playing with the setting is probably my favorite part! i guess i don't really get the same rehashing over and over because really, when it comes down to it, redoing the setting is the reason i make so many crossovers :P how would x character change if y setting and how would that impact z is just...yell heah
I always think of "crossover AU" as "characters from one thing in the setting of/in a setting taking elements from another thing" rather than "characters from one thing going through the plot of another thing."
for me they are not things that have distinct terms. Is it a crossover? Does it AU at least one of the things by virtue of being a crossover? It's a crossover AU.
The example given in the book was this: "The Minimalist - Wherein synopses take the place of writing Mike hit him with a metal bar and the man fell, dead. Mike left hurriedly, realising he was going to have a murder rap. Getting in his car, he drove away fast, heading for a hotel. At the hotel he sat and decided what to do. He called his girlfriend and told her to pack his things. The police found the body and identified the killer as Mark by the fingerprints on the bar. Before the police could track them down, Mike and his girlfriend got on a plane to Europe. In Europe they went to the countryside and decided to buy a house with money the girlfriend had. "I need a gun, too," said Mike. They bought everything, food too. Then they settled down and lived under European names. That was the past."
I hate the transplant into another universe with minimal changes but. Im kind of a garbage boy in that i usually read crossovers where ive never had any interaction with the universe in question. For instance i once read a persona/homestuck crossover that was GREAT but i have no idea if it was original or not because i dont persona. I feel like it was in character though.
On the topic of another gripe, bizarre descriptions in sex scenes, especially anatomically implausible ones. I recall being told of one fic which claimed that Ron Weasley's penis was twenty-one inches long "and Draco was at least twice as big"; someone else, upon seeing that, spawned the minor meme "IT COULD GET ON DISNEYLAND ATTRACTIONS BY ITSELF". Similarly, this.
That's... that's a thing. Even if it were centimeters that'd be pretty extreme, but in inches... that's uh, weird hentai level.
I remeber seeing a harry potter badfic where there was a spell that made penises grow long enough to tie people up with. yeeeeep.
@palindromordnilap Is that the same one I'm thinking of? @emythos "A Very Alternate Yule Ball", or is there more than one? If it was AVAYB, that leads nicely into another gripe; rape being okay when a character the author likes is doing it.
Another; long, long, long descriptions of things I don't care about. Hogwarts Exposed again did it with pages about the characters' exercise routines, and it's not a fanfic but The Eye of Argon is infamous for that. No story needs half a page of description of a pair of random soldiers' uniforms when they die less than one more page later, another half page about a guy falling over when he's kicked in the crotch, and regular unnecessary adjectives about what shade of red everything is. Also, I once downloaded a sample of some self-published Kindle horror-porn, and the entire sample was taken up with descriptions of different kinds of knives.
Spoiler: Self harm Dear Undertale fandom A: It is possible to self harm in ways besides damaging wrists B: How many fics have Papyrus damage his wrists with a chisel and why are there at least two, did one of you get the idea from the other? C: There are lots of reasons for why someone might be in a state where they stood harm. The extreme tragic reasons like (1) I'm trapped in a time loop and I keep dying, (2) I'm trapped in a time loop and my brother keeps dying, and (3) I don't know that I'm trapped in a time loop, but I do know I imprisoned abominations of science in my basement... these are like. How so many sites (West Wing, Firefly) flirt with representation of sex workers by having classy high end call girls. Sure, technically you did the thing, but you also sanded the edges and have it a ~ not like those other ones~ feel. Kinda spoils the mood.
That same fic brings up yet another gripe; now, I love making random references to other fandoms in my fics, but it has to make something approaching sense. The fic in question was for a fandom which has furries, obviously, but no magical creatures; casually throwing in a reference to a friend of the family being a unicorn and nobody thinking this is even slightly weird is the literary equivalent of a slap to the head. Worse, I recognised the throw-in reference as being to Spellsinger, an obscure favourite series of mine which deserves far more respect than this.
