him, even if he did usually succeed in his assignments, as long as he was allowed to choose his targets himself.
‡ Cpl. Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch woke up in his own bed the next afternoon with a terrible hangover and absolutely no idea how, or when, he'd got there. It was one of the first times he'd had this experience, but it was going to be far from the last. As he always woke alone, the door was always latched from the inside, and the only other egress from his room was a tiny garret window, he eventually decided, through a haze of alcoholism, that it must be the city watching out for him, the same way he watched out for her. Nobody ever corrected him on this point.
††In fact on the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May last year they had been guarding a bridge halfway across the Republic of Treacle Mine Road, on the other side of the Shades, and been unaware of the battle of the lilacs until it was quite over. Well, the assassin had been. The wizard had been passed-out drunk under a table in the Broken Drum, at least until someone hauled the table away to add to a barricade, after which he was just plain passed-out drunk.
‡‡ Ankh-morpork Thud!, from oldest tradition, called the two sets of pieces the Monarchists and the Angry Mob rather than Trolls and Dwarves. Among other rule alterations, the players only switched sides for the second round if the Angry Mob had won the first one. There also tended to be rather more use of fire, as was traditional in Ankh-Morporkian politics (for this reason sets were usually made of the cheapest possible pasteboard.)
(..also can I just note for those of you trying to figure out Javert's timeline that Vimes' timeline is impossible? The Ankh-Morpork novels contradict each other incessantly, and that's even without the parts that involve time travel.)
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Secondly: Although I think in this version I'd want him to fall into modern-era Ankh Morporkh instead of barricades-era, because I want him to end up annoying Vimes so much that he gets put on Moist von Lipwig's security detail, because that would be hilarifying and full of sass. And gets adopted by Lady Sybil, which he would handle both much better and far, far worse than Vimes did
I would read the shit out of this. Because it would also have him dealing with Adorabelle Dearheart, whose principals are just as rigid but totally incompatible.
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I need them like AIR.
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NO I DON'T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH I NEED MORE OF THIS FIC. LIKE, I WILL TRADE YOU A FIC OF YOUR CHOICE IF YOU WRITE MORE OF THIS FIC.
*frolicks happily in the Assassin!Enjolras/Vetinari dynamic* *ASSASSIN!ENJOLRAS* *KILLING PEOPLE WITH PROTESTS* And, oh, Grantaire. Oh, Grantaire so much. With your hat. And your trying to find someone not like Enjolras and meeting his mirror!cynic!counterpart. You know how you've always drunkenly rambled about what Enjolras would be like as a cynic? NOT MUCH FUN WHEN YOU FIND OUT, IS IT? ;)
(And I want to read ALL of those crossovers, especially Vimes helping them make it work this time.)
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Which I think is actually the Discworld fic I've already wanted to write, and ta-da Les Mis gives me some ready-made "OCs" to work with, but OMG SO TWISTY.
The more I think about this the more I really want more about assassin!Enjolras and Vetinari building a
personal andpolitical alliance. Because on the surface they disagree about everything except that Snapcase needs to go, right? Vetinari is all about increasing the centralization of power in the hands of the Patrician, privatizing government functions while stripping power from the civil service, and building up the Guilds (read: bourgeoisie) at the expense of the working poor, etc. But if you look at what he actually *does* - and not just in a "It's Vetinari doing it so it's okay" way - like, the absolute *first* thing he does when takes power is legitimize the Seamstresses' Guild and the Beggar's Guild, to the point that in 'Feet of Clay' Mrs. Palm is the acknowledged as the most influential guild leader on the city council! Everybody focuses on what he did with the thieves' guild, but he's basically leapfrogging right past egalitarianism and putting streetwalkers on a par with lawyers and doctors, and he makes it stick without anybody actually realizing what he's doing, and that is the first thing he does.*flailyhands* And I suspect when the revolution finally comes Enjolras has no idea what to do with that. Like he should hate him for stealing the revolution again! But! If you look at it right that's actually further left than his most radical platform! How! What!
