BDCP Round Five: The Aftermath
Mar. 8th, 2013 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nevanna...And that's a wrap on Round Five of the Big Damn Crossover Project. A week ago, I posted Three's a Crowd, a Sherlock/X-Men crossover. Despite the amount of time it took me to fulfill that prompt, I'm ultimately very glad that I did, for reasons including, but not limited to, the requester's liking it.
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hanasaseru requested Charles Xavier and John Watson talking about their friendships with Erik and Sherlock, respectively, and, as she put it, "possibly why everyone is so convinced they're in relationships." (It should be noted that I totally read Charles and Erik as having been intimately involved at some point, though I'm more neutral on whether Sherlock and John could be.) They didn't really get around to talking about Erik directly, though he did get a couple of indirect mentions.
Right up until I put pen to paper, I wasn't sure whose brain Charles would be riding in. I think that there could have been some interesting interactions either way, and playing with Sherlock's MIND PALACE would have been fun. On the other hand, I was also exploring a (much more sinister) "there's someone else in Sherlock's brain" scenario in another project, even though the situations were very different. But I was more interested in whatever conversations were happening telepathically, and when I remembered that someone had used John as a puppet before, in canon, I knew that I wanted to work that in somehow. So Jim Moriarty really influenced the direction that this story took, twice over, without even appearing or even being mentioned by name. Sounds about right.
Anyway, I received a comment saying that it was in character for John to allow this to happen, which pleases me. I was not trying to make a Positive Statement About Multiplicity - however situational it might be - when I wrote this, but I have a long history of focusing on the creepy or traumatic implications of telepathy and bodily possession (especially when Charles Xavier is involved), and so I enjoyed exploring a more consensual variation on a familiar scenario.
I started what would become the Big Damn Crossover Project (I based the name an oft-quoted line in Firefly, of course) in November of 2007. It was inspired by a meme on a friend of a friend's journal. By the time I'd completed all the requests in May of 2008, I realized how much fun I'd had coming up with scenarios in which some of these people could meet. Some were more challenging than others, but that was part of the adventure, and I had ended up exploring some potential character parallels and relationships that would never have occurred to me otherwise, which is one of the best things about crossovers. With that in mind, I decided to ask for another round of prompts, with a different set of characters, the following year, and again the year after that. One of the stories from Round Three, Family and Other Strangers, led to three follow-up pieces and an unfinished NaNoWriMo project, but then again, I loved the glorious train-wreck of the central pairing and probably would have ended up exploring sooner or later even if nobody had requested it. As I revisited the BDCP year after year, I developed self-imposed rules about how I chose characters, under what circumstances I could include someone on the list more than once (I actually bent that rule this time around, with Charles, but X-Men: First Class had given me a whole new take on the character to play around with), and under what circumstances I could use time travel, interdimensional travel, or alternate realities as shortcuts, which are sometimes necessary but not usually where I go first. It's all in the interest of challenging myself.
I love crossovers. I have loved them since long before I ever heard the term "fan fiction." I recommend this method of soliciting prompts to anybody who also likes crossovers: make a list of characters (organized however you wish), ask your readers to choose two, and build a story around their interaction. I'm so glad that I started this, and I'm so glad that so many people have played along. When I have the time, I'm going to make a master list of all the stories that have resulted from your prompts. And I'm already composing my lists for Round Six.
hanasaseru requested Charles Xavier and John Watson talking about their friendships with Erik and Sherlock, respectively, and, as she put it, "possibly why everyone is so convinced they're in relationships." (It should be noted that I totally read Charles and Erik as having been intimately involved at some point, though I'm more neutral on whether Sherlock and John could be.) They didn't really get around to talking about Erik directly, though he did get a couple of indirect mentions.Right up until I put pen to paper, I wasn't sure whose brain Charles would be riding in. I think that there could have been some interesting interactions either way, and playing with Sherlock's MIND PALACE would have been fun. On the other hand, I was also exploring a (much more sinister) "there's someone else in Sherlock's brain" scenario in another project, even though the situations were very different. But I was more interested in whatever conversations were happening telepathically, and when I remembered that someone had used John as a puppet before, in canon, I knew that I wanted to work that in somehow. So Jim Moriarty really influenced the direction that this story took, twice over, without even appearing or even being mentioned by name. Sounds about right.
Anyway, I received a comment saying that it was in character for John to allow this to happen, which pleases me. I was not trying to make a Positive Statement About Multiplicity - however situational it might be - when I wrote this, but I have a long history of focusing on the creepy or traumatic implications of telepathy and bodily possession (especially when Charles Xavier is involved), and so I enjoyed exploring a more consensual variation on a familiar scenario.
I started what would become the Big Damn Crossover Project (I based the name an oft-quoted line in Firefly, of course) in November of 2007. It was inspired by a meme on a friend of a friend's journal. By the time I'd completed all the requests in May of 2008, I realized how much fun I'd had coming up with scenarios in which some of these people could meet. Some were more challenging than others, but that was part of the adventure, and I had ended up exploring some potential character parallels and relationships that would never have occurred to me otherwise, which is one of the best things about crossovers. With that in mind, I decided to ask for another round of prompts, with a different set of characters, the following year, and again the year after that. One of the stories from Round Three, Family and Other Strangers, led to three follow-up pieces and an unfinished NaNoWriMo project, but then again, I loved the glorious train-wreck of the central pairing and probably would have ended up exploring sooner or later even if nobody had requested it. As I revisited the BDCP year after year, I developed self-imposed rules about how I chose characters, under what circumstances I could include someone on the list more than once (I actually bent that rule this time around, with Charles, but X-Men: First Class had given me a whole new take on the character to play around with), and under what circumstances I could use time travel, interdimensional travel, or alternate realities as shortcuts, which are sometimes necessary but not usually where I go first. It's all in the interest of challenging myself.
I love crossovers. I have loved them since long before I ever heard the term "fan fiction." I recommend this method of soliciting prompts to anybody who also likes crossovers: make a list of characters (organized however you wish), ask your readers to choose two, and build a story around their interaction. I'm so glad that I started this, and I'm so glad that so many people have played along. When I have the time, I'm going to make a master list of all the stories that have resulted from your prompts. And I'm already composing my lists for Round Six.
