As the Cardinal Flies

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.

For once, I actually got an entry into intoabar on deadline! Go me!

Alfred Pennyworth walks into a bar and meets...Mary Russell!

Under the Hill and Far Away
Fandom: Batman - All Media Types, Mary Russell - Laurie R. King
Rating: all ages
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~1100
Relationship: Alfred Pennyworth & Mary Russell
Characters: Alfred Pennyworth, Mary Russell
Additional Tags: crack, magic

It's been almost half a century since Alfred Pennyworth, long-retired from British intelligence, has seen one of his oldest colleagues in spycraft. Now he's about to find out what she's been up to...and where.

Late last week two threads crossed on the Letters of Mary email list - a couple of posters noted the arrival of Ms. King's newest novel (not, actually, a Russell book, but rather the start of a sequel-series to her earlier Kate Martinelli novels), and several others found in the change of seasons an excuse for an informal exchange of drabbles (that subset of fic that is 100 words exactly, or occasionally a multiple thereof).

And in the midst of that list traffic, the following dropped unexpectedly into my email, by what appears to be the same back-channel that supplied me with a certain Holmestice entry some rounds back. I tell you, it feels very odd getting these messages, but I'm certainly not going to complain; after all, look where that got (their) Professors Moriarty.

A Family Conference
Fandom: Mary Russell - Laurie R. King
Rating: General Audiences
Words: 300
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Mary Russell
Additional Tags: Meta, Raquel Laing, Laurie R. King, Edited By, Triple Drabble
Series: Part 2 of Holmes & Russell in the 21st Century

Laurie King's newest novel, Back to the Garden, isn't part of the Mary Russell series...or is it? Sherlock Holmes appears to have thoughts on the matter.

You may be looking a trifle askance at the number of exclamation points in that header, but I'm here to tell you that every one of them is deserved. I got a podfic rather than a fic - and it is a gorgeous, skillfully read, delightfully soundtracked version of the story I wrote just last round, in which Enola Holmes and Mary Russell join forces with sometime jungle princess Nell Watson, née Nylephtha Goode Curtis of the Zu-Vendi, to finally defeat the schemes of Von Bork, villainous German spymaster - with, of course, appropriate support from Sherlock Holmes.

To say I am delighted is several orders of understatement. The Women in the Case is fairly close to 7,000 words - it's a 43-minute audio - and between the length and the considerable dialogue (featuring the voices of three different women born on three different continents), creating any podcast at all amounts to a considerable effort on someone's part. Creating one this well-executed is a feat of impressive skill and reflects a high degree of dedication, and I can't begin to thank my anonymous creator sufficiently for having devoted that much work to my words. Here is your link; don't hesitate to go forth and listen!

The Women in the Case - Podfic
(Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer, Mary Russell - Laurie R. King, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer - Philip Jose Farmer)
Author (text): graycardinal
Producer/Narrator (Podfic): oldshrewsburyian
Rating: General Audiences
Length: ~43 minutes
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Enola Holmes & Mary Russell
Characters: Enola Holmes, Mary Russell, Original Moriarty Character(s), Sherlock Holmes, Nylepthah Watson, Von Bork
Additional Tags: Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 30-45 Minutes, Bechdel Test Pass, Community: holmestice

Greetings, O writer of letters, and welcome! And also, thank you!

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:

Doctor Who (1963)
Mary Poppins (Movies)
Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Young Wizards (Diane Duane)

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 Yuletide letters (and those for other exchanges) are tagged "dear santa" herein; see the "Yuletide" tag too, if you like.

Things I like:

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 tend to intersect. Also, for this exchange, I find myself not especially interested in any of these characters writing e/s/p.

DNWs:

I've resisted writing this section for years – not because I don’t have preferences, but because I hate framing them as absolute negatives. I’m a flexible reader, and the story I want most out of a given exchange is 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). That said, in the interests of clarity, some things I Do Not Want:

AUs: For this exchange, avoid both alt-setting (i.e. coffeeshop, high school, dept. store, etc.) and canon-divergence AUs. This does *not* mean that 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 absolutely preclude crossovers, but for once I’m (mostly) reining in that part of my muse.

Explicit sex, or “sexting” exchanges.  In the context of this exchange, this just isn’t my jam. Non-explicit mention or discussion of sex is fine, though. Kinks to avoid: noncon, incest, adult/child, power-imbalanced sexual/romantic partnerships (teacher/student, boss/underling, etc.).

