So, I've stopped watching Downton Abbey two seasons ago. But as soon as I saw this crossovery, I knew I'd read it, and did with ever greater joy, for verily, idea and execution are golden.

Tony Stark Meets an Extremely Unimpressed Time Traveler, or, Thomas Barrow Makes a Surprisingly Good 21st Century Butler (87671 words) by Alex51324
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: Downton Abbey, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Tony Stark
Characters: Thomas Barrow, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: Time Travel, Butlers, Crossover
Summary:

In which Tony Stark ditches a boring party, makes an addition to the household staff, throws a much better party, and tries not to sexually harass his new butler.

Or,In which Thomas Barrow has a little trouble getting home from the pub, is generally unimpressed with many aspects of the 21st century, never thought of himself as a conservative dresser before, and may or may not be falling in lust with his new employer.

tl:dr: Thanks to time travel, Thomas Barrow becomes the Avengers' butler.

The one thing you have to handwave is that Downton Abbey is actually referenced in Iron Man III, complete with clips (Tony's chauffeur/bodyguard Happy Hogan is a fan), but otherwise, this is perfect. Not least because it uses the ensemble well, not just the two main characters, and has everyone in character. It's funny and touching in turns and the dialogue is golden.

Title: Magical Mystery Tours

Disclaimer: Harry Potter owned by J.K. Rowling, Buffy the Vampire Slayer owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemies, X-Men owned by Marvel. Beatles owned by themselves, and certainly unrelated to their fictional counterparts here.

Summary: Three fictional universes the Beatles didn't end up in, or: how they fared at Hogwarts, who the Vampire Slayer of the 60s and 70s and her Watcher were and why Timothy Leary was so sure the Beatles were mutants.

Rating: PG 13 solely for swearing, discussed drug use and discussed adultery.

Characters: Albus Dumbledore, Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Maureen Starkey, Chris O'Dell and Brian Epstein.

Spoilers: Some for the Harry Potter books (and Dumbledore's backstory), basic ones for X-Men: First Class (the movie, not the comic), and only premise ones for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Author's note: Started out as a meme reply and got away from me. Considering the sheer silliness and gen-ness of the premise, I think even utter objecters to RPF are safe to read it.

( Harry Potter )


( Buffy the Vampire Slayer )

( X-Men: First Class )

For leviathan0999:

( Hermione Granger (Harry Potter) and Sarah Jane Smith (Doctor Who/The Sarah Jane Adventures) )


For daybreak777:

( Morgaine (tv version of The Mists of Avalon) and Alicia Florrick (The Good Wife) )


For lakrids404:

( Debra Morgan (Dexter) and Xander (BTVS) )


For gehayi:


( Darla (BTVS and AtS) and Servalan (Blake's 7) )


For kathyh:

( Darla (BTVS and AtS) and Morgana (Merlin) )

Idle thought of the day: The recent anniversary release of Band on the Run reminded me that one of the people on the cover is Christopher Lee. Whom Paul McCartney knew since the Beatles were shooting A Hard Day's Night while Lee was simultanously shooting one of the Dracula movies elsewhere on the set.... Methinks Brian Epstein when wondering about the subject for a third Beatles movie missed out on a Dracula/Beatles crossover a la Abbot & Costello meet Frankenstein. Okay, not really; Brian had better taste than yours truly and wouldn't have gone for it. But still, the thought will not go away. One of the later Hammer films was an ill-advised attempt to bring Dracula into the Swinging London era anyway, only they tried to play it straight, which you really, really can't with such a combination. And come on, it's not like "Indian cult pursues Ringo because he's wearing their holy ring" is less silly a plot than "the Beatles on their latest tour, in need of overnight quarters, end up on a castle in Transsylvania".

The glower contest between George and Christopher Lee alone would have made it worth it.

Since I am in a silly crossover mood, have some silly crossover vids.

( Lots of superheroes, Stephen Colbert, Conan O'Brien and Paul McCartney await )

Academic Pursuit is one result from the Babylon 5 Rare Pairings story and is actually a Crusade fic, starring Max Eilerson (that's him on my icon) and Dureena. Sparkling dialogue, both completely in character, and I love it to bits.

new Battlestar Galactica: The Day I Met You: the five ways that Ellen might've met Saul. Set pre-show, naturally, no spoilers, and such a great take on my favourite Edward Albee couple not written by Edward Albee, the Tighs. Keep your pilots of any nature, these two are my BSG love story of choice. (Well, followed by Baltar/Six in all her guises.)


Chosen is a lovely Alias/Carnivale crossover ficlet written for me by kangeiko, in which those two men of faith, Arvin Sloane and Justin Crowe, encounter each other.

Now, this was written as the result of the recent relationship meme. I had written my take for kangeiko earlier, about Connor (AtS) and Caleb (American Gothic) . Now, sinister seducer that she is, she wants me to expand on that and write Connor/Caleb. But a) I can't write AG fanfic - it would necessitate Southern accents, and I can't write accents in English, b) I can't write grown up Caleb in a serious fashion as long as I have the image of the kid in my brain (perhaps checking out images of Lucas Black today would help?), c) I'm not sure the world would be save with that combination (whaddaya mean I'm a messed up relationships addict?). So clearly all of this saves me from the temptation to ignore my real life obligations for the evil lure of fanfic right now. *am ignoring that I've been writing Connor/Harry Osborn for over a year now at theatrical_muse...*

As the Multiverse stories, or rather their authors, are revealed now, I can 'fess up: I wrote "Pretty in Pink", a Firefly/Babylon 5 crossover, and "Coming in from the Cold", a Deep Space Nine/ Babylon 5 crossover. Of the two, "Pretty in Pink" was more troublesome to me, because Inara and Vir are so nice, polite and sensible characters, and I'm doing better if at least one of the people I'm writing about is a bastard. So imagine my delight when getting the second assignment, because that one asked for Garak and Bester. Which just had to be written.

