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thinking about crossovers
The crossover meme got me started thinking abut crossovers, how they work, and why I like writing them. It occurred to me that although I write a lot of the things, I've never tried to talk about the process in a coherent fashion. Not that this is necessarily coherent. I'm using a few scenes from that meme as illustrations, even though they're not really full-fledged stories and thus may not always work as stories.
And first of all, I should say that part of the reason that I write crossovers is that I just happen to see them easily. You know those writers who say that they were slashers before they knew such a thing existence? I was a crossover-writer before I knew what it was. I've been playing with the things since at least my early teens. There is text to prove it, alas. All I can say is, thank god the internet wasn't part of anyone's life back then.
What I "see" when I see a crossover is usually something comparable: analogous story types, similar situations, shared tropes or character types. Writing a crossover is a way of drawing those similarities out and using them to comment on each other, generally without forcing the characters to speak or act in ways which are (in my mind) out of character. Most of the characters I write don't tend to talk about themselves, and for me as a writer, a crossover can be the easiest way to bring something about their experience to light. I think this is why I hate the moment one often finds in crossovers where character share their stories with each other. For one thing, it all too often seems wildly out of character, but also I think that the crossover is there for the reader, not for the characters. Or not necessarily for the characters, who may or may not get anything out of the encounter. Too much information can lessen the dramatic irony, and the irony is one of the things I most love about crossovers.
In fact, as I think about the crossovers I've written, all too often nothing really comes of it for the characters. The characters meet, maybe something happens between them, and then they go on their way, back to their own stories. One example of this in the meme is the meeting of Irina Derevko and John Winchester: I think this scene works, although obviously it's quite rough. Almost nothing happens, but it illustrates something about each character -- John's essential recalcitrance, but (more interesting to me) Irina's difficult understanding of her own motherhood. The chasm between them isn't just there because John's not much of a talker -- it's there because he's a parent and she's not.
I'm sure there's something odd about the fact that most of the canons I write for involve adults (usually parental figures) shaping their children, usually in some vaguely unethical way, to serve a larger purpose, but in the meantime it makes for interesting crossover potential. See under: Sydney Bristow and Sam Winchester, bitching about the creepy supernatural figures trying to control their lives, which someone should totally write.
I was writing about how I see crossovers with Rez, and she made the comment that it's everything we do in standard fanfiction, only more so. I really do believe that this is the case.
I think the purity of the exercise is why some people don't like crossovers -- in this they're comparable to OC stories, which of course have a terrible reputation, because of the Mary Sue thing -- but a Mary Sue story is also purely fannish in a way a lot of fans don't like to recognize. That moment of self-insertion, the assertion of control over the source text, the ability to bend it to one's own liking. But a lot of fans have a certain amount of suspicion of out-and-out wish-fulfillment, because too much of that and you're just talking to yourself: fanfic works best when our desires for the source of congruent, and we don't have to think quite so much about the extent to which we're imposing our desires on the source. Genres which seem to acknowledge the desires of the author and readers too openly -- OC stories, AUs, various types of crackfic -- can meet with resistance from fans who don't share those desires.
Hence the need to "sell" the crossover, to make it natural. Even when a crossover seems mind-numbingly obvious to me, I know that I need to sell it to whoever's reading the story. Or at least, I know I ought to; sometimes I'm too lazy a writer and skimp on that. One thing I don't do, though, is write the full background into the story, which makes them less accessible to someone who only knows one of the fandoms. I know that this is a problem but I can't do it without seeming artificial, and I'd rather write a story which I think is good than a story which I think is accessible.
What I try to do instead is make the crossover as natural to the reader as the canon of each source, which I think is why I spent some of the crossover snippets shifting the worlds together so that the characters could meet naturally. In this matter, it helps that I love mytharc and that there appear to be a limited number of story types used by the shows I watch. And that one of them involves Rambaldi, because seriously, you can do anything with Rambaldi. Or the Consortium; possibly the most useful poorly defined conspiracy ever.
So for example,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cofax7 asked for Scully with a Winchester, and I started to think about some kind of post-apocalyptic scenario, but most of what I wrote was just getting the SPN universe and the XF universe together -- there was almost no crossover character interaction at all until the very end, and that ends up rather flat because I was so taken by the whole setup. (Although really, the Winchesters as a family ought to make anyone's top ten list of characters likely to set off the apocalypse by accident, right below Fox Mulder.)
Anyway, the point is that getting an audience to buy a crossover, especially one that isn't immediately obvious, can be a challenge -- I think the fact that I can make Supernatural/Firefly look completely natural, even though one of the shows takes place in outer space and the other one just doesn't, is great. Some of the crossovers I write are challenges to myself, because I know that they'll be hard to sell -- usually because the canons just don't match up in some important way.
It might be odd to talk about canon when talking about crossovers, since a crossover is almost always uncanonical by definition (more obviously so than other types of fanfic.) Rez described crossovers as a way of repairing canon to our satisfaction, sometimes, or of expanding a character whose canon existence is limited by more than just screen time.
