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Tiny ficlet. Josh Lyman and Matt Santos first learn about Iron Man. Sparked by conversation withhatman over the nature of SHIELD.
Apparently I keep writing Avengers/West Wing crossovers. I'm trying to think about why the crossover is so natural for me, why it keeps being my entryway into Avengerverse, and for that matter, why it's an entryway into West Wing fic, which I rarely wrote before this.
I think there's a few reasons. One is that Joss and Sorkin are both masters of similar styles of TV and film writing, full of rapid-fire banter that uses infodumps to reveal character. Mechanically speaking, dialogue styles are compatible.
Another reason is that Avengerverse idealism is compatible with West Wing idealism. West Wing got perpetually criticized (and praised) for constructing a fantasy of a government where things work and everyone is an idealist, but the reality is more complicated. The reality, as I've written before, is that the West Wing's idealism is an idealism of process. Sorkin's West Wing held that the political process, of communicating ideas to people, of setting opposing viewpoints against each other, was the best way to keep our democracy moving forward. It believed that the only way to hurt America was to stop trying, to stop believing in Tinkerbell. That idealism of process allowed for a pragmatism of politics. Josh and Toby weren't above dirty tricks, compromises, doing things that were against their beliefs, because at the end of the day they were moving toward a better society just by having the conversation. There's no greater summation of the West Wing ethos than Jed telling his staff "We're going to have a great debate."
And the Avengers is similar. There is cynicism, there are bad guys and there are people doing underhanded things and most of the time it's not even clear that the good guys are the good guys. But at the end of the day, there are heroes, and they come because we need them, and they do what we need them to do. And that belief that the problems of the day, the ordinary disagreements of civil society, can get subsumed by our need to unify to fix the great problems of our time... that's where West Wing meets Avengers, ideologically speaking.
But the real reason is because both fandoms love government agencies with silly acronyms. My favorite line in this silly ficlet is "We're referring everyone to OSHA." because I love the idea of Lou as communications director going "Oh, it's in a factory? Industrial accident, refer all questions to OSHA." And the OSHA guys going "Uh... shit. This is our mess how?" And then Nick Fury fixing everything.
Tiny ficlet. Josh Lyman and Matt Santos first learn about Iron Man. Sparked by conversation with
hatman over the nature of SHIELD.Apparently I keep writing Avengers/West Wing crossovers. I'm trying to think about why the crossover is so natural for me, why it keeps being my entryway into Avengerverse, and for that matter, why it's an entryway into West Wing fic, which I rarely wrote before this.
I think there's a few reasons. One is that Joss and Sorkin are both masters of similar styles of TV and film writing, full of rapid-fire banter that uses infodumps to reveal character. Mechanically speaking, dialogue styles are compatible.
Another reason is that Avengerverse idealism is compatible with West Wing idealism. West Wing got perpetually criticized (and praised) for constructing a fantasy of a government where things work and everyone is an idealist, but the reality is more complicated. The reality, as I've written before, is that the West Wing's idealism is an idealism of process. Sorkin's West Wing held that the political process, of communicating ideas to people, of setting opposing viewpoints against each other, was the best way to keep our democracy moving forward. It believed that the only way to hurt America was to stop trying, to stop believing in Tinkerbell. That idealism of process allowed for a pragmatism of politics. Josh and Toby weren't above dirty tricks, compromises, doing things that were against their beliefs, because at the end of the day they were moving toward a better society just by having the conversation. There's no greater summation of the West Wing ethos than Jed telling his staff "We're going to have a great debate."
And the Avengers is similar. There is cynicism, there are bad guys and there are people doing underhanded things and most of the time it's not even clear that the good guys are the good guys. But at the end of the day, there are heroes, and they come because we need them, and they do what we need them to do. And that belief that the problems of the day, the ordinary disagreements of civil society, can get subsumed by our need to unify to fix the great problems of our time... that's where West Wing meets Avengers, ideologically speaking.
But the real reason is because both fandoms love government agencies with silly acronyms. My favorite line in this silly ficlet is "We're referring everyone to OSHA." because I love the idea of Lou as communications director going "Oh, it's in a factory? Industrial accident, refer all questions to OSHA." And the OSHA guys going "Uh... shit. This is our mess how?" And then Nick Fury fixing everything.