Useful Stuff: Professionals/The Chief Crossovers
I've found I've quite a kink for Professionals/The Chief crossovers. Especially where it turns out that Ray Doyle and Alan Cade are the same person. It's especially weird due to the fact I've never seen the Chief and I've no real intention of rectifying that deficiency
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I've seen other crossovers too, based on characters that MS has played. He's played so many coppers/law men that I suppose it really shouldn't be a surprise (he was actually the first one they offered The Equalizer to, Edward Woodward taking it after MS turned it down).
I recently saw one where Doyle and Judge John Deed were the same person. There appear to be a few writers hard at work on crossing Pros with ALL of MS' later shows... I even saw one with George Gently recently.
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Oh, and I LOVE the typo in your last sentence! *eg*
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I missed that!
(And now I've got to keep it, damnit!!!)
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I'm still waiting to find a Citizen Chauvelin/Bodie crossover. Now *that* would be mighty fine.
*G*
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Actually, George Gently is off in the time line too... IIRC, the story I saw had Gently meeting one of the lads' fathers.
Chauvelin/Bodie -- I'm sure someone will do it/has done it. *would pay good money* One of my friends, sunray45 recently posted vid clips of Doyle doing that lovely little "lip rub" thing he does when he's thinking along side MS doing the same thing as Chauvelin.
( ... )
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MS is *so* sexy as Chauvelin. Such a bad, bad boy... Mind you, he's pretty sexy as Doyle as well...
I've come across some tolerable AUs, but I still don't get the "Bodie and Doyle are really gentlemen in the 18th century"... A good Bodie/Chauvelin would definitely have to involve high crack and time travel/unpasturised cheese nightmares, I think.
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I've got nothing against the quality of the writing, a great number of AUs being really well written, but my personal tolerance level for AUs pretty much ends at what someone on a friend's LJ called "a simple divergence from canon." As you know, I don't really consider the Hookerverse to be full-on AU but it is a good example of where my tolerance level in the slide toward AU ends.
When they lift the characters and do the 18thC gentlemen type of thing for me, at least, it's no longer Bodie and Doyle and I'm just not interested. If I want to read "original" fiction then I'll read original fiction. I read the ff I read because I *want* to read about those particular characters. I guess that's why I find crossovers more palatable as the characters are still in character... Erm, yes, English *is* my first language, thanks for asking.
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Certainly reading in the Pros fandom has made me think quite a lot about AUs. I've come to accept quite a lot of the "playing with canon" AUs (Heat Trace by Helen Raven, where Ray never joins CI5, but still interacts with Bodie is an example, as is Waiting to Fall by Rob), which I never thought I would manage to accept. Plus cracky concepts are always good - that's why I'm a sucker for both Professional Dreamer by Pamela Rose and Twist of Fate by Dee.
But I am worried it's a slippery slope. Now I've started to accept a bit of flexibility of my canon, am I going to suddenly going to hanker after "Spaceman Doyle and Caveman Bodie have a fight - who wins?" stylee of fic?
*is afraid*
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When at least one of the lads is still CI5 I suppose I'd still consider that "a simple divergence from canon" and potentially be interested in reading it.
The thing is, my time to read ff is very limited, so I'd rather spend that time hunting down the things I *really* want to read rather than spending days reading something that doesn't really interest me... and, let's be honest here so many Pros AUs are novel length so we are talking days.
*is afraid for you* That is a *very* scary slippery slope and I'm not even prepared to go and glance over the edge. I've heard rumours about the Bodie/Doyle elf stories for instance and have not even glanced at one. Nooooooooooooo! I think the categories at the new Automated Hatstand will make such things easier to find... and easier to avoid! Oh, and I am of course laughing at myself as I've written the Autogenesis stories... although, brace yourself, I don't really consider those AUs either. Erm...
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It's very true - It's taken me a good four months to get through the fanfic on the Circuit Archive, avoiding (most) AUs and reading quite a lot. I think I've only managed one published book this year and I read all the time... Prosfic has eaten my life!!!
Oh hell, yeah. The Elf stories. There's lots of them and it's frightening. Cat!Doyle is almost as scary! Though the Dangermouse crossovers by Debra Hicks are quite amusing.
The line between crack and AU is a blurry one. It's not quite "it's an AU where getting a car pregnant is sensible", and I'm not quite sure why... but it makes sense to me. Probably about the same as girl!Sam being considered crack but not AU. I think? Or would you consider *those* to be AU?
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Well, I think LoM comes with a lot of the Doctor Who type leeway built in... not a "real" world. If Sam can talk to the TCG then why can't he wake up female or get a car pregnant? Apart from being "classic" crack formats, I think it doesn't cross the line into AU because we *still* build these things around their being the active CID officers they are in canon. Even in the Autogenesis nonsense I'll have things happen and have Sam think "they must have changed my medication." Actually, the only AU story I can point to in LoM land is the one where Sam & Gene are soldiers in WWI.
That's one of the reasons why I was so surprised to see so much AU in Pros and that is set so firmly in the "real" world. Again, I suspect it has to do with the fact that after so many years of fan fiction people were just desperate to try something different.
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A lot of the high-AU Pros fic (aka the stuff I won't touch with a barge pole) is old though, so I'm not sure it's an excuse in having to branch out. The Hunting series by Jane (one of the infamous elves AUs) is circa 1986, Arabian Nights, in which the boys don't even have their own names, is also from 1986. I could name lots, actually. It looks more like a general trend away from taking characters you know well and putting them in any situation to writing about the meaning behind scenes or reactions. Or, indeed, just torturing the characters for fun. (But as if I know *anyone* who would do such a thing...)
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You???? Torture characters for fun/therapeutic purposes? Heaven forfend!
See again, SG is fantasy so a lot more leeway. I've just never seen much AU in my wanderings through other "reality" based shows. And you're right, it did start early... Hmmm... maybe it has more to do with the fact that for a long time it was extremely difficult to obtain copies of the Pros vids and that a lot of the ff was written in response to other fan fic rather than to the show directly.
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