#fic cryptid

Hello again! Happy to help. I think you did conflate a couple of fics, but I also think I've identified at least one of them.

First Guess: sine qua non, by mellyflori (@werebearbearbar) Nicky giving Joe a ride: check (they drive to Nicky's family for Thanksgiving) They don't get along: no (they are best friends) They meet over the years: check (they go to school in different places and then move to the same city) They become roommates or friends: check (they are friends, Joe stays at Nicky's for a time) Nosy boyfriend on Skype: check (Anatoly is the worst)

Supplemental Guess: though my soul may set in darkness (we will rise in perfect light), by knoepfchen (@knoepfchen) Nicky giving Joe a ride: check (Nicky drives him around quite a bit) They don't get along: check (it's a supernatural AU, there's some vampire/werewolf hostility) They meet over the years: check (it's a nonlinear account of them meeting over and over again) They become roommates or friends: check (friends and lovers but not roommates) Nosy boyfriend on Skype: no (not even remotely)

I do consider this an impossible question, but with some clarification it might become somewhat less so. Here are my primary reservations:

The question of authenticity is a very loaded one in this fandom. People can claim anything, and who is to say whose claims are accurate? This goes beyond the Big Dramatic Controversy (if you don't already know about it, I'm not going to tell you, it's enough to know that there is one.) I've certainly seen people in the fandom make (incorrect) assumptions about other people's backgrounds because they disagreed with a particular take. It's a minefield that I absolutely will not step into (nor will I allow it to be re-litigated in the notes).

"Doing Joe's background in a way that seems thoughtful or well researched" is very ambiguous, in multiple ways. What do you mean by "Joe's background"? Do you mean details about his religious practices? An exploration of family dynamics? Geopolitics? How much of the fic should be devoted to this? Also "thoughtful or well researched" by whose metrics? Some of the modern AUs feel to me like "I'm going to make Joe's family religious and totally queer-friendly because I don't know anything about the cultures in question and I don't want to be Islamophobic" and some of them feel more like "I have thought about what it might be like to be queer and religious in a country where queer relationships are illegal and highly stigmatized" and others feel like "I myself am a queer Muslim of color or at least I know a lot of people who are." But I'm a white Jewish American, so how reliable are my feelings here? I could be totally wrong about who was thoughtful and who did research and who has lived experience! (Not to mention that people can put thought and/or research into something but be bad at thinking and/or research.)

But of course!

Language Barrier (always the first that comes to mind for me for TOG humor)

this duology

a classic from the fandom's earliest days

Nile attempts to teach them D&D

Joe attempts to install plumbing

Midsomer Murders crossover

Nicky and the history of medicine

Notable sightings include:

- that time on a Discord server I'm no longer active in, when someone asked for fics with a very specific concept and I came back with a link so quickly that it had the same time stamp as the initial request

- that time someone had agonized over a nearly-forgotten fic for months, and all they could recall was a vague description of a single scene, and I could instantly reply with title and author

The most common kind of funny AU (at least, if you have a sense of humor like mine) is the Joe/Nicky "idiots to lovers" AU. The two masters of the craft, as far as I'm concerned, are @werebearbearbar (mellyflori on Ao3) and @sixth-light (also on Ao3). I would not dream of telling you where to start; scan tags and summaries and see what catches your eye. (I'm lying, the secret passcode is "sushi with a fork.")

If you like juvenile humor and suggestive puns, this is the fic for you! (and check out the author's other work as well, they also wrote one of the canon humor fics I mentioned)

trust me on this one

*rubs hands gleefully*

Ok, couple of caveats first: 1) this is not even remotely comprehensive. This is just the stuff I particularly like. There are many others out there, and I don't mean to imply that they aren't also good. You might find the "Team as Family" tag helpful on Ao3. 2) One of the things I love about TOG is its undertone of melancholy and how it engages honestly with the inevitable sadness of immortality. So a lot of my favorites have some sadness in them too. If that is not your jam, let me know.

In no particular order:

these two short fics by sodiumflare

this longer fic about Nile figuring out her place in the team

an exploration of different kinds of love

more of Nile getting acclimated

this is both "team as family" and "creepy as fuck"

another long one, set in the six months between the scene at Copley's and the scene in Booker's apartment

some more shameless self-promotion, because "team as family" is one of my favorite things to write, and I think these two fics are two of my best

and here is a selection of short, fun, fluffy pieces riffing off the game "never have I ever"

There are so many post-Crusades fics and I can't check all of them to be sure, but I believe you may be looking for this one:

Hmm.

The thing about anonymous asks is that they are, you know, anonymous. Which means not only do you not know who they are, you also don't know how many people are messaging you. Is this the same anon I started with? A second? A third?

Because these asks have gone from "friendly and interactive, look at us being humans and connecting as humans" to "you are a fic vending machine, I want item D07." It's one step up from sending "hey" as a message on a dating app. I give fic recs because I enjoy being part of fandom, which is a community, which is built out of relationships between people. Even when one party is anonymous and the other is pseudonymous, we can still treat each other like people.

You get one fic that involves teaching Nile swordfighting. Treat me like a vending machine, get vending machine output.