Crossovers: They Need To Make Sense (Especially in Fanfics)

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This post is my personal take on crossover stories and what I consider good crossover and bad crossover.

Good crossovers need to do four things

1. Logically blend two or more series together.

2. Characters must interact logically and their development within the plot should be organic, especially if the first point is well adhered to.

3. The crossed series must be affected by the others and their shared plot line should be as much benefit to the characters in universe as it does for the writer.

4. The original story parts must serve to act as glue tying the crossed plots together in such a way they are more than just spackle to fill the cracks of the plot, they must also serve to enhance the crossover plot as a whole.

With that in mind, let's examine a good crossover series, the Drunkard's Walk series by Robert Schroeck.

Bob's series is based on a time and space traveling hero who lands in different canons of other series, and his presence has an effect on changing the base canon of that series, and in the process the hero develops as a character based on what he encounters.

Given the Quantum Leap like impetus that kicks off the raison d'etre for Bob's character being the protagonist, Point 1 is covered. Point 2 is covered by the hero being forced to not only acclimate hismelf to the world he is in, but he must also make his own changes to the base canon of that world, while still adhering enough to The Stations of the Canon at first so that by the time his hero's interference in that canon starts noticeably throwing things off the rails, the plot has progressed in such a way that the changes have become organic to the plot progression, which Bob manages to do quite well, especially in the Bubblegum Crisis story "Robot's Rules of Order" which proceeds to follow the canon for a time while slowly but subtlety changing to account for the hero's interference so that by the time the canon has been noticeably altered, it comes off more as organic plot development and less a blatant attempt at a Fix Fic.

Point 3 is also satisfied because while Bob's character makes changes, he is both affected by those he encounters and their own perspective changes based on his interactions. There is no bad self insert character Mary Sue hijinks here, as many of Bob's hero's interactions often go badly and by the time the canon elements start to become seriously disrupted by his presence, he's often made as many friends if not even more enemies, and the lives of all the characters involved have been put in real danger more than once.

Point 4 is also satisfied because his hero, Douglas Q. Saignoir, hails from a universe where his dimensional adventures have had a real impact, and events from that universe still continue to have an impact, and it's this that often causes the conflicts, as the canon antagonists and sometimes even the protagonists find themselves at odds with Doug's goals, which are to return home, often when his attempts to do so upset the applecart of the canon he is residing in at the time, and the characters of each respective canons noticeably change in realistic fashion due to all the conflict that drives the crossover, and Bob maintains a strong sense of continuity throughout, so it avoids coming off like a self insert fantasy Canon Defilement exercise.

By contrast, I consider Undocumented Features a bad crossover.

On the first point, it fails quite badly. Some series are meshed very, very poorly, especially Star Trek and Babylon 5, which, due to a lot of conflicts regarding the internal politics and alignments of factions in both shows, not to mention how the Trek Federation and B5's version of Earth and it's relation to interstellar politics simply do not match up, and what you get is series that tries to pick and choose elements from both shows while trying to ignore what doesn't work, often leading to story holes where Earth is in an antagonist role like it was at one point in B5 while still trying to reconcile the "good guy" status of the Federation and its characters, as Earth is a founding member of the Federation, and hence the two series already have a glaring incompatibility.

Second, character interactions verge between logical at times, and other times nonsensical. In the Utena arc, while great pains were taken to have the characters from that series interact with the other characters (both crossover and original) in a mostly plausible manner, it became obvious the writer was forcing his love of music on characters from other canons simply because he wanted to stop and do a musical number every so often.

By contrast, Bob Schroeck did a much better job with his character, who has music based powers, often tried to draw his music from something that would fit the source canon, and made a point of keeping it's use plot relevant as much as possible. And most of all, it was never forced on other characters, who, in their source canons, weren't prone to whatever his tastes in music were at the time.

Point 3 was inconsistently applied in UF. While some canons were crossed over with attempts to make them make some degree of sense (like the Utena/Ah My Goddess crossover material), some material was just lazy wish fulfillment, namely ANYTHING to do with most of the mecha related content, where the author flat out cut and pasted what he liked together and threw out the rest, canon accuracy and plausibility be damned, he just wanted what he thought was cool to be around, and tossed any semblance of plot to make it all make sense down a well when it got in the way of wish fulfillment.

Point 4 is a trainwreck. UF telegraphed virtually every major plot twist, and whenever the author wanted to drop one storyline and start another, he'd neatly tie off one plotline (or leave it hanging to be picked up later), and since the author had a blatant self insert he wanted to give the appearance of not being a Mary Sue, he even inserted what had to be the most transparent attempt at cheap drama by taking his wife away at one point, particularly blatant because up to that point the self insert was really letting his Sueishess show, so the author, instead of either having written more subtle character development or avoiding this, opted instead to screw over his self insert in a blatantly obvious way, both to start a new plot arc and to try and make the reader forget the character was an obvious self insert.

On the whole, though, I won't say UF was a total waste of time. It did have some legitimately good ideas, and when the author was able to rein in his self insert Mary Sue, keep his musical tastes from clogging up the plot (to the point one chapter was essentially filler for the author to go on a musical binge), and actually tried to NOT ignore canon problems and tried to blend different canons using compatible elements and themes instead of cherrypicking what he liked, it was then quite enjoyable.

The conclusion to this compare/contrast is that a crossover hinges on Willing Suspension of Disbelief, specifically, the ability of the reader to find the crossover plausible without tripping their own bullshit filters and be so engrossed in what they are reading because the writer took extra care to make it all entertaining while being done in a way you could see it happening without making you feel like the writer put square plot pegs in round canon holes when trying to stitch it all together.

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