Poll: Crossovers, Oh My

[thefourthvine]

Recently, I was moderately flabbergasted to come upon a Highlander x Yami no Matsuei crossover. I had one of those moments of staring blankly at the computer screen, trying to figure out if I had experienced a sudden linguistic disconnect, and maybe in this language "Highlander x Yami no Matsuei crossover" actually meant "now we all get cake" or something, because surely such a thing, defined as I understood it, was totally impossible.

And then I read it, and realized that, no, it isn't impossible, and I was forced once again to reflect on the fact that Highlander seems to be a fandom that is just very open to crossovers. I know that's partly because, hey, you've got 5,000 years of mostly unfilled Methos backstory, and who is to say he didn't pick up a young Christopher Keller in a gay bar? He could have! He could also have spent fifteen years traveling around with Doctor Who. I mean, it's not like he'd necessarily bring either of those things up in conversation. But also, just, the Highlander universe seems to be unusually smooshy - it is totally willing to cozy up to, maybe even move in with, other canons, as I'm reminded every time the HL newsletter comes out and most of the new stories are crossovers.

Naturally, I got to wondering: what other fandoms are particularly crossover-friendly? And that led, inevitably, to thoughts of those fandoms that are much, much harder to work into crossovers. Which led to thoughts of AUs, which in turn took me to a terrifying meta place, and Best Beloved had to come talk me down. "How about a poll?" she said. "Polls are fun! And, also, you can probably finish one before you fall asleep." (Whereas with actual meta - at the rate I'm currently finishing stuff, I'd have it ready for posting in, um, 2012 or thereabouts, assuming no delays for rain.)

So perhaps you would like to write my meta for me? I offer ticky boxes as incentive!

[Poll #1177790]

Comments

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

God, I can't believe I forgot Quantum Leap. That pretty much wins for anything set on Earth within Sam's lifetime, though you'd have to go a little to convince me of other settings.

The X-Files is great for crossovers with sci-fi shows because you can just have Mulder & Scully investigating whatever weird phenomena are happening (and if it requires ignoring the big conspiracy plotline, I am completely OK with that). The Chronicle had the potential to be a great crossover vehicle for roughly the same reason -- it was a show whose premise was basically, "What if the stories reported in the tabloids were actually real?" Not the celebrity gossip stories, but the paranormal ones. Sadly, the show only lasted 13 episodes.

[boogieshoes.livejournal.com]

will come back to read the comments later, but just wanted to mention The Sentinel. back in the day, we claimed you could cross The Sentinel over with *anything*, and make it work... it's probably still true.

i also wanted to say that i find crossing live-action fandoms with anime/ cartoons/ comics especially difficult to visualize when reading, unless, like X-Men, there's a live-action counterpart to imagine. this is at least in part because anime and comics don't have to follow real-world rules about anything, whereas a live actor-series or movie may involve all sorts of magic and physics-defying stunts, but it still has an underlying 'real-world' reality to it. like just the fact the actors are *alive* give it more 'possibility energy' than an anime gets.

oddly, crossing live-actor series with books doesn't affect me the same way.

-bs

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I firmly believe anything can be crossovered. Provided the people are hot.

I use the Shallow Defense for that one.

[pepperjackcandy.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those awful people who likes crossovers based on common surnames. Like Harry Potter being adopted by his cousin Laura (on his father's side), leading to him and Lana being raised as siblings in Smallville.

Would then-nine-year-old Harry stop his cousins from being pancaked and shake the world of Smallville to its very foundations? Or would he, too, end up being adopted by Aunt Nell?

Stuff like that.

[ars-longa.livejournal.com]

You forgot the (probably) most crossover-unfriendly fandom. Star Wars. They are just all but impossible to believably mix with anything.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I love crossovers. And Methos. So give me a xover with Methos and I'm a happy girl. My favourite idea for a loopy xover has always been Highlander/Gilligan's Island. No idea why, but the concept tickles me :) Replace the Skipper with Kronos and Gilligan becomes his 'little buddy'. Okay, I'll stop now [g]

[azrathiel.livejournal.com]

Crossovers are peculiar in that they rarely work, and not becuase the canon of a particular fandom doesn't allow it (because lets admit it, we rabid fans could make almost anything work if we wanted it to) but because characterisation and plot timing are so often ignored.

Most crossovers seem to be written purely for the author. Who really doesn't care if the timing is crap, and hey we just skipped several pages of crucial dialogue, because, see over there Harry Potter and Colonel Sheppard are snogging and isn't that *hot*.

That said, I have read some really brilliant crossovers, the best of which was (despite the polls results to the contrary) a Lord of the Rings crossover. Admittedly it was with Buffy, which I suppose we have all agreed is as pliable as anything... though I am waiting to see it sucessfully crossed with Doctor Who...

[americangrl69.livejournal.com]

I think really any fandom could be turned into a crossover. Though there are some that are way too over done it's annoying. Like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. I swear every fandom has at least one crossover for one or both of those fandoms.

Though my favorite crossovers are Buffy/Dark Angel and Supernatural/One Tree Hill. I've actually created my own little verse for Buffy/Dark Angel. Totally au but it's fun. And who's to say Max didn't meet Buffy when she lived in LA.

The most popular crossovers I've seen lately are SPN/OTH and SPN/BTVS. Though most of them are shipper fics but it's still fun. Some of the ships that come from those crossovers are pretty popular. Like Faith/Dean.

Some fandoms I think that could work well with just about any fandom are Heroes and Dark Angel. You'd be surprised just how many Dark Angel crossovers there are. I've seen it crossed with Buffy, Roswell, Alias, Supernatural, Smallville, and even X-men. But I think overall it all depends on the writer and if they can make it believable or not.