And I think that this is sort of right. Of course there are plenty of people who feel that "repairing" canon isn't what this whole exercise is about. They talk about expanding canon, or exploring canon -- and I think crossovers do that too, or that they can. And here I think that as I writer I have to be careful about my own wish-fulfillment things, because it's easy to use a crossover to "fix" canon. So for example, I could have continued that SPN/HL crossover with John maybe looking up the names Amanda left him -- either Joe or Duncan -- and things going from there. But I would only be writing that because I don't really want John to be dead, and my guess is that a universe where the two fictional worlds come together makes that less likely. Of course, the way I KNOW that this is pure wish-fulfillment fantasy is that John would never do that. It just isn't in him to go looking to strangers for help; the man can barely speak to his own flesh and blood.
So for me, crossovers are certainly a way of "repairing" canon, but I also like to think that I can do that without violating canon or deforming it to suit my narrative desires. At least, that's the goal. In the past, I've describe my relationship with canon as competitive -- I can't ignore it, but I also don't always like it, because (as I've said before) the interests of the shows producers and my own interests are unlikely to match up. That's the nature of life when you get interested in secondary characters. Crossovers expand the fictional universe enough to give these characters some place to go: it's a way of giving them depth. And of course, although you do need to sell a crossover, it's often easier to sell a crossover than an OC story. A crossover pairing may already seem hot when a reader encounters the story, if the reader knows both canons.
But from my point of view, the key is to expand canon without violating it. (And this, I think, explains some of my own reading preferences -- crossovers which rely on the use of a single actor playing more than one to the characters are a hard sell for me, and I think that's because to me it feels like the author is breaking that fourth wall.) It may be weird to be talking about the integrity of canon at the same time as crossovers, but there you go. I guess I see the crossover as a way of enriching canon -- like any other kind of fanfic. It doesn't come with an opt-out clause, or no more than any other type of story does.
I have the sneaking feeling that I have a reputation for writing crossovers, but it's hard for me to judge that kind of thing. Maybe there are readers who are more likely to click on a crossover with my name attached, but maybe those readers are like me and will try almost any crossover which hits their fandom/character preferences. But at least in a big and scary fandom like Supernatural, crossovers are a way of forming a reputation. Maybe. I don't do it on purpose, though -- I do it because I see them everywhere, all the time. There are too many ways of connecting characters and story types to resist.
So mostly, I like crossovers, and I like the challenge of making them work. Which I think we all knew, going in.
And first of all, I should say that part of the reason that I write crossovers is that I just happen to see them easily. You know those writers who say that they were slashers before they knew such a thing existence? I was a crossover-writer before I knew what it was. I've been playing with the things since at least my early teens. There is text to prove it, alas. All I can say is, thank god the internet wasn't part of anyone's life back then.
What I "see" when I see a crossover is usually something comparable: analogous story types, similar situations, shared tropes or character types. Writing a crossover is a way of drawing those similarities out and using them to comment on each other, generally without forcing the characters to speak or act in ways which are (in my mind) out of character. Most of the characters I write don't tend to talk about themselves, and for me as a writer, a crossover can be the easiest way to bring something about their experience to light. I think this is why I hate the moment one often finds in crossovers where character share their stories with each other. For one thing, it all too often seems wildly out of character, but also I think that the crossover is there for the reader, not for the characters. Or not necessarily for the characters, who may or may not get anything out of the encounter. Too much information can lessen the dramatic irony, and the irony is one of the things I most love about crossovers.
In fact, as I think about the crossovers I've written, all too often nothing really comes of it for the characters. The characters meet, maybe something happens between them, and then they go on their way, back to their own stories. One example of this in the meme is the meeting of Irina Derevko and John Winchester: I think this scene works, although obviously it's quite rough. Almost nothing happens, but it illustrates something about each character -- John's essential recalcitrance, but (more interesting to me) Irina's difficult understanding of her own motherhood. The chasm between them isn't just there because John's not much of a talker -- it's there because he's a parent and she's not.
I'm sure there's something odd about the fact that most of the canons I write for involve adults (usually parental figures) shaping their children, usually in some vaguely unethical way, to serve a larger purpose, but in the meantime it makes for interesting crossover potential. See under: Sydney Bristow and Sam Winchester, bitching about the creepy supernatural figures trying to control their lives, which someone should totally write.
I was writing about how I see crossovers with Rez, and she made the comment that it's everything we do in standard fanfiction, only more so. I really do believe that this is the case.
I think the purity of the exercise is why some people don't like crossovers -- in this they're comparable to OC stories, which of course have a terrible reputation, because of the Mary Sue thing -- but a Mary Sue story is also purely fannish in a way a lot of fans don't like to recognize. That moment of self-insertion, the assertion of control over the source text, the ability to bend it to one's own liking. But a lot of fans have a certain amount of suspicion of out-and-out wish-fulfillment, because too much of that and you're just talking to yourself: fanfic works best when our desires for the source of congruent, and we don't have to think quite so much about the extent to which we're imposing our desires on the source. Genres which seem to acknowledge the desires of the author and readers too openly -- OC stories, AUs, various types of crackfic -- can meet with resistance from fans who don't share those desires.
