Long letter is long; it's kind of a feature for this exchange, and also of the way I build requests for it. I am contemplating ways around the issue, but in the interests of posting while the iron is hot, for this year the Epic remains an Epic.
First, of all, thank you. This is, I think, up at the advanced-mastery level of fic exchanges, and I am grateful to anyone who braves its challenges. And of course it's also one of my favorite exchanges - crossovers are a big part of my fanfictional universe as both a reader and writer, and I'm always delighted to have an excuse to jump into this briar patch.
So: let the Epic begin.
Why I'm HereThree 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.
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Fandom-Specific Notes ( )Requests#1: Modern Mischief ( )#2: Doing It Old-School ( )#3: They FIght Crime! ( )#4: There's No Business Like Show Business... ( )#5: Retro R Us ( )![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinkauli and I were each other's recipients. 
