Crossovers that should be: Here we go again

[Jinx999]

Sgt. Pepper vs. The Spiders from Mars.

[classicdrogn]

"Lennon played guitar, jammin' with George, Paul, and Ringo..."

[robkelk]

Sgt. Pepper vs. The Spiders from Mars.

"The chances of anything coming from Mars were a million to one, they said"...

No, wait - that would be the Tripods from Mars.

[Norgarth]

[Norgarth]

[Tennie]

For a while now, I've had a few thoughts about doing a crossover fic (or series of fics) involving Lyrical Nanoha and Sailor Moon.  I've toyed around with a few possible ideas, and have ended up favoring at least one general concept in my mind (though I figured I'd at least share the others as well to see what you think of them).

Now, before we begin, I want to stress that I also count myself as someone who dislikes fics that bash on works/settings that I like, and given that I like both Lyrical Nanoha and Sailor Moon on their own respective merits, I really want to see a fic (or series of fics) that does both franchises justice!  So please keep that in mind as you read through this post.

(Also, the fact that I felt the need to add such a preface in the first place is, IMHO, a rather sad commentary on the state of, at the very least, Sailor Moon crossover fanfiction (and likely more beyond that).)

With that now out of the way, let's begin:

Basically, from my POV the mechanics of such a crossover can be boiled down to three general scenarios, which are based on where in the respective timelines of each work the crossover is set during.  I will refer to them as "Scenario 1 (S1)", "Scenario 2 (S2)" and "Scenario 3 (S3)" going forward.

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Scenario 1 (S1):

In S1, the crossover occurs after the events of Sailor Moon canon, with the Sailor Guardians getting dragged into the events of either the first or second seasons of Lyrical Nanoha.

This one has some potential here: Nanoha could end up learning how to use magic from older, more experienced magical girls (though the fact that their magical systems have notably rather different means of mana manipulation might pose some challenges--Nanohaverse magic systems have their spells basically be algorithms/programs that use complex mathematical equations to shape mana into doing what the users want it to do; on the other hand, the Sailorverse magic system(s) (if they can be called systems) seem to rely more on things like the users' intent in order to get mana to do their intended jobs.  Nonetheless, I wouldn't be surprised if the more mathematically inclined Guardians--notably Ami and Setsuna--could figure out some kind of workaround...).  This also has the potential that the Guardians could impart some lessons about not overexerting oneself during training, thus lessening the chance that Nanoha ends up suffering a terrible injury due at least in part to overwork.

As for how the Guardians get involved, perhaps one of the Sailor Guardians encounters a Jewel Seed and (perhaps inadvertently) discovers its dangerous capabilities, and Nanoha (and possibly Fate) end up having to help resolve that issue.  The Guardians, learning that there are more of these things scattered across Earth, decide to help out (and perhaps even try to join in with helping to resolve Fate's own issues).  This could especially be interesting in how they also end up tackling Precia's problems, especially in whether the Silver Crystal can both heal Precia of her decaying health and revive Alicia.  Regardless of how things go, I'd imagine that the effects of such an effort would have some knock-on effects down the road...

In addition, the addition of the Sailor Guardians to the Book of Darkness incident also has some dramatic potential as well: Imagine what could happen if at least one of the Guardians ends up having her magic be drained into the Book.  Also imagine how the final battle against the fully awakened Book could go, with the spells of at least one Guardian (or especially all of them!) in its repertoire--one can only hope that at least some of the more powerful spells the Guardians have have some kind of safety system built into them that prevents them from being used by anyone other than the original Guardian, otherwise we'd have to deal with such things as (say) Reinforce using (or at least attempting to use) Sailor Pluto's time-stop ability!

(Although, I personally find the idea of Reinforce firing off gigantic heart-shaped spells stolen from Sailor Moon to be an oddly compelling mental image...)

Plus, I can't help but wonder how well the Silver Crystal could fully cleanse Reinforce of the taint of the Defense Program/NachtWal.  Would that be enough to prevent Reinforce's death (either by self-sacrifice as in the mainline and movie continuities, or eventual decay as in the A's Portable continuity)?

