A good crossover fanfiction can be a hard thing to pull off. Lean to heavy into one fandom and you can lose the audience and there is no guarantee that many people will be a fan of the two or more fandoms featured in the story, but Chierei has blended the worlds of John Wick and Gotham almost seamlessly in there wonderful fic Redacted and it is all thanks to the casting of Gotham favourite Robin Lord Taylor (Oswald Cobblepot aka The Penguin) as the Administrator in John Wick 3, that has lead to a crossover fandom between the two franchises.
The fic itself is a long read, but well worth it with an 80,175 word count and 17 chapters including the epilogue. The main focus of the story is Oswald Cobblepot, a fan favourite of the Gotham series just having enough of constantly being pushed down and betrayed by those he thought he could trust again and again so he decides to leave Gotham without telling anyone and ends up at a certain hotel in New York City, The Continental Hotel.
What I love about this fic is the gradual evolution we get to see of Oswald into the person he becomes upon entering the world of The Continental and the world of assassin’s that makes up the John Wick universe. His character growth throughout the story is believable and feels in character for him which makes this a fascinating read. One of Oswald’s biggest character traits in Gotham is his not only his ability to read a situation and manipulate it to his end goal but also his at times lack of emotional control and I love that both these aspects of his personality are explored within the fic and as the story continues on is grown upon as well.
In case it is not obvious to any of my lovely readers who follow me on twitter more than anywhere else… I am a huge fan of the TV show Gotham and if I am completely truthful it was the beginnings of this fic that got me to finally sit down and finally watch the first two John Wick movies earlier this year and to immediately get the third when it came out on DVD. Chierei’s fic got me curious about the other fandom that shared this crossover with Gotham and that is just a sign of how amazing their writing is. Plus it also kind of helps the story for me when the author revealed that the story would end with some Nygmobblepot, my favourite ship from the show that I have an upcoming post about.
If you are a fan of either Gotham or John Wick and especially if you are a fan of both and have ever wondered what a story that collides the two worlds would be like, I can not recommend this fic enough. Plus since I am recommending it here that also means that there is some very well written yaoi scenes in this story, though the final pairing is not obvious in the beginning we also get some very sweet moments between John Wick and Oswald as well and that is something most definitely worth reading.
Yaoi Playground 