As the Cardinal Flies

From astrogirl2

Mary Russell, Sarah Jane Smith, and Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart are stranded at sea in a tiny lifeboat. Do they easily survive to be rescued, perish horribly at sea, or find themselves resorting to cannibalism by day five?

All three are much too civilized to resort to cannibalism and much too experienced at surviving difficult circumstances to be severely challenged by this one. Also, between Sherlock Holmes, the Doctor, and Sarah Jane’s own various allies, someone will show up to bail them out well before the end of day two.

Why is Sherlock Holmes trying to kill Dairine Callahan, and how likely is he to succeed?

[boggle]

The only way this even begins to be possible is for Holmes to have been really well brainwashed, and that just about has to mean that some incarnation of the Master is involved. Which is actually possible, given that it’s established in canon that the Doctor exists in the Young Wizards universe. Since that appearance involved Five, we can further extrapolate that it’s Anthony Ainley’s Master, who is probably trying to co-opt Dairine’s planet of silicon life forms for his own ends. However, like all of the Master’s plots, this one is doomed to failure – in this case because he really doesn’t quite get the degree to which wizardry is rather more than a weird scientific sub-discipline.

Peggy Carter has become a vampire! Does she angst about it endlessly, or wholeheartedly embrace her creature-of-the-night status?

Peggy only does serious angst if it involves Captain America, and since he obviously wasn’t the one who turned her, there will be no angst at this table. If Howard Stark or the SSR can’t find some way to turn her back (very possible, though not guaranteed), she’ll adapt with no great difficulty, though she may have to get very stern with a few people about how much blood they’re willing to donate to her cause. And eventually Stephen Strange will probably find a way to unvamp her, several generations down the line.

Richard Castle, Victoria “Victory Anna” Cogsworth, and Severus Snape are having a movie night. Who brings the snacks, who loses the remote control, and how hard do they fight over what to watch?

[reboggle]

Castle brings the snacks (because he doesn’t trust Torrey’s culinary skills and because snack-bringing isn’t in Snape’s vocabulary). Torrey does not lose the remote, she merely borrows it, and somehow its parts end up scattered among two ray guns, a teleportation device, and a pair of rocket skates. There is actually very little fighting over the movie, Torrey will watch just about anything in the name of learning more about her present dimension, and Snape is there less for the movie than to try and figure out what diabolical scheme has prompted Castle to set up the event. Since Castle is screening the new Nebula-9 feature film (produced after the events of S5 episode “Final Frontier”), both his guests end up more confused than ever....

From lost_spook:

Vala and David Xanatos are stuck in a lift! Will they escape, meekly wait till the fire brigade gets there or kill each other?

Knowing Xanatos, he secretly caused the elevator to get stuck in order to plot an ingenious caper of some kind in which Vala will be a key player. Knowing Vala, the odds are dead even as to whether she’ll go along with the scheme whole-heartedly or play along just long enough to (at least attempt to) pull the rug out from under him at the last minute.

Mary Russell has been murdered. Cat Grant is the detective, Xanatos is her faithful sidekick and Victoria Cogsworth is the plodding police ally. Why is Rupert Giles a red herring, and who actually dunnit and why?

[re-reboggle]

This one is so full of improbables that one hardly knows where to start. David Xanatos is so definitionally a mastermind (if not precisely an evil one) that he’s difficult to envision as a sidekick. Victory Anna? Absolutely Does Not “Plod”; she may not be quite the loose cannon she often appears, but she is a woman of action and intuition. And of course, despite the title of her latest adventure being The Murder of Mary Russell (how’s that for a scary coincidence) it’s difficult to contemplate one of the world’s premier sleuths (alongside her more famous husband) actually getting herself killed.

Which leads me to believe that the whole thing must be part of a party game set up by someone with really good superpowers in order to generate this particular guest list. On this list, that looks like Dairine, though it could also be Xanatos’ aide Owen Burnett in his alternate Puckish persona, or just possibly one of the most recent Doctors. That being the case, Giles is a red herring because that’s the game-card he drew, and in all probability the in-game mastermind will turn out to be (ta-da!) Sherlock Holmes himself, who will reveal in the climax that of course Mary Russell has not actually been murdered after all.

