As the Cardinal Flies

Unsent Letters 2026: Dear Correspondent

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:04:56 GMT

Greetings!

I'm trying something new this year: my general likes and DNWs for challenges and exchanges are in a master letter post here. What follows are prompts and notes on my specific requests for this exchange.

( **Crossover Fandom** )

( **Castle** )

( **DCU** )

( **Kim Possible** )

( **MCU** )

( **Nancy Drew - Keene** )

( **Stargate SG-1** )

( **Tomorrowland** )

comments

NEW FOR 2026: Master "Dear Writer" Letter

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 23:29:22 GMT

In an effort to save some time in drafting individual signups, I'm trying something new this year; starting with this year's unsent_letters exchange, assigned writers (and interested treat-writers) will get two posts as opposed to one. This master post will cover my general interests & likes, and there will be an individual signup post with specifics regarding prompts and DNWs for each particular exchange. The AO3 signup will link to the exchange-specific post, and each exchange-specific post will include a link to this one.

Treats are always welcome and encouraged.

( Why I'm Here )

( What I Like )

( DNWs )

comments

Question for the gallery: Is the revenge worth taking?

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 01:44:01 GMT

ADVISORY: This is not the post you may have been looking for....

////

I have, over the last few months, arguably spent more time on YouTube than one should (specifically, in a couple of specific corners of YT that are not at all relevant to the present inquiry).

However, YT being YT, it is all too easy to be lured into other corners of the videoverse in the process...

...and thus did your correspondent discover the vast yet singularly redundant swampland in which one finds AI-generated revenge-fic. Herewith a very brief description of this sea of mire, madness and muckraking for those not familiar with the concept:

Your narrator, you learn at once, has been horrifically ill-used by those around him. He (or she) may be:

a hard-working child whose parents liked their other offspring best

a gifted technical genius cast aside by an employer out to profit massively from their breakthrough

a highly decorated but now-retired member of an elite or classified military unit

a newcomer to or neighbor of an HOA ruled by a "Karen" who recognizes no authority beyond her own, who destroys all who won't submit to her will

What none of these villains realize is that their plans have been foreseen, their schemes laid bare, their crimes anticipated, their every move planned for. For just as they swoop in to claim their unjustly gained rewards, Our Hero smiles a thin, calm smile and confronts them with reality:

the inheritance they anticipated belongs to the child they ignored

the patents they thought they owned are in Our Hero's name

Our Hero has bought the company from the villains under their very noses

Our Hero's former co-workers in black ops have assembled evidence to have the villains put away (or, occasionally, neutralized the villain's Evil Empire)

the newcomer to the neighborhood is a Senator/Mayor/Police Chief/etc. (who owns the land "Karen" has been trying to co-opt, and/or is the parent of the child they've bullied or injured)

Which is to say that the formula for these things is extremely, well, formulaic. And yet the genre garners tens of thousands of views, and is thereby (at least in theory) tremendously profitable for its creators, who have built the vids almost entirely with AI narration, a handful of still images, and a means of putting narrative text on top of the images they've used.

And there is, evidently, a market for these things, such that people are evidently making considerable money off of revenge channels nowadays.

////

Which makes one wonder...

How hard would it be for a veteran fic-writer to whip out a dozen or so revenge yarns with just a little more creativity than the formulas have so far demonstrated? To download the software the current creators are using? To set up a YouTube channel of this sort of thing that would, perhaps, be just a bit more, well, creative than that now dominating the current swamp? Could one make enough money at such a game to retire, if not to the French Riviera, at least to a corner of Darkest Suburbia with better bus and train service than he has now?

Inquiring minds want to know what your humble narrator is missing in this equation....

comments

The Grinch did WHAT?

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 21:47:41 GMT

Let me start by acknowledging that I am three or four years late in noticing the implications of the following. That said, I am also not normally someone who buys or eats Hershey's Kisses in the first place, so I can perhaps be excused for not noticing a thing I wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been unexpectedly thrust into my personal space over last weekend.

That said: WHAT WERE THEY THINKING????? (You may need to click on the image to enlarge the picture. Be sure to swallow and put down your beverage first.)

I mean, really. Surely I'm not the only person in the room whose reaction was, "Wait, what, do they not realize they've just portrayed the Grinch as a potential sexual predator?"