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It's the kind of character where it's easier to write the characters around him, the ones who are reacting to what he does, or are his pawns, because then you 1) don't have to write what he's actually doing in too much detail, and 2) pawns never see hte entire board, so it works better.
Which is probably a long way of saying: if Enjolras is working with Vetinari towards a common goal and then gets the revolution stolen out from under him, it would probably be simpler from his POV than Vetinari's ;) (but, uh, I think my sudden obsession with Enjolras is the most obvious thing ever). Vetinari's a really fascinating character, but, hmm. Enjolras and Vetinari both exist in a sort of "this character exists fine in fiction, but does not happen in the real world" space, but Enjolras to a somewhat lesser extent? They're both archetypes. I don't even know.
Maybe it comes down to motivations? Like, I know what Enjolras wants. Enjolras will be happy to tell you what he wants. And he will ruthlessly pursue it (because of Reasons, I made a list of Enjolras attributes. He's got things like ruthless, scary, principled, and also a good friend. He's not gonna stab you in the back. He gave that guy a minute to pray before he executed him. (Poor Javert. Enjolras won't waste a bullet on him, noooo, but he'll waste it on someone else.)
What does Vetinari want, though? The city to be safe and secure and not under the control of any other Patrician? That's kinda vague, and also leads right into Vetinari as benevolent dictator: for the city to be safe and secure, he has to be in charge, because he has to balance the scales, and he'll make sure everything works and the city functions. But, as you said, that's not *free*. That's the benevolent dictatorship problem: it's a dictatorship, but it's supposed to still be okay because the guy in charge is a good guy. But the structures are still in place for totalitarianism; Vetinari *is not actually helping the city*, because once Vetinari's gone, everything is going to collapse. Power abhores a vaccuum. For Ankh-Morpork to prosper in the long-term, Vetinari is not helping.
And I don't know where I'm going here (where did I start? oh, right), but I think Enjolras and Vetinari would get along VERY WELL right up until Vetinari tried to put some of his ideas into practice. Enjolras is violent, and here he's an assassin, but he's also the guy who said to Marius "hey, you're in charge!" after Marius saved the barricade. He's not really in love with being in charge, and he's morally opposed to people who are and who try to do something aobut it.
I think after Vetinari takes over, Enjolras is ANGRY AS FUCKING HELL, and then gets ANGRIER as Vetinari keeps putting in reforms that Enjolras agrees with, because he's co-opting the social movement for his selfish purposes. And while Enjolras is enough of a pragmatist, it still bothers the hell ot of him because Vetinari is using it to bolster his position, not to make the people free. The fact that it does help people is not Vetinari's goal, it's a side-effect.
But I think Vetinari is happy to keep Enjolras around. IT KEEPS VIMES ON HIS TOES.
tl;dr: Discworld needs a republican movement. :P
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That is a very, very good question and I think it's the best-kept secret on the Discworld. (At some point in a previous scene in above fic - *points up at entry* - after Vetinari asks him out, someone says to Enjolras, "You want to be a lover to the city. But he wants to be the city" (and then Grantaire moans 'why did you say that, why') but I don't think that's quite it, either.)
Actually, the more I re-read canon with a close political lens, the more I think Vetinari wants the exact same things Enjolras wants - I mean, the book he's secretly writing in Feet of Clay is called "The Rights of Man" and he often has very insightful things to say about Free Men, when nobody who'll call him on it can hear him, plus basically everything else - he just has a very fundamentally different view of how to achieve it than Enjolras, i.e., Enjolras wants fire and blood to bring liberty to all, Vetinari is more interested in boiling the frog so slowly that it's free before it notices it's free.
That's sort of a thing that runs through a lot of SF stories that dwell on rulership, not just Discworld? And it's bothered me for awhile - i.e., that you can't trust a popular revolt, the only path to a just state is by way of a reformist authoritarian ruler from the elite who also happens to be a good man - and there's evidence from history that this is at least partially true, some of most stable current democracies could be interpreted as having started that way - and yet it's really really not an argument I like, especially not when it's the dominant one, because your chance of hitting on that one good man is really very low, and the alternative is horrible.
So in other words: Discworld needs a Republican movement!
