Hand-wavium and lampshades.

About crossovers. by Sergio Turbo on 2011-03-19 14:13:00 UTC Reply

Here's what I think it's an interesting question: what is exactly the influence of a crossover on the Multiverse, canonical or not?

Let's leave uncanonical ones apart, since it's DIC's role to deal with them, and let's talk about canonical ones.
While crssovers that have only an occasiona crossover via dimension travelling or similar stuff goes well with the PPC Multiverse (basically, the characters stumbled upon something very similar to our portals), what happens when the main characters of two or more shows, thought to be completely independent, are later revealed to be in the same dimension, planet or even town?

That would mean that what were thought to be two different continua are in fact one. I do not know if it already happened during the PPC life, but if does how would it be explained? Retconned into a single continua with a new CIC, or some other explanation, like the two universes somehow merging in a literal way?

Another question I have is about goodfic crossovers. Again, when the explanation for the "contact" is a dimensional travel or similar we can assume a portal has been somehow generated, but when the main characters of both continua are stated to live in the same universe/world/town what's the explanation?

Example: Card Captor Sakura and Magical Girl Lirycal Nanoha are two different continua, from different authors. Nearly any crossover I found (five or six, all good or at least decent, truly a miracle. Or maybe Nanoha's blasting away all badfic authors, who knows.) states that Sakura and Nanoha both lived on Earth. True, canonically are both from Earth, but it shouldn't be the same Earth, since they're from two different continua. It can have an explanation, or we have to hand wave and ignore this problem?

Re: About crossovers. by Meta on 2011-03-20 23:21:00 UTC Reply

Actually, you do raise an interesting point about cannon cross overs as well. I seem to recall discussing this subject a few years back when CSI crossed over with Without a Trace.

Wasn't here at the time. by Sergio Turbo on 2011-03-21 10:36:00 UTC Reply

I joined less than a year ago, so I do not know what was the conclusion back then.

One interesting canon crossover I saw (and that I will use as example) is "Lupin The Third VS Detective Conan", and the question I raised is: how are related the two continua now? They were never supposed to be in the same continuum at all (different shows, authors and even TV channel in Japan), but if we take it as canon, how we should think about it?

1) Lupinverse and Conanverse are one and the same, and the error was in the PPC database. However, since there are no missions (only one DC MST I did) in those two continua and no CIC, this shouldn't be a problem.
2) The two universes merged, and now exist as the Lupinconanverse.
3) The two universes came in contact, but then separed (Not very likely, since it was stated that DC and Lupin characters actually knew about each other, but never met).
4) The crossover is not part of the main canon, and so it has his own continuum. Best solution, but cannot be confirmed.

Or maybe I'm nitpicking and we can ignore all those troubles until we stumble in a crossover badfic involving those two continua.
That was a pretty good one, IIRC. (nm) by Pretzel on 2011-03-21 03:25:00 UTC Reply

Re: That was a pretty good one, IIRC. by Meta on 2011-03-21 10:34:00 UTC Reply

Yeah, it was pretty good. But it did raise the question of how do the two universes combine together. We spent ages trying to make sure that it all fitted correctly.

What Neshomeh said. by Pretzel on 2011-03-19 23:29:00 UTC Reply

I myself have written several crossovers wherein the fandoms themselves share actors or don't go together at first. An example would be my NaNoWriMo for 2009 that had Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, and Sanctuary crossover with one another. All three share common actors- Amanda Tapping, for one (this isn't too bad with SG-1/Atlantis crossovers, since it's the same character) -but there I never had the characters both played by Amanda Tapping (Samantha Carter and Helen Magnus) meet in the story.

As for totally odd crossovers- like, say, Sanctuary and Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010) -I usually focus on a common element within the two 'verses. Oh, so, magic is basically energy/electricity in the SA 'verse? Well, cool, then it's totally plausible that they could crossover, 'cause Nikola Tesla in the Sanctuary 'Verse has those kinds of abilities. Hey, maybe Tesla could be a sorcerer!

That kind of thinking led to this fic of mine, which is rather silly, but if you're at least vaguely familiar with both fandoms- science=magic, Tesla is a vampire who controls electricity -then it works.
Hand-wavium and lampshades. by Neshomeh on 2011-03-19 19:24:00 UTC Reply

Okay, that's not a serious explanation, but it's close.

Basically, any time you're combining two worlds previously believed to be separate, you have to explain why nobody from the one 'verse ever noticed anybody/any events from the other one before, or retcon it so that they did, or hand-wave/lampshade it and ignore it so you can get on with the story. The chances of getting away with one method or another vary depending on how compatible the two verses are and how serious your story is.

Lord of the Rings crossovers, for instance, are hard to pull off because it's a very serious, very well-defined world. However, it is possible if you take advantage of the part where it's supposed to be a mythos of ancient Earth "before the world changed." Therefore, any other continuum set on Earth could conceivably be the same Earth, just in a different time. For instance, these are reincarnation fics, not actually crossovers, but author Scribe shows us how to pull off this concept in The Patient and its sequel, Triumvirate.

Sci-fi verses, of course, have all sorts of opportunities to be crossed. Here are a couple of one-shots that I enjoyed a good deal:

My Brain Slug by Insane Troll Logic (Scrubs x Animorphs)
So Turk just extracted a brain slug from a patient, JD’s being stalked by a red-tailed hawk and Cox has been acting a little different. Not exactly your average day at Sacred Heart.

Ride the Lightning by SabaceanBabe (Battlestar Galactica 2003 x Farscape)
For a moment, a split second in time, Kara couldn’t breathe. xxx Crais had pronounced his final words to Scorpius – indeed to every soul aboard the command carrier that had once been his.

I don't know how well you know any of those continua, but both stories take advantage of the qualities inherent in the 'verses involved to pull off believable, well-written crossovers. And that's how you do it.

~Neshomeh