And yet, a few moments of Googlemancy revealed that evidently this packaging has been around for four or five Christmas seasons now.

Think about this. Wouldn't one expect that in a non-zero percentage of cases, giving a co-worker a box or bag with this slogan on it would be a violation of the relevant employer's anti-harassment policy? (Deity knows that I would never, ever think of giving one of these to a co-worker at my own place of employment.) Might one not also expect that in a non-zero percentage of cases outside a workplace context, the giver of these Kisses might do so in hopes of stealing actual kisses from the recipient, and that some few such givers might subsequently attempt to collect such kisses (or other favors) irrespective of the wishes of their particular recipient(s)?

And that leaves aside the problem that the package design represents a complete and utter mis-characterization of Dr. Seuss' actual Grinch, either before or after having his heart resized. Note particularly here that even pre-reform, he is carefully polite to Cindy-Lou Who when she interrupts his tree-thievery. One has to think that the good Doctor would be appalled, nay, shocked at seeing his creation portrayed as the box copy portrays him. And the Grinch himself strikes me as having an excellent case for a libel or slander action, a la Coyote vs. Acme.

Truth be told, I have to wonder how this got past the approval phase from the people who license Dr. Seuss' material (not to mention the social-media team(s) at Hershey and its marketing agencies). Given that the Seuss licensors have actually pulled a handful of his original books from circulation due to the content having not aged well, you'd think they'd have realized the implications of the Kiss packaging before it went into production.

I am sorely tempted to go look up contact info for the Seuss licensing outfit and write a letter....

comments

Crossworks 2025: Lost (and Found)

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 23:56:24 GMT

[Aside to sanguinity: you clearly need to see this.]

Now, then.

The collection for crossworks is live, and for once I'm going to get the thank-you post up in ridiculously good time. There is a great deal of excellent work in this exchange - I may in fact do a recs post here in a bit - but in the meantime: someone's written me a genuinely delightful tale that takes full advantage of the "mix any two things I've mentioned" element of the exchange, and that would be this:

Lost (and Found)
Fandoms: Young Wizards - Duane; Valdemar - Lackey
Rating: all ages
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~2200
Characters: Dairine Callahan, original Valdemaran Companion
Additional Tags: crossover, interspecies friendship, portal fantasy, worldgates

"I'll have you know I'm not a horse girl."
"Then it's a good thing I'm not a horse."

Suffice to say that the author knows both these canons well, and that the blending is beautifully done. If you're familiar with both of them, it should be clear just from the summary that they've got the character voices down perfectly, and it keeps right on going from there.

comments

Dear Santa: Yuletide 2025

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 09:31:52 GMT

These letters aren't getting any shorter, so while I've got detailed material farther down, I think it's only fair to give you the list of fandom requests up front. So, those would be:

Antiques Roadshow RPF (any)
Batman Beyond (any)
Dirk Pitt (worldbuilding)
The Keltiad (any)
The Magician (TV 1973) (any)
Night of the Solstice (any)
Night World (any)
Power Rangers Operation Overdrive (any)

Now, then:
Greetings, O YuleScrivener, and welcome! And also, thank you! Where Yuletide is concerned, I am nothing if not a Requester Of The Seriously Obscure. Thus I am always amazed when the technomancy of the matching process succeeds in finding a writer who shares my appreciation for said obscurity, and delighted on Christmas morning when a wonderful and wondrous story from that writer's (metaphorical) pen lands in my AO3 gift-folder. We may just be setting out on this year's journey, but I know there's a happy ending to come, and I am grateful for it already. Your work is (and will be) appreciated and valued, and I look forward to seeing its fruits.

( Likes & Dislikes )

( DNWs )

( Character Matching & Prompts )

( Requests )

comments

[Fic (Amnesty: Into a Bar)] All in the Subtext (Miraculous Ladybug/Batman)

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 20:52:59 GMT

One more step toward catching up with all my outstanding prompts for the FIcathon That Goes Into A Bar....

Title: All in the Subtext
Author: graycardinal /gray_cardinal
Prompt: Gabriel Agreste ~~goes into a bar~~ visits a Gotham City bookstore…and meets Barbara Gordon!
Fandoms: Miraculous Ladybug / Batman: TAS
Word count: ~1700
Rating: Suitable for all ages.
Warnings: None.

