You know, Otacon would be sort of delightful as the Doctor's companion. He would be so fascinated by everything. (He would also be terrified, but he would never be able to leave the Doctor, on account of having fallen madly in love with the TARDIS.)

Other possible companions for the Doctor (I've posted on this topic before, of course, but the possibilities are never quite exhausted): Sora, Riku and Kairi. The trio have been planning for years to build a raft and sail away from Destiny Island together. One night, their island is overrun by Heartless and swallowed up by the darkness. Sora, Riku and Kairi are standing back-to-back-to-back on Riku's favourite part of the island, slashing ineffectually at the little shadowy creatures with their wooden swords, and just when all hope seems lost a blue box materialises before them.

Riku doesn't trust the Doctor at all; he's convinced that he is the one responsible for the destruction of their home. Sora trusts him completely, though, and Kairi, despite some initial wariness, seems to like him, so Riku rolls his eyes and steps into the TARDIS. Just to make sure his friends don't get themselves killed.

...hey, wait. This is completely unrelated to the characters-as-the-Doctor's-companion subject, but does Riku have a Nobody? (Kixur? Kirux?) Surely it would make sense. He did have the Heartless symbol on his chest in the first game, so I sort of assumed there was at least a period of being a Heartless. (I was going to say 'a period of Heartlessness', but of course the Heartless aren't heartless. It's the Nobodies that don't have hearts. In fact, Nobodies are just, er, bodies. DEAR KINGDOM HEARTS: YOUR NAMING SYSTEM MAKES PRECISELY NO SENSE.)


OTHER CHARACTERS WHO SHOULD BE THE DOCTOR'S COMPANION: DONNA NOBLE.

YES, SHE IS A CANONICAL COMPANION, BUT SHE SHOULD BE HIS COMPANION ALL THE TIME.

I love you, Donna.


Unrelatedly: yesterday, when I posted my ill-advised Captain John Hart: Team Rocket Agent manip, dracothelizard asked who his team partner would be.

The obvious answer was 'Suzie Costello'.

They've never met in canon, of course, but I have a feeling that they could make a rather marvellous team. Jack's Houndoom, Gwen's Eevee/Flareon, Ianto's Aerodactyl and Owen's Carvanha had better watch out. (Tosh's Porygon lives in the computer system, so it's probably safe. UNTIL HART AND COSTELLO INFECT THE TORCHWOOD COMPUTER SYSTEM WITH A VIRUS AND IT EVOLVES INTO PORYGON-Z, OH NO.)


On an even less related note: this morning, I received a large envelope in the post.

It contained a High School Musical paper plate and nothing else.

Most perplexing. (want... wanttobeatree? Was that you?)

Troy looks like a Hobbit on it and I don't know why.

A TORCHWOOD FANFIC IN TWO PICTURES:




"I'm working, Porygon. Is it - oh. Oh, dear. Yes, that is important."




"PREPARE FOR TROUBLE."

(It would probably have both been less work and looked much better had I just pasted Hart's head onto James-of-Team-Rocket's body, wouldn't it? The obvious solution never seems to occur to me.)

Owen, I have decided, would have a Carvanha, but it is difficult to represent a character with an aquatic Pokémon when, as my attempt at actually drawing the Team Rocket uniform illustrates, one's artistic ability is limited solely to creating manips of already-questionable quality.

(More Torchwood/Pokémon manips (or Torchwood/Pokémon in general) would be extremely welcome in the comments!)

This paragraph has nothing to do with the rest of this entry, but I would like to see an Avatar-esque elemental bending battle portrayed in live action using the terrible sixties special effects of Star Trek: The Original Series. It would be spectacular.


I was just on TV Tropes, and found, to my distress, that both Cameron and Thirteen of House were listed as The Wesley (LINK GOES TO TV TROPES, DO NOT CLICK IF YOU VALUE YOUR TIME), a character who is loved by the author but despised by the fanbase.

Therefore, I thought I would make a nice poll in which we all express love for unpopular characters.

(Whilst Alex Drake was unpopular at the beginning of Ashes to Ashes (I have to confess that I disliked her at first and have since changed my stance), I don't know what the general opinion of her is now. I included her in the poll anyway, because love is good. Also, this is just based on what I've seen on the Internet, so I may have mistakenly included a character with whom the fandom in general has no problems at all. Again, that's no reason not to express your liking for them!)

