Dear Crossworks Author
Dear Crossworks Author,
Thank you so much for writing for me! I'm
skieswideopen on AO3 as well.
I've got some general likes and dislikes and some specific prompts below. Please don't feel compelled to use any of the specific prompts; they're just starting points in case you need inspiration. Or feel free to adapt them by changing the characters or fandoms or whatever needs changing. My general tastes are pretty consistent across fandoms, so if I like an idea for one request, I'll almost certainly like it for others.
In some cases, I've also mentioned some favourite characters and pairings, but again, don't feel compelled to stick with them. Just go with whoever works for your story, including secondary characters if they're the ones who interest you. The pairings are especially optional. (And canon pairings are always welcome.)
Things I Like: Competence (so much love for characters being competent!), integrity, secrets coming out (by choice, chance or necessity), equal partnerships in romantic relationships, outsider POVs, introspection, mentors, brief moments of emotional vulnerability from generally stoic characters, learning something new about a character, and stories that pick up dropped plot threads. Some favourite tropes include time loops, forced proximity, truth serum/in vino veritas(/Eli?), undercover as a couple, road trips.
Things I Don't Want: Hopeless endings, explicit gore, long and detailed descriptions of recovering from traumatic events, AUs that significantly alter the premise, setting, or character roles (e.g., coffee shop AUs, high school AUs, hospital AUs, A/B/O), romantic or sexual relationships featuring a significant power imbalance.
Other Things: I'm very flexible on genre: plot-driven, character-driven, action, introspection, slice of life, gen, romance...it's all good. I have squicks but no triggers. I'm fine with character death, including main and requested characters, unless otherwise noted. Background non-con is fine if it's helpful for the story, but I'd rather it not be the primary focus. I dislike plots that revolve around misunderstandings that could be cleared up with a simple conversation. I also dislike it when competent characters are rendered temporarily incompetent for the purpose of driving the plot. One of my favourite things about crossovers is giving both sides a chance to shine.
Request 1: BSG, Firefly, Killjoys, Star Trek: Discovery, SGA
This is the space shows category. The settings are all pretty different, so the obvious way to go is for some mishap (or alien action) to bring them together. Maybe an accident with a wormhole/stargate/warp drive malfunction/space-time anomaly/experiment-gone-wrong leaves a ship stranded in the wrong universe, or maybe ships from two different realities get sucked to a completely different place by unknown forces and the crews have to work together to get home, or maybe just one person ends up alone in the wrong universe and has to figure how what to do next, whether that's return home or build a new life.
Maybe Dutch, Johnny and D'avin or the crew of Serenity end up at Federation headquarters, where they're met with some suspicion while they discover what a post-scarcity society looks like. Maybe a puddlejumper winds up encountering the Colonial fleet, leading the fleet to discover that Earth could be more than a myth. Maybe the whole story is Vance and Roslin and Adama trying to figure out what happens next after the fleet ends up in a completely different universe. Whatever works.
Note: I'm a fan of SGA as well as SG1, so feel free to bring in SGA characters as well or instead if you like.
I've listed some favourite characters in case that helps, but please write whoever works best for the story.
BSG: Lee Adama, Laura Roslin, William Adama, Sharon Agathon, Karl Agathon, Kara Thrace
Firefly: Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, Mal, Book
Killjoys: Dutch, D'avin, Johnny, Turin, Zeph, Alvis
SG1: Carter, Mitchell, Vala, Teal'c, Jackson, O'Neill; favourite ships are Sam Carter/Cameron Mitchell, Cameron Mitchell/John Sheppard and Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran
SGA: Sheppard, Weir, Carter, Teyla, Ronon, McKay, Zelenka, Heightmeyer; favourite ships are Mitchell/Sheppard, John Sheppard/Ronon Dex, John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir
ST: Discovery: Vance, Burnham, Saru, Tilly, Culber, Stamets
Request 2: Battle Creek, Being Human (US), Covert Affairs, Elementary, Forever, Intelligence (US), The Listener, The Mentalist, SG1
This request is largely defined by shows that involve people with secrets to hide and shows that involve people who are good at ferreting out secrets. Sometimes those are the same people.
