As the Cardinal Flies

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.

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....

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.

A new experience this round (and a round with a great many new and capable players besides): I got a genuinely nifty vid!

Elementary!
Creator: beakeaper
Rating: G
Fandoms/Sources: Elementary, Murder By Decree, The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1987), Sherlock: The Musical, Star Trek: TNG*, Young Sherlock Holmes
Relationships: Holmes & Watson(s) (John, Joan, Jane)
Warnings: none

Holmes and Watson's friendship in different versions, the greatest duo, represented by the song "Elementary" from "Sherlock: The Musical".

////

For my part, I wrote a pre-Reichenbach story - this one from Holmes' POV - for tadhana_writess.

A Problem of Trust
Rating: G/all ages
Fandom: ACD
Relationship: Holmes & Watson
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mycroft Holmes
Words: ~1900
Warnings: none

The astute reader may wonder why neither Watson nor his literary agent were ever brought to court by Professor Moriarty or his relations. The truly serious reader is likely to ask the more intriguing question: given the sterling public reputation ascribed to the professor, and the care which Moriarty took to protect it, why would he, his heirs, or his business associates not take legal action against Watson and Conan Doyle?

Some few of those devoted to the close study of Watson’s writings have deduced the answer. Insofar as I am aware, however, no one has ever satisfactorily explained who – or why – someone might have chosen to invent Moriarty in the first place.

I noted in the prior post that both the story I wrote and the gifts I received involved Mary Poppins, but it was more interesting than that: in fact, sinkauli and I were each other's recipients.

In this case, my own story is a bit of an outlier. I chose to blend the Poppins canon with Murder She Wrote - but rather than focusing on Jessica Fletcher, I decided to spotlight her identical cousin Emma MacGill (also played by Angela Lansbury), and to connect the tale with Mary Poppins Returns by way of Lansbury's Emma's appearance therein. Which leads us to:

As Lucky Can Be
Fandoms: Murder She Wrote, Mary Poppins
Rating: G
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~2900
Characters: Emma MacGill, Jessica Fletcher, Lin-Manuel Miranda, a chimney sweep, a lamplighter, Frankie Fletcher
Additional Tags: theater, movies

Some career decisions are more life-changing than others....

Amazingly, I have now actually made a bit of progress on completing old projects - in this case, the first of a whole slew of "Into A Bar" prompts that I asked for and then didn't get done during their initial windows. This one dates from 2018, and turned out to be a sequel - if rather an odd one - to a prior story of mine. So now I have yet another series in my bibliography, and one that is both very strange and evidently a long way from being fully resolved. (It's possible, I think, to read this one without having to look at the first, but I won't mind at all if you start with the earlier entry...)

Anyway....

Title: New Plan
Author: graycardinal / graycardinal
Prompt: Kali Cutter goes into a bar visits a high-tech research laboratory and meets…Dr. Bunsen Honeydew!
Fandoms: Austin/Murry/O’Keefe stories (Madeleine L’Engle); Muppets
Words: ~2500
Rating: Suitable for all ages
Warnings: none

In plain language, he was a Muppet. Except, of course, where there are Muppets one usually expects Muppeteers, and the Dr. Honeydew who’d just hopped off a stool behind a cluttered laboratory table to greet us landed on two perfectly ordinary feet (if you can use “ordinary” to describe plush feet wearing black rubber-soled sneakers) with no sticks, strings, or other Muppet manipulators in sight.

“I should advise you,” the scientist said in a mild, apologetic voice, “that this is a secure area, and anyone attempting to enter secure areas here at Q-36 is subject to potential shrinking, rabbitizing, multiplication, spectrographic diffusion, gravitational flux…”

I remain mildly amused that I was not immediately tagged for this in the guessing interval (and wholly flattered that the wrong guesses were for some of Holmestice's most talented writers). Likewise, I am still boggling a little at the degree of enthusiasm expressed in the comments on this story over on AO3....

The Mice and the Mastermind
Fandom: Basil of Baker Street, Without A Clue
Rating: all ages
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~2200
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Basil of Baker Street & Sherlock Holmes, Reginald "Sherlock Holmes" Kincaid & John Watson
Characters: Basil of Baker Street, David Q. Dawson, John Watson, Reginald "Sherlock Holmes" Kincaid
Additional Tags: crossover, AU-Canon Divergence

The Sherlock Holmes of the mouse world has learned all he knows of detection and investigation at the feet of the Master himself. And then one evening in Baker Street, he and Dr. Dawson discover that they may not know Sherlock Holmes quite so well as they think.

