On The Subject Of Crossovers
OK, so, before I start, a minor bit of comm-pimping. I'm trying to jump-start my dead comm, inception_meta, and with that in mind just posted a new discussion topic over there, so anyone interested please go check it out!
Ahem. On to the topic at hand. This is also a meta of sorts, but a more general fanfiction writing one as opposed to one for a specific fandom. I'm hoping to continue with these - I have a few ideas already and I'm open to suggestions for others. But for this one, the subject is writing crossovers.
For me, writing crossovers is all about finding worlds that will gel together. This is why, for example, I have a terrible time crossing Harry Potter with any other magical fandom. Trying to make two drastically different sets of magical rules jive together is not an easy thing and as a rule I don't really have the patience to do it. And I can't simply throw them together because then the world doesn't make sense.
So, when I want to cross things over, that's the first thing I look for. What fandoms work together without too much screwing with canon? I've found, personally, that it's surprisingly easy to cross a "realistic" fandom like NCIS - set in basically the real world - with fandoms that are set in a world like ours, only with secrets aka The Masquerade. I'm thinking fandoms like Charmed, the Buffyverse, Doctor Who, Primeval, or Supernatural; fandoms where there's a different world under the mundane. In situations like this, usually the characters from the mundane fandom are for some reason being introduced to the supernatural/sci-fi element. There's two common ways to do this; one is that all the characters are new to it and for some reason have been exposed - if the mundane fandom is a crime drama, this is usually because of the case they're working. The other is for one character from the mundane fandom to already know about the other element, and for some reason they need to bring their compatriots in on it. The way I usually do this is through backstory; either the character was previously involved in the other world or someone they know was/is. Sometimes both.
Sometimes, of course, you're crossing different weird worlds. In that case, for me, I try and find a way of making different sets of rules work together. Sometimes that's the whole point of the story - as in my Primeval/Whoverse fic Ripple Effect. Primeval fans will know that at the end of season 1, there's a timeline change. Now, in the world of the Whoverse, that would almost certainly lead to a paradox situation, which as anyone who's seen the Ninth Doctor episode Father's Day can attest, is a Very Bad Thing. So I turned the timeline change to an accidental jump between realities, and proceeded to write a fix-it fic based on that. (It also snowballed into an eight-fandom crossover/fix-it 'verse with in-story AUs since there were, at last count, five different realities in different levels of play, but that's another story.)
I also started - but never posted - a fic involving NCIS and the Anita Blake universe. That one, in some ways, was less of a pure crossover and more of a fusion fic, in that I transplanted the NCIS characters to the Anita Blake world. They still had their regular jobs and though I never got that far, most events of the NCIS canon stayed the same, just set in a world where vamps and shapeshifters and other preternaturals live alongside regular humans.
So, what about you? How do you handle crossing fandoms, with their conflicting rules or whatever challenges I haven't had trouble with and so didn't think to mention? What about the other kind of fusion fic, where you replace the characters of one fandom with another? How do you decide who takes what spot? Which fandoms have you found cross well, either by writing it or reading it, and which should never be mixed on pain of death? (Er, so to speak; fandom can be serious business, but it's not worth killing for. Obviously.)
Ahem. On to the topic at hand. This is also a meta of sorts, but a more general fanfiction writing one as opposed to one for a specific fandom. I'm hoping to continue with these - I have a few ideas already and I'm open to suggestions for others. But for this one, the subject is writing crossovers.
For me, writing crossovers is all about finding worlds that will gel together. This is why, for example, I have a terrible time crossing Harry Potter with any other magical fandom. Trying to make two drastically different sets of magical rules jive together is not an easy thing and as a rule I don't really have the patience to do it. And I can't simply throw them together because then the world doesn't make sense.
So, when I want to cross things over, that's the first thing I look for. What fandoms work together without too much screwing with canon? I've found, personally, that it's surprisingly easy to cross a "realistic" fandom like NCIS - set in basically the real world - with fandoms that are set in a world like ours, only with secrets aka The Masquerade. I'm thinking fandoms like Charmed, the Buffyverse, Doctor Who, Primeval, or Supernatural; fandoms where there's a different world under the mundane. In situations like this, usually the characters from the mundane fandom are for some reason being introduced to the supernatural/sci-fi element. There's two common ways to do this; one is that all the characters are new to it and for some reason have been exposed - if the mundane fandom is a crime drama, this is usually because of the case they're working. The other is for one character from the mundane fandom to already know about the other element, and for some reason they need to bring their compatriots in on it. The way I usually do this is through backstory; either the character was previously involved in the other world or someone they know was/is. Sometimes both.
Sometimes, of course, you're crossing different weird worlds. In that case, for me, I try and find a way of making different sets of rules work together. Sometimes that's the whole point of the story - as in my Primeval/Whoverse fic Ripple Effect. Primeval fans will know that at the end of season 1, there's a timeline change. Now, in the world of the Whoverse, that would almost certainly lead to a paradox situation, which as anyone who's seen the Ninth Doctor episode Father's Day can attest, is a Very Bad Thing. So I turned the timeline change to an accidental jump between realities, and proceeded to write a fix-it fic based on that. (It also snowballed into an eight-fandom crossover/fix-it 'verse with in-story AUs since there were, at last count, five different realities in different levels of play, but that's another story.)
I also started - but never posted - a fic involving NCIS and the Anita Blake universe. That one, in some ways, was less of a pure crossover and more of a fusion fic, in that I transplanted the NCIS characters to the Anita Blake world. They still had their regular jobs and though I never got that far, most events of the NCIS canon stayed the same, just set in a world where vamps and shapeshifters and other preternaturals live alongside regular humans.
So, what about you? How do you handle crossing fandoms, with their conflicting rules or whatever challenges I haven't had trouble with and so didn't think to mention? What about the other kind of fusion fic, where you replace the characters of one fandom with another? How do you decide who takes what spot? Which fandoms have you found cross well, either by writing it or reading it, and which should never be mixed on pain of death? (Er, so to speak; fandom can be serious business, but it's not worth killing for. Obviously.)