My 2020
hlh_shortcuts contribution was, obviously, "
The Power That’s Inside (We All Live in a Pokémon World)" (7K words, PG, gen) (Duncan, Methos, Joe, Giovanni, Emolga, Charmander).
My recipient's sign-up included “crack taken seriously” and the “reality of being immortal,” and allowed “most stuff” for crossovers. I agonized over what direction to take (as usual, but more) and consulted
celli on the nature of the crack-fic genre and this idea. I almost instead went for a Very Serious concept about Joe and all the institutional betrayals he's suffered. (I can do "taken seriously." It's whether I can do "crack" that's in question.) Instead, we start with Methos as a PokéTuber a la TrainerTips, and then it gets even stranger.
I lucked out. My recipient knows and likes main-series Pokémon through her daughter. Whew!
I regret that I ended up with all the women characters off-screen. Angie, Anne, Mary, Amanda, and Jessie all had scenes in my head that ended up as Duncan telling the key takeaway, rather than me showing the encounter. And I see now how I could have done better by digging into Duncan's motivations and memories more, and more frankly (as nudged by
leela_cat's perceptive beta).
But when the story rolls into crack-ness, I think it works.