Hence the need to "sell" the crossover, to make it natural. Even when a crossover seems mind-numbingly obvious to me, I know that I need to sell it to whoever's reading the story. Or at least, I know I ought to; sometimes I'm too lazy a writer and skimp on that. One thing I don't do, though, is write the full background into the story, which makes them less accessible to someone who only knows one of the fandoms. I know that this is a problem but I can't do it without seeming artificial, and I'd rather write a story which I think is good than a story which I think is accessible.
What I try to do instead is make the crossover as natural to the reader as the canon of each source, which I think is why I spent some of the crossover snippets shifting the worlds together so that the characters could meet naturally. In this matter, it helps that I love mytharc and that there appear to be a limited number of story types used by the shows I watch. And that one of them involves Rambaldi, because seriously, you can do anything with Rambaldi. Or the Consortium; possibly the most useful poorly defined conspiracy ever.
So for example,
cofax7 asked for Scully with a Winchester, and I started to think about some kind of post-apocalyptic scenario, but most of what I wrote was just getting the SPN universe and the XF universe together -- there was almost no crossover character interaction at all until the very end, and that ends up rather flat because I was so taken by the whole setup. (Although really, the Winchesters as a family ought to make anyone's top ten list of characters likely to set off the apocalypse by accident, right below Fox Mulder.) Anyway, the point is that getting an audience to buy a crossover, especially one that isn't immediately obvious, can be a challenge -- I think the fact that I can make Supernatural/Firefly look completely natural, even though one of the shows takes place in outer space and the other one just doesn't, is great. Some of the crossovers I write are challenges to myself, because I know that they'll be hard to sell -- usually because the canons just don't match up in some important way.
It might be odd to talk about canon when talking about crossovers, since a crossover is almost always uncanonical by definition (more obviously so than other types of fanfic.) Rez described crossovers as a way of repairing canon to our satisfaction, sometimes, or of expanding a character whose canon existence is limited by more than just screen time.
And I think that this is sort of right. Of course there are plenty of people who feel that "repairing" canon isn't what this whole exercise is about. They talk about expanding canon, or exploring canon -- and I think crossovers do that too, or that they can. And here I think that as I writer I have to be careful about my own wish-fulfillment things, because it's easy to use a crossover to "fix" canon. So for example, I could have continued that SPN/HL crossover with John maybe looking up the names Amanda left him -- either Joe or Duncan -- and things going from there. But I would only be writing that because I don't really want John to be dead, and my guess is that a universe where the two fictional worlds come together makes that less likely. Of course, the way I KNOW that this is pure wish-fulfillment fantasy is that John would never do that. It just isn't in him to go looking to strangers for help; the man can barely speak to his own flesh and blood.
So for me, crossovers are certainly a way of "repairing" canon, but I also like to think that I can do that without violating canon or deforming it to suit my narrative desires. At least, that's the goal. In the past, I've describe my relationship with canon as competitive -- I can't ignore it, but I also don't always like it, because (as I've said before) the interests of the shows producers and my own interests are unlikely to match up. That's the nature of life when you get interested in secondary characters. Crossovers expand the fictional universe enough to give these characters some place to go: it's a way of giving them depth. And of course, although you do need to sell a crossover, it's often easier to sell a crossover than an OC story. A crossover pairing may already seem hot when a reader encounters the story, if the reader knows both canons.
But from my point of view, the key is to expand canon without violating it. (And this, I think, explains some of my own reading preferences -- crossovers which rely on the use of a single actor playing more than one to the characters are a hard sell for me, and I think that's because to me it feels like the author is breaking that fourth wall.) It may be weird to be talking about the integrity of canon at the same time as crossovers, but there you go. I guess I see the crossover as a way of enriching canon -- like any other kind of fanfic. It doesn't come with an opt-out clause, or no more than any other type of story does.
I have the sneaking feeling that I have a reputation for writing crossovers, but it's hard for me to judge that kind of thing. Maybe there are readers who are more likely to click on a crossover with my name attached, but maybe those readers are like me and will try almost any crossover which hits their fandom/character preferences. But at least in a big and scary fandom like Supernatural, crossovers are a way of forming a reputation. Maybe. I don't do it on purpose, though -- I do it because I see them everywhere, all the time. There are too many ways of connecting characters and story types to resist.
So mostly, I like crossovers, and I like the challenge of making them work. Which I think we all knew, going in.
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I just followed the link to your crossovers meme, and there's so much good stuff there! I had missed it before.
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I think that it can be a lot of work to get a crossover set up just for the porn, you know, and then if you've never seen the characters together there's a certain amount of guessing about how they'll fit, physically. But I'm not much of a porn writer, so I may be wrong about that.