On the other hand, S1 has a few logistical problems that would need to be dealt with in order to make it work in the intended fashion.  For one, even in the anime continuity, the events of Sailor Moon (particularly in the climax of each season) tend to have what look to be substantial amounts of magic use going on by both sides, and even if you can discount the first season due to the weird "time rewind" Usagi's wish at its end created, there's still some substantial magical "noise" going on (especially at the end of StarS, wherein you had combat that is implied to have taken place on the scale of the entire Milky Way galaxy) that should at the very least have raised some eyebrows in the TSAB and made them want to go out and investigate (and when you get to the manga continuity, the climax of the Dark Kingdom arc by itself should've produced more red flags than a Communist parade, let alone any of the subsequent arcs!).

Additionally, there is also the issue regarding the timing of the founding of Crystal Tokyo relative to the gap between A's and StrikerS: In the manga, it's explained that Usagi became Neo-Queen Serenity and founded Crystal Tokyo at around age 22, while the final battle of the Stars arc took place when she was 16 (which leaves about a six-year window of pre-CT activity).  It's also mentioned that the early CT era involved the Sailor Guardians having to fight numerous wars all over Earth against various anti-CT factions that sprung up during this era.  The anime, meanwhile, is a bit more vague, only noting that a major disaster engulfed the Earth in an ice age for a number of centuries before Neo-Queen Serenity thawed things out and brought about Crystal Tokyo, so there's a bit more room to play with depending on how old Usagi was when the disaster happened.

If you're going with the manga continuity, then there is a window of at most 5-6 years for Usagi to be Sailor Moon before becoming Neo-Queen Serenity.  After that, it's possible that Nanoha and co. will also have to spend some time at the very least training those forces of Crystal Tokyo not called the Sailor Guardians, perhaps at least partially derailing the events of StrikerS and later.  Again, the anime's more relatively vague timeline offers more room to play with (and perhaps even the opportunity to avert the disaster entirely and have a different reason for CT to come into being).

Of course, you perhaps could write around at least some of this (more easily done with the anime continuity, for already-explained reasons).  For example, the final battle at the end of Stars could be the final straw that makes the TSAB send an expedition out to Unadministered World #97 to see just WTF has been going on there for the past couple years or so, and it just so happens that a ship on a routine run suffers a catastrophic failure that, among other things, scatters the Jewel Seeds across the same planet around the same time (perhaps adding extra urgency to the mission, what with potential worries of the effects of whatever was going on there also coming into contact with those powerful Lost Logia...).  This could also have knock-on effects on the Lyrical Nanoha first season's timeline and how things play out...

As to the issue of the manga's pre-CT timeline, one could potentially do some modifications that lead to Crystal Tokyo's foundation being delayed to at least as late as after the events of Force, if one is willing to go down that route.  Perhaps, for example, the Guardians end up doing some work (internships or something roughly similar) for the TSAB after A's in order to get some hands-on experience managing things such as command, politicking, and the like, which could help them better prepare for the challenges of managing a newly-(re)formed kingdom.  This eventually leads to them getting caught up in some of the events that led up to StrikerS, and so after much deliberation vis-a-vis this unusual "Relic" case vs. Crystal Tokyo, they ultimately decide to help out with the case by supporting the forming of Riot Force 6 (and subsequently get to participate in the events of StrikerS),  Needless to say, one consequence of these choices is that Crystal Tokyo is delayed to sometime after StrikerS.

Of course, this is all just one possibility.  Now on to Scenario 2:

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Scenario 2 (S2):

In S2, both the Sailor Moon and early Lyrical Nanoha timelines are running more-or-less concurrently.

This one also has some potential here: for one, depending on which arc of the respective work the crossover takes place during, both Nanoha and the Guardians could be rather green when it comes to magical combat, still trying to figure out their own capabilities.  As such, this could have some dramatic potential here...

As for how things could go, one idea is that the Sailor Moon bad guys end up discovering the Jewel Seeds and their capabilities and decide to make use of them in their machinations (the details of which, of course, depend on which group of baddies is involved).  As such, Nanoha and the Guardians must team up, fight them off, and recover the Seeds before some truly horrible stuff can go down.  Having to also deal with Precia's own shenanigans would add even more of a challenge as well.

