December Talking Meme

[lunabee34]

lyr asked me: What's your little black dress fandom? You know, that fandom you find yourself trying to crossover with everything else - whether you actually write it or not.

I have several answers to this seemingly uncomplicated question. :)

In terms of writing, I am most compelled to crossover the Gateverse with all the fandoms ever. I really enjoyed figuring out how to mesh together the worlds of SG-1 and SPN in my Through the Rabbit Hole 'verse because so many elements of each source canon align very neatly.

In terms of reading, Gateverse and HP are the two fandoms I always search for new crossover fics. Gateverse crosses over so well with procedurals like NCIS because of the military/law enforcement connection. It also crosses over well with canons that are magical, like Buffy or SPN, and canons that are sci-fi based, like Star Trek or BSG. HP obviously works well with canons that contain magic, but I really enjoy when HP is crossed over with canons that aren't magical because part of the fun is A) watching the non-magical characters discover that magic is real and seeing how they deal with that revelation or B) exploring how the non-magical characters might behave if they were magical.

I think crossovers get an undeserved bad rap; I admit that the more fandoms involved in the crossover, the less cohesive the story is likely to be, and I don't enjoy reading those monolithic SuperWhoLockTrekVengers crossovers because they are ridiculous. I also think it's less difficult to cross over fandoms that are very different from each other than might be apparent. I get a great deal of satisfaction out of a crossover that neatly aligns elements from each canon (the Goa'uld have glowing yellow eyes? the demon who killed your mom has glowing yellow eyes?), but I also enjoy really unexpected canon choices, like Murder She Wrote + SGA (Jessica Fletcher is Rodney's aunt).

What do y'all think about crossovers?

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

You know, I am a very hard sell for crossovers because what I enjoy most about fanfiction is extrapolating from the onscreen chemistry we see.

I can certainly imagine how different characters from different shows might interact if they were thrown together, but for me that is a very very different thing that exploring or expanding upon the onscreen chemistry. And I enjoy it much less.

Another reason that crossovers are hard for me is that compared to most fans, I know very few canons. So most crossovers go right past me.

[lunabee34]

I hear you on the last one. I have to skip about two thirds of the HP crossovers because I don't watch Teen Wolf or Sherlock. LOL

I get what you're saying in your first point, but a good crossover story should do both things--show characters from different canons interacting but also explore the onscreen chemistry of the characters within each canon.

[princessofgeeks]

Right, exactly. But its the interactions between the characters who have never met onscreen that is less interesting to me. I'm not saying I never read crossovers -- I do, and I've written one ficlet that is a crossover, and I really enjoyed some of the Into A Bar ficlets I read.

But that's my impression.

Fandom loves them, though. They have only grown in popularity in the ten years I've been reading fanfic, it's my impression.

[lunabee34]

Ah, gotcha. Fair enough. :)

I do think they've gotten steadily more popular as you say.

[wendelah1]

I LOVE CROSSOVERS. The X-Files is my little black dress. I've written one with SG-1, and three for Fringe. I'm working on one for The Americans. I just finished rereading one of my favorites. It's an SG-1 crossover with Voyager, which is a neat trick. And now I can't find it...I need a better system.

[lunabee34]

Oh man. If you find that, I will read the hell out of it. Not nearly enough Gateverse/Any Trek franchise crossovers out there for my taste.

Got it!

[wendelah1]

The Other Side of the Gate by Jemima Pereira. And check out the oldskool website. I need to save her fic. It could disappear at any moment.

Re: Got it!

[lunabee34]

Sweet!

Thank you so much.

*goes to read*

[zulu]

I like crossovers because the fun part is figuring out how they could possibly work together--crack is always best when it's taken seriously, in my opinion.

[lunabee34]

I agree completely. I love when authors figure out connections or how to explain thing in Canon X with Canon Z logic. It's a wonderful puzzle.

[executrix]

I love crossovers SO MUCH. Apart from wanting to fix up my guys, there are so many ways that an outsider's perspective would solve problems that the insiders just can't.

Err, I've been watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (gotta use the punctuation because of my early fixation on Illya Kuryakin) and I might be thinking about a B7 fic with a drop-in Melinda May expy. Who might just kick Tarrant's ass and hook up with Vila.

Zulu: I agree about working out the implications seriously.

Princess: But what about fandom osmosis? I have a lot of info about shows I've never watched and in all probability never will.

[lunabee34]

The outsider POV (which is something I always enjoy) is one of the big draws for me. I like seeing how our intrepid heroes come off to others who aren't in the know.

Fandom osmosis doesn't work all that great for me in terms of fic enjoyment. I'm not interested in reading in fandoms where I'm not familiar with the source material unless it's a really tiny part of the fic or inconsequential.

[princessofgeeks]

I do have some fandom osmosis, but not as much as you'd think. I'm really an outlier here and I realize that.

Hi!

[executrix]

Hi princess!

I suspect everyone in fandom feels like an outlier, it's the pixelated equivalent of the other line always moving faster.

[lunabee34]

Naw, I don't think so.

