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.

In response to my friend, who when I made a comment about how, according to Mulder and Scully, we have until Saturday, responded with "The X-Files? Wasn't that show in the '90s? What does that have to do with anything?"

...I give you two XF WIPs of mine, both set in late December, both untouched by me for about eight years. (They are never going to be finished, so I am giving you plot summaries of the big plans I had.)


( A Last Illusion )

( Old Familiar Carols Play )

...okay, that hypothetical crossover meme has reached levels of ludicrosity previously unattained on this journal.

Here is a list of fills so far:

Dresden Files/Vorkosigan Saga for isis (consisting of some extra bits of canon for the crossover I already wrote for this.)
Temeraire/Princess Bride ideas for finch
Pinkwaterverse/Cthulhu mythos for seekingferret (in which I fail miserably; surely *somebody* can come up with a better one?)
--seekingferret does Major League Baseball/The pirate Rabbi and Thor/Star Trek to my prompts
White Collar/Pirates of the Caribbean and DCU/The Lone Gunmen for elf. (Somebody needs to write a pirates/white collar crossover actually. Desperately. Also need fic now where Frohike tangos with Barbara Gordon, but that's a given.)
some flailing as regards Temeraire/Sherlock Holmes for ellen_fremedon
British Comedian RPF/Vorkogisan Saga for marginaliana (This one got kind of out of hand after lannamichaels tapped in. It probably helps to note that we were borrowing some of the characterization from a previous conversation regarding Aral Vorkosigan, Epic Troll. Also: this article on how traditional Chinese stand-up has fared under communism which I incidentally already had bookmarked, yes I did background research for this bit.) marginaliana asked for a British Comedy RPF crossover and I'm afraid in the elaboration we focused almost entirely on the Barrayar part, but I promise if I actually wrote it there would be a bunch of scenes of David and Charlie and Jimmy and Dara and so on meeting in hidden, poorly-lit back rooms at the university and playing at revolution.
Avengers/Sesame Street for lannamichaels. An excuse to write fic for the Teeny Little Super Guy! Yay!
Homestuck/Colbert Report for erinptah, featuring unbridgeable idealogical differences. And stabs. Mostly stabs.
Homestuck/Vorkosigan Saga for biichan. In which there are fantrolls.
Homestuck/Ranma 1/2 for terajk, featuring brownbetty and biichan contributing their own versions as well, which we must encourage them to write. yes.


Unfilled, still to do (list mostly for my reminder):
Avengers/Young Wizards and Vorkosigan/Avengers (I really need to watch that movie, I guess)
Something Sutcliff/Rihannsu-ish (Every time I poke at this I just come out concluding I need to re-read Rihannsu more. Tragic!)


This is actually an interesting way to find out what fandoms my commenters care about! Avengers yes (kind of obviously) but there's lots of Vorkosigan and Homestuck and Temeraire on there too, hmm.

And yes, I will still fill prompts if people leave them. Not crossovered out yet!

And as usual, all bunnies and notfic posted by me here are completely available for other people to pick up and run with, if you should chance to be so inspired.

1. Worked the election again. Am very, very glad this was just a boring primary and we had less than 20% turnout, if the general election goes the same way it's going to be a disaster. Vote early, vote often! Just like I did.

2. Did I mention Homestuck fandom is dangerous? At election day set-up I used the word "cull" to mean "kill for incompetence and the good of the gene pool" without even thinking about it twice and confused several people. (Of course the supervisor I was paraphrasing used the words "go to your house and beat you to death" instead, so really I was just trying to be more polite. And that should tell you all you need to know about my election judging experience)

3. I posted a thing tracking the plants that are blooming on my weekly walk to common_nature. Hopefully this will be an ongoing monthly update right through November! I have a spreadsheet and all.(In fact currently I have recreational spreadsheets going for books read, things bought at yard sales, wildflowers seen, records owned, and words written. It's like a festival of spreadsheets!) It's going to get harder as the months go on, though, because I know early spring weeds the best, and also, mosquitoes and poison ivy.

4. princessofgeeks made some posts about nuts and bolts of betaing and different sorts of betas because of my request for behind-the-scenes descriptions of the beta process! It was exactly what I was looking for, and I want more of this type of stuff. (Incidentally, I am slowly trickling my con.txt panel ideas onto the official con.txt website suggestions page, but I think I'm going to put only a few more in, so if there's another one you really want to see go up, speak up! Or submit it yourself, I'm not possessive. :D

3. I've been listening to the Pinkwater Podcast's audiobook of The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror lately. I hadn't re-read it in years (actually, I first encountered it in audiobook form, so maybe that's re-listened) because I had found the plot rather thin and boring, compared to most of the other Pinkwater books I'd read.

I still find the "plot", what there is of it, rather thin. On the other hand, it has hipsters - real hipsters, the kind who hang out at a coffee bar/bakery called the Dharma Buns, have deep thoughts about communism and read bad free verse poetry to each other, rather than being ironically racist on Tumblr. And it has a teenage boy who has conceived of a passion for a girl he barely knows who doesn't like him and insists on pressing his suit even after she repeatedly tells him she isn't interested in him or in boys in general, and this is presented as obviously creepy, possibly dangerous, and reasonably terrifying rather than an epic romance, which there needs to be more of in YA fiction in general. (Come to think of it, maybe we weren't supposed to immediately assume stalker-boy was also the overall villain, and that's why the plot always seemed thin to me? But it's pretty damn obvious.)

Also I had forgotten how very OT3 Rat, Winston and Walter are in this one, and how awesome and hilarious their OT3 dynamic is. When I was walking home today I dreamed up a futurefic story for them wherein ( they're all in their late twenties or so, and Walter and Winston are still renting the house near Blueberry park that they moved into after college )

Also, Rat ⋄ Dirk "Bro" Strider. Somebody get on that.