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I like the notion of Sam Winchester bumping into Amanda. He's lost his mother and his fiance, and Amanda would seem to be the antidote for that--she's immortal, after all. But Sam would know that even the immortals would be vulnerable to his enemy. Each would go away believing the same thing they believed going in--she, that she is immortal, and he, that anything he loves will be destroyed by the demon, but the reader would have a question to ponder--who of them is right?
I'd like Dean to meet Krycek, because Dean is used to having puppy-ish Sam around, and to Krycek, Dean would be that annoying puppy. But Dean would get it in a way that Mulder didn't--that all these "wonders" are scary and dangerous and need killing before they kill you. Neither of them would stare in fascination as a monster tried to kill him. The monster would be dead before it ever got that far.
I just love the notion of Syd and Sam comparing notes.
I love the notion that Jack Bristow is aware of John Winchester somewhere out there in the shady world they share tangentially.
It is sort of like saying, I will put Jane from work next to Joe from the gym, because they have the same sense of humor, or keeping Mary from church away from Bill from coven, because neither of them would understand. Only, in fiction, you can throw them together and watch the fur fly, because with fictional characters, you don't have to worry about your real-life social network blowing up in your face.
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To me, crossover characters are like guests at a particularly angst-ridden dinner party, because I'd like to eavesdrop on the conversation.
Whereas I'm more interested in all the things the characters will never say because they don't know that it's relevant. It's probably why I'm not greatly tempted to write the scene with Syd and Sam, because they'd actually want to talk to each other! The horrors! Even the thought that it would be cute and funny can't quite get me started.
Only, in fiction, you can throw them together and watch the fur fly, because with fictional characters, you don't have to worry about your real-life social network blowing up in your face.
That's a neat way of putting it. Especially the part about your RL social network exploding all over everything, because yes, that can be a risk. Whereas with fictional people, not so much.
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(Anonymous) - 2006-11-13 17:38 (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
(Anonymous) - 2006-11-13 17:39 (UTC) - Expandno subject
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Get some sleep!
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I confess that I almost never read crossovers, no matter who writes them or what the fandom is. This is my sad face *points*, because I'm sure I'm missing a lot of cool stuff, but. I have this thing about crossing universes that don't go together, and I think most universes don't go together. It probably has to do with being a complete canon whore. Also, the chances I'll like it are substantially decreased if I don't watch or like the other universe in the crossover, because I read fan fiction to see additional character revelation, and if I don't care about the characters, there's no incentive to read. Stories set in space/stories not, or stories set in two different time periods or universes, are a definite no-go.
Interestingly, there are a few universes I can see crossing effortlessly. One of them is Supernatural with Miracles or Angel. I think it has to do with similar themes about evil and similar types of monsters and demon-fighting, etc. It's plausible that these characters would cross paths in pursuit of common goals. Also it has to do with concurrent timelines; these shows are recent, and there's not a large gap between their timelines. But for the most part, as soon as I see 'crossover with' in the notes of a story, I click right on by.
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A. I'm not sure that this is true; I think that what sets the crossover apart (in particular from the OC story) is the sense of reciprocity -- characters and relationships within a single text are often coded in various kinds of hierarchies, whereas relationships between texts aren't. I may not be putting this clearly. I think that there's also an effective economy to crossovers which appeals to me on an aesthetic level; I like being able to say a lot in a small space, and crosovers are a way of doing that.
B. Even if that were true, so what? If I can get result X via method A or B, why only use method A?
I do get not having a taste for crossovers -- I don't read many AUs, and I think that my reaction ("what's the point?") may not be dissimilar to yours here. It's just that I think it's a matter of taste.
I want to see how characters are changed by those in their orbit, not those forced into their orbit by the writer, if that makes sense.
Whereas I like to see how characters are changed when they're forced out of their orbit. Which may come down to a liking for scenario and plot as well as character.
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(Anonymous) - 2006-11-13 17:43 (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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I have been thinking about crossovers a lot, recently, and it was really interesting to read your thoughts! (I am really looking forward to the end of the semester when I can go back and catch up on Blessings Against the Thunder, by the way.)
Anyway, the main thought I'd been having is one that you've got here - that crossovers can use their disparate elements as foils for each other. That's one of my favourite things about crossovers, that ah-ha! compare and/or contrast moment.
Also, it's interesting to think about character-types and story-types... (Is tone-type a thing? Because I think that's why SPN/Firefly works.. I guess that's a subset of story-type?) I instinctively went - yes! character-type crossovers! but looking at my own (either written or in progress)... hm. Yeah, I do have some that are really a function of character-type (Crowley and the Marquis, Will/Xander) but others are more... circumstantial? Like, I'll come across some random, non-fannish factoid that seems to tie two fandoms together, and build a plot around it. My favourite for randomness would be the time I went to this club in an old church, and got bit by a CSI/SPN bunny when I simultaneously thought a) man, this club is SO haunted and b) the stamp on my hand would show up under blacklight during an autopsy. ... um. The club was creepy, ok?
