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graycardinalAs usual, long letter is long.
Why I'm Here
• Three words: flexibility, challenge, and surprise.
As a writer, I come for the challenge. While I’m careful to offer for fandoms I know I can write, I tend to offer them in combinations that I also know will stretch my internal idea generator and my storytelling muscles. And I’ve offered – and will continue to offer – fandoms in clusters of four to six so that I absolutely won’t know ahead of time what my matches will look like. Much of the fun for me is in the range of what I might be asked to do. I want to be surprised by my recipient’s requests, and by the nature of the specific challenge facing me in any given year. Up to now, specific matching protocols notwithstanding, there’ve usually been several options open to me from among my recipients’ requests, and I hope that remains true this time around.
As a requester, I come bearing flexibility. As with offers, I tend to cluster my requests in groups of four to six, because – again, notwithstanding the specific match AO3’s Sorting Hat may generate – I want you to have choices too. In a way, I think of this as the thematic opposite of Yuletide, where we often do request specific heart-fandoms and hope for particular elements in the stories arising from them. Here, I am looking not for the story I’d write, or even the story I’d most like to read – rather, I’m looking for the story a given pair of crossed fandoms makes you write, because that’s most likely to be one I would never have thought of.
Thus, as both a writer and reader, I come to Crossworks for the surprise. I enjoy being surprised by the stories my muse draws from the match(es) I’m handed, and I very much enjoy being surprised by the stories your muse draws from the one(s) I’ve supplied for you. This is why I tend to give broad, general prompts rather than specific ones for this exchange. Having said that: if you would like more specific prompts than what I’ve supplied, please contact the mods, and I will cheerfully amplify on any of my individual request-clusters – which won’t spoil any surprises on either end, since only you will know the specific combo on which the original match was made. •
Likes & Dislikes
• My tastes in fic are wide and eclectic -- I read and enjoy gen, het, and slash (both flavors) at all ratings and have very few outright squicks aside from noncon, incest, and adult-child kink, but I am not typically attracted to stories for erotic content or angst quotient. Rather, I like good characterization, authentic-sounding dialogue, effectively sneaky plotting, and well-developed wit. I am equally intrigued by clever use of canon and thoughtfully developed AUs, and I am disturbingly fond of crossovers [obvious much?] and well-woven meta threads.
As to romance: where crossovers are concerned, I'm hardly ever drawn to write one for pairing-related purposes, and within individual fandoms I normally gravitate to canon-consistent pairings -- but in the crossovers I read, I've been wowed by a startling range of intriguing cross-fannish relationships (up to and including Buffy Summers and a Ninja Turtle. That said, I add the observation that in my book, well-sustained UST (heavy on the T) is often as good as or better than actual sex, in crossovers as well as canonical relationships.
I have said in prior years that I'm more interested in crossovers than in fusions - but in the last couple of years both my reading and writing have evolved, and what I find now is that I'm camped firmly in the fuzzy middle of that diagram (that is, where both source canons exist "side by side" in the same background world, often with one source timeline shifted to some degree to allow the characters to encounter each other at a particular point in the merged timeline). Thus I am equally happy with the classic "multi-parallel space-time inversion" setup and the full-on fusion in which worlds and characters have been fully smooshed together - although where fusions are concerned, I prefer a merge where the source canon influences are relatively balanced in one way or another. See particularly a couple of my own Holmesian fusions for examples of what I mean by this.) •
Notes on Logistics
• This year's set of requests is organized a bit differently from those from prior rounds. This is mostly because I'm making use of the "Any Other Fandom" options this time out, which lets me to formulate request clusters with less overlap while giving you, the writer, the maximum ability to think outside the box and do something deliberately and gloriously improbable. It's also let me spread my subgenre wings a bit more widely, particularly given some of the material in this year's tag set. •
Fandom-Specific Notes
• A couple of my nominations are at least moderately obscure - you'll either recognize them or not. If you're curious, though, here are capsule summaries of the farthest outliers:
The Keltiad is a series of novels by the late Patricia Kennealy-Morrison (there are variations in the bylines on specific editions), published beginning in the 1980s mixing high fantasy Keltic myth and legend with high-tech space opera. There are two full trilogies, a couple of free-standing novels, and a (hard to find) short story collection, set at various points in a history stretching over several thousand years. The Copper Crown begins as a Terran spacecraft unexpectedly makes contact with a starship whose crew speaks - of all things - Gaelic, a fact that amazes and delights Irish comms officer Sarah O'Reilly. Kennealy-Morrison is very good at juggling a large ensemble while focusing on a handful of lead characters, and her version of interstellar Keltic culture is a deft blend of thorough research and New Age idealism. Unfortunately, the author's passing a couple of years ago appears to have left the series in limbo - but then that's what fanfic is for, isn't it?
Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series was a one-season wonder that briefly shared Disney Afternoons with Gargoyles (only in a corporate sense, though). While the premise does involve an LA-based hockey team, this isn't the one from the better-known live-action franchise - it is, rather, made up of alien humanoid ducks (!!) from a parallel dimension who are fleeing an Evil Dinosaur Overlord with designs on conquering both the ducks' home planet and the immediate multiverse. While the writing isn't quite as ambitious as that of Gargoyles and the overall tone is considerably lighter, this is a fantastic example of a cracktastic premise played almost totally straight, the result being a very watchable SF-adventure saga. The full run is available on DIsney+.
Tom Swift Series IV - this one dates from the 1990s, consisting of ten slim mass market paperbacks from Archway (plus two crossover books partnering Tom with the then-current versions of Frank & Joe Hardy). For this incarnation, the publlishers recruited seasoned SF authors to ghostwrite the stories and gave Tom a recurring adversary, one Xavier "Black Dragon" Mace. The pace is quick, the plots inventive, and best of all, Tom's sister Sandra is updated from window-dressing to a gifted scientist in her own right. •
Requests
• This year I am diving in at the deep end of the pool - though I haven't typed it in here in the letter, each cluster now includes the "any other fandom I've requested his year" option. What this means, as I read the rules, is that while the matching engine will have matched you based on one particular cluster, you have the ability to treat my signup as one ginormous mega-cluster and pick two fandoms of your choice from the combined list.
I have not, for obvious reasons, tried to prompt for all the possible combinations this creates. My theory is that if one of the unlikelier combos calls to you, it will come with some semblance of an idea attached to it, at which point the "surprise me" principle applies. That said, if there are any possible combos on which you'd like more in the way of prompts than is given below, ping our revered mod, who will in turn ping me, and I'll do my best to supply an idea or three for your consideration. •
NYC Cluster
Castle, Elementary, Elsbeth, Enchanted, Hawkeye (TV), The Shadow (1994), Young Wizards
• I'm not sure what it is that causes this, but for whatever reason, I have a lot of fandoms with NYC-based settings. Most of these are also strongly character-driven, which should tell you what I'm looking for in a prospective story - Castle shadowing Elsbeth, one or both Hawkeyes dealing with fallout from Disney-princess shenanigans, Kit & Nita crossing paths with Joan & Sherlock on a case. (Yes, the Shadow is a bit of an outlier time-wise, but some of these canons have workarounds for that - and some offer some fascinating fusion possibilities - what would Rick & Kate look like if Rick *was* the Shadow, or imagine Elsbeth taking the Margo Lane part....) Also, if you've read the "Into a Bar" story where I aimed Dairine Callahan at David Xanatos of Gargoyles as a potential intern - feel free to follow that wherever it leads you.... •
Fantasy Cluster
Dungeons & Dragons (cartoon), Gargoyles, Oz - Baum, Tangled, Valdemar
• This is perhaps the one cluster where "multi-parallel space-time inversion" may actually work better than "fuse these canons" - although the greater world of Valdemar may be large enough to fit one of the others in. And a couple of these - Oz and the D&D realm in particular - are pretty much built around dropping outsiders into the setting. (There is at least one existing instance of Magnus from Tangled being imagined as a Companion, but I wouldn't mind seeing another. And if you're looking to cross the clusters, there's Enchanted's Andalasia to consider - I would be fascinated to see how the Gargoyles clan would deal with that situation.... •
SF Cluster
Doctor Who, Gargoyles, Keltiad, Lois & Clark, Mighty Ducks: TAS, Stargate: SG-1, Tomorrowland
• Some of these canons are definitely more easily mixable than others. The wild card is clearly the Keltiad, which is canonically several centuries in Earth - for the most part, at least. OTOH, that might not prevent the Kelts and the Wyvern clan from crossing paths in pre-canon times, or SG-1 from dialing a Stargate that leads to a Keltic world.