There is also the possibility that the Sailor Moon bad guys of the arc end up finding out about the Book of Darkness and try to acquire it for their own ends as well.  This has the potential of a melee-a-trois between the baddies, the Cloud Knights, and the Sailor Guardians and the TSAB (perhaps even a four-way clusterfuck if you also want to throw in Admiral Gil Graham's behind-the-scenes plot to do away with the Book himself).  One must also wonder what the baddies would do once the Book fully awakens and they realize that it's about to go crazy and do its own thing--would they be forced to team up with the Guardians and the TSAB in an effort to stop it, or would they try to take advantage of the chaos for their own ends?

Adding to this is the potential effects of the involvement of Nanoha and the TSAB to the Sailor Guardians' fights against the various villains.  Imagine the effects that having a major support system in the form of an interdimensional technomagical military/police force in place would have on the Sailor Guardians.  In addition, the fight against the eldritch beings basically heading the respective villainous groups could give the TSAB some much-needed experience in handling those particular kinds of threats.

Meanwhile, one has to wonder what the villains would make of the involvement of a force calling itself the "Time-Space Administrative Bureau" on the side of the Sailor Guardians (and thus, opponents of the villains).  Perhaps they'd try making plans for taking the TSAB on in their own territory, whether post-Earth conquest/destruction, or even before then.  That could add some extra challenges for the protagonists as well...

On the other hand, this scenario also has its own issues as well.  For one thing, there's likely to be more than a few moving pieces to keep track of (even more if you try to include at least some of the intrigue that has taken place within the villain groups in Sailor Moon's various adaptations).  Any writer of this would need to be quite good at juggling multiple subplots more-ore-less simultaneously in order to really do this scenario justice.  As for me, my own creative writing experience is best described as "lacking", and as such I feel that I wouldn't be able to tackle this scenario properly unless and until I've developed quite a bit of actual experience.  However, if anyone else here has enough confidence in their creative writing skills that they at least think they could handle the load, then please speak up about it and we can go from there.

Additionally, as with S1 there is also the issue of the post-A's vs. pre-Crystal Tokyo timeline to consider, though again this likely only applies to the manga (and again refer back to S1 to see one potential way to resolve it).

Of course, this is all just one possibility.  Now on to Scenario 3:

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Scenario 3 (S3):

In S3, the crossover takes place some time after A's at the least (probably after StrikerS or later if you're willing to go down that route, which personally speaking I'm willing to).

This one has potential of its own: the Sailor Guardians end up being trained in magical combat by older, more experienced magic users.  Again, as with S1, the compatibility issues involving substantially different forms of mana manipulation should add a bit of challenge in adapting training methods (though we could again get some potential workarounds from Ami and later Setsuna).  Plus, Nanoha could also help to make sure that the Guardians don't try to overwork themselves from training (much like how she helped do the same with Teana in StrikerS).

A potential scenario could be to have, say, Nanoha and Fate take a well-earned vacation to Earth, only to end up inadvertently getting involved in a battle between Sailor V and an enemy monster.  It's possible that, even after hearing from Minako and Artemis about the enemies that they've been fighting against, Nanoha might want to at least attempt to hear out the other side in an effort to see if she can somehow attempt some kind of resolution (based in-universe off her own track record of making conflict-resolution attempts).  Of course, even if she is able to get an explanation, she might not like the implications of what she hears, and might even make attempts to convince at least some of them to change sides if possible.  Then once Sailor Moon shows up, Nanoha might want to get into contact with her (and subsequently the other Sailor Guardians).  At some point Nanoha and Fate might even decide to call in the other former members of Riot Force 6 (and perhaps at least one entire TSAB ship as well) in order to have them help out with the situation.

Again, a lot of the stuff mentioned regarding S2's version of the events of Sailor Moon would apply here, albeit without the extra complicating factor of the Nanoha protagonists also being relatively new to combat (they'd instead already have plenty of experience to share here).

Additionally, unlike the previous two Scenarios, there's less of a need to fudge the post-canon Sailor Moon timeline relative to the Lyrical Nanoha timeline, particularly with regards to the timing of the founding of Crystal Tokyo relative to the gap between A's and StrikerS and afterward (especially since, in S3's case, it's possible to set the start of the crossover as late as after StrikerS or later still).