I don't know... crossovers are a very... knee-jerk thing for me, somehow. It satisfies some very VERY strange part of my lizard brain, the whole jigsaw of it. :)
Lastly, I was thinking about the difference between crossovers, fusions, and AUs. I have this vague idea that there's some kind of continuum, where crossovers <-> fusions <-> AUs. Like, a fusion is a crossover, but only using the characters from A in the setting from B, while an AU is pulling the setting from elsewhere (history, or reality, or a genre as a whole, etc.)
... Er. This is all rambly and disconnected. To conclude: your brains = tasty, crossovers = awesome.
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Crossovers are a very knee-jerk thing for me as well, which is why I've had trouble thinking about them. They're so obvious to me that the whole question of what it is I can do or am doing with them is extremely difficult to frame. It's a bit like asking what I'm doing when I walk down the street -- you know, I'm just walking down the street. But the "aha!" moment -- the contrast or comparison -- is a big part of it.
For me, crossover ideas can come out of practically anything. I do not think your story about the club is weird at all.
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I think SPN is also a good crossover fandom because the characters aren't tied to a specific place -- you can put them pretty much anywhere in the continental US or Canada. And yes, the tight focus on their world makes the crossover an appealing way to expand the universe.
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How much are you going to pay me not to post the evidence? :)
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I suspect your love for mytharc is similar to my need to find political parallels and points of intersection in my crossovers. And yes to crossovers being a way of enriching and extending canon - which is what the external perspective provides. Sometimes, it can force you examine truths and aspects of the character that might have been occluded otherwise, by romanticism or personal attachment.
I think I'm addicted to Alias crossover which have Sark dying - victims of Draco and Bellatrix, John Winchester (like in your story), or whomever. It's always somewhat shocking and confrontational, but you can hardly call it out of character for him.
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Sometimes, it can force you examine truths and aspects of the character that might have been occluded otherwise, by romanticism or personal attachment.
Mmm. And sometimes there are places you don't want to take the characters in the context of their own canon, because of the pre-existing relationships there. Breaking them out of those relationships can give you more freedom to maneuver, somehow. So I'm not keen on killing Sark within the canon universe, particularly post-series, with the characters remaining. And yet it's clear to me that someone's likely to get him someday.
I suspect your love for mytharc is similar to my need to find political parallels and points of intersection in my crossovers.
Maybe. The mytharc isn't what I have to say, but it's what I use to say it.
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Absolutely agreed. Most characters I write about aren't talkative about themselves, either. (Well, Londo Mollari excepted, but he wouldn't say anything IMPORTANT about himself to anyone he doesn't absolutely trust, and that certainly wouldn't include a stranger.)
Similar situations and character types: yes, but. I find this works better with ambiguous characters. I know I had no problem at all writing a story with Garak (DS9) and Bester (B5) and a hell of a difficult time writing Inara (Firefly) and Vir (B5), because the former are very shady, to put it mildly, while the later are nice, polite, and full of good intentions. Sometimes, in a crossover when you're NOT dealing with highly ambiguous characters, I find contrast works best, i.e. when at Multiverse I was challenged to write Adama in one of the Star Trek universes, I deliberately didn't let him meet any of the Captains but put him together with Lwaxana Troi.
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I hadn't thought of this at all, probably because I write so many more ambiguous characters than non-ambiguous characters. Is it because there are more shadows to the characters, and somehow those can be used to illuminate each other? Or is it that ambiguous characters bring their own plot, wherever they happen to go?
It strikes me that in some way, crossovers with main characters ought to be more effective, because they often don't have to deal with equals within their own universes -- but they also are not usually ambiguous characters.
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I'm mostly a crossover avoider, and you've hit on the biggest reason right there. Most crossovers break the fourth wall for me, because they depend on the reader knowing things about both characters that neither of them know about each other, and they require believing in two fictional universes at the same time. I find that hard to do. Crossovers bring a freightload of meta, for me, and I often feel like the author just lets the meta sit there and doesn't use it. Also, crossovers of the type where Character A from universe X travels to universe Y usually feel lopsided and out-of-balance to me -- we know both universes are real, but the story doesn't give them both the same weight.
That being said, there are occasional crossovers that really work for me. I'm trying to pin down what makes the difference.... Hmm. Here are some narrative strategies used in crossovers that I have liked: (1) Characters from *both* universes are divorced from their standard universe. So,
Oddly enough, I am passionate about AUs. They're like a social psych experiment, an examination of the Person X Situation interaction: what about these characters is essential to them, and what is an effect of their surroundings and history? If I were to extend that metaphor to crossovers, they'd be... maybe an appointment with a therapist -- an interaction with someone completely outside your normal sphere of existence, who might challenge your assumptions about yourself and your world.
I happen to prefer one to the other. That's why I got a degree in social psych, not clinical. *g*
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Hm. I don't think of this as breaking the fourth wall; I think of it as dramatic irony. But also, miscommunication and failed communication interest me as themes, and a crossover can highlight that precisely because the reader has knowledge that the characters don't.