As for the other Multiverse stories, my guesses about the authors turned out to be right - I figured astrogirl2 for "Travel Light" (great Dr.Who/Farscape with Stark as a prominent character) and kangeiko for "Take care of yourself for me" - the lyrical style and the Briar Rose reference gave it away. (I also had an inkling Andraste might have written mine, but wasn't completely sure about that one.)

***

Babylon 5-wise: hobsonphile started her DraconCon report, and has a great theory why the Minbari and the Centauri don't appear to have an equivalent of the Psi Corps. Read and discuss, people! It makes perfect sense to me.

***

My Jake Sisko story is up here, freed of two grammar mistakes by kathyh.

Okay, before I dive back into the wonderful present of new stories which is the Multiverse 2005, a first few recommendations for you, gentle reader.

Battlestar Galactica/Star Trek: TNG: "I Shall Be Made Thy Music". This was the story written for yours truly, and I'm absolutely delighted with it. Gaius Baltar and Six meet God, or the next best thing, which in the ST universe is Q. Q has an offer. And Baltar is his self-centered, oh so human self.


Dr. Who/ ST: Deep Space Nine: "An Element of Blank". The Ninth Doctor on my other favourite space station, trading past lives, crimes and losses with Jadzia Dax. Love it to bits.

Dr. Who/ Farscape: "Travel Light", on the other hand, is my (still) favourite Doctor and Companion team, the Seventh Doctor and Ace, in a huge sprawling epic that takes place in the Unchartered Territories, post- Peacekeeper Wars. Where they encounter Pilot, Stark, and a revolution. One of two stories where I think I can guess the author. Of course, author-guessing is part of the fun in these ficathons.

Firefly/Babylon 5: Another big story, and a fantastic River pov. Wonderful, poetic language. An intriguing rendition of Jayne. And Talia Winters, the B5 character who ends up in the FF'verse, makes me wonder why I hadn't thought of the fact FF could be set hundreds of years post-B5 without a problem. Go and read "Take Care Of Yourself For Me".

Blake's 7/ Farscape: Farscape gives us as many canon AUs as we want in form of the Unrealized Realities, and they're put to ingenious use here exploring one Roj Blake, in "Tunnel Visions". Blake (sans Avon) does not get so much fanfiction attention, so I'd be delighted about a Blake-centric story in any case; this one is a treat.

Battlestar Galactica/Firefly: "Resting Place". Set in early season 2 of BSG, during the week when ( spoiler ). It so happens that Serenity has ended up in the fleet, and you bet Captain Reynolds isn't fond of martial law. On the other hand, he's not too keen on new passengers, either. This is the only BSG story (that I've read so far) to feature my favourite character, Laura Roslin, but I'd have loved it anyway, for it's great rendition of the entire Serenity crew plus Lee Adama and Roslin.


Now I must check out whether my own two babies have received feedback. And get back to reading. Excuse me.

While we're all waiting for the Multiverse 2005 stories to be released, a few not too original thoughts about crossovers, and what makes them work, or not.

To me, the trickiest part of a crossover is how it handles the exposition question. Because obviously, if you let characters from show A meet characters from movie B and repeat all the essentials about both worlds in either dialogue or narrative voice, you're boring your readers, who presumably already know either show A or movie B, or both. On the other hand, some essential knowledge has to be conveyed, not just for the readers but for the character's sake. A character who ends up in an entirely unfamiliar environment and doesn't question what the hell is going on is implausible.

In last year's Multiverse stories, one of my favourite crossovers was a Firefly/Farscape one, "Crosses and Naughts". It is set in the Firefly universe, and has at its core Mal Reynolds meeting Aeryn Sun, one of the main characters from Farscape. Now, the author doesn't make the mistake of letting Aeryn tell Mal her entire history, complete with descriptions of the FS gang and the political backstory of the Unchartered Territories. It would be out of character for Aeryn, and it's not necessary for the story; I believe that if you haven't seen a single episode of Farscape, you still get a good idea of what Aeryn is like, and can make some educated guesses about her background and what happened to her, based solely on Mal's observations and reactions. Conversely, Mal is a character who talks more but is actually even less inclined to tell really painful and important things about himself to anyone. However, the story is written in his pov, and so we find out a bit of what is haunting him - when it's appropriate for him to think of it in terms of storytelling. Bits of backstory that do not matter for this story, like, say, the crews encounters with Saffron, do not get mentioned. (That's another danger of crossovers - the writer liked episode X so much episode X gets namechecked even though it has squad to do with the subject of the story)

Another difficulty of crossovers is that different fictional universes have different rules. And sometimes they appear to be incompatible... at first glance. In this particular example, Firefly, like the new Battlestar Galactica, doesn't have Aliens. Farscape practically consists of them, with just one human in between. However, Aeryn's species, Sebaceans, look human, and thus a lengthy "non-human lifeforms do exist? No, really?" scene for Mal is superfluos. Had the challenge been for him to meet Chiana or D'Argo, that would have been another matter.

Leaving aside space shows for a moment, one of the most ingenous crossovers I remember reading was a Harry Potter/BTVS one by marinarusalka in which young Rupert Giles and Ethan Rayne stumble into the last war against Voldemort in the early 1980s. Magic in HP is quite a different thing from magic in the Buffyverse (where practically anyone can learn how to use at least some of it, though it takes talent and practice to manage more than a few tricks). marinarusalka made that difference work for her not by ignoring it but by using it; in her story, both Dumbledore & Co. and Voldemort get interested in Giles and Ethan because these two use magic not bound by the rules of the wizarding world. I loved it.

Now, back to waiting for the release of a whole new bunch of crossovers...