I'd enjoy anything that throws characters from these shows together, particularly if it leads the secret-finder to look into the secret-keeper. Casefic with two teams racing to solve a series of crimes, each convinced they know what's really going on? Casefic where they have to at least pretend to cooperate? Someone is a witness to a crime, leading the secret-finder to become interested in the secret-keeper? Someone gets seconded to a different team for a specific case? A random encounter at a coffee shop/bank/supermarket somehow piques the secret-finder's interest? A blind date or old cross-team friendship leads to an encounter? Someone gets sucked into a case while on vacation?
Their teams swear that Sherlock and Jane are competing to see who can be the most insightful/irritating? Jane tries to figure out what's going on with Gabriel when Cyber Command agrees to help the FBI with a case? Sherlock Holmes figured out the Stargate project years ago, but Joan, Marcus and/or Gregson knew nothing about it and can't figure out why the Air Force is looking into their case? Gabriel and Riley run into Dr. Henry Morgan or Aidan Waite, and Gabriel's quite startled when he runs an standard background check? Sherlock doesn't believe in psychics, but he can't fine another explanation for Toby Logan? Henry Morgan and Aidan Waite recognize each other from an encounter a century earlier? Annie and Eyal are read into the Stargate program and asked to find a mole from one of their countries? (I'm just throwing out random combinations here. Please feel free to substitute in different fandoms, or just ignore this whole paragraph and run with your own idea.)
Or maybe characters from the two shows team up to deal with an emergency/catastrophe: The Ori/Goa'uld invade earth? Preventing an apocalypse? Surviving in a post-apocalyptic world?
Feel free to play with the timelines to get seasons to match up the way you need them to.
Note: I'm a fan of SGA as well as SG1, so feel free to bring in SGA characters as well if you like.
I've listed some favourite characters in case that helps, but please write whoever works best for the story.
Battle Creek: Milt, Russ, Guz
BHUS: Aidan, Kat, Nora, Josh, Sally, Henry
Covert Affairs: Annie, Joan, Eyal, Auggie, Jai; favourite ship is Annie/Eyal
Elementary: Sherlock Holmes, Joan Watson, Tommy Gregson, Marcus Bell
Forever: Henry Morgan
Intelligence: Gabriel, Riley, Lilian, Shen, Jameson
The Listener: Toby, Michelle, Charlie
The Mentalist: Jane, Lisbon, Cho and anyone else on the team
SG1: Carter, Mitchell, Vala, Teal'c, Jackson, O'Neill; favourite ships are Sam Carter/Cameron Mitchell, Cameron Mitchell/John Sheppard and Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran
SGA: Sheppard, Weir, Carter, Teyla, Ronon, McKay, Zelenka, Heightmeyer; favourite ships are Mitchell/Sheppard, John Sheppard/Ronon Dex, John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir
Request 3: Battle Creek, BSG, Covert Affairs, Intelligence (US), Killjoys, Madam Secretary, The Mentalist, Star Trek: Discovery, The X-Files
This is category was inspired in part by a fic I once read in which a cryogenically frozen Fox Mulder ends up on Voyager (and proceeds to use his psychology training to sort out all sorts of problems), i.e., mixing and matching contemporary and future/space shows. (Obviously, if we matched on just space shows or just procedurals, that's fine too. In that case, please see the first two requests for the relevant discussion. I will be delighted to read a crossover between any two--or more--of these shows.)
I'm happy to handwave how the crossover happens--mysterious portals, experiments gone wrong, Ancient intervention, etc., etc. The fun part is seeing how the characters deal with it. Do a couple of Raptor pilots somehow wind up on Earth and run into Mulder and Scully or Mossad or the Battle Creek police department? Does an entire ship end up orbiting the planet, leading the US president to call in Milt Chamberlain/Patrick Jane/Annie Walker/Fox Mulder to help evaluate the situation? Do Dalton and Elizabeth have to figure out what to do with 50,000 Colonial refugees? Does the story start after the visitors have already built a discreet life for themselves on earth (while still working on getting home?), only to have their cover blown?
Or does someone from contemporary Earth wake up on a space ship? If so, how do they shake things up? What problems do they try to fix? What shocks them? What do they love about it? Who might they fall in love with?
I've listed some favourite characters in case that helps, but please write whoever works best for the story.