I find that AUs just fail to grab me, much of the time -- I have too strong an interest in the canonical universe as a whole to want to see the characters divorced from that reality. I like the specifics of their story arcs too much, generally, to care much about who the characters might be without those pressures. (The closer an AU is to canonical reality, the more likely I am to tolerate it -- so for instance I read around in that Pegasus-B thing a while back, because the universe was the same, although the characters were different.)
Is it a bad sign that in most of the crossovers I write, the therapist is trying to shoot the patient?
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As you know, I read almost all of your crossovers, and 99% of the time I am unfamiliar with one or both texts. I think one of the reasons I enjoy them -- outside of simply enjoying your writing -- is that you do have a way of having the characters meet somewhere in the middle of their respective universes, so it's not (usually) one character plopped into the middle of the other universe. I also like that you take one moment or characteristic, and you use that as the linchpin of the story -- and that they don't share their stories with each other, you leave it to the reader to see the connection (based on their knowledge of the universes). There's a lot unsaid in your stories, but it doesn't need to be said; even I, with my limited knowledge of the two texts, have gleaned enough of the characters to be able to see the subtext you've created.
Okay, done rambling now. Laundry and the gym awaits!
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As for not plopping one character into another universe -- I think it's in part the thing Camille said, above, about how I tend to assume that the universes are actually the same, so that both worlds are equally true and real. So I spend a surprising amount of time nudging some kind of backstory into existence.
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Absolutely.
the man can barely speak to his own flesh and blood.
Amen to that.
the key is to expand canon without violating it.
Yes. I hate crossovers where the only reason the writer had to write it in the first place was just to pair up two or more pretty faces. And those were the most I've met, I confess, and I've never been one to actually stop and think about what would make a good crossover.
Now that I've read yours (well, SPN/FF especially), and see how smoothly, how naturally you make it flow, well...I saved your entry in my 'On Writing' folder. I'll think about what you wrote, and practice in my head.
thank you :)
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Well, I can't say I think that's a bad reason, although a story needs a little more than that to make it work -- you know, why (aside from the hotness) would the characters go for each other? I find crossover PWPs hard to buy as a reader, because I spend a lot of time wondering how the characters got there. But this is true of a lot of pairing oriented fic, isn't it? And that SPN/FF piece actually started out because Vic commented that Zoe and John would be incredibly hot together, and I'd had the same idea already. The story just got a little out of hand along the way, you know?
And thank you for the kind words -- but really, I think it's at least 95% confidence.
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Just, as the response to the meme shows, I'm not good enough for short ficlets. Hmm. Must either practice more shorts or write a long one (but who has the time?)
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Ficlets are... uneven, I think. Sometimes they work and sometimes they just fall flat. Or at least, mine do.
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As a reader, some crossovers work better than others for me. I tend to think the separate universes should be similar in tone (the Everwood/BB idea would have to skew more toward the comic side of Everwood, with a few Deep Moments when people bond over dead parents and one character survives brain surgery). So I agree that Angel and Supernatural are great fits, while I'd find it tougher to reconcile Angel and -- heh, I was going to say Ugly Betty, but then I thought, no that could work. Comic moments and corporate structure as the basis for Angel's adventures at Mode Magazine. I think if a gifted enough writer tackles the crossover idea, they can emphasize the similaries over the differences, and make the combination seem smooth.
I do know that crossovers have gotten me reading fanfic in fandoms I probably wouldn't have explored otherwise. I think I went through my brief fling with Sentinel that way. And also that I was lured into Highlander through a crossover, although I'd watched the show at one point. Whether or not I keep reading depends on how well the author integrates the two shows, and also on how much the characters are involved. I recall an SGA crossover with Scrubs that began as teh Scrubs characters on Atlantis and I had no interest in it, because I don't watch the show and I didn't even have Sheppard or McKay or Teyla as intermediaries.
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I agree about the importance of tone, but I think a skilled writer can pull off almost anything -- like your Angel/Ugly Betty xover here, which I bet someone could do a really good job of, if they brought the right skill set. Many shows have a range of "settings," so you can kind of nudge them together.
I think I got into reading fic for HL through crossovers as well -- this was quite a few years ago -- and then back into XF via crossovers. Usually I'll read both crossovers and non-crossovers, but there are fandoms where I'll pretty much only read or write crossovers, at this point.
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Also, the shows themselves need a certain variability in tone for crossovers to work well. A show that's too... monotonous isn't actually the word I want -- a show which is uniformly dark will be harder to write crossovers about than a show which ranges from darkness to humor. Which most shows do.
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I am also the shameless defender of crossovers based on the You Know It Would Be Hot! and the You Know It Would Be Funny! premises, the latter because I think fandom does not have enough good comedy and doesn't know how to write or appreciate it. Ahem. (I mean, what is not hilarious about McDreamy being eaten by a Spirit Bear and the Winchesters rolling into town to take care of it?)
And the thing is, I think they can have meaning and shed light on both canons and characters involved. The story I've gotten the most feedback for ever is the most improbably crossover ever - the one with Sirius on Serenity. I don't know why, but it's 11 months later and I am *still* getting comments from people about it, and how first of all nobody ever thinks it should work, but somehow it does.