Romantic partnerships that directly contradict canon. 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. (Also see canon-specific notes.)

Doctor Who (1963)
Any Companion & Any Companion, Any UNIT Member & Any UNIT Member, Sarah Jane & Harry

NOTES: I’m good with seeing any of the available epistolary formats for this request.

PROMPTS:
I picked “Any Companion & Any Companion” (and its UNIT-based cousin) with full knowledge of just how wide a net that casts, and I am good with that. I’m best acquainted with Three through Six and their fellow travelers, but if your muse runs to correspondence between Susan Foreman and Ace (however that might fall out) or Peri and Jamie (ditto), I’m on board. That said, I’m especially fond of Sarah Jane, Nyssa, Jo Grant, and Tegan, especially intrigued by Turlough and Kamelion, and curious about how Adric might find a way into this form.  

EXTREMELY OPTIONAL BONUS POINTS: For any of these prompts, I am entirely OK with drifting into the 2005-era timeline, and also into Sarah Jane Adventures territory.  And if you can finesse a regeneration cycle for Sarah Jane out of one of these prompts, feel very free to do so!

Mary Poppins (Movies)
Bert & Mary, Minerva McGonagall & Mary, Mary & Original Characters

NOTES: I’m good with seeing any of the available epistolary formats for this request.

DNW:
• AUs: See above - but in this context I’m thinking that McGonagall & Mary looks more fusional than crossover-ish, still, either way (and even if your take differs from mine) that’s one request where it’s OK to indulge. (Also, if by some chance you’ve actually read a certain fic of mine in which Mary appears, extending or riffing further on that fic’s premise is totally in bounds.)

PROMPTS
Bert often appears to act as Mary’s eyes and ears in the mundane world; it would be interesting to see his written reports – whether on the Banks children or other matters (does he vet potential candidates for Mary’s patronage?). Was Minerva Mary’s mentor (or maybe vice versa?), or is Mary something outside wizardly rules and traditions?  Who else has Mary already nannied over the years?

Sherlock Holmes (ACD)
Holmes & Professor Moriarty, Irene Adler & Holmes, Watson & Anyone

NOTES: I’m good with seeing any of the available epistolary formats for this request.

DNWs:
• Note that Adler & Holmes material should be non-romantic as per the tag.
• For Holmes & Moriarty: just in case, let me emphasize here that ACD-canonical Moriarty is not, repeat not, equivalent to the popular post-canon Moriarty of movies, TV, and pastiche (this last in either direction, whether slanted toward Meyer & Kurland or toward Horowitz and ELementary). As with Poppins, I’m happy to see thoughtful speculations roving outward from canon – but I’d like to see them grounded *in* canon, one way or another.

PROMPTS:
• For Holmes & Moriarty: I’m thinking the most intriguing material is likely to be pre-canonical. Yet every bit of “fanon” we have (the professor as the Holmes family math tutor, etc.) is purely speculative; there’s a lot of room for that speculation to go in different directions.
• For Holmes & Irene – who writes to whom first, and why? Does Holmes need a field agent, does Irene need a sleuth, or are they simply sharing practical tips on cross-dressing disguises (heh)?
• For Watson, the great question here is: how did the good doctor really store, sort, and distribute the millions of words’ worth of manuscripts he evidently wrote? (And who got the job of doing either the field work or the cataloging?)

Young Wizards (Duane)
Carl/Tom, Dairine & Roshaun

NOTES: I’m good with seeing any of the available epistolary formats for this request.

DNW:
• Explicit sex/kink; for Dairine & Roshaun, it’s way too soon, and for Carl & Tom, I’m happy to give them their privacy for that.
• AUs: Avoid both alt-setting (i.e. coffeeshop, high school, dept. store, etc.) and canon-divergence AUs. This does *not* mean that you can’t extend on canon, fill in blanks, etc.; indeed, Unsent Letters strike me as designed for just this sort of thing.

PROMPTS:
• For Carl & Tom: I’m absolutely up for intimate exchanges, given this relationship, but I am more interested in the intimacy than I am in the romance, if that makes sense. (For example, what do they write, whether for themselves or each other, after ‘losing’ Picchu? Or what do their journals or texts look like during/after the memory lapses from WIZARDS AT WAR? Alternately, I’d love to see some of their after-action reports to higher authority (whether Irina, or some intermediary) after some of the kids’ adventures.