Now, then; Unsent Letters opened earlier this week. My contribution this year was a Stargate/Indiana Jones fusion, thusly:

Studies in (Relatively) Contemporary Egyptology
Written for: Huntress79
Fandoms: Stargate SG-1, Indiana Jones movies
Rating: G
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~3200
Relationship: Daniel Jackson & Indiana Jones
Characters: Daniel Jackson, Cassandra Fraiser, Janet Fraiser, George Hammond, Indiana Jones
Additional Tags: epistolary, stealth crossover, multiple crossovers, Easter Eggs, footnotes

Whoof. I do believe that this completes the catching-up, more or less.

So: we backtrack again; I received two excellent stories this past Yuletide, and here they are. First up, a delightful and mischievous adventure set in the world of Emily Pollifax,sometime CIA courier - but here starring her world-traveling neighbor, Miss Grace Hartshorne, who has no idea that the roguish gentleman whom she's unexpectedly encountered in Rome is in fact a friend and colleague of her neighbor back in New Jersey.

Photo Finish
Fandom: Mrs. Pollifax (Dorothy Gilman)
Author: sholio
Rating: Teen & Up
Category: Gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~5600
Characters: Grace Hartshorne, John Farrell
Additional Tags: casefic, caper fic



As it happens, my other gift also features a vacation - but Dairine's is much quieter and far less stressful, which is something of a novelty for someone who's getting used to having interstellar adventures fall into her lap. For the reader as well as for its central character, this is a deeply effective exercise in relaxation (yes, I know, that sounds weird, but trust me here).

Be My Place to Land
Fandom: Young Wizards • Diane Duane
Author: Gray Shadows (tris_chandler)
Rating: Teen
Category: gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~3300
Characters: Dairine Callahan
Additional Tags: minor appearance by Carmela Rodriguez, futurefic, travel
And now, suitably relaxed, I need a nap....

As threatened, this should start the catching-up process as to what I've been up to between posting droughts.

I've been blessed by fellow fans over the years with a generous handful of excellent podfics presenting stories of mine in audio form. I've also been thinking for a long time about trying my own hand at podfic, but till relatively recently my hardware setup hasn't been ideal for attempting it. But in this past round of Holmestice, I was matched with rachelindeed , who'd written a truly excellent Mycroft-centered story for me in a much earlier round...and I decided the time had come to test the waters. So for that assignment, I fired up Audacity, produced a podfic of that story, and grinned quite a bit during the guessing phase as people speculated on who might have recorded the work. The comments were uniformly both enthusiastic and kind, and it's not at all unlikely I'll continue to produce occasional podfic as the muse arises.

Art in the Blood • Podfic 
Source Work: Art in the Blood by

rachelindeed  
Length: ~32 minutes 
Fandom: Murder By Decree (1979) 
Rating: General Audiences
Category: Gen
Warnings: Spoilers (reveals canon ending)
Characters:  Mycroft Holmes, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes
Additional tags: POV Mycroft Holmes, Podfic, Podfic Length: 30-45 Minutes, Career Change, Character Study

 

After the events of Murder by Decree, Mycroft Holmes leaves the British government and tries to decide what to do with the rest of his life.

 

I also produced a treat for starfishstar - we had both recently expressed interest in "kitten!Holmes", inspired by about five seconds of animation at the end of the screen credits for the Remington Steele TV series showing a tabby cat with a deerstalker and a calabash pipe. With a bit of time on my hands after turning in the podfic, I considered how to approach the material, and unexpectedly came up with the perfect tag line for the feline version of the Holmes-and-Watson meeting scene. This was the result: 

A Foregone Introduction 
Fandom: kitten!Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms 
Rating: General Audiences
Category: Gen
Warnings: none
Words: ~700
Characters: Dr. Stamford, Murray, Sherlock (kitten!Holmes), Watson (kitten!Holmes)
Additional tags: cats, canon TV

 

A fateful meeting takes place at the Bartholomew Street Animal Shelter. 

This too was enthusiastically received, although there was (of course) no question during the guessing phase as to who'd written it.