On crossovers
Jul. 31st, 2004 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakTomorrow, the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
multiverse2004 stories will be unveiled, and I’m all aquiver with anticipation. You know, there was a time where I wasn’t that fond of crossovers – extremely sceptical towards them, as a matter of fact. Mostly because I had the misfortune of coming across some none too convincing ones first. Since then, some excellent writers have convinced me of the error of my ways.
So, what does a crossover need in order to work for me?
1) Good background knowledge of both worlds. Should be a given, but isn’t. In ye olde Highlander days, I used to find stories by the dozens where the author kindly informed her readers that she hadn’t really watched HL/ knew Methos only from fanfic/ knew only the Methos episodes, but hey, she had this neat idea etc.
2) On the other hand, not too much infodump. Recapitulating the crucial events of two canons in detail tends to bore the reader familiar with both or either. Admittedly, this is tricky. I admire crossovers which work even though one is familiar with only one of the fandoms, by giving just enough information about the character from the other show and their world. Granted, this is tricky. Where to draw the line? But that’s how I first came across Blake’s 7 - by reading a crossover. I was intrigued enough to want to know more about this old British show. (Even though I assumed Vila was female before pronouns were used, simply because of the name.*g* Given that I had Latin at school, I should have known better.)
3) No ooc-ness simply because one character is in unfamiliar surroundings. Doesn’t mean he/she shouldn’t react to the unfamiliar surroundings – after all, this character does not have the information the author has. But Buffy telling X all about being the Slayer within five minutes feels wrong even for the later seasons, when she’s more blasé about it. Same with any of the HL Immortals telling Y all about their status, and when Methos spills the Horseman beans, I start screaming.
4) Romantic pairings should be believable. This is another tricky area. Any imagined crossover has the problem that we simply don’t know whether the characters would have chemistry; we never saw them together, and we never will. But if a story gives me in-character reasons for the two people in question to jump each other’s bones, other than “they’re really pretty”, I’m all for it. (Exception: if the character in question is someone like James T. Kirk whom the show had going after pretty much everyone female with a pulse and not under his command, he doesn’t need much additional incentive to make a pass at character Y.*g*)
5) Difficulties at combining specific canons acknowledged. For example, the magic used in the Potterverse is clearly of a different type than the one used in the Buffyverse. So if I read a crossover which doesn’t even bat an eyelash at Harry & Co. coming across Tara or Willow who don’t need wands and didn’t get letters on their 11th birthday, my suspension of disbelief is overstretched.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marinarusalka, otoh, turned this difficulty into a virtue in her splendid crossover “The End of the Beginning”, in which Giles and Ethan become entangled in the last war against Voldemort precisely because both sides look for a different type of magic.
6) New ideas. Not absolutely necessary – Liz Williams once wrote a great DS9/B5 crossover in which Garak meets Londo Mollari, which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to read another crossover using the same idea. But once I read a drabble byaltariel1 which managed to cross LotR with Watership Down and am still agog with admiration at the ingenious idea. (Plus I’ll never look at Sam’s coney stew with the same eyes again.*g*)
My one big crossover turn-off: if characters from different shows played by the same actor meet and end up in bed. Which might be someone’s ideal sexual fantasy, but it certainly isn’t mine.
multiverse2004 stories will be unveiled, and I’m all aquiver with anticipation. You know, there was a time where I wasn’t that fond of crossovers – extremely sceptical towards them, as a matter of fact. Mostly because I had the misfortune of coming across some none too convincing ones first. Since then, some excellent writers have convinced me of the error of my ways.So, what does a crossover need in order to work for me?
1) Good background knowledge of both worlds. Should be a given, but isn’t. In ye olde Highlander days, I used to find stories by the dozens where the author kindly informed her readers that she hadn’t really watched HL/ knew Methos only from fanfic/ knew only the Methos episodes, but hey, she had this neat idea etc.