Ninety-five percent of the volumes on Codex Antiquaria's shelves were simply old, and little more than that, each waiting for one of the half-dozen people on Earth with a unique interest in the particular topic whose subject that work concerned.

Not surprisingly, the remaining five percent – the grimoires, the spell-books, the alchemical field guides, the encyclopediae of magical artifacts – drew most of the paying customers.

comments

2025: Dear Crosscrafter

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 01:16:53 GMT

As usual, long letter is long.

( Why I'm Here )

( Likes & Dislikes )

( Notes & Logistics )

( Fandom-Specific Notes )

( Requests )

( NYC Cluster )

( Fantasy Cluster )

( SF Cluster )

( Meddling Kids Cluster )
( Capers & Crimes Cluster )

( Odds & Ends Cluster )

( British Cluster )

comments

[Fic} Two down, /mumble/ to go (Into A Bar, Jacqueline Kirby / Nancy Drew)

Sat, 02 Aug 2025 04:25:02 GMT

And we continue the "Into a Bar" catch-up process. This one sat idle as long as it did because while I had a premise in mind almost at once, the execution stalled almost as soon as I'd had the idea. And then this past week, once I'd looked at it again, I realized where it really needed to go.

I probably owe a little bit to Chelsea Cain for this one, because what I've done with Ned here is at least partially inspired by what she did with him in Confessions of a Teen Sleuth.

Title: Why Me?
Fandoms: Jacqueline Kirby series (Elizabeth Peters) / Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Word count: ~1500
Characters: Jacqueline Kirby, Ned Nickerson
Relationship: Nancy Drew & Ned Nickerson
Rating: Suitable for all ages.
Warnings: None.

Jacqueline Kirby ~~goes into a bar~~ visits a jail … and meets Ned Nickerson.

comments

RIP Tom Lehrer

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 16:04:22 GMT

Reading online this morning, I find news of Tom Lehrer's passing. This is not perhaps unexpected in itself; he had led a long and fruitful life, but it's definitely a moment for reflection, as Lehrer was possibly the cleverest and most literate satirist of our time, not to mention the funniest.

More than usually, though, one of my favorite Diane Duane quotes applies: "What's loved, survives." We still have the music (and that's a very literal "we"; per his Web site, Lehrer a couple of years ago released his entire oeuvre into the public domain.

And in the wake of the news, it turns out he also left behind a (formerly) top secret mathematical joke that took more than half a century to fully detonate. (sanguinity, you should appreciate this....)

comments

[Fic] He writes, and having writ....

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 06:24:37 GMT

I am disastrously late, as usual, in catching myself up on fic postings. That being the case, you're about to get three things at once: my unsent_letters_exchange fic, my holmestice fic, and a just-posted amnesty story for intoabar (the story is up on AO3, but the corresponding entry is in the mod queue on the DW comm).

First, for Unsent Letters, a series of journal entries that turned out to be rather more of a comedy than I expected going in.

Written By The Winners
Fandoms: Power Rangers Time Force
Rating: all ages
Category: F/M
Warnings: none
Words: ~3200
Relationship: Lucas Kendall/Nadira
Characters: Lucas Kendall, Nadira, Ransik Additional Tags: epistolary, poetry, haiku, limericks

If the poem had really been written to Lucas' car, then none of what had happened made any sense. Unless....

Piece by piece, Nadira unravels the tangle of mixed signals and unintended consequences.

Next, the Holmestice story, which, while not precisely comical, allowed me to indulge my fondness for (seriously obscure) Gilbert & Sullivan....

The Affair of the Statutory Duel
Fandoms: Sherlock Holmes (ACD); The Grand Duke (Gilbert & Sullivan)
Rating: all ages
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~2600
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Rudolph (Grand Duke)
Additional Tags: secret history, royal intrigue, Great Hiatus

Either the following material is an out-and-out forgery...or just possibly, Gilbert and Sullivan owe the central plot device of their last operetta to none other than Sherlock Holmes.

(Which is to say, the story to which this summary is attached raises a hell of a lot more questions than it answers.)

And just tonight, a stupendously late (we won't even mention the year I put in the original request) intoabar tale, in which I attempt to explain how legendary Power Ranger Tommy Oliver survived the volcanic explosion and complete destruction of a remote tropical island.