Meddling Kids Cluster
Defenders of the Earth, Jackie Chan Adventures, Stargirl, Tom Swift IV, Young Wizards
• Lots of young heroes, lots of diabolical enemies - and they would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids. This is not to say that I'm not just as fond of the adult heroes in some of these canons - notably Mandrake and the Phantom, Stripesy, good old Tom & Carl, and of course Uncle ("one more thing!"). I'd love to see a classic team-up episode for any two of these. Also, I see distinct possibilities in this cluster for villain-on-villain action, whether as co-conspirators (Xavier Mace and Ming?), rivals in roguery (Stargirl's Shade vs. the Monkey King from Jackie Chan?), or multi-cosmic threats (Shendu and the Lone Power?) •
Capers & Crime Cluster
Columbo, Hawkeye (TV '21), Leverage, Remington Steele, Superman ('25), Tracker
• On one hand, putting some of these together might require some definite finagling of timelines (and I'm entirely on board with that); OTOH, others overlap sufficiently (Hawkeye or Supes and Tracker's Colter, Columbo and Steele) that not much hand-waving would be needed. In the caper department, I would love to see the fireworks when a Leverage caper somehow intersects with a Steele operation. I'd also love to see either of Kate or Clint cross paths with our newest cinematic Superman. A murder investigation in which Columbo and either Colter or the Steele agency are involved also strikes me as generating interesting fireworks, and there are certainly a lot of other possible scenarios to be mined. •
Odds & Ends Cluster
Agent Carter, Batman ('66), Doctor Who ('05), Enola Holmes (Springer), Oz - Baum, Young Wizards
• A couple of these are pure period pieces (Peggy, Enola), whereas others (Oz, Who, the YW milieu) are extremely time-flexible. And to my mind, the '66 Batverse is likewise timeless in its own way - almost anyone or anything can show up (as for instance via an open window while our heroes are climbing via Batrope). That said, do not let this stop you, if you're so inclined, from dropping Batman and Robin (or Enola, for that matter) into Oz, or giving Angie Martinelli a wizard's handbook.... •
British Cluster
Agent Carter, Enola Holmes - Springer, Mary Poppins (movies), The Mummy ('99-'08)
• Here again, I am entirely on board with the application of creative chronology in order to facilitate a particular crossover or fusion (though in several cases, the time periods involved are not so far apart as to prevent legitimate meetups at timepoints pre- or post-canon), and Mary Poppins is arguably herself in any time or place, rather like the Doctor. (Yes, you may also rule that Mary P. is in fact a Time Lord if you so choose; that's one of the things the "any other fandom" option is for, after all.) I am perhaps especially partial to the idea of Enola getting involved with a Mummy-related episode - or to Mary Poppins taking Enola's friend Cecily under her wing. (Alternately, I can see all kinds of shenanigans arising from a situation in which Mary Poppins gets involved in a conflict between Peggy Carter and Dottie Underwood....) •
Why I'm Here
• Three words: flexibility, challenge, and surprise.
As a writer, I come for the challenge. While I’m careful to offer for fandoms I know I can write, I tend to offer them in combinations that I also know will stretch my internal idea generator and my storytelling muscles. And I’ve offered – and will continue to offer – fandoms in clusters of four to six so that I absolutely won’t know ahead of time what my matches will look like. Much of the fun for me is in the range of what I might be asked to do. I want to be surprised by my recipient’s requests, and by the nature of the specific challenge facing me in any given year. Up to now, specific matching protocols notwithstanding, there’ve usually been several options open to me from among my recipients’ requests, and I hope that remains true this time around.
As a requester, I come bearing flexibility. As with offers, I tend to cluster my requests in groups of four to six, because – again, notwithstanding the specific match AO3’s Sorting Hat may generate – I want you to have choices too. In a way, I think of this as the thematic opposite of Yuletide, where we often do request specific heart-fandoms and hope for particular elements in the stories arising from them. Here, I am looking not for the story I’d write, or even the story I’d most like to read – rather, I’m looking for the story a given pair of crossed fandoms makes you write, because that’s most likely to be one I would never have thought of.
Thus, as both a writer and reader, I come to Crossworks for the surprise. I enjoy being surprised by the stories my muse draws from the match(es) I’m handed, and I very much enjoy being surprised by the stories your muse draws from the one(s) I’ve supplied for you. This is why I tend to give broad, general prompts rather than specific ones for this exchange. Having said that: if you would like more specific prompts than what I’ve supplied, please contact the mods, and I will cheerfully amplify on any of my individual request-clusters – which won’t spoil any surprises on either end, since only you will know the specific combo on which the original match was made. •
Likes & Dislikes
• My tastes in fic are wide and eclectic -- I read and enjoy gen, het, and slash (both flavors) at all ratings and have very few outright squicks aside from noncon, incest, and adult-child kink, but I am not typically attracted to stories for erotic content or angst quotient. Rather, I like good characterization, authentic-sounding dialogue, effectively sneaky plotting, and well-developed wit. I am equally intrigued by clever use of canon and thoughtfully developed AUs, and I am disturbingly fond of crossovers [obvious much?] and well-woven meta threads.