(The question of Vetinari's successor is kind of tragic. I think there's a subtext in the more recent books that he's desperately searching for someone who can seamlessly take over when he's gone. Everything was pointing toward Vimes for awhile, except how it's clearly demonstrated that Vimes really really really doesn't want the job, and Vetinari horrified himself by realizing that he likes him too much to condemn him to it, so he started grooming Moist instead, only I suspect Moist is also too smart to want the job and too slippery to be forced into it. Basically, Vetinari's in a catch-22 - anybody he'd consider qualified as his successor is too competent to let himself be tricked into it.--
And if that is a deliberate plot thread Pratchett's put in there, I sadly suspect it's one we'll never get to see the ending to.)
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Yeah, I just have all the feelings about this, and it's all tied in with RL movements, etc. Like, okay, to get even further meta: the reason I have made Enjolras & company be into nonviolent protest and activism in modern AUs is primarily because there are currently strucutres in place in the US to have serious political change that do not require violence. So you can at least try to work wtihin the system. How well this works is a different qustion, and ha ha ha ha am I a very bitter and burned out political junkie. But the point is, there are structures in place.
This is NOT the case in fantasylands like Discworld, where you have the Heir Problem compounded by the fact that there's actually a legitimate heir (Carrot) walking around, so Vetinari needs to find a suitably benevolent heir while at the same time shoring up his positions. Dictatorships are just not built for peaceful transitions for power. There was a great article in Foreign Policy about what happens when dictators get sick and why they try to keep it a secret and everything, but it basically comes down to "one person with the power, look at the vultures".
Vetinari knows about the vultures because he's been one of them, and now he needs to find a successor and, um, he probably won't find one, and if he does and tries to install him into power, it probably won't work. That new Patrician will get assassinated and we'll be right back where we started. And because powers are given and taken away by the Patrician, there's no way to be sure that Vetinari's reforms are going to stick; they're all up to whim and might-makes-right and such. Kill enoguh people, exploit political vacuums, maybe you'll get kill yourself, sprawling and sprawling, and you are right back to where it all began.
Stability requires peaceful transitions of power and Discworld just does not have those structures in place. I want to believe Ankh-Morpork won't collapse, but I think Aral Vorkosigan's comment about being in for a period of political cannibalism is probably worth stealing, because, yeah. Death of a dictator, here come the vultures.
(The question of Vetinari's successor is kind of tragic. I think there's a subtext in the more recent books that he's desperately searching for someone who can seamlessly take over when he's gone. Everything was pointing toward Vimes for awhile, except how it's clearly demonstrated that Vimes really really really doesn't want the job, and Vetinari horrified himself by realizing that he likes him too much to condemn him to it, so he started grooming Moist instead, only I suspect Moist is also too smart to want the job and too slippery to be forced into it. Basically, Vetinari's in a catch-22 - anybody he'd consider qualified as his successor is too competent to let himself be tricked into it.--
Also, I never really understood, because aren't Vimes and Vetinari basically the same age?
And if that is a deliberate plot thread Pratchett's put in there, I sadly suspect it's one we'll never get to see the ending to.)
Yeah :(
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POSSIBLY.
They are in Night Watch (Vetinari could be ten years older, maybe, if Young Vimes is very young and Vetinari's on the graduate course? But even that's stretching it) but there are various things in other books that seem to strongly imply otherwise, but then again maybe not, because internal consistency ahahaha.
But even if they are, it'd be worth it for Vetinari to have a successor-in-waiting for a peaceful transition in case of Sudden Inhumation etc.
(A lot of the fic has decided that Young Sam is the only hope. Maybe, but I don't think canon's giving us much of that yet, and that's a long time to hope Vetinari survives until he grows up.)
(I think Pratchett may have actually thought he could get Vimes and/or Moist to agree to it, but realized he was mistaken...)
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Vetinari's an excellent dictator and a great character, but... I don't think I have a thesis here, other than that: the fantasy genre takes the easy way out of a whole lot of problems.
Which we all knew.
