#shhh ignore the fact that I'm now thinking about how a dead like me/atla crossover would work

[ladylynse]

what are some crossovers that intrigue you in theory but that youre not sure how to make work, if you know what i mean?

*steeples fingers* Okay. I know exactly what you mean, Anon. Having more of a justification for a crossover than 'I like these two (or more) things so I want to write the characters interacting' is important to me when I'm writing a crossover fic, so I look for that in the crossovers I read. Naturally, some fandoms are ridiculously easy to cross with something else because of the nature of what goes in canon, and some are a lot trickier. It can be difficult to pull on those little connecting threads to build a story into a more believable crossover.

Now, I'll be honest with you. It's rare that I look in a crossover section for something that I just can't see working at all. I've done it, but I have yet to find something that's actually satisfying to me if it's completely random, mostly because no explanation for the crossover is ever given, or it's some outside force that is never explained, and the fics tend to be unfinished and dead because the author ran into trouble with it.

So.

Can I give you specific examples of what you're talking about? Not really, not at this precise moment--even though I've been sitting on this ask for a couple of days. There's nothing in my back pocket that I'd really like to see but doesn't have any common ground whatsoever, mostly because when I think of crossovers I might do or would like to see done, I start with the commonalities, which means I start from a point of 'how could I make this work based on what I already have?'. I am perfectly willing to fudge a bit of canon to make something work if I'm trying to do a crossover, clutching onto my common threads and going, "I can come up with an explanation for the discrepancies, just watch me." (Example: Rise of the Guardians and Narnia re: Santa Claus/North) I can talk generalities, though.

Take The Good Place, something I've no desire to write fanfic for because I like what the show did. Could you write a crossover with it? Absolutely. Could you write a crossover with it with something that shows an afterlife/heaven/hell that's contrary to what they show there, like Lucifer or Supernatural? Yes, I'd argue you could, but it's a lot harder, at least without jumping to the alternate dimension thing, which is canon for both Lucifer and SPN. Most of the commonalities are contradictory, and then you have to come up with explanations about why that is. (Well, you don't, but I like that, so I do, and I'd look for that in a fic I was reading.)

Other things that are difficult for me to figure out how to make it work in general tend to be stuff that very obviously take place in different dimensions (or time periods where the time periods are different enough it's not within the lifetimes of the characters you want to write and you want more than parallels/tangential connections). If one of the fandoms has canonical dimensional (or time) travel, regardless of how easy that is to accomplish, then all you need to do is figure out how to get the characters back to where they started at the end of it all, and you take what you're given for getting them there. But something where interdimensional/time travel doesn't exist in either one? That's hard. It means you need to create that, and depending on the fandom, that might not be easy. You need magic or tech or something beyond some force that never gets explained (preferably) to make the crossover happen and then straighten things out at the end, assuming you actually intend to straighten things out at the end and not just leave it unresolved.

To be fair, for most of the media I consume, I have magic or tech or at least some supernatural force at my disposal. I read/watch stuff that tends to involve that. Would I write a crossover between Dead Like Me and Avatar: The Last Airbender? Probably not. Could I come up with a wild explanation to make it work, or at least make it work well enough because I'm trying to tie it together? Yes. Through the spirit world and the afterlife. (Dead Like Me is all about Grim Reapers, after all.) Like so: George thought going to her own funeral was weird enough. She could've done without this shit, but turning down the promotion hadn't sounded optional, and now she's got a sticky note with an E.T.D. on it for some guy named Lu Ten--at least she has a full name to work with--at the outer wall of Ba Sing Se, wherever the hell that's supposed to be.