Where You Need to Be
Fandoms: Power Rangers Dino Thunder, Gargoyles
Rating: all ages
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~2800
Characters: Tommy Oliver, Katharine (Gargoyles), Ophelia (Gargoyles)
Additional Tags: crossover, interstitial

Death by drowning, Tommy Oliver reflected, was totally unfair.

I'd always wondered how Tommy survived the aftermath of Dino Island blowing up (as we see in an early episode of Dino Thunder). And then the dice-rollers at the Ficathon That Goes Into A Bar handed me the answer....

comments

Fly! All is known....

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 15:58:54 GMT

I will have extremely limited access to a full-sized keyboard this week (phone, yes; proper keyboard, no), but don't want to disappear without acknowledging two wonderful recently-written gifts:

From Unsent Letters 2025:
A Series of Notes Attached to A UNIT Requisition Form by astrogirl

Three and the Brigadier navigate the halls of bureaucracy (and the vastness of time and space) in pursuit of an electron microscope. A perfect replication of the reality of bureacuratic procurement channels...

From Holmestice, Summer 2024:
a study in violin by unrevealed

A full-fledged and dead-flat-brilliant novella (!) following Elementary's Sherlock Holmes through a lifetime spent with a Stradivarius (and a great many complicated relationships).

comments

Yuletide 2024: Written & Received

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 20:56:11 GMT

I received two stories for Yuletide this past winter, and (as with Holmestice in the prior post) am horribly late in acknowledging their creators. Technically speaking, one was a gift and one a treat, but I'm in the camp that loves its treasures equally irrespective of that sort of labels.

Both works are short (though no less delightful for their conciseness) character-sketch pieces arising from the new CBS series Elsbeth starring Carrie Preston as the sparkling (for multiple values of the word) Technicolor-garbed title character, an attorney-turned-sleuth presently attached to the NYPD. (I did not follow either The Good Wife or The Good Fight, which featured our protagonist as a secondary character; the new show, luckily, is fully self-contained.) Here, Elsbeth Tascione is a delightfully quirky Columbo for the 21st century, supported by an engaging ensemble and - very much as Columbo did - solving murders that we in the audience see firsthand in the opening scenes, often with A-list performers as the killers-of-the-week.

Kaya Blanke's Night Off
Fandom: Elsbeth
Author innie
Rating: General Audiences
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~1600
Relationships: Kaya Blanke & Elsbeth Tascione, Kaya Blanke & Captain C. W. Wagner, WEslbeth Tascione/Jake Turling
Characters: Kaya Blanke, Elsbeth Tascione, Captain C. W. Wagner, Jake Turling

Kaya and Elsbeth have a night off.

////

All Kinds of Music
Fandom: Elsbeth
Author FanchonMoreau
Rating: Teen
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~2600
Characters: Elsbeth Tascione, Kaya Blanke, Detective Donnelly, Teddy Tascione, Dr. Yablonski

"You didn’t hear this from me," Detective Donnelly began, "but the real Little Italy isn’t on the Lower East Side. It’s in the Bronx.”

Elsbeth takes a day off.

////

My contribution for the round was for Gargoyles; I've written several stories in the fandom, but had never previously focused on Elisa Maza, so this was a chance to stretch a bit...and ended up giving me an opening I hadn't expected to play a bit with the show's backstage connections to the Star Trek franchise.

Thrust and Parry
Fandom: Gargoyles
Rating: General audiences
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~1500
Relationship: Elisa Maza & Puck | Owen Burnett
Characters: Elisa Maza, Puck | Owen Burnett
Additional Tags: missing scene

Puck would claim afterwards that he'd intended to out-Vogel Preston Vogel.

Neither he nor Elisa ever mentioned the theory she'd floated much, much earlier....

comments

Holmestice Winter 2024: Written & Received

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 19:48:16 GMT

Per immediately prior post, this is disastrously late - all the more embarrassing given that my gift for the prior round is genuinely exceptional. It's very much what it says on the tin - a post-ACD letter from Watson to Holmes, describing in eloquently researched detail (complete with a generous set of bibliographic links) the former's activities as a military medic during WW I:

A Letter From France
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Author rabidsamfan
Rating: General Audiences
Category: gen Warnings: none
Words: ~4600
Relationship: Holmes & Watson
Character: John Watson
Additional Tags: Ambulance Trains, Battle of the Somme, Correspondence, Watson knows Holmes can read between the lines, World War I

Watson writes to Holmes after becoming the commander of an Ambulance Train just before the Battle of the Somme.

