All the actor crossovers I've written play on the physical similarity that one character notices between the two characters played by the same actor; it can be explicitly explained as a blood relationship, or waved away as a trick of the light, but in all cases my A/B' stories are in some way a comment on A/B.
I can see that. I think that what I see sometimes in these stories is that the author is using the physical similarity to have the pairing without having to deal with some of the messiness that may be involved in the non-crossover pairing -- to make a relationship "easy" (or at least, less fraught) than it normally is. And because I tend to like the antagonism and bad history in at least some of the relationships I read, I find that a less satisfying narrative device. So for example, from my perspective pairing Mulder with some other character played by Nick Lea is just not as satisfying as a Mulder/Krycek pairing, because what draws me to that pairing is all the repressed violence and anger. But I agree that these pairings can certainly be done well, and can work to comment on the non-crossover pairing in an interesting way. I just come into stories like that with a certain amount of skepticism.
Thank you for commenting, though -- you've made me stop and think about what exactly I meant there, which is what I was hoping would come out of comments on the post.
For example my SGA/HP crossover is about magic and technology, not about any character relationships - although I suppose that parallels are drawn between how certain characters view magic, and how others view technology.
That sounds quite cool -- in part because, as you describe it, it sounds as though some of the similarieits in characters' attitudes crept up on you as you wrote.
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I can see that. I think that what I see sometimes in these stories is that the author is using the physical similarity to have the pairing without having to deal with some of the messiness that may be involved in the non-crossover pairing -- to make a relationship "easy" (or at least, less fraught) than it normally is. And because I tend to like the antagonism and bad history in at least some of the relationships I read, I find that a less satisfying narrative device. So for example, from my perspective pairing Mulder with some other character played by Nick Lea is just not as satisfying as a Mulder/Krycek pairing, because what draws me to that pairing is all the repressed violence and anger. But I agree that these pairings can certainly be done well, and can work to comment on the non-crossover pairing in an interesting way. I just come into stories like that with a certain amount of skepticism.
Thank you for commenting, though -- you've made me stop and think about what exactly I meant there, which is what I was hoping would come out of comments on the post.
For example my SGA/HP crossover is about magic and technology, not about any character relationships - although I suppose that parallels are drawn between how certain characters view magic, and how others view technology.
That sounds quite cool -- in part because, as you describe it, it sounds as though some of the similarieits in characters' attitudes crept up on you as you wrote.