[ratherbe4gotten.livejournal.com]

Just dropping you a note to say hi seeing as I just friended you.

I found your journal after going back to read some of maygra's TFATF fanfic in a fit of nostalgia... and finding a link to your lj there. It seems you have posts on a lot of the fandoms I lurk around the edges of, and I'm always looking for good fic to read, so I thought it might be worth sticking around. I hope that's okay?

[zincpiccalilli.livejournal.com]

Damn. Too late to participate. I love me a good crossover though, so here's my two pence anyways. ^^;;

I'm rather of the opinion that any fandom can be well crossed with any other fandom given enough creativity and flexibility. The latter is particularly important, I feel. For writer and reader both. What are your perceptions of the canons involved? How far are you willing to bend these interpretations?

For example, LOTR, which seems to be the uncrossable fandom of choice, becomes malleable, IMO, if you follow the convention of many modern day LOTR AUs and fold Middle-earth into a distant, (previously) obscure part of our past. There's the question of whether the straight road can be traveled in both directions or even if Valinor remains separate from the world. Tolkien's Elves certainly have lifespans long enough to plausibly still be around. As for the mortal characters, well, there's reincarnation. Leitmotifs in the Great Music of the Ainur maybe, lol.

Trying to cross the main body of LOTR with anything else is difficult, I admit. Given the number of fandoms open to inexplicable time- and dimension-hopping, however, I think the mechanics of such a crossover aren't, in fact, hard so much as folks have trouble integrating the unique, sort of legendary tenor of Tolkien's universe with other, more, er, irreverent sources.

Say, LOTR/POTC, which quite a few people picked as either the head-splittingest crossover imaginable or their secret dream crossover of insanity. It's been done at least once and, IMO, not badly at all: Kings of the Sea (http://www.dreamyaspirations.co.uk/fiction/tortuga/kings.htm), by torn_eledhwen. A (relatively) easy matter of finding the right LOTR angle—the Corsairs of Umbar, the Oathbreakers, Saruman's clever devices, etc.—relative to POTC.

Of course, you can always just be silly: CSI Goes Deep (http://trickster.org/arduinna/csix.html), by aka_arduinna. XD

I think one fandom especially friendly to crossovers that hasn't yet been mentioned is the anime xxxHolic. Actually, xxxHolic is a perfect vehicle to get otherwise stubborn fandoms together. What with a character, Yuuko, whose abilities include granting wishes (at a cost) and sending people to other times and dimensions...

Um. Don't have much else to add, meta-wise, so I'll throw links at you instead!

Someone mentioned joisbishmyoga's The Best Defense (http://foreverfandom.net/viewstory.php?sid=44) (and sequel A Good Offense (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2419955/1/)) for HP/YYH. I'd also recommended the following: Thicker Than Water (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1557551/1/), Higher Learning (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2101819/1/), Flawed (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2435415/1/), Keeping Quiet (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2991697/1/), Escapade (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3328325/1/). All at ff.net and, IMO, very instructive as to the perhaps surprising compatibility of these two fandoms.

On the ubiquity of crime investigation: Five Homicides Never Investigated (http://www.inlovewithnight.com/fivehlots.html), by inlovewithnight.

My probably all-time favorite SW crossover: Starcrossed (http://www.daltonator.net/fanfics/stravo.html). The writing's rough in spots, IMO, but I simply can't turn down a 90-chapter epic (WIP!) that starts with a dark Luke, turned in ESB, leading an Imperial strike force through a wormhole straight into Star Trek and escalates to a battle royal for galactic domination between too many factions to count.

Finally, the three crossovers or fusions I dream of these days are a historically accurate SGA American Civil War AU set in the western theater, a M7(ATF)/SG-1/SGA gunrunning plot that works with how everybody's in Colorado, and a Pern rewrite of SGA that capitalizes on the sci-fi basis and future of McCaffrey's work. Dragons as a means of FTL travel in space! Seriously.

[saara-zaara.livejournal.com]

Hmm, better late than never ;D My two cents on the resistant fandoms - LotR is sort of the obvious one because of the self-containment of the 'verse, but House is similar in that respect because of the narrowness of the central characters outlook & the excessive focus on House as the center of its universe. The only character I've truly successfully seen x-ed from that fandom is Chase, driven by the fact that he's the character who in canon believes that there's something out there & he falls very naturally into SG-1, Firefly, Supernatural etc etc environments as a result.

Similar rules extend to AUs too, I doubt I've read more than a handful of true non-Princeton focused AU that are completely persuasive in the House-verse - not that there are many to start with, breaking House or most of the characters away from the PPTH setting & its internal logic seems pretty near impossible in the same way it is for LotR.

One thing about Who though - though it works well for x-overs, I don't find it amenable to AUs - a Doctor without the TARDIS & time travel is difficult to place persuasively in an AU, but there's nowhere time travel can't take him for a x-over.

For AUs (particularly of the crack variety), in my book the crown has to go to SGA. Cookie slash? Odd sock slash, unicorns, polar bears, Rodney as a vitriolic David Letterman, John as PotUS - they got it, particularly of the McShep variety & rather mind bogglingly it almost all works at some level. The fandom is also particularly fond of Harlequin AUs as well as movie transpositions (see reel_sga, & the gay pr0n for girls AU - I've not seen anything like this last elsewhere).

That said, there's a My Little Pony/House AU (all the House characters are ponies) which 1) works & 2) is absolutely pricelessly funny. The exceptions always prove the rule ;D