2) On the other hand, not too much infodump. Recapitulating the crucial events of two canons in detail tends to bore the reader familiar with both or either. Admittedly, this is tricky. I admire crossovers which work even though one is familiar with only one of the fandoms, by giving just enough information about the character from the other show and their world. Granted, this is tricky. Where to draw the line? But that’s how I first came across Blake’s 7 - by reading a crossover. I was intrigued enough to want to know more about this old British show. (Even though I assumed Vila was female before pronouns were used, simply because of the name.*g* Given that I had Latin at school, I should have known better.)
3) No ooc-ness simply because one character is in unfamiliar surroundings. Doesn’t mean he/she shouldn’t react to the unfamiliar surroundings – after all, this character does not have the information the author has. But Buffy telling X all about being the Slayer within five minutes feels wrong even for the later seasons, when she’s more blasé about it. Same with any of the HL Immortals telling Y all about their status, and when Methos spills the Horseman beans, I start screaming.
4) Romantic pairings should be believable. This is another tricky area. Any imagined crossover has the problem that we simply don’t know whether the characters would have chemistry; we never saw them together, and we never will. But if a story gives me in-character reasons for the two people in question to jump each other’s bones, other than “they’re really pretty”, I’m all for it. (Exception: if the character in question is someone like James T. Kirk whom the show had going after pretty much everyone female with a pulse and not under his command, he doesn’t need much additional incentive to make a pass at character Y.*g*)
5) Difficulties at combining specific canons acknowledged. For example, the magic used in the Potterverse is clearly of a different type than the one used in the Buffyverse. So if I read a crossover which doesn’t even bat an eyelash at Harry & Co. coming across Tara or Willow who don’t need wands and didn’t get letters on their 11th birthday, my suspension of disbelief is overstretched.
marinarusalka, otoh, turned this difficulty into a virtue in her splendid crossover “The End of the Beginning”, in which Giles and Ethan become entangled in the last war against Voldemort precisely because both sides look for a different type of magic. 6) New ideas. Not absolutely necessary – Liz Williams once wrote a great DS9/B5 crossover in which Garak meets Londo Mollari, which doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to read another crossover using the same idea. But once I read a drabble by
altariel1 which managed to cross LotR with Watership Down and am still agog with admiration at the ingenious idea. (Plus I’ll never look at Sam’s coney stew with the same eyes again.*g*) My one big crossover turn-off: if characters from different shows played by the same actor meet and end up in bed. Which might be someone’s ideal sexual fantasy, but it certainly isn’t mine.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 11:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 12:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 12:03 pm (UTC)#3: one of the Dr Who New Adventures was a Sherlock Holmes crossover, and poor Holmes suffered badly from no longer being the smartest person around (Mycroft was in the mix too).
I have to admit that crossing LotR with Watership Down was not my idea but Alawa (http://www.fanfiction.net/~alawa)'s. Hm, crossing LotR with A Christmas Carol was her idea too (I'd done a version before with Garak - and I got that idea from a B7 story in which Avon plays Scrooge's part... not an original bone in my body!).
And I hope to provide the world with another DS9/B5 Garak-Londo story in time :-D
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Date: 2004-07-31 12:26 pm (UTC)Yay for more Garak-Londo, though!
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Date: 2004-07-31 12:37 pm (UTC)Here's a question for you: someone asked me whether I thought the LotR/Christmas Carol story was a crossover, since it didn't include any characters from A Christmas Carol. I said I thought it was, since it used the plot ACC. But when I thought about it more, I realized there were other stories (e.g. my Anna Grant/Lola Rennt story) that I probably wouldn't call a crossover. How would you go about defining it?
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Date: 2004-07-31 02:51 pm (UTC)It does need a name of its own, but it isn't a crossover.
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Date: 2004-08-01 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 05:24 am (UTC)A story which takes the characters and/or background of one universe and place them into, make them interact with, the characters and/or background of another universe. (Borrowing plots is another category.) Most crossovers use both character and background, but I would still consider it a crossover if you took the characters from one universe and put them into the other universe without having to meet the other universe's main characters, if that other universe was sufficiently distinguishable. Like, say, writing a Highlander/Stargate crossover which explains what Methos was doing when the Stargate was buried -- that has Highlander characters and background, but it's only got Stargate background. Or doing the popular making-someone-immortal story, and not having the main Immortal characters in it, would be using the Highlander background but not the characters.