*sighs*
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I think the amount of actual political reform Vetinari has managed is - well, okay, it's wibbly-wobbly because Pratchett never even goes into enough detail to let me know whether the City Council is an actual governing body or just a group of advisors - but. If you look at the medieval communes, the independent city-states that Ankh-Morpork's system is clearly meant to evoke - I think he's actually managed more than is visible to the naked eye? Because in those real historical systems, what you get (in the cities that managed to keep something like democracy for more than a generation or so, anyway) is guilds/burghers balancing nobility, which is what Vetinari's been doing, and it's the increasing power of the guilds/burghers, + increasing social mobility within that professional class, that moves the city more toward something we'd think of as a republic.
So if you posit a formal government originally based on that system - with a formalized city council based on a shifting balance of nobility & professional class, who serve as a legislative body and elect an executive, which is about as close as the middle ages got to democracy - then I think Vetinari is actually making great strides toward re-codifying that system from the chaos it was in when he got there. And by vastly expanding the guild system beyond the elite/professional/sons of nobility that seemed to mostly comprise it in Winder's period, he's effectively opened up the 'voting citizenry' to all sorts of tradesman and other social classes (like seamstresses) that probably wouldn't have had any share in ruling even in the RL commune cities, pulling it away from an oligarchy and more toward real democracy.
The fact that they need him because they'd never agree on anyone else is hiding the fact that there are a hell of a lot more people who'd have to agree than there were before Vetinari's day, because he's been spreading the political power around under the guise of gripping it more tightly to himself. And it's interesting that in Feet of Clay, the council's (which by that point is almost entirely guildsmen) first thought on choosing a successor is already a democratic vote of guild leaders. (They reject it just as quickly, of course, but I almost think that if worst came to worst Vimes could have made it stick. As long as they weren't electing him, anyway...I bet Rosie could've managed.)
(On the other hand I still haven't been able to figure out if Ankh-Morpork even has a judiciary, there's a lot of mention of lawyers and evidence but nothing about courts, so possibly I am extrapolating too far.)
(Barrayar's something else again - I think Gregor is supposed to have republican sympathies, but we sure haven't seen any evidence of him moving to put them in place. Although I think he is a fundamentally much, much more cautious person than Vetinari. And he also doesn't have a nominally republican system with a tradition of egalitarianism to build on like Vetinari does. I think he's thinking about maybe democracy by his grandson's time...)
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Grantaire and Vimes are so very bad for each other, unless you factor in that Grantaire turning him into too much of an alcoholic to get active in politics is the only reason he lived long enough to make Captain... (When the Amis find out that the policeman Grantaire was getting drunk is actually the last living descendant of Old Stoneface... well let's just say that this universe's equivalent of Jacobinism is Vimesianism. Various people kind of lose their shit.)
(Sadly I think Vimes would be more likely to try to talk them out of it than to sweep them to victory. Louis-Phillipe was no Mad Lord Winder. Unless he just got swept up in trying to keep them alive, like he did in Night Watch. He could probably keep them alive long enough to see the amnesty, though.)
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I am very easy and suggestible, this is true. ;)
(But if you *wanted* to write The One Where Enjolras Starts A Porn Studio For Justice, re: your last fic, it would be make my day...)
I actually wrote that one based on my hazy memories of watching m/m porn (Bel Ami) for RP reasons back in 2005 and I was, to put it politely, not the target audience, and did not appreciate it. I didn't do any real research (does reading The Hardest Man In Showbiz a few years ago count as research?), so now I'm going OH MY GOD IS THERE SOCIAL JUSTICE PORN? THERE HAS TO BE SOCIAL JUSTICE PORN.
If there is social justice porn, please give me links? (It would totally be for research. And Enjolras's angelic looks, you just know he does ALL OF THE INNOCENT GETTING DEFLOWERED vids. Grantaire is the guy who corrupts him. This amuses everyone, because Enjolras is actually filthy.)
(When the Amis find out that the policeman Grantaire was getting drunk is actually the last living descendant of Old Stoneface... well let's just say that this universe's equivalent of Jacobinism is Vimesianism. Various people kind of lose their shit.)
NICE JOB BREAKING IT, HERO.
