thoughts toward a Vorkosigan/Stargate crossover

[twistedchick]

On the way back from stitchnbitch yesterday, a group of us were talking about Vorkosigans, as you do, and the thought of crossovers arose.  One possibility someone (ase , I think) said was to have Ivan somehow on Atlantis as John's boss.  That made my mind jump to the possibility of an inter-universe exchange program, like exchange students but exchange officers, where one of The Best and Brightest gets sent to the other place for six months to learn how They do it.  And what came to mind was an exchange of Ivan and Cam Mitchell.  I went to sleep on this, and this is what I woke up with:

Pros:  Both of them already have impossible families and military backgrounds.  Drop either one into the maelstrom that is the other's social circle, and he'll come up swimming.  Cam is an officer and a gentleman but also a country guy; Miles can take him up to Vorkosigan Surleau and out to visit his small-town friends and Cam will be just fine with this.  Alys can set him down next to the shyest girl and he'll chat her up and make her feel good. I suspect that Ivan, dropped into a Mitchell family gathering with cousins and aunts and uncles and dozens of others, would flounder for a little while until he noticed how pretty all the girls were. 

Considerations:  Ivan doesn't know how to not hide in the corner, so to speak.  He's always walking a fine line, trying not to be too noticeable in case someone decided to depose Gregor, kill off Miles and make Ivan emperor.  He's an imperial subject, so he doesn't have much understanding of democratic processes (he'd call them Betan), and his family structures and situations are authoritarian rather than communitarian (which is what I see in the Mitchell fanfic in various places).  Ivan really can do more than he does, but I think he gets bored with that and doesn't think that he could find another way to do things.  In a way, it's as if Miles is the older brother he's always trying to live up to; Ivan may have the perfect body but Miles has the adventurous life that Ivan can't keep up with.

Cam's military, in a military family, but it's not personal in the sense that he's fighting for his country and his family, but not for an emperor he used to play with when he was a child.  I think he's a little more easygoing than Ivan and easier on himself in certain ways.  He's also got the injuries from Antarctica (which the show ignores but I don't think fiction should, entirely), which gives him something in common with Miles.  Both Miles and Ivan have lived in other cultures more than Cam has; Cam has been in other cultures along with team members, but except for his time with the Sodan he was never immersed in another culture.

And I think Miles and Cam together might sneak off and go joyriding in Miles's lightflyer.  Or maybe Cam gets to hang out with the Dendarii briefly...

The thing that would make it work is that there would be a different quantum mirror, made of some substance from Cetaganda, for example, that allowed travel to some sector of the Pegasus galaxy from which Cetagandans brought back interesting plants for their gardens and labs.  And at some time they lost it, or it was misplaced in the war, or something like that, and they decided not to say anything about that because they were sure none of the less-advanced-than-they-were cultures could use it, so they just made another and kept going.  But this extra mirror was out there in a closet or something, and got captured in the war and somehow got stuck in an attic, (maybe at Vorkosigan Surleau?) because nobody knew anything except that it was a very weird picture or mirror or something... and then someone decided to touch it.  Or maybe it was in the attic at Miles's home and he and Ivan played with it when they were very small, a la The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

It's total crack, of course. 

Thoughts?  Should I start ducking while large squishy fruit is thrown in this direction?

Comments

[branchandroot]

*deeply amused* I think this could totally work with Syn-verse Cam and family. I can actually see Daniel kind of making Ivan twitch because he might remind Ivan a lot of Miles only... different.

[beatrice_otter]

I think, perhaps, that for those who are big Vorkosigan fans but only moderately involved in SG-1 fandom it should be noted that you are subscribing to the Kansas my ass! theory of Cam's family and background, in which it is pointed out that Cam's attitudes and actions fit much, much better if you assume him to come from a huge, sprawling Southern clan with many strong women andd a tradition of military service, instead of from an ordinary midwest family. I approve of this theory; it makes much sense, more than canon does, and much great fanfiction has been written in service of it, which you can check out at clan_mitchell and the founding clan_mitchell community on LJ. synecdochic (who hosts the stitch'n'bitches) and ivorygates are the two major authors of the theory, but they have invited the whole fandom to play with it.

[twistedchick]

Well, yes, I'm subscribing to the "Kansas my ass!" theory for two reasons: I have been in Kansas, and Cam doesn't fit there. (No television show yet actually shows Kansas, including Smallville; what they show might be lower Indiana, but it's not praries, the Flint Hills in the east or the rolling hills that gradually move toward Colorado ... sorry, that's an essay for another time and place.) Cam acts like someone who confidently grew up in a large clan of people who liked him, unlike Ivan, who grew up in a small group of people who had to deal with assassins, wars, and conspiracies. And I do wonder what Ivan would make of it.

[beatrice_otter]

Yes. Though it would be a much greater culture shock for Ivan to go to Cam's home than to Cam's place of work, I would imagine, given that the Stargate program in general has run into enough weird and hostile situations and people in the past to give them at least a small degree of the paranoia that Ivan would consider normal and healthy.

[bibliofilen]

I don't think Ivan wants adventures. All he wants is to be left alone to live his own life. I don't for a second believe that he envy Miles' adventures. Some of the results of those adventures maybe but not the life itself.

He has spent his whole life being shallow enough that noone will look deeper and making enough of an impact to be overlooked. I'm not even certain he himself knows that there is more to him than this. Imagine growing up watching Miles' pain and hearing about Aral's loss of his family, Gregor's loss of his parents, and being taken to yearly visits to the place where his own dad was murdered - all coupled with Alys' overprotectiveness of her only son. The LAST thing Ivan wants is to be more like Miles. In fact it is as if, like in groups of siblings, they compensate for each other - each taking up one distinctive role in their family.

[twistedchick]

If you asked Ivan what he wanted to do with his life, while others were around to listen, he'd give you a line of superficial fluff. But there is more to him. I'm not saying Ivan *wants* to be more like Miles, but that he is always measured against Miles, no matter what he does. But nobody in canon is asking Ivan what he really would like to do. He does what he's given to do, and he does it very well. Is it what he wants? Does he see alternatives and ignore them, or does he not see them?

[feuervogel]

While I agree that there's a public Ivan and a private Ivan, I'm not sure they're extremely different. There are people out there who are perfectly happy to go to work, come home, go out on dates/be with their families, and not aspire to be, say, Miles Vorkosigan. Or even Mark Vorkosigan, for that matter.

It's always seemed to me that Ivan is one of those people. I doubt he'll ever get promoted too highly or to division chief or anything like that.

Or it could be that I'm projecting a bit, since I am, after all, unapologetic about my fangirling of that idiot Ivan.

[bibliofilen]

Mm. Well if you want to explore those possibilities I, for one, would love to read that!

[rokeon]

maybe it was in the attic at Miles's home and he and Ivan played with it when they were very small

Now I want a fic where the mirror goes to Atlantis, which was still deserted when they were kids, but without the gene (which of course the Cetas could have given themselves, if necessary) they could never get out of the empty lab they arrived in and the game got old quick. But fast forward a couple of years to when Helen Natalia and Aral Alexander are old enough to play in the attic and when the expedition is in Pegasus...

[bibliofilen]

Write it!