Will Riker and Severus Snape are going camping in the woods! Fun holiday or complete disaster?

On the one hand, Riker’s woodcraft skills are impeccable (and he’s known to be an avid fisherman). On the other, a situation in which Riker would invite Snape on a camping trip – and Snape would accept – is difficult to conceive, unless perhaps Snape needs to go out in search of potion components in the wild and someone in authority has insisted that he needs not to go by himself per the relevant wilderness-safety regulations. (Where and how he comes up with Riker as a campmate is left as an exercise for the student of improbable time travel.) My guess is that the trip would start out reasonably enough, but that by two or three days in, the two men would rapidly figure out that they’re catastrophically incompatible, mostly because Riker would be having fun and Snape is, if not constitutionally incapable of experiencing fun for its own sake, at best deeply uncomfortable with the concept.

Because yes, I have stories in progress for two exchanges...

OTOH, I just had one of these pop up on the LJ side of this journal (and followed it over to another iteration), and have been reminded of how much I like playing the Wacky Crossover Theater game.  So why not?

Rules:
I've made a list of fifteen (15) characters from a variety of fandoms.  Your job is to ask questions about various combinations of these characters (examples: What secret past do #8 and #14 share?  What if #2, #6, and #9 went on a road trip?  If #5 and #10 were having dinner, who invited who?), which I'll do my best to answer.

Notes:
Once we've accumulated sufficient questions, I'll compile the results and make a new post incorporating all the Qs and As -- this way, the Dreamwidth and LiveJournal readerships both get to see all the collective wackiness.

Different practitioners of this meme make different sorts of lists.  My approach tends to involve recruiting from as many different sources as I can possibly manage (in this instance, 12.5 unique fandoms are represented -- we'll talk about the .5 later).  Thus, queries are extremely likely to produce Improbable Crossover Theater for various -- and sometimes really weird -- values of "improbable".  Management will do its best to respond to all queries posed, but reserves the right to designate some results Just Too Bizarre To Contemplate.

And here's the story I wrote for the round -- also a Mycroft-POV story, though with a quite different slant and tone, this one set in (mostly) traditional Conan Doyle canon territory.  There have been a considerable number of attempts to "explain" the events of "The Final Problem"; this one is mine.

Broken Silence
Written for: meredydd
Characters/Pairings: Mycroft Holmes, John Watson
Rating: G
Warnings: none

Yes, You Can Do That In Fanfiction, and here's the Dear Scripter letter to prove it.

First, and always most important: thank you -- for taking the plunge into a new fic exchange, for offering to write at least one fandom that's in both our wheelhouses, and for the care and effort that I know always goes into these challenge/exchange stories. I never cease to be delighted at the superb quality of the stories I receive, and I appreciate the thought that goes into producing a story arising out of my often-rambling prompt-letters.

So: first, you want to know what I like.

Pluses for me include strong characterization, well-written dialogue, wit/banter/snark, clever use of canon, well-developed AUs, UST (heavy on both the U and the T), and more. I'm neutral when it comes to matters of gen, slash, and the like -- if the pairing is well-developed, I'll read with an open mind. I'm not into noncon, incest, or adult/child kinks, but have few other outright squicks as long as the relationship is age- and canon-appropriate; OTOH, I mostly don't read fanfic for sexual content (though in a couple of these fandoms, I do enjoy romance plots; see the specific prompts for details).

I will note in particular that I am a sucker for the clever and well-executed crossover -- not because I expect one (Optional Details Being Optional, and such things being well beyond the call of either duty or necessity), but because in more than one of these cases, the potential amusement and/or entertainment value would be particularly high if your writerly imagination should happen to wander in that direction.

Fandom-specific notes below the cut:

( Read more... )

What it says on the headline. Here's the link:

Facing the Music (podfic) -- podfic by blackglass (aka xdiorix) story by Gray Cardinal

"No, worlds music, with an S."

This was originally a crossover-intensive Buffyverse drabble-sequence written for tthdrabbles; the podfic adds the actual songs referenced in the chapter-titles and thereby creates a really nifty short radio adventure in a way that I totally failed to anticipate when I wrote the initial work. I am utterly delighted and charmed.