For my part, I committed a more-than-usually ambitious fusion, merging elements of Laurie King's Mary Russell universe with those of Elementary....

The Really Final Problem
Fandoms: Mary Russell - Laurie R. King; Elementary
Rating: General Audiences
Category: gen, f/m
Warnings: none
Words: ~7600
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & Joan Watson, Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes & Sherlock Holmes
Characters: Sherlock Holmes (x2), Mary Russell, Joan Watson, Estelle Holmes
Additional Tags: crossover, fusion

Joan Watson's Sherlock Holmes has just come back to life.

Mary Russell's Sherlock Holmes has just come home with a copy of Joan Watson's book.

One Holmes is looking for an inheritance; the other has already bestowed it.

comments

In which I am as the White Rabbit...

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 18:54:24 GMT

[glyph of Mary Poppins gazing sternly and brandishing her umbrella]

Why yes, I am still alive (and signed up, as of just now, for both Unsent Letters and the new round of Holmestice). But. I am unconscionably late in acknowledging the outcomes of both Yuletide and the prior round of Holmestice, and the estimable Ms. Poppins would be wholly justified in thwacking my knuckles with her umbrella handle.

So. Multiple posts incoming, in the interests of catching up.

comments

Unsent Letters 2025: Dear Correspondent

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:22:32 GMT

I can't write short letters worth a darn, so while I've got detailed material farther down, it's only fair to give you the list of fandom requests up front. So, those would be:

Batman (1966)
Crossover Fandom(s) - see below
Doctor Who
Gargoyles
Kim Possible
Marvel Cinematic Universe
Power Rangers Time Force
Stargate (SG-1)

Feel free to wander backward through this journal and my fic on AO3 (linked to your left) to get an idea of my interests; what I write is very much also what I like to read – and has, over time, added up to rather a variety of fandoms. My past letters for various exchanges are tagged "dear santa" herein.

Things I like:

I’m a flexible reader; the story I want most out of a given exchange is usually the one you want to tell me rather than the one that’s living in my own head (that one, if I want it badly enough, I can always write myself).

Text-driven pluses for me include effective use of wit (aka banter aka snark, etc.), as well as strong characterization & dialogue. I value both respect for and clever use of canon (including well-developed canon-divergence AUs). I thrive on UST (heavy on both U and T), and am neutral where gen/het/slash is concerned; if the pairing is well-developed, I'll read with an open mind.

None of my requests call specifically for mature/explicit content. This doesn't mean I don't appreciate sizzling erotica/smut/porn; it's just that my fanfic-reading interests and my e/s/p-reading interests mostly don't intersect. Also, for this exchange, I find myself not especially interested in any of these characters writing e/s/p.

DNWs:

AUs. For this exchange, avoid alt-setting (i.e. coffeeshop, high school, dept. store, etc.). and major canon-divergence in non-crossover requests. This does not mean you can’t extend on canon, fill in blanks, etc.; indeed, Unsent Letters strike me as designed for just this sort of thing. Nor does this necessarily preclude crossovers, even if not formally built into a request.

Explicit sex, or “sexting” exchanges. Most likely not an issue as nearly all my requests are "&" rather than "/", but to be clear - basically, this just isn’t my jam. Non-explicit mention or discussion of sex is fine, though. Please avoid noncon, incest, adult/child, power-imbalanced sexual/romantic partnerships (teacher/student, boss/underling, etc.), and A/B/O settings.

Romantic elements that directly contradict canon. Also unlikely to be an issue, per above, but to amplify: where a character explicitly states a sexual preference/identity in canon, honor the statement. OTOH, if no preference/identity is specified onstage, it’s OK to establish – or widen – one for a given character. It's also OK to create or expand relationships for unpaired characters, including cross-canonical pairings where the potential arises.

Requests:

( Read more... )

comments

[Yuletide 2024] Dear Yulewriter

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 04:33:08 GMT

Greetings, O YuleScrivener, and welcome!

