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-actually-a-seamstress and Joly and Bossuet, and sort of half-accidentally fixes the timeline so NOBODY HAS TO DIE. And there needs to be more steampunk!Combeferre in general, yes there does, and also happy-ending AUs with lots of worldbuilding where everybody is old and distinguished and has changed the world.

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.<sup>2

2</sup> Screw it. Fine:

( May 25th, in the second year of the patricianship of Lord Snapcase )

(..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.)

OKAY HERE IS THE NEXT ONE ENJOY (??)

( In which nobody dies (at least not for very long) and I abandon all concerns with narrative plausibility )

This wins the award for "One I Am Most Likely To Play With More". Only I'd have to read the book first, and then I would probably decide that all of my characterization here is wrong, and anyway I'm now only interested in [minor character who doesn't even have an AO3 tag yet] [or even worse, Marius]. Anyway, here are some other things that happen in this 'verse:

( Nobody is still dead and plausibility is still somewhere far over the horizon )

The other problem with writing more of this is that trying to give canon, and what it has to say about death and duty, the respect and thought it deserves, while also magically bringing everyone back to life, would take, oh, at last report, several hundred thousand words. And I'd have to do it while writing well-researched 1830s France and Enlightenment philosophy. I have other things to do with the next ten years of my life.

I hope.

Things wrangling Les Mis fandom makes you do: start wondering really desperately which other fandom you've been in in which bread!sex was a thing. (I know there must have been one! I wouldn't have images this vivid in my head if there wasn't! Possibly it was actually in canon, in fact! But where??)

Anyway, I just saw Javert/Valjean Sentinel/Guide tags come through! So YAY I am not the only one wanting this! I haven't looked at the tags yet, but por encourager les otres (to quote Sergeant Colon) I thought I'd post Part One of this series that I am almost finished playing with. :p (And then go see what's in the one on the AO3).

( In which Javert is Keeping Watch In The Night )

This wins the award for One I Most Wish There Was a Bunch More Of! C'mon, Javert's a Sentinel, Silent and Sure! And somebody really really needs to write the one where Combeferre's the Guide of the Amis! It's practically canon.

Hooray I just finished the Things I Have Not Been Doing (okay, two of the four, but I promised myself that if I wrote up this DW entry, I would immediately do the other two.) You can bet that if I unexpectedly go several weeks without posting here, it is because there are Things I Am Not Doing (That I Need To Get Done Before I Write A DW Post.)

...it works like that with everyone, right? <_<

Anyway, here are some neat things that I have been wanting to post about while I have been busy Not Doing far more important things:

1. Les Miserables fandom! So, in case you haven't noticed, today there was a Miracle worthy of Monsieur le Maire, and ( somebody has gone in and finally wrangled a bunch of tags in the Les Mis fandoms on AO3. )

2. Janet Stephens, Forensic Hairdresser! She is a local stylist who has been reconstructing ancient classical hairstyles in completely new ways and gaining academic acclaim for it, despite no formal qualifications.

This is awesome and I have been trying out some of the styles she demonstrates on her youtube channel; I have been searching for years for updoes that work well with long hair with my texture and not a lot of goop or constant fussing, and this is really the first time I've found any. Stephens' main innovation is the idea of sewing the styles together with a large needle and thread instead of trying to work with pins, and it makes so much sense. She talks about how sewing hair is very difficult to do on one's own hair, but (so far) I haven't found it any harder than doing anything complicated with bobby pins (it is, however, much harder to adjust once it's up than bobby pins - you have to get it exactly right the first time.)

Anyway, so far I've tried ( two of the styles )

I was thinking about cutting my hair really short this summer but this may change my mind... (also today I bought about thirty yards of linen, wool, and woven-in cotton plaids suitable for making garb. Why did I do this...?)

3. Colin Wright, Mathematical Juggler! I discovered this guy through the BBC's statistics-for-the-people podcast, More or Less (which is also awesome, by the way) and then went and looked up his full juggling talk on Youtube. And suddenly, I am understanding juggling way better than I ever have before! It's all sine waves. Why did nobody ever graph it for me before?

SO anyway I've pulled out my old practice juggling balls and have been practicing whenever I have idle hands. I still can't juggle three, but I can already keep 420 going for quite some time! Blindfolded! Which given my general physical skills is actually a fairly dramatic improvement.

4. I have started a secondary tumblr! It is called SleepyEST. Here is the story of SleepyEST:

Not that I actually understand tumblr or anything, and you can tell I still haven’t figured out things like “about” pages, but: a few weeks ago right about the time I should have gone to bed, somebody reblogged one of those yawning sloth gifs (you know the ones) and every time I checked my dash, there was the yawning sloth! Making me go “aww” and yawn and reminding me it was bedtime! And it actually made me close tumblr and go to bed.

So I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be neat if someone would conveniently reblog a cute sleepy animal at bedtime every night?”

And then I thought, wait, this is tumblr, it would be incredibly easy to make it do that.

So, yeah. Here is a tumblr that reblogs something adorable and sleepy at sometime around midnight, US Eastern time, every night. That is all it does. Enjoy. It as actually been working for me - not that I go to bed every night as soon as the post appears, but I usually at least stop randomly surfing tumblr and start thinking seriously about bed.

(I realize that if you are not on a schedule similar to mine, it might not be helpful for the bedtime thing. But it is still a blog full of adorable sleepy things? Also, anybody is welcome to start a sleepypst or a sleepygmt or whatever one at whatever time is useful for there to be sleepy things on their dash, and just re-reblog everything.)

So, yeah, if anybody might find that useful, feel free to follow or copycat or whatever.

5. Psychic wolves! ...er, yeah. I did not finish my Lupercalia story. Even after various people wrote good crack at my instigation. Oops. (Ironically, that was not one of the Things I Have Not Been Doing, becaus I have been doing it, just not in a way that resulted in a complete story by the end of Lupercalia. I am over halfway through! It will get finished! I hope!

...In the meantime there are all of these other beautiful Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia stories you could be reading!

(ps: so yesterday I learned that on public transit in the middle of a snowstorm is the worst possible place to come down with stomach flu very suddenly.)