And the two other crossovers I hear a lot about are the HP/Sports Night and the HP/West Wing, neither of which should work at all, but the nature of HP - hidden, yet ostensibly part of our world - makes it possible, imo.
And I think you're right - the obvious crossover is not always the best one, but I like them better than stories with OCs, because they appeal to the part of me that adores all the pop culture references that go on in my shows, and since Munch showed up on XF three seasons after he proclaimed it a television show on Homicide, I never let that whole "But it's fictional in their world" thing stop me, either.
I dunno. I think they can and do narrow your audience, but as long as I get a charge out of it, I will keep writing them. At least until Dean has finished sleeping his way through the multiverse. *G*
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Just wanting to second this - HP is utterly fabulous crossover fodder precisely because of that "you're not supposed to know they're there" but this is still the real, modern day world angle (the X Files works that way, too). It's a lot harder to cross something that either a) has no connection to Earth as we know it, or b) (IMHO) has no mystery to it).
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Alas, I am one of those people who is vehemently anti-crossover. I hate them. I think they are against all laws of God and man :) Even if they are written by an author I admire. But I did enjoy reading your thoughts!
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I'd agree with this. But interestingly (to me), I think that this is why I like actor crossovers, which you dislike. 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. (For example - and I have no idea if you have any clue about these fandoms - my HCL/Wilby Wonderful Joe/Duck crossover is really at heart a Joe/Billy (HCL) story. Duck is just a catalyst, because he resembles Billy.)
I don't see how this necessarily violates canon. In fact, it plays on the canonical relationships. But I agree that the whole point is to make the universes mesh as seamlessly as possible, so that it's believable from both POVs.
This is not the only type of crossover I write, I'm just pulling this out of your post because I think that this type doesn't have to break the fourth wall. But I do think these stories tend to be comments on the similar in-canon relationships, whereas other types of crossovers, which rest on other types of universe or trope similarities, generally aren't. (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.)
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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.
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For example, I started this year with a long and dramatic crossover storyline that mixed Hellsing (horror-drama-comedy featuring a secret British organization that employs vampires) with Read Or Die (action-drama-comedy featuring a secret British organization that employs superpowered humans). The close thematic ties are obvious.
And then around Halloween I did a shorter storyline crossing Hellsing with Scooby-Doo. Both feature monsters, but the tones are completely different.
And last year I dragged Madeline into the mix, and she has no relation to Hellsing at all except that she and one of Hellsing's main characters are both French.
Of the crossovers I've been reading recently, some make thematic sense in the way you described; on the other end of the spectrum, the most incongruous puts the Powerpuff Girls together with Doctor Who.
Point being that sometimes crossovers work because the series involved fit so well together, and sometimes they work because the series seem like they would spontaneously combust if put together.
(And I like them all ^_^)
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Ha! That's a nice way of putting it. I think sometimes incongruous crossovers can work very, very well -- and even if they don't work perfectly they're often a lot of fun to think about!
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If it helps any -- I generally like to know the other series in the crossover. But, if I like the author enough, and one-half of the crossover is one of my preferred series, I'm willing to treat the other half of the crossover as a set of OCs.
The characters meet, maybe something happens between them, and then they go on their way, back to their own stories.
That works for me. "My" characters interact with interesting new folks, but at the end of the story there are no messy entanglements. I follow "my" characters and happily watch the others ride off into the sunset.
One thing I don't do, though, is write the full background into the story, which makes them less accessible to someone who only knows one of the fandoms.
I think it depends on what the reader brings to it. Some readers (or at least this one) don't need a whole lot of background -- just a few broad brushstrokes to help them anchor the characters in their mind.
Just my two cents. Came here from metafandom, and we don't know each other, so take it for what it's worth. But I know that, as authors, many of us tend to overinflate the importance of things we have a sneaking suspicion that we're doing 'wrong'. I'm convinced that, as long as you're telling a good story, most readers will not really care, and simply enjoy the ride.
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I suspect that you're quite right -- that we all worry about the things we perceive as our weaknesses, and underestimate the importance of the things we do well. I said above to another commenter that a lot of what I think makes crossovers work when I write them is confidence: if I give the impression that I know what I'm doing, readers will be willing to accept whatever I do.
But, if I like the author enough, and one-half of the crossover is one of my preferred series, I'm willing to treat the other half of the crossover as a set of OCs.
One of things I find interesting is that a lot of people who are ordinarily resistant to OC stories (I have no idea how you feel about them, of course) will happily read a crosover under precisely these circumstances -- but will continue to insist that they don't like OCs! I suspect that this says more about what they think OCs are like than what they actually enjoy in a story.
It's not to say that I don't like stories where the universes really merge, messy entanglements and all -- it's just that I think one needs to be more careful, plotting them out. At least, I'm more aware of my own desires for the text and characters when I write them.
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I should say that part of the reason that I write crossovers is that I just happen to see them easily.