First of all, thank you! As a longtime requester of Seriously Obscure Fandoms™, I'm constantly amazed when the matching process succeeds in finding authors who have actually heard of and fallen in love with the canons I so persistently request. I am also invariably delighted on Christmas morning when wonderful and wondrous stories land in my AO3 gift-folder. In particular, I've gotten some truly excellent treats in recent years, as well as a stream of gorgeous gifts - it boggles my mind that the Yuletide community is as consistently productive - and as consistently talented - as it is, and the fact that some of those stories are written just for me never ceases to amaze me.

With the evolution in Yuletide customs over the last few years, my detailed fandom requests, prompts and all, are mirrored straight from the signup itself. Anyone needing further details regarding a specific request should email the Yuletide mods. (As far as I'm concerned, this goes both for assigned writers and prospective creators of treats - to which I remain very much open - unless and until the mods tell us otherwise.),,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

My AO3 dashboard is linked to your left; feel free to cruise it looking for fandoms of mutual interest (or just to see what all I've written for). Here on DW, all my fic-exchange letters are tagged "dear santa" as well as to the relevant exchanges, Yuletide included. For those of you willing and able to feed my endless desire for crossovers and fusions, let those listings be your guide to prospective combinations.

Now, then: here's what you need to know about my reading tastes:

Things I like:
( Read more... )

DNWs:
( Read more... )

Now for the specific requests:

Diana Winthrop series - Kate Chambers (any)
( Read more... )

Elsbeth (2024) (Elsbeth)
( Read more... )

The Master (TV) (any)
( Read more... )

Mighty Ducks: TAS (any)
( Read more... )

Tomorrowland (2015) (any)
( Read more... )

Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego (1994) (Carmen Sandiego)
( Read more... )

comments

Meme: have a poem!

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 05:39:51 GMT

I am behind on any number of things, but the trail of breadcrumbs backward from sanguinity's post today made me go back and rummage through the poetry shelf on the wall across the room, looking at some of my favorite authors...

...but what I'm actually posting is something a trifle more obscure. (An abbreviated two-stanza version is in some circulation among Irish folk musicians, often cited as "traditional" - I first heard it on an Irish Rovers album when I was in grade school - so I was much surprised when I ran across the full text below some decades later in a used bookstore, in The Viking Book of Poetry of the English-Speaking World, Volume Two. I promptly bought the book, of course, and hope someday to find a recorded - and properly credited - version of the poem in its entirety....)

The Fairies
William Allingham

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men.
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together,
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather.

Down by the rocky shore
Some make their home--
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow sea-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and grey,
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back
Between the night and morrow;
They thought she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees,
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As to dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men.
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!

////

comments

Sun, 07 Jul 2024 16:53:39 GMT

Noted in (very brief) passing: woke up very early this morning in order to cross town and attend the closing day of LeakyCon, where in a few moments I shall attend a Potterwatch! concert featuring mundungus42 and her amazing friends. (I suppose that coukd be construed as an oblique Spider-Man reference, but I didn't intebd it to come out that way.)

comments

Holmestice (Summer '24) "The Affair of the Command Performance"

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 04:48:38 GMT

My recipient this round was mundungus42, for whom I also wrote "The Possibility of the Improbable" quite a few rounds back. Initially, I thought this gave me a chance to write a tale I'd had in the back of my head for years...but that idea declined to supply a plot to go with it, and so I reread the signup post, noticed an improbable-looking possibility (why yes, you should be picking up a theme here), asked myself a couple of key "what if" questions...

...and the rest pretty much rolled out like a magic carpet from there, including two complete musical numbers, a sheep (or SHEEP), and a theater that may just be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

The Affair of the Command Performance
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (ACD); Muppet Show
Rating: G
Category: gen
Warnings: none Words: ~6900
Relationship: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Kermit the Frog, Statler (Muppets), Waldorf (Muppets), Sweetums (Muppets), Scooter (Muppets), Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Beaker (Muppets), Rowlf the Dog, Baskerville (Muppets), Rizzo the Rat
Additional Tags: musical, songs, stealth crossover

Holmes and Watson are invited to an evening at the theater - only to find themselves guests at an unexpected celebration with an even more unexpected mystery behind it, and an even more unlikely performance as its featured climax.

comments

Holmestice (Summer '24): "The Final Purroblem"

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 01:10:06 GMT

As the title suggests, someone's written me kitten!Holmes fic...and specifically, a story featuring both the most arch of arch-nemeses (-nemesises?) and a purrfectly diabolical pun.

