Obligatory (but happy!) Yuletide post

[rivkat]

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?

Comments

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I hate to say it, but I think at least some of it can actually be attributed to *mono*fannishness--to the extreme fixation on the current pretty that apparently renders people incapable of imagining that anyone might *not* be interested in it, too. Like the people who couldn't restrain themselves from asking for Harry Potter in the challenge last year, or Firefly this year.

There was also a throwaway reference to Angel in a Brimstone story this year.

[rivkat.livejournal.com]

I had noticed that and forgot to put it in the post! I should do so. I'm sure cathexys has developed some typology of crossovers. The Brimstone one was a name-check, and like the Real Genius story it added an in-joke, as opposed to being important to the plot. The Nip/Tuck story worked for me because the due South mythology, imported to Nip/Tuck, yielded great results for the Nip/Tuck characters, which seems like a decent reason to have a crossover. The Calvin & Hobbes less so, and your explanation makes sense, though that particular story might be someone just trying to reach out to SGA fans.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

that's an interesting reading...sadly i have no typology, though i came up with a tentative fusion definition yesterday as fusion=AU+crossover (probably totally wrong but it's a working hypothesis :-)

but i think it is true that there are levels of crossovers from namecheck to two fully realized merged universes...and everything in between...