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

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

it may be wishful thinking, but i think john the genius with authority issues sounds a lot like SGA's favorite colonel sheppard :-)

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???

[corinna-5.livejournal.com]

John Sheppard -- fandom's latest little black dress!

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...)

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i did a post when i first got into the fandom on shep as the little black dress :-)

hmmmm, so not style? still like the blankie image (or is it a stuffed tiger for some of us??? :-)

[corinna-5.livejournal.com]

Now you're going to have to point me to that post!

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.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

it wasn't very deep but here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/cathexys/170956.html)...

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 :-)