caminante has been teasing me about cryptids. I tried to tell her "I'm not all that interested in cryptids by themselves, it's just Amnesty fandom," and she came back with "how many times have we had sad Loch Ness Monster conversations?" Those conversations were really about
The Areas of My Expertise, but you know what: fair. She bought me a Bigfoot sticker that says "Hide & Seek World Champion" on it and offered/threatened to come up with a pairing smush name for my weird ship. "There are only like two of us who ship it," I said, "I don't think we really need one of those," and she said, "No, I'm going to get into it! You can do something with their cryptid names!" But there aren't a lot of great possibilities. Mothfoot might as well be a fairy from Midsummer Night's Dream, and Bigman sounds unrelated; you could come up with a fanciful ship name like people used to do a la Stark Spangled Banner, but I haven't thought of one.
(I also told her my fic has "so much more apocalyptic dread and so much less midcentury cryptid shenanigans than I intended," and she said, "well, that sounds like a fic by you. [eccentric_hat], every year: 'Is this story too sad for a Yuletide gift?'")
All of this is to say, I'm posting a chapter of my
Bigfoot/Mothman Amnesty fic today, the last chapter I currently have ready for posting, and I felt like talking a bit about where it came from.
( Source texts & sideways influences )