I'm not sure what it's called when you... write a parallel universe avatar crossover, for example, Sue Bursztinzki wrote a B7/Trek story which explored what the B7 universe's version of James T. Kirk would be like. Or my idea of writing a B7/Sentinel crossover by exploring what Jim and Blair would be like if they lived in the B7 universe. It's probably still a crossover, but a weak one.
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Date: 2004-08-01 07:08 am (UTC)Is Sue Bursztinzki's B7/Trek story online anywhere?
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Date: 2004-08-01 07:29 am (UTC)Yep, unless we can think of a better term.
Is Sue Bursztinzki's B7/Trek story online anywhere?
Not that I know of. I read it in Chronicles, forget which issue.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 01:36 pm (UTC)But what I want to know is: Is there a specific name for moving episodes from one series to another? I mean, my "Gand Candy" is a crossover because Blake & Co. show up to complicate the canon events of "Band Candy," but I'm working on B7's "Duel" as a Firefly episode.
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Date: 2004-07-31 02:03 pm (UTC)I'm amazed they didn't do that one (although they didn't really get a chance, I suppose).
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Date: 2004-07-31 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 01:49 pm (UTC)Heh. The doppleganger sex, my dear, is not for everyone. It does happen to be one of my things, though I'm still not convinced it can be done in a crossover story without seeming ridiculous.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 08:41 pm (UTC)Haven't Read Past the First Line Yet, But ...
Date: 2004-07-31 02:29 pm (UTC)I'm afraid you'll have to quiver a bit longer *g*.
Tomorrow is when most of the stories are coming in, except I doubt I'll actually get them all on the day. Then I have thirty-five stories or so of varying length to put into html code. Allowing delays for that and any stragglers (and I'd lay money that there'll be a few) it could be another four or five days before the website goes up.
And maybe I need to make that clearer to everyone involved.
Re: Haven't Read Past the First Line Yet, But ...
Date: 2004-07-31 02:54 pm (UTC)If you need help converting stories to HTML, you might try using txt2html, if you have Perl on your system.
</pimpage>
Re: Haven't Read Past the First Line Yet, But ...
Date: 2004-07-31 11:49 pm (UTC)I actually have a program that does that (and a few other things), it's checking the formatting on the headers and converting the Word documents that's taking the time. But thus far I've kept up with it.
Thanks for the tip anyway, though *g*.
Woe is me.
Date: 2004-07-31 08:43 pm (UTC)Re: Woe is me.
Date: 2004-07-31 10:02 pm (UTC)I am currently getting far more practice than I wanted at not strangling people *g*. But it should all be up within the week. I hope.
Re: Woe is me.
Date: 2004-08-01 02:31 am (UTC)Re: Woe is me.
Date: 2004-08-02 05:49 am (UTC)It would also substantially reduce the writer population in certain fandoms *g*. No, I shall restrain myself nobly.
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Date: 2004-07-31 02:51 pm (UTC)#1) Oh yeah. I hate that when it happens when the story isn't a crossover too. One can sometimes get away with having just watched a few episodes if the story is short, because one at least knows the concept and a short story is unlikely to trip over canon violations (such as altariel1's story here). But those who write stories never having seen the show should be run away from very fast.
#2) Indeed. If the information doesn't come out as a natural part of the story (usually in the dialogue), then we don't need to know. And we don't need story-notes that tell us everything about the shows either. Boring boring boring. Even worse, it's missing an opportunity, because part of the fun of a crossover can be in how the characters, in character, explain themselves. It was a discussion of this very point that prompted![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladyslvr to to write this.
#3) (rolls eyes) Oh yeah. Especially Methos running around telling everyone his real name and his real age. Geeze! He's spent the last however many years hiding this information, he only told Duncan because Duncan figured it out, he only told Amanda because Duncan was careless, he only told Richie because Duncan begged him to; he is not going to tell complete strangers!