BSG: Lee Adama, Laura Roslin, William Adama, Sharon Agathon, Karl Agathon, Kara Thrace
Battle Creek: Milt, Russ, Guz
Covert Affairs: Annie, Joan, Eyal, Auggie, Jai
Madam Secretary: Elizabeth, Henry, Nadine, Daisy, Jay, Stevie, Dmitri, Matt, Mike B., Dalton
The Mentalist: Jane, Lisbon, Cho and anyone else on the team
Killjoys: Dutch, D'avin, Johnny, Turin, Zeph, Alvis
ST: Discovery: Vance, Burnham, Saru, Tilly, Culber, Stamets
The X-Files: Scully, Mulder, Skinner
Request 4: Being Human (US), Sleepy Hollow
This is a bit of a wild card request. Aidan Waite and Ichabod Crane are products of the 18th century now living in contemporary America, and I'd love to see a story where they meet in the present day.
Maybe the knew each from the war, or maybe they struck up a correspondence when Ichabod Crane wrote to Edmund Waite in search of a rare book and Aidan answered the letter. Either way, what happens when they run into each other in the present day?
Or maybe Crane and Abbie are somehow directed to Aidan--and his knowledge of the supernatural--for help?
I tend to prefer the first season of Sleepy Hollow, but feel free to write whatever makes sense. And feel free to hand-wave away parts of BHUS season 4 if it's set post-series. Ignoring the inconvenient parts of the story works fine for me for this story.
Request 5: Madam Secretary, Intelligence (US)
For this request, I'm primarily interested in seeing Elizabeth find out about Clockwork, and her reaction to it. Maybe Gabriel and Riley accompany her on an overseas trip, and something goes terribly wrong, leading to an accidental revelation of Gabriel's abilities. Maybe President Dalton tells her about the whole thing and asks her opinion on whether the program should be expanded. Maybe she gets the briefing after she becomes president and decides she wants to meet the man whom they've entrusted with so much power. Maybe Gabriel and Riley save her life, or stop a terrorist attack, and that's how she finds out. Maybe the whole story is her talking it over with Henry, or discussing hypotheticals with her staff, trying to decide what to do with it. However you want to do it.
If you want to delve a bit further into the Tigers or that whole plotline, that would be fun too. This entry was originally posted at https://skieswideopen.dreamwidth.org/260440.html, where it has
comments. Comments are equally welcome on either entry.
Thank you so much for writing for me! I'm
skieswideopen on AO3 as well.
I've got some general likes and dislikes and some specific prompts below. Please don't feel compelled to use any of the specific prompts; they're just starting points in case you need inspiration. Or feel free to adapt them by changing the characters or fandoms or whatever needs changing. My general tastes are pretty consistent across fandoms, so if I like an idea for one request, I'll almost certainly like it for others.
In some cases, I've also mentioned some favourite characters and pairings, but again, don't feel compelled to stick with them. Just go with whoever works for your story, including secondary characters if they're the ones who interest you. The pairings are especially optional. (And canon pairings are always welcome.)
Things I Like: Competence (so much love for characters being competent!), integrity, secrets coming out (by choice, chance or necessity), equal partnerships in romantic relationships, outsider POVs, introspection, mentors, brief moments of emotional vulnerability from generally stoic characters, learning something new about a character, and stories that pick up dropped plot threads. Some favourite tropes include time loops, forced proximity, truth serum/in vino veritas(/Eli?), undercover as a couple, road trips.
Things I Don't Want: Hopeless endings, explicit gore, long and detailed descriptions of recovering from traumatic events, AUs that significantly alter the premise, setting, or character roles (e.g., coffee shop AUs, high school AUs, hospital AUs, A/B/O), romantic or sexual relationships featuring a significant power imbalance.
Other Things: I'm very flexible on genre: plot-driven, character-driven, action, introspection, slice of life, gen, romance...it's all good. I have squicks but no triggers. I'm fine with character death, including main and requested characters, unless otherwise noted. Background non-con is fine if it's helpful for the story, but I'd rather it not be the primary focus. I dislike plots that revolve around misunderstandings that could be cleared up with a simple conversation. I also dislike it when competent characters are rendered temporarily incompetent for the purpose of driving the plot. One of my favourite things about crossovers is giving both sides a chance to shine.
