#She had playdates at the Nabokov family mansion

[lilacnothlit]

I read an awful lot of xenofiction, of various degrees of obscurity, most of which don't have a lot of fanfic to their name. Thoughts:

- The Plague Dogs. Book's about two dogs who escape from a medical testing lab in Lake Country and join up with a Geordie fox to become wild animals and kill sheep to live. And the whole time, they're still arguing about belief in God and the goodness of Man and how much they wish their Masters were there. And the government is trying to kill them to cover their tracks, so it tells everyone they have the plague. Jara and Ket would have a field day with the world it paints. Some OC gets trapped in dog morph and has to communicate these realities while the yeerks pursue any reports of talking dogs. I don't know, man, it's so depressing, it's perfect!

- Guardians of Ga'Hoole. Canonically, the owl knights in a war with nazi owls led by a demon witch queen exist in a world after the extinction of humans - the "others" who built stone temples, made oil paintings, had no feathers, and whom the nazi owls force the owlets to sleep in crypts of human bones. There are fifty methods of brainwashing and molding the mind to your will. Ax would be astonished by their libraries. Four giant mythological beings end up in your world, accompanied by a great diurnal predator and an alien vegetarian who doesn't believe in magic? Actual warriors versus knights whose strategies are often affected by "I saw the future in a dream?" Digger and Cassie going for midnight flights and debating the meaning of existence. Twilight teaching Rachel how to rap. Tobias going native in a world designed for birds and getting a whole suit of armor, but always feeling out of place for his size and his diurnality. Sure, they've managed to basically farm rodents on a scale where one island can sustain an entire fortress of predators, and invent a whole cuisine! They're geniuses! And yet, he's constantly awake when his new friends are asleep and vice versa and he's just as lonely as ever. Meanwhile, the humans are starving for want of food that's big without being sentient and have a time clock towards getting home... Doesn't this just write itself?

- Animalish series I can't believe I haven't seen crossover fanfic with, given their size: Redwall, Narnia, Lonely Werewolf Girl, Shiver. Imagine Ax feeling depressed Reepicheep is a more honorable Andalite than him. Imagine Cassie debating the ethics of curing werewolves with meningitis. Imagine how Tobias feels in a world where all the good guys are delicious, tiny mice - and how Ax reacts to Redwall cuisine in mouse morph.

- Finally... a crossover I talked about writing, but never did, because I wasn't afraid of the Fandom, I was afraid of the antifandom. All the people who know the story only on a surface level:

Cassie debates the ethics of killing her new friend's stepdad: security liability Humbert Humbert.

Anyone who's ever read Lolita knows that its best feature is the comedy from being narrated by an internet libertarian: "I am on trial for murder. I am explaining how I am the good guy for killing the other guy. To do this, I must heretofore thusly tell the story of how I married someone to lust after her daughter and then took an orphaned twelve-year-old around the country on a sexual road trip - now now! I believe you're starting to think mayhap that I may be the bad guy, this sounds 'gross!' But have you considered this: I am very intelligent! Here, have some facts and logic, you're being hysterical."

On a cursory reading of the plot, it sounds like it's justifying him. But that's because it's being told by a comically unreliable narrator who quotes French poetry, parodies Catullus, stretches the truth whenever he gets bored - and the universe is constantly conspiring to make him blameless in comically convenient ways, he assures you! The car crash just happened! It saved me the trouble of murdering my wife, as you saw me plan out ways to do, because I'm the good guy currently on trial for murder, but I'm still totally blameless! You can't trust a word of this guy.

Imagine a megamorphs where he's the villain narrator. It'd be the funniest book in the series. Inverse Visser One where it's the yeerk yelling at the host how much he sucks? Maybe. Cassie morphed as Illim? Imagine her trying to process those memories as he experienced them and still trying to retain her faith in the goodness of Man at heart.

I didn't write it, but the idea is free.

Is there any Animorphs crossover you really think someone should write?

I'd vote for Animorphs and Star Wars. I'm not nearly expert enough on the lore (and far too afraid of the fandom) to tackle that one myself, but I think it could be super cool if someone was willing to take it on.