Who chose what is visible only to me, so you don't have to worry about being judged for not ticking a box. (I'll admit that I'm not a fan of River Song, but I included her anyway because it's not only the characters I like who deserve affection.) Also, remember that a character receiving fewer votes than another is not necessarily an indication that that character is more disliked, as people answering will be familiar with different fandoms.


Poll #1434859 I Promise Not To Judge You For Your Answers.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None, participants: 90

Which of these unpopular/frequently-bashed characters do you like?

ENTIRELY UNRELATEDLY: if you were the physical incarnation of a deadly sin, which deadly sin would you represent?

I almost included a 'now ramble about your favourite of these characters!' textbox, but then I remembered that, as results aren't viewable, only I would be able to see the ramblings, and that's no fun. Feel free to ramble in the comments, though! (You should also feel free to ramble about your love for unpopular characters I have failed to include in this poll.)

Today, reipan and hippyjolteon invited me to join them for a just-for-fun readthrough of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Finsbury Park. Actually, that's not entirely accurate: they invited me to watch a just-for-fun readthrough of A Midsummer Night's Dream in which they would be participating. This was, it transpired, a trap, and I ended up playing Philostrate.

It was fun, though! Everyone involved was brilliant, and the play was so enjoyable that I didn't really care about the 'in a park in the pouring rain' aspect of it. I met many delightful, intelligent, witty people, over whom, because I am me, I was later to knock half a pint of lager. To the actors of Bottom and Helena, should you somehow come across this entry: I am very, very sorry.

Assuming my hopeless clumsiness has not rendered me No Longer Welcome amongst the readthrough group, I'd love to go to another of their performances!


Unrelatedly, zeitheist has come up with the idea of Misha Collins/Jack Harkness, and it is such a beautiful concept that I felt compelled to share it with you. Misha would make such a good Torchwood agent! He worked in the White House; his wife wrote a book on threesomes; he is a lunatic. He winks inappropriately at people who ask him questions at conventions. You can't say Torchwood have never even approached him.

Hang on, have I ever assigned a Pokémon to Captain Jack Harkness? What a horrible oversight. I bet he'd have a Houndoom.

(What would the rest of the Torchwood team have?

...this is actually extremely difficult. Er, Gwen can have an Eevee. It eventually evolves into a Flareon. Tosh has a Porygon that lives in the Torchwood computer system and pops up on Owen's screen to give him disapproving looks if his e-mails to Tosh aren't polite enough. I have no idea about Owen or Ianto, though.)

( Torchwood, 'Children of Earth', Day Three. )


On a perplexingly related note, I was playing Pokémon Gold earlier, and Wade the Bug Catcher suddenly called me up just to say 'Hey, how are you? My Caterpie's really energetic! And I almost caught Rattata the other day! It was soooo close, too!', and all of a sudden my heart was exploding. POKÉMON TRAINERS. CALLING EACH OTHER UP JUST TO TALK ABOUT THEIR POKÉMON. I love the original Pokémon games, but never did I realise just how much adding inane telephone conversations would improve them. It made me feel so much more immersed in the world! Yes, all of the trainers say variations on the same thing, but I don't even care.

...all right, guys: we've now had two episodes of the Torchwood 'Children of Earth' miniseries, and both of them were good.

I don't quite know what to do with myself.

(Two good episodes of Torchwood! In a row! I am even more surprised because it is a storyline spread over multiple episodes, and I think the two-parters in Doctor Who tend to be quite weak. But, no, apparently an ongoing storyline was exactly what Torchwood needed!)


( Thoughts! )


I did miss a couple of bits in the middle, because I was somewhat distracted by one of my brother's friends getting stuck in the laundry chute.

(Oh, I've missed being home.)

Ladies and gentlemen, the worst pun I have ever made:

(RIONA and housemate RACHAEL are cleaning out the refrigerator, in preparation for moving house.)
Riona: We appear to have some freak grapes in here. They expired on the twenty-second of May, and yet they still look fresh and green.
Rachael: Oh, really? And I bought that pack from SPAR last week, and they had mould growing on them the next day.
Riona: They must have been a pack of Dorian grapes.

I'm sorry, but not nearly as sorry as I should be.


In other news:

- I love Sweden/Finland, but it simultaneously makes me a bit sad. Don't be so afraid of Sweden, Finland! Sweden is a sweetheart! I'll take him off your hands if you don't want him.