I'm the same. I usually don't have to sit down and think "How do I cross fandom A with fandom B?" I might spend some time thinking of how to make the technicalities work, if the fandoms are very different; but the plot bunnies come on their own. This is because I tend to think of most fandoms (except those set in a very distinctive universe) as taking place in the same universe, as opposed to one universe per fandom. But I've been told that this isn't a very usual way of thinking.
Anyway, the point is that getting an audience to buy a crossover, especially one that isn't immediately obvious, can be a challenge
Oh, that's definitely true - there are the reasons you mentioned there, and there's also the fact that some people will only read certain kinds of crossovers. There are fans who won't read crossovers of mixed media (actors and animated characters, visual media and books) or who won't read crossovers of mixed genres. I usually don't mind either, but I'm aware that I won't get many readers if I crossover a detective show with a magical girl manga (which I did!).
But from my point of view, the key is to expand canon without violating it.
That's what I try to do. I don't see crossovers as necessarilly uncanonical, at least not the way I write them. True, most of my fandoms are fantasy/sci-fi and have Convenient Plot Devices that help meshing different worlds in one fic. But I have a lot more fun if I can convince the readers that the two worlds have always been the same. For example, Harry Potter crossovers work for me (well, the well-written ones) because the wizarding world is supposed to be hidden, so it's believable that a character from a magic-less fandom doesn't know it's there in his own world. Some fandoms are trickier to merge than others, but there's usually a way to make it work.
Something else I've noticed about crossovers, and that has to do with the last two points, is that many fans seem to think that crossover writers don't bother with canon or even logic - which isn't true at all. Just because one writes crossovers (even silly, humorous ones) doesn't mean there wasn't thought put into that fic. I'll admit it, most of my crossovers come from crazy ideas. But I put a lot of thought in the way to make them work, even if I'll end up with a comedy one-shot.
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Something else I've noticed about crossovers, and that has to do with the last two points, is that many fans seem to think that crossover writers don't bother with canon or even logic - which isn't true at all. Just because one writes crossovers (even silly, humorous ones) doesn't mean there wasn't thought put into that fic. I'll admit it, most of my crossovers come from crazy ideas. But I put a lot of thought in the way to make them work, even if I'll end up with a comedy one-shot.
Yes, absolutely. I spend most of my fannish time in fandoms that are fairly tolerant of crossovers, but I still feel the need to make the crossover work in a coherent fashion, and to consider what the implications are if we assume that the universes are essentially the same -- how does this affect the history of each, for example. Even if I'm just tossing out a ficlet, I like to know what the implications are for the larger universe. I tend to start from "hey, wouldn't it be neat if X met Y!" but between that and an actual story there's all kind of thinking going on.
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(Anonymous) 2006-11-24 01:25 am (UTC)(link)(This is the first cross-over that I can remember working on that *didn't* start as a ficathon - deadlines and assignments.)
Annnnd now I remember that I never got back to you on your reply on the porus/rigid fandoms email. *has that open in open other window*
Genres which seem to acknowledge the desires of the author and readers too openly -- OC stories, AUs, various types of crackfic -- can meet with resistance from fans who don't share those desires.
Ehhh. I agree, but I think that's all of us, isn't it? I mean, we all don't like what we don't fancy, it's just that some things - like OTPs - are liked by tons of people and disliked by only a few, so the resistance gets drowned out. There are some people who really don't like the Impala, and would rather no more electrons get wasted writing stories that involve the boys driving. But you can't hear them bitch over the creak of the front doors, so few are they. (And plus, the rest of us going oh, be still my heart over Dean/Impala kinda drown out the heretics.)
What I "see" when I see a crossover is usually something comparable: analogous story types, similar situations, shared tropes or character types.
*thinks* For me, it's characters with resonance together - like Six and Harvey, who are both manipulative bastards who know more than they say, and that's beyond the invisible rabbit angle. Or, say Mark Vorkorsagan and the Ninth Doctor - both snarky, smart guys, without a home, and hauling a load of pain with them. Aeryn and River...both lost girls, in a way.
Universes or types of stories (quests, satire, etc) don't matter as much for me as characters do. I usually seem to handle the issue by having one universe encompass the other, and yet keep each separate. By contrast, in the original writing that I've done, I find that melding universes or at the least plotlines of two different characters greatly improves the story, the plot, and lessens the emo exposition while bouncing up the action considerably.
It hasn't worked like that for fanfic. In fact, it's the disconnect between SPN and BSG in the types of stories that's giving me fits. Of course, it would be a hell of a lot easier to meld the Ceiling Demon's plans with that of the Cylons if I had a *clue* what either one had in mind.
I think cross-overs, like other stories, work best when the writer keeps true to the characters, and tells the story as that character would see it. Which makes it harder to tell the mythology of the other universe, and makes cross-overs harder than single fandom stories. For me, this is in contrast to OCs, which for me are a lot easier to write than cross-overs.
*shrugs*
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. Now, when do we get more Blessing Against Thunder? *g*
- hg