Crossovers: They Need To Make Sense (Especially in Fanfics)
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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. |
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. |
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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 |
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]]. |
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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 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. |
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By contrast, I consider [[Undocumented Features]] a bad crossover. |
By contrast, I consider [[Undocumented Features]] a bad crossover. |
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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" |
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" |
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status of the Federation and its characters, as Earth is founding member of the Federation, and hence the two series already have a glaring incompatibility. |
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. |
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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. |
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. |
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