an antipathy to space travel

[hedda62]

OMG done and posted (in time for me to go out of town).

Sparrow, I-don't-even-know-where-this-came-from "Person of Interest"/Vorkosiverse crossover. OTP, people.

ImpSec analyst Harold Finch and ex-Armsman John Reese are both lonely outsiders; together, they fight crime. Though that will change, if Simon Illyan has anything to say about it. (I don't know; I needed a summary. Cordelia and Bothari are in it too.)

It is possible that only yunitsa and philomytha will read this; that would be enough for me. But I did make an attempt to be more expository in my writing so that people from either fandom could wander in and enjoy the wackiness (with high moral overtones). And I had SUCH FUN writing it; I can't even tell you.

Comments

[ailis_fictive]

I do wish I could remember how I wandered over! I'm pretty sure it was via dira's most recent Aral/Jole piece, but how I got linked to that in the first place, I can't think!

Identity. Yeah. I think you could make the argument that identity is often the root issue there. I also think I'm going to need to go recompile most of my brain; I've gotten about halfway though that thought a couple of times and never put it all together. Thanks. I think. :)

>"Fathers and Sons" is wholly and completely under the spell of "Aral Vorkosigan's Dog," of course

Aren't we all? I'm currently prodding at Aral/Simon myself, and having Thinky Thoughts about the way fanfic can function as a prism in a way that...well, more conventional storytelling has a harder time doing, though it still *does*. We can tell the same story over in different ways, illuminating different facets. (Criminal Minds does something similar, building a thematic fugue across multiple seasons--though...huh. That may be something that episodic TV, especially mysteries, can do. They're telling the same story over and over as well, though with a slightly stronger variability in the set dressing. There's an essay here, and I'm *NOT* writing it, blast it.)

I'm sure at some point I'll be bitten by a plot bunny that requires me to get over my fear of writing Miles, thought at the moment I'm busy killing him off in five different ways. (Mini-AUs. In between edits and housecleaning today, I'm trying to get Captain Vaagan to defect with one of the galactic doctors brought in during Ezar's final illness. Though typing this I've realized she probably can't be Escobaran or Betan, which...hmm.)

Thank you. Wheeeeeee!

[hedda62]

Hee, I see you got a start on writing the essay. Will attempt a reply there a bit later.

I do notice the writing-the-same-story thing, and the wealth in this fandom is how many versions and variants of the story we can tell, with all our individual writing preoccupations figuring in. It's great fun; it's more fun than the fandoms where the repeated story is getting the two main characters into bed, although I'm not saying that's not entertaining or occasionally deep. Just... less roomy.

One thing I noticed in writing "Sparrow" was the way I had to change the Reese and Finch characters to fit them into Barrayaran society, and how those changes were mostly about loyalty. In the show, Finch decidedly doesn't work for the government, making it easy for him to be a loner (his vast fortune doesn't hurt); Barrayar-Finch really had to work for ImpSec (because I don't think they have civilian contractors), which gives him a tie to Simon (and ultimately to Gregor and to Regent Aral) that pulls on his motivations. And Barrayar-Reese ended up with quite complex loyalty issues that aren't there in the original, where despite his military and CIA service his significant ties seem to be quite personal. So it's not just me; it's the world-building, I suppose is what I'm saying. :) Though it was really the idea of throwing Cordelia and her Betan sensibilities into the mix that got me to write it.

Killing Miles off in multiple ways actually seems quite tempting. You may have noticed, actually, how long it took me to start writing him into the Lion's Cub series. He has this very annoying tendency to take over any fic in which he is a character, and wriggle his way to the top.

[ailis_fictive]

Having not yet watched PoI, I don't have anything useful to say except that's interesting. I think there *are* stories to tell about Barrayar that don't hinge on loyalty, but it's a much more...reachable motivation in that world than in many others. (There's something about how this ties into the Vaagan piece I'm working on, but I don't want to try to poke at it too much because the story's at that malleable point where if I type too much about it, instead of typing *it*, I'll deform it.)

Cordelia and her Betan sensibilities are a fairly handy tool to use to illuminate Barrayar and its sensibilities...I'm thinking especially of Philomytha's new Post Facto, which I'm still processing.

I am both amused and heartened that even LMB seems to have trouble keeping Miles under control--since she had to shove him off-planet to keep him from throwing Captain Vorpatril's Alliance off-course.