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My story, Sympathy for the Devil (Dead Zone), is a great look at Johnny from Bruce's point of view, and as a bonus incorporates the coming apocalypse. You could wonder, at the end, whether Stillson or Johnny is the devil; very few bad guys think of themselves as bad, and this story suggests a reason Stillson isn't one of the few.
I haven't read LJ all day, nor have I read too many stories yet, but I have noticed in the ones I did read a number of crossovers with more popular fandoms -- Calvin & Hobbes, Nip/Tuck, Real Genius (blink and you'll miss it), and another. (ETA: also a witty Brimstone story with a Wolfram & Hart name-check.) (ETA2: and a Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell crossover with Patrick O'Brien.) Plainly, Yuletide is an endeavor that can only be sustained by a multifannish community, but I don't remember so many crossovers from years past. I wonder if this has anything to do with LJ and the way we're all multifannish now. My reactions were different for each one: I thought the Calvin & Hobbes story was fantastic up until the crossover, which to me detracted from the wonderful story of how Calvin grew up without losing Hobbes. The Nip/Tuck story worked because it was a crossover; the author did a bit of borrowing from one show's canon to create a scenario for N/T that was hilarious on the surface but extremely creepy underneath. (Extra crossover points for taking the title from a third show.) The Real Genius story works either way because the crossover is barely there and just works as a wink and a nod.
Thoughts on crossovers as the new ground state of fandom?
I haven't read LJ all day, nor have I read too many stories yet, but I have noticed in the ones I did read a number of crossovers with more popular fandoms -- Calvin & Hobbes, Nip/Tuck, Real Genius (blink and you'll miss it), and another. (ETA: also a witty Brimstone story with a Wolfram & Hart name-check.) (ETA2: and a Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell crossover with Patrick O'Brien.) Plainly, Yuletide is an endeavor that can only be sustained by a multifannish community, but I don't remember so many crossovers from years past. I wonder if this has anything to do with LJ and the way we're all multifannish now. My reactions were different for each one: I thought the Calvin & Hobbes story was fantastic up until the crossover, which to me detracted from the wonderful story of how Calvin grew up without losing Hobbes. The Nip/Tuck story worked because it was a crossover; the author did a bit of borrowing from one show's canon to create a scenario for N/T that was hilarious on the surface but extremely creepy underneath. (Extra crossover points for taking the title from a third show.) The Real Genius story works either way because the crossover is barely there and just works as a wink and a nod.
Thoughts on crossovers as the new ground state of fandom?
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slightly OT...
I'm a huge crossover fan and one of the things I think they do (for better or worse) is requiring some form of fannish shorthand, some way to remind people quickly of who these people are, to sketch them when it's not your primary fandom...I don't know if that's better or worse, it's something thst happens in AUs as well, and both seem to be a matter of taste (i for one love both!), but it creates a different story, I think...
ihave some thoughts about fannish archetypes and the way meta and vidding have made all of fandom their source text but i'm not sure yet where these thoughts are going...except i think you have a point :-)
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It reminds me of when I was little and would throw my Strawberry Shortcake and Hollie Hobbie dolls in with my Barbies. In the steamy universe of the playroom, anything went. Just because Strawberry and Hollie were 2/3 Barbie's size and technically minors was no reason to keep them from trying to stealing Ken away, if they could. (This being my innocent pre-slashy days, before I realized Ken was really lusting after my lone, inherited GI Joe.)
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(And I *did* miss the Real Genius one, even after going back and LOOKING for it, so now I need you to explain the reference to me, please!)
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and i love the idea of a safety net, kind of a default where you're familiar not only with character but universe and stule???
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And I think not so much style as character and motivation, which for me are always the parts I have to write my way towards, more so with new-to-me characters.
(Plus, obscure references are fun to add, and fun to discover...)
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hmmmm, so not style? still like the blankie image (or is it a stuffed tiger for some of us??? :-)
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Definitely a blankie, I think -- but looking at the crossovers Rivka pointed to, they're very much told in a voice that fits the fandoms they're written for, rather than making me think "oh, this is written for that other fandom," with the possible exception of that C&H epilogue.
I've been thinking a lot about style in another context, far too disconnectedly for me to make sense of it here (and I've been trying, and deleting, for a little while now!) so that's also part of why I'm resistant to using it here as well.
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oh, i'm always interested in style! maybe b/c i always have to work to notice it...now i'm very curious about your post :-)
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There was also a throwaway reference to Angel in a Brimstone story this year.
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but i think it is true that there are levels of crossovers from namecheck to two fully realized merged universes...and everything in between...
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Yeah, I was disappointed in that. I'm not an SGA fan, which could be why that rang false for me, but I really enjoyed that story, and to have it suddenly turn into a crossover at the end ...it didn't work for me the way perhaps the author had hoped. Again, probably because I'm *not* a fan of SGA.
I love crossovers, but with something like Yuletide, I wonder if they're not cheating a bit - a safety net for people to fall back on when they're a little unsure of the crazy new fandom they've agreed to write in. Or perhaps a way of ensuring people who only read in one fandom will read a story in another...
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a) it didn't add anything to my understanding of Calvin as he grew up in that story
and b) it merged two different kinds of suspension of disbelief. Believing in Hobbes means going along with Calvin's fantasy, which we don't believe has a factual basis. Believing in the Stargate program means believing in several sets of aliens who regularly meddled in the affairs of humans just because they could. One is believing that the world as Calvin perceives it is a little bit different from the way regular people do, and the other is believing that the world at large is operating on a secret level which is objectively true but most are unaware of. It would be like mixing the magical realism of Like Water for Chocolate and the future scifi-ness of the Transformers.
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It's possible that you could see the ending as an extension of Calvin's childhood fantasies - he's finally discovered that there *are* things like transmogrifiers and time machines and he's going to get to play Spiff Spaceman after all.
On the other hand, it totally jarred me out of the story and annoyed me, like what is this doing here? so you may be right about (b), but that could also just be because I feel overwhelmed by SGA fans and chatter at the moment and having it pop up somewhere I didn't expect was irritating.
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I've been writing Dracula-Phantom crossover fanfic......
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Something about the context of the challenge makes me more interested in crossovers (and vague references) than usual.