Personally, this one's my personal favorite of the three, as the logistical issues of the other two Scenarios are far less prevalent (or even absent in at least some cases) in this Scenario.  This greatly simplifies the amount of handwaving, subplot writing, etc., that this kind of crossover would need to make work.

Of course, there is the potential downside that a good number of Sailor Moon fans might take a look at a fic with this premise and end up worrying about it being yet another Sailor Moon bashfic.  Again, though, I would want it to actually come off as a fic that pays a metric shitload of respect to both franchises, and I want to show that both sides are actually benefiting heavily from the meeting of the two!

Of course, this is all just one possibility.  Now on to some extra ideas:

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Now, regardless of which of the scenarios ends up being used, what I would especially love to see is the character interactions and how they might play out.

For example, imagine Haruka and Signum teaming up to slice their way through various monsters with their respective swords, potentially causing great terror in those capable of feeling such emotions.  Teana and Minako unleashing copius amounts of beam-spam onto a particularly bothersome monster-of-the-week.  Fate and Makoto blasting a hench(wo)man full of some really high voltage.  And so on and so forth...

And the interactions outside of battle could also be something interesting to see.  For example, Hayate and Makoto teaming up to make some utterly mouthwatering dishes{1.}!  Usagi and Subaru hanging out together, enthusiastically licking their way through towers of ice cream scoops at least as tall as they are{2.}.  Usagi using her experience dealing with Chibiusa to help Nanoha handle Vivio, or vice versa (depending on which scenario is used).

{1.} If your own mouth isn't filling with drool while that mental image is in your head, you might want to get that checked.  I'm just saying, is all...

{2.} On the other hand, if you're getting a case of brain freeze just imagining this scene (particularly the ice cream stacks), then please put the blame on my imagination for demanding that I write this in here.

Of course, there's also potential for conflict between the two groups, and not just through direct combat.  For example, in a "Nanoha trains Usagi" scenario, one has to wonder what the naturally-lazy Usagi would make of Nanoha's training style, what the workaholic Nanoha would make of Usagi's lazy tendencies, and how things could end up playing out from there...

And now onto some extra info/"Food for thought":

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As I've said before, I really do NOT want this kind of crossover to become a bashfest, of either Lyrical Nanoha, Sailor Moon, or (worst of all) both!

I want to mention again that I especially like S1 and S3, primarily due to the whole idea of the older, more experienced magical girls getting to mentor the younger magical girls, while simultaneously also learning about the young'uns' magical capabilities vis-a-vis their own.  Of course, as previously mentioned, I've come to favor S3 as I believe it to be the logistically simplest of the three Scenarios.

And here's another thing to add, mainly as "food for thought":

The Sailor Moon setting (especially the manga, anime, and musicals) has very much a "magic realism" vibe going for it, what with quite a few manga side stories (and some anime episodes/specials) involving the Sailor Guardians dealing with issues that aren't connected to some world-conquering/ending threat--for example, one of the "Chibiusa's Picture Diary" manga side stories (specifically, the second one, "Beware of Tanabata", has Chibiusa discover that a set of Sailor Moon wristwatches were actually being used to drain children of their energy, and it turned out to be a plot to take advantage of a domestic spat between the deities featured in the Tanabata legend, as secretly carried out by a pair of subordinates to one of the deities.  Needless to say, Chibiusa singlehandedly kicks their asses and helps straighten out the deities' quarrel.

Another setting that has plenty of magic realism to go around happens to be Triangle Heart, the visual novel series that the Lyrical Nanoha franchise spun off from.  Among the more magical/supernatural stuff you'll find there are *clears throat*: National-level certification for ninjas, psychic powers that are apparently considered to be a rare genetic form of neurodivergence{3.}, ghosts and reincarnation{4.}, humanoids and human(oid) hybrids{5.}, people from other worlds/dimensions{6.}, chaotic spacetime events{7.}, etc., etc., etc.  Now, the Lyrical Nanoha spinoff franchise greatly toned down at least the Earth-based portions of these things, but who's to say that they weren't outright eliminated entirely?

{3.} Specifically called "Highly-functional Genetic Syndrome", or "HGS" for short.

{4.} Funnily enough, Nanoha herself was originally planned to be the reincarnation of a ghost girl (specifically, Nanase Haruhara, who in a scrapped ending would've been renamed to Nanase Takamachi upon reincarnation) who was one of the romantic options in the first game, though it was ultimately decided to instead turn her into an original character.