I mean, hardly anyone on my flist is posting fic for or meta about stuff I'm watching or fannish about, and while I get some references from those shows, I mostly just don't read those posts. LOL So, I remain very ignorant about a lot of the juggernaut fandoms.

[princessofgeeks]

OK you're just trying to make me feel better, right? LOL.

Seriously -- I know at least 60 percent fewer fandoms than the average person on my F list. And certainly I don't know the popular crossover fandoms.

Or if I do know them, it's not an enticement for me to read.

I was intrigued by one of your commenters who said that they tend to crossover Firefly with everything, and honestly I do see that. :)

[lunabee34]

No, I think we're legit in the same boat. LOL

My flist is full of White Collar and Teen Wolf and Sherlock and Elementary and Hawaii 5-0 and Sleepy Hollow and etc., and I have no idea about any of that.

Firefly has some awesome crossovers. There's some really good Buffy ones. Exec has written a couple. And some good SPN ones; there's an amazing one where Dean ends up on Serenity that's by sevenfists, I think, and it's so so so awesome.

[lyr]

Thanks for answering! I have a soft spot for crossovers myself, though I think a lot of the time they're harder to write and so don't come out as smoothly as single fandom fics. That's why I find a really good crossover so impressive.

I can't say I read or imagine HP crossovers much, but I absolutely cross with the Gateverse. I'm also very much inclined to crossover with Firefly, I find.

[lunabee34]

OMG, have you read that SPN/Firefly crossover where Dean ends up on Serenity? I think it's by Sevenfists? So so sso good.

[lyr]

Read it, loved it, recced it at crack_van once upon a time. Excellent example of a crossover!

[torachan]

I'm really not a fan of crossovers because I feel like most series are contradictory in some way. Like I don't think HP is easy to cross with other fantasy/magical series at all, because everything has it's own magical system. Back in the day when I was super into Vampire Chronicles, people used to cross it with other vampire stuff, especially Buffy, but that was just terrible because Buffy vampires are totally different from Anne Rice vampires.

[lunabee34]

I completely get what you're saying, and I know that's a deal breaker for a lot of people.

I don't need the canons to be 100% compatible to enjoy it, and I have read some stories where the authors have come up with some neat ways to explain those discrepancies.

But YYMV, always. :)

[china_shop]

I'm invested in very few canons that are popular in fandom, so I rarely read crossovers, but I'm fine with the idea of them.

I've written a few Due South/BtVS, and a couple of White Collar/Leverage things, but all pretty short. Being monofannish limits my options. :-)

[lunabee34]

Due South. One day I will watch that. And the Sentinel.

And then I will understand everything there is left to know about fandom. LOL

[tamoline]

I can't say I'm utterly opposed to crossovers, given my first fanfic was one. (Granted one I'd copied off someone else, but still.) Done well, I think it can be really interesting, but then I'm all about winding characters up and seeing where they go - it's a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar that often works for me - whether that unfamiliar is a situation that stresses people/relationships, an AU or a crossover.

I haven't written that many crossover fics, but if I had to just choose one fandom to crossover with anything and everything, it'd have to be Amber. Partly because I'm way into that fandom from the roleplaying side of things - and the roleplaying game actively encourages and incentivises you to write fanfic for your game - and also because it's intensely easy to cross Amber with anything given that Amber contains an infinite multiplicity of worlds. I've only *actually* written two Amber crossover fics though.

[lunabee34]

Is that the Chronicles of Amber by that guy whose last name starts with Z? Book big enough to drop on a cat and smush it? LOL Josh loves that. I should read it at some point.

[tamoline]

Yes - The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. To be fair, the book big enough to drop on a cat and smush it is probably the collection of all 10 books rather than one big one. Each individual book is fairly small. And, say what you like about it, but the series is full of strong, vivid characters, including a few decent female ones - a lot of the fun of gaming in the setting is interacting with them. (It's also an incredibly incestuous setting, at least in the first five books. Pretty much anyone who does anything is all part of one family, and they're all doing it to each other. Also incestuous in the sense that the crush the main character has on his sister isn't exactly that subtextual, and he *does* get it on with someone he thinks might be his niece, and one of his brothers waxes lyrical about how it's such a shame that their father forbade brother-sister marriages.)

[lunabee34]

Yes! It is all of them in one book.

Actually Josh is here now and telling me he only made it about halfway through because he lost interest around book five.

[tamoline]

Well that's basically at the end of the first series, which is complete unto itself and rather different tonally to the second series.

I think the weird thing for me fannishly about Amber is that I'm not particularly interested about writing from the viewpoint of the characters from the book, generally, but from the perspective of people around them, quite often putative children, and generally with AU twists on the universe. It's probably because I'm coming at this from the perspective of the RPG, where that's the general setup. (But I was fond of one of my Good Wife/Amber fusions where the main character was a lawyer imported from Earth who got sucked into royal family drama and had to deal with all these, um, eccentric individuals in a somewhat foreign to her setting.)

[lunabee34]

Oh, I love outsider POV and peripheral characters. I tend to write fic from those POVs more often than not, so I get where you're coming from.