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

[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