Request 1: BSG, Firefly, Killjoys, Star Trek: Discovery, SGA
This is the space shows category. The settings are all pretty different, so the obvious way to go is for some mishap (or alien action) to bring them together. Maybe an accident with a wormhole/stargate/warp drive malfunction/space-time anomaly/experiment-gone-wrong leaves a ship stranded in the wrong universe, or maybe ships from two different realities get sucked to a completely different place by unknown forces and the crews have to work together to get home, or maybe just one person ends up alone in the wrong universe and has to figure how what to do next, whether that's return home or build a new life.
Maybe Dutch, Johnny and D'avin or the crew of Serenity end up at Federation headquarters, where they're met with some suspicion while they discover what a post-scarcity society looks like. Maybe a puddlejumper winds up encountering the Colonial fleet, leading the fleet to discover that Earth could be more than a myth. Maybe the whole story is Vance and Roslin and Adama trying to figure out what happens next after the fleet ends up in a completely different universe. Whatever works.
Note: I'm a fan of SGA as well as SG1, so feel free to bring in SGA characters as well or instead if you like.
I've listed some favourite characters in case that helps, but please write whoever works best for the story.
BSG: Lee Adama, Laura Roslin, William Adama, Sharon Agathon, Karl Agathon, Kara Thrace
Firefly: Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, Mal, Book
Killjoys: Dutch, D'avin, Johnny, Turin, Zeph, Alvis
SG1: Carter, Mitchell, Vala, Teal'c, Jackson, O'Neill; favourite ships are Sam Carter/Cameron Mitchell, Cameron Mitchell/John Sheppard and Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran
SGA: Sheppard, Weir, Carter, Teyla, Ronon, McKay, Zelenka, Heightmeyer; favourite ships are Mitchell/Sheppard, John Sheppard/Ronon Dex, John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir
ST: Discovery: Vance, Burnham, Saru, Tilly, Culber, Stamets
Request 2: Battle Creek, Being Human (US), Covert Affairs, Elementary, Forever, Intelligence (US), The Listener, The Mentalist, SG1
This request is largely defined by shows that involve people with secrets to hide and shows that involve people who are good at ferreting out secrets. Sometimes those are the same people.
I'd enjoy anything that throws characters from these shows together, particularly if it leads the secret-finder to look into the secret-keeper. Casefic with two teams racing to solve a series of crimes, each convinced they know what's really going on? Casefic where they have to at least pretend to cooperate? Someone is a witness to a crime, leading the secret-finder to become interested in the secret-keeper? Someone gets seconded to a different team for a specific case? A random encounter at a coffee shop/bank/supermarket somehow piques the secret-finder's interest? A blind date or old cross-team friendship leads to an encounter? Someone gets sucked into a case while on vacation?
Their teams swear that Sherlock and Jane are competing to see who can be the most insightful/irritating? Jane tries to figure out what's going on with Gabriel when Cyber Command agrees to help the FBI with a case? Sherlock Holmes figured out the Stargate project years ago, but Joan, Marcus and/or Gregson knew nothing about it and can't figure out why the Air Force is looking into their case? Gabriel and Riley run into Dr. Henry Morgan or Aidan Waite, and Gabriel's quite startled when he runs an standard background check? Sherlock doesn't believe in psychics, but he can't fine another explanation for Toby Logan? Henry Morgan and Aidan Waite recognize each other from an encounter a century earlier? Annie and Eyal are read into the Stargate program and asked to find a mole from one of their countries? (I'm just throwing out random combinations here. Please feel free to substitute in different fandoms, or just ignore this whole paragraph and run with your own idea.)
Or maybe characters from the two shows team up to deal with an emergency/catastrophe: The Ori/Goa'uld invade earth? Preventing an apocalypse? Surviving in a post-apocalyptic world?
Feel free to play with the timelines to get seasons to match up the way you need them to.
Note: I'm a fan of SGA as well as SG1, so feel free to bring in SGA characters as well if you like.
I've listed some favourite characters in case that helps, but please write whoever works best for the story.