• For Dairine & Roshaun: individual journal entries may be easier to deal with than actual letters/texts/manual-mail for these two, but either is totally fine. I’d love to see each of them trying to nail down their perceptions of the other in writing – or, alternately, an exchange between them grumbling and commiserating about how No One Else Understands My Pain. Or even just Dairine trying to explain the Star Wars movies to Roshaun….

EXTREMELY OPTIONAL BONUS POINTS: If any of these prompts give you an excuse to have someone exchange email or other correspondence with Mr. (Counselor) Millman, do not hesitate to bring him in; he’s such a good sounding board as well as an excuse for the sort of wry humor that Duane is so good at injecting into these books.

Reveals are complete and all is calm after the summer edition of Holmestice, which counts as highly entertaining all round (as per usual).

I was assigned to sanguinity (who is a co-moderator, and so immune to being totally surprised), and thought briefly about writing a Dinosaur!Holmes story (the source is a very strange 2010 movie from The Asylum, specialist in offbeat adaptations of minor classics). But then I noticed a reference to a certain Philip José Farmer work in their request list, and instead did this:

The Women in the Case
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Enola Holmes Series - Nancy Springer, Mary Russell - Laurie R. King, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer - Philip Jose Farmer
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~6700
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Enola Holmes & Mary Russell
Characters: Enola Holmes, Mary Russell, Nell Watson | Nylephtha Good Curtis, Sherlock Holmes, Von Bork, Original Moriarty Character(s)
Additional Tags: Women Being Awesome, Bechdel Test Pass, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Meta, Footnotes

An account from a cache of manuscripts attributed to Enola Holmes - which both answers a great many questions about significant women in the Holmesian canon, and raises a great many others.

Only a little bit later than promised, here's what I've been doing for the last several months' worth of exchanges:

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Mrs. Pollifax and the Irish Expatriate
for genarti 
Fandom: Mrs. Pollifax - Dorothy Gilman
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~3400
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Emily Pollifax, Carstairs (Mrs. Pollifax), Bishop (Mrs. Pollifax), Grace Hartshorne


This was almost a crossover (and indeed, one commenter very perceptively noted the potential for just such a connection), but the logistics involved in actually staging the necessary scenes proved more complicated than I'd initially thought, and time constraints forced me to scale back.  In hindsight, it may have been just as well; as much fun as it would have been to connect the Pollifax canon to that of Diane Duane's "Young Wizards" universe, it occurs to me that fully integrating the two would almost certainly have ripple effects much more complicated than I'd have been able to deal with in that one story.

But even without the crossover element, I am reasonably satisfied with this one.  I had initially been contemplating a number of other explanations for Grace's background (including the idea that she might have been Emily's guardian angel), but this strikes me as more satisfying than anything else. 

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The Kincardine File: Notes from an Untold Case
for scfrankles 
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~1300
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mary Morstan, Mycroft Holmes
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes

What it says on the tin – a collection of notes and correspondence from a case for which no full manuscript has been found (almost certainly because Watson thought better of writing this one up for posterity).

This was a pure delight to write, not least because scfrankles has been one of the most dangerously accurate players in the guessing-game stage of Holmestice, and I wanted very much to supply a story that would slip beneath their guessing radar.  I succeeded in that endeavor, and also came up with what I like to think is a reasonably plausible canonical tale (although I slipped in a subtle nod to one of my favorite series of pastiches along the way). 

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X-Ceptional
for lirin 
Fandom: Perry Mason (TV), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~4000
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Della Street, Moira MacTaggert, Paul Drake, Perry Mason, Sebastian Shaw, Original Male Character(s)
Additional Tags: Secrets

Don’t get me wrong," said Moira MacTaggert, " but if your boss really wanted to make a deal with Shaw, he’d have brought a whole other sort of professional girl with him. "

"Yes, well," said Della Street, "we shared our report with the local Treasury authorities. And if Paul Drake had run into you anytime during that investigation, Mr. Mason and I would have heard about it in Technicolor detail.”