(HERE ARE SOME SWEDEN/FINLAND STRIPS (read the panels from right to left): warm now?, have you met my wife?, SWEDEN HOW ARE YOU SO ADORABLE (from the Polish-Swedish wars), NO SERIOUSLY HOW (can't find the translator for this one), watch what you say around someone so determined to attend to your needs (1, 2, from the battle for America).

I love that the Hetalia fandom have agreed on the styles in which to translate characters like Sweden and Poland. Poland's valley-girl speak brings joy to my heart.)

- I, er, appear to have applied for Germany/Italy at 1sentence. Whoops. (I'm not quite sure how I feel about Germany/Italy. I adore their relationship, but it has to remain quite innocent, because after a certain point my mind starts going 'HANG ON, THEY CAN'T DO THAT, ITALY IS MENTALLY ABOUT TEN'. These sentences are entirely rated G.) In writing the sentences, I have discovered that I am completely incapable of adopting Italy's perspective. I seem to get on quite well with Germany's, though, and as I love Germany to bits I think this is a good thing.

- You should all also make claims at 1sentence, incidentally.

- New Torchwood tonight, and, whilst I swore during the last series that I was going to stop watching this dreadful thing, we all knew I was lying. Let's have a little more fun and a little less senseless depression this time, all right, Torchwood? (And a little more Rhys.) Also: dear self, if this mini-series is as terrible as the series that preceded it, please stop watching.

- I hope that Hetalia introduces a Wales before long. The Torchwood crossovers would be many and ridiculous.

- Speaking of ridiculous Hetalia crossovers: I think the Top Gear team would be delighted to have the physical incarnation of England as the Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car. (I haven't been posting about the new series of Top Gear, have I? I am enjoying it very much.)

- And surely someone must have written fanfiction in which the Winchesters encounter America. Surely.

- I want to go home! My academic year finished almost a month ago! PLEASE STOP BEING SO COMPLICATED, UNIVERSITY HOUSING SITUATION; I JUST WANT TO SEE MY FAMILY.

apiphile has had what I think is a rather lovely idea: write out a poem and leave it lying around for strangers to find. The poem, Poem For The Person Who Finds This Poem, is here, if you'd like to get involved yourself.

(Poetry and I haven't really got on for most of my life, and I always assumed that this was because I simply wasn't a poetry person, rather than a case of not yet having discovered the right poet.

As it turned out, apiphile was the right poet, and I am heartily in favour of spreading her words around.)


I really haven't been able to write lately, which is distressing. I suspect this may be because I have developed an interest in too many things lately and cannot settle on one fandom.

In an attempt to remedy this, I am going to steal a prompt table from 1sentence and write a little bit about everything that is clamouring for my attention, in the hope of clearing some space in my mind for a longer work.

And if it doesn't work, well, at least I'll have written something.

(As this isn't actually for the community, I reserve the right to exceed one sentence should I feel the need.)

I've filled twenty prompts below; I may or may not attempt the remaining thirty later. Organised by fandom, rather than prompt number. Fandoms represented are DN Angel (a tiny bit), Derren Brown, Silent Hill (in a crossover with Derren Brown), Kingdom Hearts, Merlin, Death Note, Top Gear, Iji (is there even an Iji fandom?) and Hetalia. Also, sos_your_face appears in one of them.


( DN Angel )

( Derren Brown )

( Kingdom Hearts )

( Merlin )

( Death Note )

( Top Gear )

( Iji )

( Hetalia )

Passing on a recommendation from kadrin: Iji is an excellent little free action-platformer. What really tempted me to play it was the fact that, if you choose to go through it whilst killing as few enemies as possible, the game recognises that and responds: the notes you find from enemies say 'hmmm, not sure what's going on with that human, she doesn't seem to be killing anyone' rather than 'oh God oh God she's going to destroy us all'; the dialogue in cutscenes is different. My housemate thinks I'm mad for downloading a shooter-platformer and then going 'YAY NOT SHOOTING ANYONE', but I think it's a rather nice touch. Also, the music is great, and I love reading all the logbooks.


I have a strange urge to write Satoshi/Daisuke DN Angel fanfiction. Here is the difficulty with Satoshi/Daisuke: writing something cute and fluffy and requited (and also a bit creepy, because Satoshi is involved, but mostly cute) is tempting, but it is almost impossible when Satoshi could snog Daisuke until his tongue broke off and Daisuke would still probably think he was just being friendly.

BE LESS OBLIVIOUS, DAISUKE.

The other difficulty is, of course, my complete inability to write anything lately. There are so many things I want to write! Why have you abandoned me, words?