Battle Creek: Milt, Russ, Guz
BHUS: Aidan, Kat, Nora, Josh, Sally, Henry
Covert Affairs: Annie, Joan, Eyal, Auggie, Jai; favourite ship is Annie/Eyal
Elementary: Sherlock Holmes, Joan Watson, Tommy Gregson, Marcus Bell
Forever: Henry Morgan
Intelligence: Gabriel, Riley, Lilian, Shen, Jameson
The Listener: Toby, Michelle, Charlie
The Mentalist: Jane, Lisbon, Cho and anyone else on the team
SG1: Carter, Mitchell, Vala, Teal'c, Jackson, O'Neill; favourite ships are Sam Carter/Cameron Mitchell, Cameron Mitchell/John Sheppard and Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran
SGA: Sheppard, Weir, Carter, Teyla, Ronon, McKay, Zelenka, Heightmeyer; favourite ships are Mitchell/Sheppard, John Sheppard/Ronon Dex, John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir
Request 3: Battle Creek, BSG, Covert Affairs, Intelligence (US), Killjoys, Madam Secretary, The Mentalist, Star Trek: Discovery, The X-Files
This is category was inspired in part by a fic I once read in which a cryogenically frozen Fox Mulder ends up on Voyager (and proceeds to use his psychology training to sort out all sorts of problems), i.e., mixing and matching contemporary and future/space shows. (Obviously, if we matched on just space shows or just procedurals, that's fine too. In that case, please see the first two requests for the relevant discussion. I will be delighted to read a crossover between any two--or more--of these shows.)
I'm happy to handwave how the crossover happens--mysterious portals, experiments gone wrong, Ancient intervention, etc., etc. The fun part is seeing how the characters deal with it. Do a couple of Raptor pilots somehow wind up on Earth and run into Mulder and Scully or Mossad or the Battle Creek police department? Does an entire ship end up orbiting the planet, leading the US president to call in Milt Chamberlain/Patrick Jane/Annie Walker/Fox Mulder to help evaluate the situation? Do Dalton and Elizabeth have to figure out what to do with 50,000 Colonial refugees? Does the story start after the visitors have already built a discreet life for themselves on earth (while still working on getting home?), only to have their cover blown?
Or does someone from contemporary Earth wake up on a space ship? If so, how do they shake things up? What problems do they try to fix? What shocks them? What do they love about it? Who might they fall in love with?
I've listed some favourite characters in case that helps, but please write whoever works best for the story.
BSG: Lee Adama, Laura Roslin, William Adama, Sharon Agathon, Karl Agathon, Kara Thrace
Battle Creek: Milt, Russ, Guz
Covert Affairs: Annie, Joan, Eyal, Auggie, Jai
Madam Secretary: Elizabeth, Henry, Nadine, Daisy, Jay, Stevie, Dmitri, Matt, Mike B., Dalton
The Mentalist: Jane, Lisbon, Cho and anyone else on the team
Killjoys: Dutch, D'avin, Johnny, Turin, Zeph, Alvis
ST: Discovery: Vance, Burnham, Saru, Tilly, Culber, Stamets
The X-Files: Scully, Mulder, Skinner
Request 4: Being Human (US), Sleepy Hollow
This is a bit of a wild card request. Aidan Waite and Ichabod Crane are products of the 18th century now living in contemporary America, and I'd love to see a story where they meet in the present day.
Maybe the knew each from the war, or maybe they struck up a correspondence when Ichabod Crane wrote to Edmund Waite in search of a rare book and Aidan answered the letter. Either way, what happens when they run into each other in the present day?
Or maybe Crane and Abbie are somehow directed to Aidan--and his knowledge of the supernatural--for help?
I tend to prefer the first season of Sleepy Hollow, but feel free to write whatever makes sense. And feel free to hand-wave away parts of BHUS season 4 if it's set post-series. Ignoring the inconvenient parts of the story works fine for me for this story.
Request 5: Madam Secretary, Intelligence (US)
For this request, I'm primarily interested in seeing Elizabeth find out about Clockwork, and her reaction to it. Maybe Gabriel and Riley accompany her on an overseas trip, and something goes terribly wrong, leading to an accidental revelation of Gabriel's abilities. Maybe President Dalton tells her about the whole thing and asks her opinion on whether the program should be expanded. Maybe she gets the briefing after she becomes president and decides she wants to meet the man whom they've entrusted with so much power. Maybe Gabriel and Riley save her life, or stop a terrorist attack, and that's how she finds out. Maybe the whole story is her talking it over with Henry, or discussing hypotheticals with her staff, trying to decide what to do with it. However you want to do it.
If you want to delve a bit further into the Tigers or that whole plotline, that would be fun too. This entry was originally posted at https://skieswideopen.dreamwidth.org/260440.html, where it has
comments. Comments are equally welcome on either entry.