(The link above connects to the very short foundation story in this tiny corner of Holmesian apocrypha, and there's a further link in the headnotes of that story to the tiny snippet of video that inspired the parent work.)

To say I'm delighted is an understatement. I am now harboring more hope than ever that we'll see more and further feline adventures from diverse hands arising from the premise...

The Final Purroblem
(Anonymous)
Fandoms: kitten!Holmes; Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - T. S. Eliot; Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: G
Category: gen
Warnings: mentions of crime, very light violence, one reference to (human) prostitution
Words: ~1400
Relationship: Sherlock (kitten!Holmes) & Watson (kitten!Holmes) Characters: Sherlock (kitten!Holmes, Watson, Macavity
Additional Tags: Story: The Final Problem...; Alternate Universe - Cats; Crime; Humor

I can still see them now, perched on the edge of the snow-white precipice.

(Or, at the paws of his nemesis, Sherlock meets with a terrible fate...for a kitten.)

comments

Unsent Letters 2024: Written & Received

Sat, 08 Jun 2024 03:15:41 GMT

Yes, I'm late with this....

That said: My gift-writer and I both went for MCU prompts this time out. My gift was one of two really excellent Yelena-and-Natasha stories written for this exchange:

Bringing Her Home
Author flipflop_diva
Fandom: MCU; Black Widow (Movie 2021)
Rating: teen
Category: gen
Warnings: no archive warnings apply
Words: ~1100
Relationship: Yelena Belova & Natasha Romanov
Characters: Yelena Belova, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: Post-Avengers: Endgame; (Movie) Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence; Post-Canon Fix-It; Natasha Romanov Lives; Sisters; Little Sisters; Letters

Steve was the one who brought the letters to her, folded gently and stacked carefully and tied with a thin red ribbon. He told her he found them in one of the metal safes that had originally been in one of the offices at Avengers compound in upstate New York. One of the very few things to survive the destruction caused by Thanos and his army. Almost like it was fate.

////

My contribution was (this being me) a crossover; in this case, an exchange mostly involving Dr. Stephen Strange and Elementary's Joan Watson. (It's a small multiverse. I had, in a previous Unsent Letters entry, established that she and SG-1's Dr. Janet Fraiser were in med school together at Columbia; here, it turns out that she and Dr. Strange overlapped during their residencies.)

A Strange Correspondence
Fandom: MCU, Dr. Strange (Movies)
Rating: G
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~4400
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & Joan Watson (Elementary); Stephen Strange & Joan Watson; Sherlock Holmes & Stephen Strange
Characters: Joan Watson, Stephen Strange, Sherlock Holmes
Additional Tags: Musical, Songs, Stealth Crossover

Sometimes, even a Master of the Mystic Arts needs to call on others for assistance.

comments

Meme: The Mother of All TV Lists (#3 of 3: DVD Commentary)

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 04:06:51 GMT

Now, then:

As one might expect, my markup of the list runs strongly to genre SF and fantasy - but it pretty much skips straight from very old material forward to the Buffyverse and its sisters & cousins & aunts, with not a lot of material in between.

There are, more or less, three major reasons for this. First, the vast majority of the shows I was watching as a teenager just aren't on the list, being largely short-run series that didn't last long enough to find an audience - Bill Bixby's Magician, one-season wonders a la The Fantastic Journey or Cliffhangers!, or outright weirdness on the order of Automan and Manimal. Second, I was a very hard sell for pretty much any sort of situation comedy that didn't have a genre hook; far too many of them, then and now, relied on humiliation-driven "jokes", and I'd been the target of too many of those in real life to enjoy seeing them on TV.

Third, and perhaps most significantly, my brother and I grew up in the TV generation where syndicated reruns ruled the airwaves on most afternoons, especially where local non-network stations were concerned. And our local independent had three series in particular that allowed it to dominate the daytime ratings for decades on end - Perry Mason, the original Star Trek, and Batman. They knew their audience, and quickly got on board when they were offered Babylon 5 and the revived Star Trek shows, and did very well in that corner of the market.

