multific | Finish-a-thon 2009 Post of Squee

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One thing I am missing about this year's sign-ups is the squee that people would do when they saw what people have signed up with. So, in the name of "Take Back The Glee" Year, I hereby open the Post of Squee.

Take a look (and come back to) the Full Author List, and post here about the story ideas that you are squeeful about.

ETA2: I have added links back to this post, so you can click on a link at the individual author page and it will post it here! (I love it when a plan comes together)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

izhilzha.livejournal.com

I wish I knew more about Highlander, because any thoughtful crossover makes me happy, and anyone actually trying to cross stuff into the YW 'verse makes me doubly so.

From:

kerravonsen

I'm in the opposite situation, being far more familiar with Highlander than Young Wizards. I've only read the first book of Young Wizards. I don't know what an Abdal is, so I don't know how that fits into the Highlander setup.

A quick rundown of the Highlander universe:
- there are certain people who are immortal; they live a normal life until their first death, after which they don't age, and when they get killed, they come back to life.
- Well, they come back to life if they haven't been beheaded.
- And they tend to behead each other a lot (usually with swords) because of The Game.
- Which is a duelling game, and "There Can Be Only One"... and it's a bit difficult to stop the Game, because even if you don't want to fight, you'll have to kill in self-defence.
- And the winner gets the loser's "quickening" (with pyrotechnics) which makes them more powerful.

But the immortality thing is the only really paranormal thing in the series. The only other touches of the paranormal are a few psychics, and a couple of people who have the ability to "influence" others with their voice (but it is implied that there aren't any others with this ability).

And then you have the Archangel arc (a 3-parter), which is a departure from the usual, because it's got a Demon and a Champion in it. Which makes it a very good place to overlap with the Young Wizards universe. The Demon in question is... well, it's more like the First in Season 7 of Buffy, but more subtle and less powerful. And because it's a departure from the usual in Highlander, you get most of the characters thinking that the Champion is just seeing things.

So I'd be really interested in a Young Wizards take on this, because Young Wizards is also a universe where the strangeness intrudes onto everyday life.

From:

melannen.livejournal.com

Thanks so much for the squee! YW needs lots more crossovers, I agree. (And thanks for the HL primer - part of my hesitation with this story is it takes a lot of canon from both fandoms, and so few people are likely to know both...)

An abdal is someone who has a direct channel to the power of the One in order to be a pillar of good, helping to hold the universe stable through the sheer power of moral rightness. They fight the Lone Power often by refusing to fight, and are far, far too important to lose. :D

Abdals are extremely rare, and rarely know about wizardry, because if they ever realize what they are, they stop being abdals. Thus explaining why Methos & Joe & company don't dare explain to Mac what they know!

From:

kerravonsen

And thanks for the HL primer
You're very welcome.

part of my hesitation with this story is it takes a lot of canon from both fandoms, and so few people are likely to know both
That's tricky, yes. As a reader, I get annoyed by authors who feel they have to do an info-dump or pre-story notes detailing every crossover in the story; I mean, if it doesn't make sense without reading Cliffs-notes, why would it make sense in the first place? And yet, I can understand that an author would want to do what they can to make the story accessible to a wider audience.

I think the most creative approach I saw to this was one crossover (Babylon 5/Highlander) which did a "dramatis personae" list at the start, with a sentence or two about each character in the story. Each mini-bio had only just enough information in it, just enough to help make sense of the plot without having spoilers. For example:

JOHN SHERIDAN, the second Commander of Babylon 5. One of his hobbies is collecting secrets. Another is orange juice.

The "collecting secrets" thing was important to the plot, since there was a part in the story where it turns out that one of the secrets he'd collected was about the Watchers. But the the "another is orange juice" was more of a red herring, since I don't recall that orange juice was important to the plot. But it sort of helped prevent story-spoilers, since the reader doesn't know how important either fact is. And also kind of amusing.

An abdal is someone who has a direct channel to the power of the One in order to be a pillar of good, helping to hold the universe stable through the sheer power of moral rightness.... Abdals are extremely rare, and rarely know about wizardry, because if they ever realize what they are, they stop being abdals.
What an awesome fit! That makes perfect sense.

From:

melannen.livejournal.com

Yes, one of the reasons this story keeps getting put off is that it takes the YW mythos, but the only actual YW characters that show up are bits of the Powers, and I always want to make crossovers *balance*.

If I actually write the Archangel retelling, mind you, /then/ I can start the sequels where the Highlander characters start running into YW canon characters!

Of course, that results in a story where YW fans won't read it because they skipped the first one that was HL-heavy, HL fans won't read it because it's mostly YW, and the two people who know both fandoms are going "what's with all the giant squid?"

From:

kerravonsen

and the two people who know both fandoms are going "what's with all the giant squid?"
You're paying back a life-debt to

lizbee? ;-)

From:

melannen.livejournal.com

isiscolo, actually! But close.

(No, but, like, giant squid ()! They get a bad-guy cameo in YW book 2, but they totally need a redemption arc! Because giant squid are awesome! Also, Methos needs to hang out with the Master Shark, the Pale Slayer, the Death as Old as the Sea (http://www.youngwizards.com/ErrantryWiki/index.php/Ed'rashtekaresket). Because.)