As the Cardinal Flies

While prowling through my files this afternoon, I ran across a couple of small things from an old LiveJournal discussion of crackfic that I realized I'd never thought to upload on AO3. This has now been remedied....

Getting Things Started
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Muppets
Rating: G
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: 160
Characters: Buffy Summers, Dawn Summers, Kermit, Scooter
Additional Tags: crack, crossover, commentfic

"Tell me again" said the frog, "why we got such a good deal buying this theater."

Gargoyles, She Wrote
Fandoms: Gargoyles, Murder She Wrote
Rating: G
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: 300
Characters: Owen Burnett, Jessica Fletcher
Additional Tags: crack, crossover, commentfic, murder, triple drabble

It was almost refreshing when the hostess of the present banquet ran screaming into the dining room and straight into Owen's arms, gasping out an urgent cry for help between inarticulate wails.
--

 

The last half of 2018 went by entirely too fast, and I am just now attempting to dig out from under the backlog of Things I Ought To Have Posted.

Chief among these are thanks for several exchanges' worth of gift fics, and in the interests of efficiency, we're going to do this all at once. (On the plus side, there is a whole lot of really good reading in these, probably more than I deserve....)

So:

The Birds in Bloomsbury
by Jay Tryfanstone
Fandom: The Ice Ghosts Mystery - Jane Louise Curry
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~4000
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Molly Bird, Mavis "Mab" Bird, Peregrine "Perry" Bird, Ariel "Oriole" Bird, Gabriel Lanz, Professor Jeffrey Bird
Additional Tags: London, Bloomsbury, 1970s, The Exchange at Fic Corner 2018, pinch hit


This was my gift for Fic Corner; the source fandom is a one-off YA mystery novel with SFnal overtones (think a sort of cross between L'Engle's Austin and Murry/O'Keefe novels and the Happy Hollisters), and the new story captures the original characterizations beautifully while transplanting them to a vividly authentic London setting. I was and am absolutely delighted, and I think this is more or less readable as a stand-alone.

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The Stakes (take two remix)
by Nadler
Fandom: Valdemar series - Mercedes Lackey; Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~1800
Warnings: Creator chose not to use archive warnings
Characters: Kethry (Valdemar, Tarma shena Tale'sedrin, Buffy Summers
Additional Tags: crossover, remix


This was done for this year's Remix Revival, considerably expanding a triple-drabble I'd done for a challenge community on LiveJournal back in the day, and the author did an excellent job of capturing the wry fish-out-of-water tone of the original while amplifying very neatly on Tarma's and Kethry's take on the whole affair. Because so much of what I write involves crossovers, I tend to be hard to match in the remix world, but I have been immensely pleased to date with what others have managed to do with my work where remixes are concerned.

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The King Under The Mountain
by rthstewart
Fandom: Agent Carter (TV), Indiana Jones Series
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Words: ~9500
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Peggy Carter, Henry "Indiana" Jones, James Montgomery Falsworth, Jim Morita, Gabe Jones, Jacques Dernier, Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan
Additional Tags: World War II, Nazis, Crossover, MCU-Indiana Jones level references to torture


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Bright Sons of the British Empire: an examination by an impartial Uncle John Watson
by Keenir
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~1100
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Irene Adler/Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes & OC
Characters: John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, OC child
Additional Tags: Epilogue, Coda, AU, ...your mileage may vary, Christopher Lee's Holmes films


One of the two pieces written for me in the recent Holmestice round, inspired (as the summary indicates) by a line from one of two gorgeous films starring Christopher Lee as Sherlock Holmes. This was thoughtful, and unconventional, and fascinating, and illustrates the immense variety of creative work that the Holmestice exchanges generate, especially from some of the lesser-known Holmesian source material.

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By the Seaside
by Luthienberen
Fandom: Murder by Decree (1979)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Words: ~3300
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson
Additional Tags: Minor Angst, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Slice of Life, Christmas

After unveiling the sordid conspiracy behind the Jack the Ripper killings, Holmes decides what he and Watson need is a holiday from London and where better than spending Christmas by the seaside?

The second Holmestice gift I received, also inspired by a lesser-known but first-rate Holmes movie (this one starring Christopher Plummer as Holmes and James Mason as Watson). This one is light and amusing, mostly (but not entirely) in counterpoint to the lurid, dark qualities of the movie (one of the several that pits Holmes against Jack the Ripper), but it's exactly that lightness that makes the characterizations resonate with those of the original film. Also, there's a quality guest star turn from an elegant black cat that has particular if highly coincidental resonance for me personally.

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Return Home, Return to Yourself
by Musyc
Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series, Uhura's Song
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~1400
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Rushlight to-Vensre
Additional Tags: Future Fic, Homecoming, Returning Home, Musicians, Yuletide 2018

Rushlight has enjoyed his travels, but he misses his world and his people. He's been away from home for too long.

And finally, this year's Yuletide gift to me, a particularly vivid and well-done character moment for a fascinating secondary character in one of my half-dozen very favorite Star Trek novels of all time.  Like Kagan's original story, this one is notable in recognizing some of the things that make aliens, well, alien -- and yet no less wonderful for their differences.

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Whoof.  That will do for tonight, I think - with luck, sometime tomorrow we'll get to my contributions to all of these.
 

This was written for the RareWomen fic exchange, which lives here on LiveJournal and here on AO3.

When the Bat in the Moonlight Flies
Fandom(s): Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gargoyles
Characters: Jenny Calendar, Owen Burnett
Words: 1731
Rating: G
Spoilers: None.  Takes place pre-series for Buffy, and very early in Season 1 of Gargoyles.

The Kalderash clan had long memories even by Rom standards. Women of the Kalderash had cursed vampires and outwitted wizards, and if they weren’t precisely friendly with the old races, they were well-versed in the legends surrounding them.

Borrowed from liviapenn:

Ten highly improbable pairings that someone should write:

Two themes seem to be running through these: "like calls to like", and Smallville (the former for reasons which may become obvious as the pairings unfold, and the latter because the relationships on that show are so amazingly dysfunctional that almost anything -- at least from the characters' perspective -- ought to be an improvement. (And yet I keep watching....)

( And now, the pairings: )