Even today, I gravitate away from the high end of the TV ratings curve. I'm still a hard sell for sitcoms. I'm still drawn to relatively lighter fare as opposed to prime-time soaps, violent police dramas, or grimdark shows where capital-E Evil consistently has the upper hand. And my taste in game shows runs to the smarter ones - Jeopardy or The Chase and even $100,000 Pyramid over "reality" TV in the mode of Survivor. (Do not even get me started on The Bachelor and its uncles and its brothers and its sons. Gahhh!, say I.)

And that's why my annotations look the way they do - the greater proportion of what I've liked well enough to be fannish about (and, nowadays, to write for), simply isn't represented on the list as it's come down to me.

comments

Meme: The Mother of All TV Lists (#2 of 3: I Have a Great Big List)

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 02:47:29 GMT

The instructions:

+ Bold all of the following TV shows of which you've seen 3 or more episodes.
+ Italicize a show if you're positive you've seen every episode.
+ Asterisk if you have at least one full season on tape or DVD.
+ Exclamation mark if it's an all-time fave.
+ If you want, add up to 3 additional shows (keep the list in alphabetical order).

(I should probably apologize to Gilbert & Sullivan for that one...but I won't.) Here, now, the freshly edited list as it came to me...

...plus, per the final instruction, entries for Castle, Gargoyles, and Kim Possible. (I could very easily have added another three entries, but this thing is a monster as it is.

I'm saving annotations and commentary for the next and final rock - that way, if anyone's motivated to pick up where I left off, they'll be able to copy and repost the list below with a minimum of copy-editing.

So, herewith the Ginormous List Of Doom™:

/////

( Long list is long! )

comments

Meme: The Mother of All TV Lists (#1 of 3: Editor R Us)

Sat, 20 Apr 2024 02:31:26 GMT

Yes, it's that meme, the one with the ginormous list of shows - except that it's probably actually the one with dozens of slightly different lists by now (because there's no such thing as purely linear distribution on the 'Net). The one I ganked is from thisbluespirit, and has obviously come down via a chain of native Brits who have seen many, many series that I, on the western edge of the continent on the other side of the relevant pond, have never so much as heard about.

When I pick up one of these, I am often minded to rewrite the rules slightly. Here, what I've done instead is a light edit on the list as a whole, because what I discovered on the way through is that there were several entries which either didn't map to a specific TV series ("Batman and Robin", "Power Rangers") or failed to distinguish between multiple iterations of a series ("MacGyver", "Quantum Leap"). In a few cases, this caused entries to move - in particular, "Superman" became "Adventures of Superman", as the only TV series to which that can realistically refer is "Adventures of Superman", the 1950s series starring George Reeves. I've also corrected an assortment of typographic or technical issues along the way, and applied dates in cases where they were necessary for clarification.

Next rock: the list proper!

comments

As the Cardinal Flies

Unsent Letters 2026: Dear Correspondent

NEW FOR 2026: Master "Dear Writer" Letter

Question for the gallery: Is the revenge worth taking?

The Grinch did WHAT?

Crossworks 2025: *Lost (and Found)*

Dear Santa: Yuletide 2025

[Fic (Amnesty: Into a Bar)] All in the Subtext (Miraculous Ladybug/Batman)

2025: Dear Crosscrafter

[Fic} Two down, /mumble/ to go (Into A Bar, Jacqueline Kirby / Nancy Drew)

RIP Tom Lehrer

[Fic] He writes, and having writ....

Fly! All is known....

Yuletide 2024: Written & Received

Holmestice Winter 2024: Written & Received

In which I am as the White Rabbit...

Unsent Letters 2025: Dear Correspondent

[Yuletide 2024] Dear Yulewriter

Meme: have a poem!

Holmestice (Summer '24) "The Affair of the Command Performance"

Holmestice (Summer '24): "The Final Purroblem"

Unsent Letters 2024: Written & Received

Meme: The Mother of All TV Lists (#3 of 3: DVD Commentary)

Meme: The Mother of All TV Lists (#2 of 3: I Have a Great Big List)

Meme: The Mother of All TV Lists (#1 of 3: Editor R Us)

Crossworks 2025: Lost (and Found)