Actually, here is a meme that may help! (Or not!)

Post a little weensy excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.

Let's see what we have here.


( Merlin/RPF: Bradley James wakes up in Camelot. )


( Time-Travelling Sky Pirates of Ivalice: Balthier, Fran and Captain Jack Harkness. )


( Prison Break: Michael Scofield is a real person, and everyone in his life is an actor. Spoilers up to the beginning of Season Three. )


( Top Gear/Torchwood/Silent Hill: Jeremy and James encounter Owen Harper. )


( Derren Brown/Kingdom Hearts: Derren is a Nobody. )


( Derren Brown/Supernatural: the Winchesters investigate mysterious psychic guy. )


( And three lines of Derren Brown working with Castiel. )


There is a very good chance that none of these will ever be finished, but I hope you enjoy the snippets, at least.

Okay, of all the bad ideas I have ever implemented (and there are many), derrenbrownfic is my favourite. People have actually been posting things! Massively glee-inducing things!

Something that amuses me: there are now crossover tags for Supernatural, One Tree Hill, Death Note, Animaniacs, Top Gear, House, Harry Potter and Doctor Who. Eight fandoms. Derren Brown has been thrown into eight fandoms, and the community has only been in existence for a week.

Doesn't that make you want to write a load of Derren Brown crossovers, just to see how many fandoms we can get him into?

Well, I hope it does, because I appear to have become a massive Derren Brown fanfiction addict. I cannot stop checking the community! This is probably not healthy.


HERE IS A SELECTION OF BAD DERREN BROWN CROSSOVER IDEAS FOR YOU. (If the absence of Pokémon or Silent Hill surprises you, I may possibly be working on those already. BUT DO NOT LET THAT KEEP YOU FROM WRITING YOUR OWN CROSSOVER IF YOU FEEL INSPIRED.)

- Twilight. Not only is Derren Brown a ridiculously charismatic, mildly evil psychological illusionist; he is a ridiculously charismatic, mildly evil sparkling psychological illusionist vampire. He doesn't particularly want to kill people, but he is certainly not settling for inferior animal blood, so instead he chooses to immobilise his victims, hypnotise them into feeling no pain, make a few cuts and collect as much blood as he needs for the moment. And, yes, perhaps he enjoys making a bit of a performance out of these blood-draining sessions. Perhaps. An immortal being has to amuse himself, after all.

(EDIT: May possibly have written this one.)

- Life on Mars. 'My name is Derren Brown. I had an accident, and I woke up in 1973.' With much focus on the is-this-real? aspect of things (Derren is extremely sceptical), and maybe possibly involving a little Derren Brown/Sam Tyler.

- Torchwood. The team develop suspicions about the origins of Derren's remarkable powers and the exact uses to which he is putting them, and so they investigate! Ineptly, of course.

- Final Fantasy XII. Derren is a sky pirate. Wait, what am I talking about? This would be a brilliant crossover idea. The only possible issue lies in the fact that I would almost certainly faint with glee were Balthier and Derren to interact, and fully appreciating fanfiction becomes somewhat more difficult when one is unconscious.

- Prison Break. NO, WAIT, THAT WOULD PROBABLY END VERY BADLY. Or perhaps Derren could use his psychological techniques to protect himself when other prisoners take a dislike to his being-overly-clever and his air of smugness? Yes, let's go with that, because I do not want Derren to get his toes chopped off. And Derren would become very jumpy, because it's all very well making someone believe his feet are stuck to the floor for long enough to allow one to run away, but one can only run so far when one is in prison.

Michael Scofield, of course, would become very interested in recruiting the man with the bizarre mind powers.

The night before last, I dreamt that I came across a YouTube video of Derren Brown playing Kid Harpoon's 'The Milkmaid' on the ukulele I sent him. Rarely have I been more disappointed to realise I was only dreaming.


In other news, I am finally writing again! I haven't really written anything for about half a year, but it turns out that all I needed to kick the ficwriting part of my brain back into action was a) moogle62, who is amazing, and b) the idea of Derren Brown as the Doctor's companion, travelling through time and space and occasionally falling in love with Pokémon.

I am not even a little bit kidding.

This concept, of course, set me looking for pictures of the Tenth Doctor so I could manip Derren Brown into them, to satisfy my need for such things, and then I realised that there was no need because David Tennant had already appeared on Trick or Treat. INCESTUOUS BRITISH TELEVISION, I LOVE YOU.