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(On the other hand I really really want this fic now. Like really any e/R Porn Star AU with Enjolras as the innocent getting deflowered and Grantaire deflowering him except that is so not how they are in real life. The social justice aspect/plot would just be a bonus.)
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Enjolras's porn name somehow involves angels. Apollo Angel? I don't know, but he does play up the ringlets and all of that. AND THEN HE GETS DEBUACHED. A LOT.
There's also a really popular one where Enjolras wears a ton of lipstick. It gets smeared all over everything. Including, very artistically, in circles on the cocks of everybody in this gangbag. Artistically.
(I have yet to watch porn that didn't make me cringe, but, otoh, I have yet to stumble upon porn for which I'm the intended audience. But I haven't looked in a looong time. Maybe stuff exists know, I don't really know.)
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Do they release that video publicly, or does it exist as a fabled rumor that only the inner circle get to see? :D
And presumably the lipstick is bright red, yes?
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And naturally it's the most red lipstick you can imagine red lipstick being. And then it gets smeared all over everything BUT THROUGH THE MAGIC OF CINEMATOGRAPHY, it's is also always perfect.
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Kind of? I think the Crashpad queer porn series is either kind of coming from that place or at least aimed at that audience (I have a friend who did a shoot with them and her partner at the time, and she is Super Social Justice Kinky Queer Activist). I mean, it's still porn, the goal is still to take money. But Enjolras might approve.
I have never heard of anything like that for more typical cis m/m porn, though.
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and gosh I really really really need to reread Night Watch again; WHY is it not one of the Pratchett books I own already?
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...Ankh-Morpork Combeferre is an apprentice Alchemist, right? Like I really want to make him another UU student, but I can't make myself tear him away from all of the glorious explosives.
(Also there's the thing where the alchemists are all about Progress! and most of the wizards... aren't. But the wizards are the ones doing the pure research for the hell of it. He's either a student alchemist who spends a lot of time visiting the High Energy Magic building, or a student wizard who spends a lot of time at the alchemists' guildhall trying to set off black powder in new ways using magic. CAN'T DECIDE.)
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Anyways omfg Ankh-Morpork Combeferre I think HE PROBABLY CAN'T DECIDE EITHER because seriously Combeferre is into knowing EVERYTHING. Although canonically he's technically studying to be a doctor so probs he's doing that and just manages to sweet-talk his way into learning stuff from the alchemists and the HEM wizards on the side.
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And yeah but in 1830s Paris my understanding was that basically your only choices for student-ing were a) doctor, b) lawyer, and c) polytechnicien; in Ankh-Morpork there are Many More Choices, even before the guild system was expanded! Like Alchemist Who Blows Things Up.
(I think most of them are going to end up either student Assassins - because that seems to be where Young Men Interested In Politics go - or UU students. Joly will make an extremely entertaining Wizzard, I feel. But some of them i can't deciiide.
I also can't figure out how to turn "Cafe Musain" into a tavern name, I have never regretted not taking French more in my life.
I can't get this crossover out of my head, help.)
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You make an excellent point about the shortage of options for studenthood in 1830's Paris! Okay I am now fully on board with your alternate ideas for Combeferre. In which case I think he'd be more likely to go the route of alchemy than the HEM because Discworld alchemy is all about HANDS-ON PRACTICAL SCIENCE where High Energy Magic is pretty damn theoretical. He's into the theoretical too! But I think he'd be more likely to focus on the stuff that has real-world applications.
Joly as a wizard will be SO AMAZING YES. Hmm! I think I'd have to reread the intros of all the Amis to decide what they'd be in the Discworld universe, and as appealing as that idea is, my bedtime is rapidly approaching so NOT NOW.
Re: the Cafe Musain, at least the Corinthe won't take much translating? And frankly the book spends more time at the Corinthe than at the Musain. So I think you could skip the Musain if you wanted to.
and WHY WOULD I HELP YOU GET THIS CROSSOVER OUT OF YOUR HEAD, THIS CROSSOVER IS AMAZING AND NEEDS LOTS AND LOTS OF ATTENTION
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