This took the longest to come together of any of this year's exchange stories; I was contemplating various other prospective crossover plots involving different sets of fandoms until very late in the game.  But once I'd rewatched X-Men: First Class, I concluded fairly quickly that I wanted to do something with Moira and Della -- at which point it took a good bit of further brainstorming to work out just what Della's mutant ability might be.

As with the Holmestice story, I also threw in a really subtle Easter egg, this one so small and tangential that it pretty much matters only to me.  (If you're curious, here are your clues: consider the relevance a carbon-refraction process might eventually have to paleontologic research, and then look for a subsequent generation or two of Mercers in a totally different fandom featuring dinosaurs....)

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A Little Self-Knowledge
for desertvixen 
Fandom: Nancy Drew - Carolyn Keene
Rating: General Audiences
Words: ~1600
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nancy Drew & Eloise Drew
Characters: Nancy Drew, Eloise Drew
Additional Tags: College, Family
So, my match on Fic Corner this year happened to be to the same recipient I drew for Crossovering last year...and in both cases, the primary matching fandom was Nancy Drew.  In some respects, this story resembles a five-things story I did for Alexis Castle in the Castle fandom a number of years back, but the context is significantly different (although the Drews and the Castles have suspiciously similar taste in restaurants).  Obviously, being an exchange story, I couldn't establish any overt connection between the two stories on the initial posting, but as I noted later in comments, there's nothing specifically inconsistent between them -- and so now I've formally made a series to include the two works.  [One notable feature of this one involves some back story on Nancy's mother, further amplified in a subsequent comment.]

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Astute readers will notice that there are four stories called out in this post, whereas there are six in the prior listing of gifts.  This is because, despite the best intentions, I ended up defaulting late in the game for Remix Revival -- a combination of unusually busy Life circumstances and a complete failure of muse on my part.  The latter rather surprised me; despite a great range of worthwhile choices, nothing whacked me over the head and said "remix me!"  So I bowed out of that one.  (I also did not finish an Into A Bar story within that challenge's designated window, though I do have a Plan for that one and hope to complete it eventually.)

 ...but wow, is there a wealth of wonder in the current round of holmestice !  Mind, I can't be too specific in my praise just yet (so that when it comes time to guess who wrote what, people will credit me with various things I dearly wish I actually did write). But if Sherlockian pastiche is your jam, I highly recommend checking out the current run of stories.

Also, I have *two* stories waiting for me--so someone has written me a treat this round!  

From the recently completed round of Holmestice:

First, an absolutely fascinating open-ended fusion. Just as I went forward in the previous round and merged the "Charlotte Holmes" novels with Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, my donor this round skipped back in time and ingeniously spliced Mary Russell into Charlotte's world.

Insoluble Puzzles by amindamazed
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: Charlotte Holmes Series - Brittany Cavallaro, Mary Russell - Laurie R. King, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Words: ~4900
Characters: Charlotte Holmes, Araminta Holmes, Mary Russell, Leander Holmes, Jamie Holmes
Additional Tags: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Mention of Past Traumatic Events, incuding harm to animals, all from canon, no graphic descriptions of it in this fic

As for me, I wrote a light, quick crossover in which almost no one is who they seem to be (and, for a wonder, absolutely nobody fingered me as the author!

A Case of Identities
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Doctor Who
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Words: ~2800
Characters: John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, James Moriarty, The Master (Delgado), The Doctor (Doctor Who)
Additional Tags: Crossover, Clever John Watson, Footnotes

Mycroft Holmes once said “I hear of Sherlock everywhere these days.” This story may (or may not) explain the true origins of that remark.

And here's the story I wrote for this latest round: hologram!Moriarty several years on, not where (or who) you'd expect him to be. I did a good deal of chuckling with evil glee when I was writing this one.

A Policeman's Lot Is Not A Happy One
Fandoms: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Professor Moriarty Series - Michael Kurland, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: James Moriarty, Madeleine Verlaine, Katherine Pulaski
Warnings: None for triggers.  Significant spoilers for ST:TNG episodes “Ship in a Bottle” and “Elementary, Dear Data”.
Words: ~2200
Additional Tags: Holodeck Character, Sherlock Holmes References, For Science!

"I must say, Professor, you've come a long way since we first met. I daresay nowadays you sound more like Sherlock Holmes himself than you do an evil mastermind."

"As it happens," Moriarty said, "there's a reason for that, but it will probably confuse you."