{5.} For one example, another one of the first game's romantic options (specifically, Sakura Kidou) was a vampire/werewolf hybrid, and she's also the aunt of the third game's canonically winning option--Shinobu Tsukimura, who herself is a full vampire in the third game and the older sister of Nanoha's classmate Suzuka Tsukimura in the anime, became the official girlfriend of the third game's protagonist, Nanoha's older brother Kyouya Takamachi.

{6.} The "Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha" mini-scenario from which the titular franchise spun off of has Lindy Harlaown and Chrono Harvey/Harlaown, who both came to Earth from Midchilda for various reasons.

{7.} The main "antagonist", so to speak, of the original "Lyrical Nanoha" scenario was a time-wrecking storm called "Hidden", which makes a mess of temporal things like cause-and-effect wherever it goes--the order of events in a place it hits can get jumbled up something fierce, and in one particularly unfortunate area the flow of time stopped and never restarted!  Needless to say, the climax of the mini-scenario involves Nanoha and Chrono having to team up in an effort to stop it from impacting Japan.

Given all this, I am personally convinced that, from a setting perspective, Lyrical Nanoha (at least by extension from Triangle Heart) and Sailor Moon would make for a fairy natural crossover.  Which makes the lack of a good fic of this type all the more disappointing!

I sincerely hope that this post helps prompt some discussion and hopefully even at least one major attempt at creating an actually good crossover!

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And finally, before anyone tries to say something to the effect of "Oh, that crossover well has been poisoned by (insert name(s) of fanfic(s) notorious for poor execution here)", I want to head off that claim by saying this:

I find the idea that a concept (of ANY kind) could have become some kind of "poisoned well" due to poor executions in the past to be, quite frankly, a rather pessimistic (arguably even nihilistic) outlook.  Remember, Sturgeons' Law is a thing for a reason, and if this kind of outlook were more prevalent than it (thankfully) currently is, human culture would be in a far poorer state as people would be afraid to try to execute a theoretically good-sounding concept simply because some previous attempt(s) went wrong in the past, thus meaning that a good number of works that exist in our reality wouldn't have ever come about instead!  As such, don't be afraid to tread back into areas that have run roughshod by bad or even hateful writing, this time to actually make something that even has the potential to be good.  All you really need are some good writing skills and a willingness to persist to the end (especially when you're writing long-form fics spanning across multiple in-universe years' worth of events)!

So please go out there, find something in the fanfic realm that has previously been declared a "poisoned well", and make something with it that's so beautiful that other people will be more willing to also do something with it out of inspiration!

[classicdrogn]

One insetting possibility in a version where the SM storylibe is happening later would be for Nephrite, perhaps the most mathematically inclined caster on that side of the fusion due to his astrology focus, to be rescued from his OTL fate of dying as the end o9f a redemption arc and be taken on in a rehabilitation program like Fate was, working to bridge the two styles along with Ami and (perhaps later?) Setsuna.

Just how to handle Pluto and her time stuff fis also a major question that would need to be addressed, too. As far as I remember SM does not deal with alternate Earths at all, while (if not on Earth as such ) that's a significant part of the TSAB's operations. Do the Gates of Time even see the TSAB side of things when they're not in the same ... layer of the mulyiversal stack, or whatever you want to call it? Alternately, does she already know of/have contact with the TSAB as the effectively permanent bonded guardian of such a powerful Lost Logia and was the one who actually called them in as soon as the need to avoid paradox would let her? I tend to favor the latter interpretation myself, as the first feels like a cop-out even if it could easily be justified in setting as the Silver Millennium just not having discovered that axis of magical travel, perhaps because of their magic being more intent-based rather than calculating out all the fiddly little details. It does seem to be a significantly bigger deal for the Senshi to use teleportation spells than on the MSLN side, so it could well be that they just threw more power at the problem to fill the gaps until it worked and never thought there might be something there to look deeper into - history id full of inventions that seem really obvious once someone came up with them, why should mahic be any different?