Unfortunately from an 'acquiring convincing pictures of Tennant and Brown as Doctor and companion' perspective, which is the only perspective that really matters, it is very clear that Derren has the power most of the time when he's with Tennant. This is not quite the case in his relationship with the Doctor. (Sorry, Derren.)

Here, however, are a couple of suitably Doctor-and-companion-ish screencaps from Trick or Treat, courtesy of tick_caps:




There have been a series of mysterious disappearances in the place in which Derren has accidentally caused the TARDIS to crash-land! Can the Doctor and Derren solve the mystery? Well, they're certainly going to try.



The investigation is a long and wearying one, but they cannot give up!

You cannot yet read moogle62 and rionaleonhart's Time-Travelling Cross-Fandom Adventures of Derren Brown and the Doctor, I'm afraid, but if you are interested in massive multifandom crossovers I would like to politely nudge you in the direction of draegonhawke's amazing Damaged People. It can be found at damageverse, and the list of sections is here. I should warn you that it is a work in progress, and also that all the time travel and suchlike makes putting the sections in any sort of order a bit tricky (there is a sort of suggested reading order here), but it is so, so brilliant, seriously. The summary is as follows:

A massively multifandom accidental epic following Sam Tyler (Life On Mars) and Jack Harkness (Doctor Who and Torchwood) on their misadventures, as they explore the galaxy, almost destroy some worlds, and barely save others.

I am fairly certain that at least some of you will be tempted by this.

I just caught the last five minutes of the House episode 'Acceptance', and all of my love for Cameron in the first two seasons just came flooding back to me. Bless you, Cameron; bless you and your little caring-too-much heart. I don't think I'm ever going to forgive the writers for Season Three. I really miss loving Cameron.

Come to think of it, my relationship with Cameron is a bit like my relationship with Captain Jack Harkness. I adored Jack in the Ninth Doctor's series of Doctor Who, and then Torchwood ruined him for me. In Riona's Happy Mental Canon World, season three of House never happened (with the possible exception of 'Fools for Love', because Foreman is adorable in it) and Jack went off to have adventures with Balthier and Fran immediately after 'Parting of the Ways'. Torchwood is parodic fanfiction Balthier wrote to make fun of Jack.

...actually, I like to pretend the shift in JD's characterisation after the fourth season of Scrubs never happened either. Man, I hadn't realised I had so much discontinuity! (The musical episode can stay. I mean, the JD in it still isn't the JD I love, but the episode as a whole is awesome enough to make up for that. And wasn't 'My Lunch' in the fifth season? Yeah, that can stay too. Actually, I missed most of the sixth season and I've only seen the last episode of the seventh, so if JD returns to his original adorable competent-but-dorky self please let me know!)

On a more cheerful note, I love that Top Gear is a real-person fandom in which people are forced to post warnings if it turns out that a particular character isn't an alien. Hee. Also, I've been watching a little more Avatar (I think I've seen the first sixteen episodes now), and it continues to be utterly charming! Sokka and Uncle Iroh are particularly wonderful. (ALSO IN EPISODE SIXTEEN SOKKA GETS ANGRY ABOUT INJURY TO HIS SISTER. Oh, Avatar, you know that sibling relationships are pretty much guaranteed to rope me in, don't you?)

I met suzie_shooter yesterday! We discussed Zombie Piers Morgan and played 'How Many Landmarks That Doctor Who Has Destroyed Can You Spot?' on the London Eye (final count: three, not including the Eye itself as that was only used as a transmitter). I always think 'surely the next Internet person I meet must be a murderer?', but no, they continue to be lovely non-murderous people! Although she did display a rather worrying desire to murder the living statues.

And, of course, tonight was the fourth-series finale of Doctor Who. I suppose I should talk about that, then.

( Spoilers for 'Journey's End'. )

IN CONCLUSION, THERE SHOULD BE RUSSELL T. DAVIES/ERIC KRIPKE FANFICTION.

Well, it only took me a little over a year to get around to watching Spider-Man 3. I sort of want Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy to bond over what a jerk Peter Parker is. And then, you know, have lesbian sex. (I would also rather like to see Mary Jane Watson and Pepper Potts having adventures together, because 'they're both red-headed and their superhero acquaintances are constantly complicating their lives' is a good enough basis for me. SPIDER-MAN AND IRON MAN TEAM UP TO FIGHT CRIME, ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT WATSON AND POTTS HAVE GOT THERE FIRST. It'd be great.)

