Crossovers: How To Make A Crossover Believable or Plausible

To make a crossover seem plausible, you first need to know which type of crossover you are writing. There are two types:

1. Character Portals (CP): Taking (a) character(s) from one universe to the next.
2. Universe Shaping (US): Shaping an entire universe around a second.

Character portals are your basic "Character A dies, and is suddenly transported to Equestria", or vise versa. Universe shaping are stories like Fallout: Equestria, where through a series of reasonable and believable series of events, creates the universe you are crossing over with, except, with ponies.

I myself prefer the latter, since character portals lack much creativity and seems a bit lazy in my opinion, but both have the potential to make extremely good stories in the hands of a good author.

For explaining CP crossovers, these usually include the following:

1. Death
2. Portal (including Spells and Magic)

For explaining US crossovers, these are a bit more tricky.

1. Decide which universe you want to "shape" into the other.
- Ex. Fallout: Equestria took the world of Equestria and shaped it into Fallout.
2. Twist an idea or a scene to your own universe.
- This is probably the hardest part of a US crossover. Ex. Fallout: Equestria took Zecora the Zebra, created a zebra nation around her, added tension and conflict between it and Equestria, and brought upon an all-out war, creating the Fallout wasteland.

As you can see, creating a reasonable explanation for a CP is simpler and easier to use than creating an entire universe for a UU. One reason because CP have less room for creativity and expanding upon is the same reason why HiE fics often have the same backstory. There's not many ways to say how a certain character(s) is teleported to a different universe. But luckily, most readers usually won't be looking for an in-depth and amazing reason why the character is transported. They are simply looking for how the character interacts within such a strange and alien environment.

And that's about it.

Comments

[Parallel Black]

Pretty cool advice here, useful, though very short. You could probably stand to expand upon this if you ever want to make a tutorial on how to make a believable crossover. But anyhow, here's my two cents:

Character Portals - "One reason because CP have less room for creativity and expanding upon, the same reason why HiE fics often have the same backstory." On the contrary, while CP Crossovers may have less room for creativity, this doesn't suggest that the concept in itself is flawed. My story (I know it sounds like a plug, but hear me out) is a perfect example of why. Locked Motions is a Bleach/MLP crossover using the CP tactic. Other Bleach crossovers have used the classic method, such as "Cuatro", or "Kick About, Los Lobos!", but in Locked motions, the characters aren't what get sucked through a portal into ponyland/Hueco Mundo, it's the ENTIRE NATION that gets transported into Hueco Mundo. Even though it's simply the scale that's being increased, the effects are vastly different to that of other CP stories.

But I digress, the CP concept still has as much room for creativity as the US tactic, but that creativity is much harder to tap than that of its counterpart.

[Toothless the Night Fury]

Yeah, I've been thinking about expanding upon the blog and making a full-length lecture about it. This was simply the remains of a thread I replied to that I copy and pasted to my blog. Hm, maybe I could try adding more to it someday.

On the contrary, while CP Crossovers may have less room for creativity, this doesn't suggest that the concept in itself is flawed.

Right, I completely agree with you. People love seeing their favorite characters interacting with each other. I remember a Deus Ex: Human Revolution crossover with Adam Jensen talking with Fluttershy and Twilight. It was awesome! XD It's usually not how the characters are crossed over which makes or breaks a CP. (It's usually death, or utter BS in the case of some "lower-scale" crossovers.) It's the aftermath; the crossed over character's reactions, their fears, their adjustments to a strange universe, etc.

But I digress, the CP concept still has as much room for creativity as the US tactic, but that creativity is much harder to tap than that of its counterpart.

Yes, and no. In my opinion, it's the introduction has less room for creativity, but what happens afterwards is all up to the writer's imagination. What does the character do? How does he do it? What happens to the portal he went through? Does anything else get through? etc. etc.

I would like to see someone put a new and creative spin on the portal itself though. Yours was pretty innovative, seeing the effects and changes as a nation instead of a individual person. Congrats for that. I wish there were more stories like that in the fandom.