The Gates might also be able to retrieve Presea to prevent her from dodging justice by elaborate suicide and, especially if she's only mostly dead rather than really very definitely most sincerely dead, Alicia, in time to get included in one of Usagi's "I don't like sad endings so I'll just rewrite reality a little so everyone can be happy, teehee!" Ginzoishou events. Nonexistence is too good for Presea, I want her taken into TSAB's tender care and psychotherapied until she looks back at the monster that wore her face with nothing but horror and revulsion and spends the rest of her life dedicated to doing good works in atonement, and I want lots of cute "big little sister" stuff between Fate an Alicia who always wanted a sibling to play with while Mama was busy with her important job. I had some elements of that worked into the outline of an El Hazard crossover some years back, but an outline was as far as it ever went.

[robkelk]

Scenario 3 (S3):

In S3, the crossover takes place some time after A's at the least (probably after StrikerS or later if you're willing to go down that route, which personally speaking I'm willing to).

This one has potential of its own: the Sailor Guardians end up being trained in magical combat by older, more experienced magic users.  Again, as with S1, the compatibility issues involving substantially different forms of mana manipulation should add a bit of challenge in adapting training methods (though we could again get some potential workarounds from Ami and later Setsuna).

If I may be allowed to point out my own work , which almost fits your specification for Scenario 3 (not all of the Guardians are involved, and one canonically bit character and a OC are). The "be sent to another dimension" bit in the '90s-anime version of the Black Moon arc goes differently because there aren't enough Guardians present to carry out a Sailor Teleport, so the ones caught in the effect are sent to the dimension that Midchilda is in. Hey, if canon is going to give me a plot hook, I'll take it.

"Still," I commented on January 14, "you're being very kind to teach us these things, Colonel Yagami. Not just strategy, all of what you and your staff are sharing with us."

"Mr. Donaldson, it's the least we can do for you," she replied with a smile. "Well, it's the least we can do for Ms. Kino and Ms. Mizuno; you and Mr. Urawa are getting a free ride."

I raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Oh? What makes Makoto and Ami so special? To you, I mean; I already know why my girlfriend and our best friend are important to me."

"Have you ever seen a Sailor Moon stage show, Mr. Donaldson? Nanoha, Fate, and I did when we were still living on Earth. Nanoha insisted because it was based on an anime that her parents let her watch in reruns. If it wasn't for your girlfriend and your best friend, and the characters that followed them like Hanasaki Momoko, Kinomoto Sakura, Harukaze Doremi, and Misumi Nagisa, Nanoha would never have imagined becoming a transforming heroine when she met Yuuno-kun, and then I would never have met her, or... well, you told us that you're already familiar with the last Book of Darkness incident. So I owe them indirectly for simply being able to live my own life today. And the TSAB as a whole owes them for the existence of our best combat instructor."

(Yeah, Ami keeps her boyfriend from the first season filler arc, and Makoto gets a boyfriend. Makoto deserves to get a boyfriend.)

Writing the scene where Ami learned the basics of Midchildan magic by having it cast through her while in Unison with Reinforce Zwei was fun.

[classicdrogn]

Are you posting that anywhere else, Rob? I've been meaning to catch up but not getting around to it, and forums are the worst for long form fic with a screen reader, and the layout here with a single column rather than how SB and adjacent sites stick the poster info off to the side prevents the workaround I've found too.

(That being to scroll to the end of a post, then click and drag from there sideways to the column with user info so it highlight the whole thing to tell the TTS what to read rather than starting at the top of the page and continuing on past it if there are more comments already after the story post.)

[robkelk]

Are you posting that anywhere else, Rob?

I have it in a PDF, should that help... although that file's the entire story. Static link EDIT: Which I just realized I hadn't updated with the master copy that includes Chapter S. That's just been done.

Setting up an AO3 account is a longer-term project that I won't have time to do for the next four to six months.

[classicdrogn]

I don't currently have any way to read PDFs at all, but thanks for the thought. If you estimate you've got a couple of months before youd have time to mess around getting stuff onto AO3, this is probably the time to send the account request though -- assuming you haven't already.

Well, that's exaggerating some, but IIRC it did take two or three weeks to get a response when I finally decided to for the sake of a few members-only stories and making it eisier to keep track of things.


edit: reliably

I don't have a way to read PDFs reliably, as 'fox can do it but poorly and with lots of wierdnes about where text is displayed and where highlighting appears, which is a big problem in this case.