Also, after briefly discussing it with dracothelizard, I would very much like to see fanfiction in which Sam Winchester, Sam Carter and Toshiko Sato set up a 'Help, All My Love Interests Die Horribly' support group, and then Winchester finds himself falling for Carter and Sato (because you know he would; Sam's always drawn to intelligent women) and panics because this was definitely not the aim of the support group. And then, er, I'm not sure what happens next. I hadn't really thought it through beyond 'Sam/Sam and Sam/Tosh would be adorable (and also result in so much death)'. Possibly their deadly love rays cancel each other out and everyone else in the world dies instead. THIS FIC IS NOT AS CUTE AS IT SEEMED WHEN I FIRST ENVISIONED IT. I'd say 'possibly their deadly love rays cancel each other out and nobody dies and they all end up snuggled up in bed together and it is the most adorable thing ever', but you know nothing that good can ever happen to a Winchester.

OKAY, SERIOUSLY, I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS. Cutest thing in the world, you guys. Why must all the most charming pairings be so horrendously doomed?

(Also, a couple of people have taken me off their flists recently, and it's made me realise I've never made my thoughts on these things clear: if you want to defriend me, go ahead. I understand that a friendspage is essentially just a reading list, so I won't be horribly offended or anything. Although I may be slightly taken aback if we already exchange four thousand e-mails a day or I visit you on a regular basis in real life.)

Apparently, I cannot stop thinking of stupid High School Musical crossovers. I'll just be going about my day, and suddenly my mind will blare 'THE CHARACTERS OF HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL AS THE ALL-SINGING, ALL-DANCING ALBUQUERQUE BRANCH OF TORCHWOOD' or 'RYAN AND SHARPAY AS SKY PIRATES'. WHATEVER, BRAIN. (The Evans twins would utterly exasperate Balthier. I think Fran would just be amused.)

Okay, so maybe Troy hadn't expected to be asked to protect Albuquerque from alien invasion when he'd started looking for a summer job, but whatever. He could work with that. SHUT UP, I'M NOT WRITING IT.

For those of you who love crossovers: check out the crossover meme on fandomsecrets. There are forty-one pages of requests, so you'll probably find something to inspire you. Or you could just look at what's already been done. Guaranteed to fulfil all your wartime Pikachu/Harry Potter needs!

I've just been flicking through one of my notebooks and discovered the line 'I think my subconscious may 'ship John Winchester/Bela'. Sadly, I've forgotten what led me to believe this in the dream I was writing about, but John/Bela would be hot. (I still haven't seen the first four episodes of the third series, so if Bela's even met John I certainly don't know about it. I can't even conceive of how it would work if they did meet. 'BELA STEALS ALL OF JOHN'S POSSESSIONS. JOHN IS FURIOUS. SEX MAGICALLY ENSUES.' Still. Hot.)

Man, I wish all fandoms had a Stig. I'm trying to write a Supernatural fic in which Sam and Dean actually hunt things, but it's occurred to me that I'm probably going to need an explanation for the fact that Sam is ten inches tall for the entire hunt. I suppose 'the Trickster did it' is a similarly versatile excuse, but it seems like such a cop-out. Not that 'the Stig did it' isn't. (Also, my mental Sam will sulk for ever if he doesn't return to his normal height by the end, but the truth is that I can't work out how to revert it. And teeny!Sam is so cute that I'm not sure I want to. Maybe I should just keep writing The Adventures of Dean and His Miniature Brother unto eternity.)

Do other fandoms have these all-purpose crackfic excuses? Whatever bizarre things happen in Top Gear fic can usually be blamed on the Stig's weird alien powers. I haven't read Doctor Who fic for a while; is the sonic screwdriver as much of a plot device in fanfiction as it is in the show itself ("Whoops, left it on the 'genderswitch' setting again")? Harry Potter has magic, I suppose, especially as it's established in canon that Harry is willing to try out an unknown spell just to see what it does. Torchwood can use 'weird alien technology' as an excuse for anything. But you're in trouble if you want to write plausible bodyswap in House.

And I do love that plausible bodyswap fic is perfectly possible in a real-person fandom. Oh, Top Gear.

(EDIT: I HAVE JUST REALISED THAT THE TRICKSTER IS TOTALLY A TIME LORD. THE DOCTOR. THE MASTER. THE TRICKSTER. YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE.

HIS INCREDIBLE REALITY-ALTERING POWERS COME FROM HIS SONIC SCREWDRIVER.)