#i mean hell it's a joke in c&r that indiana jones doesn't exist in olly's universe bc alfred molina was in raiders of the lost ark

[practically-an-x-man]

Okay so fun fact- a lot of my DC OCs are Marvel fans, and vice-versa. Siv, for instance, is a Stucky shipper and occasionally compares themself to various Marvel heroes

Oh yeah, and I absolutely love that! I try to put some cross-universe references in some of my fics too, I think it's really fun, it's just hard to keep track of what would and wouldn't be made into comics in a universe that has actual superheroes. I mean... if people with powers already exist, is it still exciting or marketable to have a whole genre of superhero fiction? And would they create new heroes, or make biographical comics about the heroes that already exist?

Idk, I love seeing fun fandom references in fiction like you do with Siv, I guess it just gets twisted up in my brain a little more from a writing perspective. I mean, can Captain Marvel as a character even exist in comics in the DC universe, since Shazam and Captain Marvel had a lot of interplay in the early comics and that can't happen if Shazam is an actual person in the DC world? If a comic creator was inspired by an older comic, but that older comic can't exist because the hero is a real person in their world, does the new comic not exist either? Do people in the Sandman universe watch Logan and go "huh, that guy looks like the nightmare I had as a kid"? I mean, hell, you don't even have to swap universes for it to get confusing - did the guards at Belle Reve go "hey, did Abra Kadabra change his name or something?" when they brought Abner in? I'm just saying... there's so much rollover in comics, it's hard to decide what does or doesn't work as a reference in a fic, at least for me lol

I am the type to make some cheeky little references to superhero actors' roles in my other fics, though. Both of my 6 Underground fics have plenty of X-Men references (Quinn's nickname for Billy, Wings, is also a nickname for Angel in the X-Men comics... that's among my most overt, though I guess you have to be a pretty big Angel nerd like me to get it right away), and there's going to be a Quicksilver reference in the next chapter of Heartstrings for sure.