Moving forward again into August 2009, I wanted to spotlight a little banner I made for an unusual AU/Crossover fanfic.
Sidetrack: I often find I enjoy playing around with the raggedy edge of crossovers rather than the traditional ‘A meet B’ formula, especially taking a concept from fandom B and transplanting it to fandom A, or re-imagining the characters from fandom A entirely within fandom B. ‘Wizards of Roswell’ was an example of the latter; I took the rules and setup from Diane Duane’s excellent “Young wizards/Feline wizards” series, but not any of the familiar characters like Nita Callahan or Kit Rodriguez. Instead, Max and Isabel Evans and their friend Michael Guerin were teenage wizards in Roswell, and Max saved Liz Parker’s life with magic after she got shot. And then I introduce the vampires.
Getting back to the banner, the pictures are fairly simple. I went with screencaps from the Roswell series pilot, since the fanfic covers some of the same material and would probably fit into more or less the same time period, allowing for the differences between universes. One shot of Michael and Max reacting to the shooting seemed too good to pass up, and I included Liz in the science lab, and a more or less random shot of Katherine Heigl as Isabel, because she’s also an important character. Maria and Alex didn’t make the cut this time.
The other interesting detail that I remember was the copy text. I liked the idea of borrowing from ‘The Wizard’s Oath’ as it’s featured in the Diane Duane books, but that’s a really long passage, and all of it is so beautiful it’s hard to cut long chunks. I’m pretty satisfied with the copy I came up with, though – it really is put together from bits and pieces all over the oath, but it’s powerful and intriguing and hangs together well.
I’ve run out of steps to my usual banner procedure, but I might have new stuff to talk about soon – I had a concept in mind for another banner crossover, for my Roswell/Pern story ‘Dragon’s Prey.’ But it would require different advanced techniques – a full photoshop manip job, and somebody from Roswell fanatics has volunteered to help put it together, on the condition that I do the scavenger duty and find source pictures for her to use, and she’ll tell me a few of the tricks, though I’m not sure if I’ll be able to practice them myself without Photoshop. Wish me good luck scavenging!
The Kelworth Files 