As to romance: where crossovers are concerned, I'm hardly ever drawn to write one for pairing-related purposes, and within individual fandoms I normally gravitate to canon-consistent pairings -- but in the crossovers I read, I've been wowed by a startling range of intriguing cross-fannish relationships (up to and including Buffy Summers and a Ninja Turtle. That said, I add the observation that in my book, well-sustained UST (heavy on the T) is often as good as or better than actual sex, in crossovers as well as canonical relationships.
I have said in prior years that I'm more interested in crossovers than in fusions - but in the last couple of years both my reading and writing have evolved, and what I find now is that I'm camped firmly in the fuzzy middle of that diagram (that is, where both source canons exist "side by side" in the same background world, often with one source timeline shifted to some degree to allow the characters to encounter each other at a particular point in the merged timeline). Thus I am equally happy with the classic "multi-parallel space-time inversion" setup and the full-on fusion in which worlds and characters have been fully smooshed together - although where fusions are concerned, I prefer a merge where the source canon influences are relatively balanced in one way or another. See particularly a couple of my own Holmesian fusions for examples of what I mean by this.) •
Notes on Logistics
• This year's set of requests is organized a bit differently from those from prior rounds. This is mostly because I'm making use of the "Any Other Fandom" options this time out, which lets me to formulate request clusters with less overlap while giving you, the writer, the maximum ability to think outside the box and do something deliberately and gloriously improbable. It's also let me spread my subgenre wings a bit more widely, particularly given some of the material in this year's tag set. •
Fandom-Specific Notes
• A couple of my nominations are at least moderately obscure - you'll either recognize them or not. If you're curious, though, here are capsule summaries of the farthest outliers:
The Keltiad is a series of novels by the late Patricia Kennealy-Morrison (there are variations in the bylines on specific editions), published beginning in the 1980s mixing high fantasy Keltic myth and legend with high-tech space opera. There are two full trilogies, a couple of free-standing novels, and a (hard to find) short story collection, set at various points in a history stretching over several thousand years. The Copper Crown begins as a Terran spacecraft unexpectedly makes contact with a starship whose crew speaks - of all things - Gaelic, a fact that amazes and delights Irish comms officer Sarah O'Reilly. Kennealy-Morrison is very good at juggling a large ensemble while focusing on a handful of lead characters, and her version of interstellar Keltic culture is a deft blend of thorough research and New Age idealism. Unfortunately, the author's passing a couple of years ago appears to have left the series in limbo - but then that's what fanfic is for, isn't it?
Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series was a one-season wonder that briefly shared Disney Afternoons with Gargoyles (only in a corporate sense, though). While the premise does involve an LA-based hockey team, this isn't the one from the better-known live-action franchise - it is, rather, made up of alien humanoid ducks (!!) from a parallel dimension who are fleeing an Evil Dinosaur Overlord with designs on conquering both the ducks' home planet and the immediate multiverse. While the writing isn't quite as ambitious as that of Gargoyles and the overall tone is considerably lighter, this is a fantastic example of a cracktastic premise played almost totally straight, the result being a very watchable SF-adventure saga. The full run is available on DIsney+.
Tom Swift Series IV - this one dates from the 1990s, consisting of ten slim mass market paperbacks from Archway (plus two crossover books partnering Tom with the then-current versions of Frank & Joe Hardy). For this incarnation, the publlishers recruited seasoned SF authors to ghostwrite the stories and gave Tom a recurring adversary, one Xavier "Black Dragon" Mace. The pace is quick, the plots inventive, and best of all, Tom's sister Sandra is updated from window-dressing to a gifted scientist in her own right. •
Requests
• This year I am diving in at the deep end of the pool - though I haven't typed it in here in the letter, each cluster now includes the "any other fandom I've requested his year" option. What this means, as I read the rules, is that while the matching engine will have matched you based on one particular cluster, you have the ability to treat my signup as one ginormous mega-cluster and pick two fandoms of your choice from the combined list.