#4) Another example of goes-after-anything-in-a-skirt are Jim and Blair of The Sentinel; usually one or the other of them seems to end up with the girl at the end of the episode.
#5) Yep. Them things is known as plot holes. Another example is Buffy/Forever Knight crossovers where they ignore that the vampires in each are incompatible: Buffyverse vampires don't have souls, yet the ones in Forever Knight clearly do. An explanation is due. Some would say those two universes are fundamentally incompatible, but I've read at least one good story where they did manage to make it work, because they acknowledged the difficulty and figured out an explanation.
#6) Well, I'm not so sure this is a problem, because I like to keep in mind the adage "there's no such thing as an original idea, only an original treatment". That's not to say that cool new ideas are unwelcome, nor that there aren't particular ideas that haven't been done to death. But it's like the post-end-of-series stories in Blake's 7: if the author is saving all the characters, they usually pick the simplest mechanism to do so, and it isn't stupid for them to do so -- it's what happens with the characters in the story that's interesting.
if characters from different shows played by the same actor meet and end up in bed.
Ewww! Ick! Ugh! Ewwww!
I'll add a (7) to that: vigniettes. Not that I haven't read some good crossover drabbles and shorts (a Doctor Who/X-Files one by Johnathan Blum springs to mind), but I also find it really annoying to read what is essentially an isolated scene that ought to be part of a bigger story, and people try to pass it off as a full story.
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Date: 2004-07-31 08:52 pm (UTC)About 7: yes, though I`d declare that a general rule, independent of crossovers. A drabble is a drabble is a drabble (ditto for a vignette), not a full story.
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Date: 2004-07-31 10:47 pm (UTC)True, but drabbles are more likely to be tasty morsels when they confine themselves to one universe. Drabbles and vigniettes lend themselves to missing scenes, which do work as missing scenes and don't have to be a full story. But with crossovers, they can't, by their nature, be a missing scene, so it's much more likely that they won't work.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 09:08 pm (UTC)And now, the actual post ...
Date: 2004-07-31 10:08 pm (UTC)(Exception: if the character in question is someone like James T. Kirk whom the show had going after pretty much everyone female with a pulse and not under his command, he doesn’t need much additional incentive to make a pass at character Y.*g*)
I'm surprised more people didn't ask for Kirk in their multiverse requests for just that reason. Chiana and G'Kar showed up quite a lot, though *g*.
There are some characters who, upon finding themselves in strange alien surroundings, would think 'there are whole species here I have not tried to have sex with! This must not be allowed to go on!'
Re: And now, the actual post ...
Date: 2004-08-01 02:33 am (UTC)Well, yes.*g* Hence the exception for said characters...
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Date: 2004-08-01 12:52 am (UTC)1. A given. You can make do with knowing only universe Y well, if you're doing the form of crossover that involves dropping character from universe X into universe Y (because then your lack of knowledge of universe X may go unnoticed) but you'll still need some knowledge of universe X, and the more knowledge, the better the story.
2. Also a given. Pretty much you have to assume that your audience for the story is people who are fans of both universes. You can use the brand new immortal gambit, as in More Deadly (http://hjc.akicif.net/storylist.html#Highlander), but even that gets old.
3. God yes. This is the Expository Lump, to be avoided or expelled.
4. Very good point. I actually think any crossover story which is impelled only by the reason that the writer thought the two characters would look so pretty together ought never to be written. (Which is my excuse for never writing Methos/Vecchio HL/DS slash.)
5. Agreed. And the vampires in Forever Knight are not the same as the vampires in Buffy. I read one crossover between them years ago, which wasn't very good in other ways, and which did mention the difference between the vampires, but without providing any satisfying reason for it.
6. New ideas: Not necessary at all in my view, at least in the "there are only 7 plots" sense. People do tend, often, to be pleased by the fact that no one has ever written this before: but originality is not the same thing as good writing, and they don't even have to live together.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 09:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-02 03:58 pm (UTC)And if characters by the same actor bedding each other turns you off, you might want to steer away from this challenge :)
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Date: 2004-08-03 03:07 am (UTC)The other callenge: quite. Especially since it also involves RPF.