So thanks to jedibuttercup all over again for hosting the tthdrabbles comm, and to blackglass for a fantastic translation-to-audio of a story I had a lot of fun writing.

Here's what I wrote for the current round of Holmestice.  I am amused and gratified at the pleased responses it's gotten -- I was initially nervous as to whether I'd done right by the characters here, but the consensus seems to be that of course the story's central assumption must be accurate.

Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle)
Written for: mundungus42 
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mycroft Holmes
Type/Rating: G • gen
Additional Tags: Australian Aboriginal Mythology, Case Fic, Minor Original Characters, Stealth Crossover
Warnings: none
Words: ~7900

I am behind by several acknowledgment posts (and indeed, one whole exchange), so don't be surprised if the order of the next few posts is a little odd as I attempt to catch up.

First up is the Yuletide story written for me:

This Soft World
Fandom: Tomorrowland (2015)
Written by: ???
Characters: Athena, Frank Walker, David Nix
Relationships: Athena & Frank Walker, Athena & David Nix
Rating: T / gen
Additional Tags: Friendship, Loyalty, Androids, Developing Autonomy
Warnings: none
Words: ~22,000 (!)

I am pretty much gobsmacked.  This is brilliantly-worked-out AI spec-fic, beautifully executed relationship fic, and a deep and intricate extrapolation of both movie canon and material from the prequel novel Before Tomorrowland (though you do not have to read the latter book to appreciate what's here).  I count Tomorrowland as the most underappreciated movie of the past year, and I think my mystery author must agree with me; this story is flat-out amazing.

Somehow we have arrived at the runup to Yuletide nominations -- and rather than the grand isolation in which I usually operate, I've found myself drawn into nomination horse-trading this year.  Which I might not ordinarily mention in this space, except that one of the fandoms that's popped up for consideration -- mentioned, I note, by someone other than me -- is one that might be familiar to certain of my eleven regular readers, namely the Circle of Magic series (no, not the one by Tamora Pierce, that other one by some folks named Doyle and Macdonald). 

Which is in equal parts a happy thing and a an eyebrow-raising thing, because a modicum of Googling establishes that Wikipedia remains under the delusion that that series is eight books long, and Goodreads seems to think that the entire series (including the notorious rogue books #7 and #8) have been translated into Japanese.

OTOH, the legitimate books are still readily findable online, and, there's clearly a good chance that the series will find its way into the tag set this year....

Out of a good many possible combinations, my story for Crossovering this year ended up being an MCU-meets-NCIS yarn -- more specifically, a hypothetical out-take from Ant-Man, which I think I'll count my second-favorite of this summer's movies after Tomorrowland.  I will observe in my own defense that this is, in fact, a case where the words popped out of the character's mouth before either he or I realized what he was about to say.

Say It With Me
Fandoms: Ant-Man, MCU, NCIS
Written For: sian1359
Characters: Hank Pym, Ducky Mallard
Words: ~1750
Warnings: none (but presumes you've seen Ant-Man)
Rating: G
Notes: This story constitutes a “missing scene” from Ant-Man, taking place following the implosion of PymTech headquarters but before Scott and Hope turn up in Hank’s hospital room. (I am assuming that at least a day passes between those two events.)
Summary:
Hank Pym's visitor shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry. After what happened in Sokovia, no one – well, almost no one – is likely to make much of your little kerfuffle. There are perhaps a dozen people on the planet who could look at that film and see what I did.”

“True, but at least three of them hate my guts.”

First in a quick flurry of posts catching up on the current exchanges:

For Crossovering, I received a highly entertaining ST:TOS/Narnia yarn, complete with wardrobe and faun:

...To Coldly Go...
by foxtwin
Fandom: Star Trek: TOS / Chronicles of Narnia
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Tumnus, Digory Kirke
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Words: ~ 2600

....this is pretty clearly exactly what would have happened if Our Heroes had beamed down to planet!Narnia. The early-gen tricorder would indeed have gone slowly out of its tiny duotronic mind, Spock would have been mistaken for an Elf...and then, of course, there's the backwards journey into the wardrobe....