I have not, for obvious reasons, tried to prompt for all the possible combinations this creates. My theory is that if one of the unlikelier combos calls to you, it will come with some semblance of an idea attached to it, at which point the "surprise me" principle applies. That said, if there are any possible combos on which you'd like more in the way of prompts than is given below, ping our revered mod, who will in turn ping me, and I'll do my best to supply an idea or three for your consideration. •
NYC Cluster
Castle, Elementary, Elsbeth, Enchanted, Hawkeye (TV), The Shadow (1994), Young Wizards
• I'm not sure what it is that causes this, but for whatever reason, I have a lot of fandoms with NYC-based settings. Most of these are also strongly character-driven, which should tell you what I'm looking for in a prospective story - Castle shadowing Elsbeth, one or both Hawkeyes dealing with fallout from Disney-princess shenanigans, Kit & Nita crossing paths with Joan & Sherlock on a case. (Yes, the Shadow is a bit of an outlier time-wise, but some of these canons have workarounds for that - and some offer some fascinating fusion possibilities - what would Rick & Kate look like if Rick *was* the Shadow, or imagine Elsbeth taking the Margo Lane part....) Also, if you've read the "Into a Bar" story where I aimed Dairine Callahan at David Xanatos of Gargoyles as a potential intern - feel free to follow that wherever it leads you.... •
Fantasy Cluster
Dungeons & Dragons (cartoon), Gargoyles, Oz - Baum, Tangled, Valdemar
• This is perhaps the one cluster where "multi-parallel space-time inversion" may actually work better than "fuse these canons" - although the greater world of Valdemar may be large enough to fit one of the others in. And a couple of these - Oz and the D&D realm in particular - are pretty much built around dropping outsiders into the setting. (There is at least one existing instance of Magnus from Tangled being imagined as a Companion, but I wouldn't mind seeing another. And if you're looking to cross the clusters, there's Enchanted's Andalasia to consider - I would be fascinated to see how the Gargoyles clan would deal with that situation.... •
SF Cluster
Doctor Who, Gargoyles, Keltiad, Lois & Clark, Mighty Ducks: TAS, Stargate: SG-1, Tomorrowland
• Some of these canons are definitely more easily mixable than others. The wild card is clearly the Keltiad, which is canonically several centuries in Earth - for the most part, at least. OTOH, that might not prevent the Kelts and the Wyvern clan from crossing paths in pre-canon times, or SG-1 from dialing a Stargate that leads to a Keltic world.
Meddling Kids Cluster
Defenders of the Earth, Jackie Chan Adventures, Stargirl, Tom Swift IV, Young Wizards
• Lots of young heroes, lots of diabolical enemies - and they would've gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids. This is not to say that I'm not just as fond of the adult heroes in some of these canons - notably Mandrake and the Phantom, Stripesy, good old Tom & Carl, and of course Uncle ("one more thing!"). I'd love to see a classic team-up episode for any two of these. Also, I see distinct possibilities in this cluster for villain-on-villain action, whether as co-conspirators (Xavier Mace and Ming?), rivals in roguery (Stargirl's Shade vs. the Monkey King from Jackie Chan?), or multi-cosmic threats (Shendu and the Lone Power?) •
Capers & Crime Cluster
Columbo, Hawkeye (TV '21), Leverage, Remington Steele, Superman ('25), Tracker
• On one hand, putting some of these together might require some definite finagling of timelines (and I'm entirely on board with that); OTOH, others overlap sufficiently (Hawkeye or Supes and Tracker's Colter, Columbo and Steele) that not much hand-waving would be needed. In the caper department, I would love to see the fireworks when a Leverage caper somehow intersects with a Steele operation. I'd also love to see either of Kate or Clint cross paths with our newest cinematic Superman. A murder investigation in which Columbo and either Colter or the Steele agency are involved also strikes me as generating interesting fireworks, and there are certainly a lot of other possible scenarios to be mined. •
Odds & Ends Cluster
Agent Carter, Batman ('66), Doctor Who ('05), Enola Holmes (Springer), Oz - Baum, Young Wizards
• A couple of these are pure period pieces (Peggy, Enola), whereas others (Oz, Who, the YW milieu) are extremely time-flexible. And to my mind, the '66 Batverse is likewise timeless in its own way - almost anyone or anything can show up (as for instance via an open window while our heroes are climbing via Batrope). That said, do not let this stop you, if you're so inclined, from dropping Batman and Robin (or Enola, for that matter) into Oz, or giving Angie Martinelli a wizard's handbook.... •
British Cluster
Agent Carter, Enola Holmes - Springer, Mary Poppins (movies), The Mummy ('99-'08)
• Here again, I am entirely on board with the application of creative chronology in order to facilitate a particular crossover or fusion (though in several cases, the time periods involved are not so far apart as to prevent legitimate meetups at timepoints pre- or post-canon), and Mary Poppins is arguably herself in any time or place, rather like the Doctor. (Yes, you may also rule that Mary P. is in fact a Time Lord if you so choose; that's one of the things the "any other fandom" option is for, after all.) I am perhaps especially partial to the idea of Enola getting involved with a Mummy-related episode - or to Mary Poppins taking Enola's friend Cecily under her wing. (Alternately, I can see all kinds of shenanigans arising from a situation in which Mary Poppins gets involved in a conflict between Peggy Carter and Dottie Underwood....) •
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