Hey guys, I've been absolutely in love with the Crossover genre since the first fanfic I ever read on here. However, something has been gnawing at my mind lately with some of the newer stories I've been looking over in the Recently Added section. A lost of them seem to be less of crossovers and more of retellings of other stories/movies/games that now have ponies in place of the original cast of characters. In your own opinions, do these still qualify as crossovers or should they have their own specific catagory or sub-genre on the site, or even just within the Crossover section itself. Is there even a real difference between the two?

...while I am genuinely interested in knowing what you all think about this subject on general, there is, of course, a more self-centered reason I ask as well. I'm in the process of writing a story that is essentiall a reworking of Iced Earth's "Something Wicked" saga. It is by no means a direct retellings or anything like that, but it is going to be heavily reminiscent of the story, to the point where I intend to cite the different songs that are up the Jon Schaffer's original story in each chapter that gets posted as an authors note, since I just don't feel right about not making it perfectly evident that the background all comes from someone else's story. As such, I kind of want to know if a story like that would belong in Crossovers or if I should just be satisfied with having it be a normal Dark story that just draws ideas from a different tale.

So anyway, what is the general consensus on this one? Are they two different genres/catagories? If so, should they remain that way? If not, should they be? Thanks lads and lasses, any input would be much appreciated.

597923
I believe the two should be separate genres.
It'll certainly make the stories less confusing.

597923 I think they should be in a sub genre. But thats just me.

I've noticed that too. Like you said, a crossover should be a blend, while reimagining is like what you said. I'm not saying those are bad though, because I do really enjoy them still

...retellings of other stories/movies/games that now have ponies in place of the original cast of characters.

I'm fairly sure that stories that are just something with the main characters replaced by ponies are banned.

Unless you're referring to something in the vein of Fallout: Equestria, which only borrows themes and ponified lore from the Fallout series.

I'd put them under the same umbrella of the crossover. It's not the characters but the concepts which are "crossing over", see... but they still are.

Some of my Chapter ideas are like that because i'm lazy but for the most part it's my own story.

597923sub genre since it isn't really that much of a crossover if it is just the original story

597923
When I do a crossover I don't just throw another character into another universe. I try to take the elements, concepts, ideas, and sometimes whole characters of one universe and create a place and back story for them in another universe. That in itself counts as a crossover. As long as there are elements, concepts, and ideas from another series I say it counts as a crossover.

597944
Yeah, that's about what I meant: not someone actually telling the exact same story with the characters replaced with ponies, but a story that borrows heavily from existing stories and such.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one thinking about this, its starting to look as though there's a pretty even split in terms of opinions on the matter here (which definitely says something good about the subject at hand seeing as everyone is presenting actual evidence for their opinions). Personally I believe Retellings/Reimaginings should be a sub-genre of Crossovers, but that's just me. They both fill a similar function in the story-telling process so I see no reason to fully separate them, but its hard to deny that there are some significant differences between the two as a whole.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, keep it coming if there's more to be said

I think Retellibg should have its own category tag - I'm thinking of doing a story that's like a Retellibg of The Giver with ponies. I think having a separate tag is a good idea.

A perfect example of the difference was just brought to my attention. In one of the other crossover threads on here people have been suggesting a Looking For Group crossover story to be written (Side note, make that story happen, please!). If it were to be a true crossover the way I see the term, it would involve the actual characters from the comic winding up in Equestria and continuing their adventure there. If it were a retelling/reimagining, it would involve ponies who happen to share similar character traits and archetypes coming together in a way similar to the characters found in the comic to do something similar to what has been done in the comic already. Both stories could be perfectly, hilariously amazing, but as you can see they would be two very different, very distinct stories.

Just an interesting little example to put with the way I see the two catagories.

Well in my opinion there are three crossovers sub genres.

1) Retellings: Where pretty much all of the characters from the retold stories are replaced with characters from another story. These for the most part just go through the plot of the story its grounded to a few unique things may happen because of the different characters, and some interactions will change, but at the end of the day its still the same story it was based on.

2) Worlds collide: This is where characters etc...from another work come into the universe of another fiction. The key here is that those to universes where the characters resided are their own universes, unchanged and were completely separate before the events of this story. Note they don't literally have to be in different universes, they just don't share (much) lore between each other. The key is that the ponies world is still pretty much how we see in the show until something in the crossover happens.

Examples:

Dishonored: The Outsiders Reach
Alduin Unbound
Rebirth of the Damned
Incredible Hulk: Hero or Monster
A Shade of Grey Warden

the list goes on, basically anytime character go from their world to equestria or from equestria to the other world. It's worlds collide.

3) Assimilated Lore: This is when the writer takes the lore of the stories they plan to cross, and weaves/manipulates them into a single lore for a world that is equally of both original stories. The key here is that the world has pretty much always been like that and the two lores are intergrated into one.

Examples:

Fallout: Equestria
My Little Borderlands: Friendship is Badass (Though it may be a retelling, there are only three chapters so far)
Deus Ex: Equine Revolution
Mane Effect
Rise of Iron Mare (Might be the same deal as MLB: FiB)
Tales from Mystika: A My Little Mages Book (Maybe)
Pony Age: Origins

Assimilated Lore, now why didnt I think of that. Brilliantly outlined, Dark, that seems to sum it up perfectly. All of the catagories share the same general idea of a story based around some other story that already exists, but by approaching that in different ways we get these three different subgroups. Anyway, yes that seems to pretty much sum it all up.

In my defense, Discord's Gate is described as a crossover "of sorts".

One wonders what the hypothetical separate category/subcategory would be called though. Ponifications? That sounds more like those human-is-turned-into-pony-as-part-of-plot-fics...

Would my story 'My Paper Pony' count as a true crossover then?

It borrows themes from 'Paper Mario', but it'd be hard to note it was based off of the game if you ignored the main characters name

I think it should be treated as something of a sub-genre. Grouped the same, but with it's own distinct feel. Even though it's something of an on-running gag/pursuit to cross over MLP with practically EVERYTHING! I do believe, for an actual attempt at narrative, there are some settings that simply can't work with it.

Thus "the fusion fic" crossover, is something of a compromise.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FusionFic

This is great because it makes a setting that would otherwise be irredeemable with Equestria, work. Hell Fallout: Equestria, probably one of the greatest achievements of our fandom is one of these!

I think crossover simply requires two different universes.

While that can result in the clunky impure crossover, it does also result in the blend crossover if done by the right person.

Look at More Than A Stallion. I didn't just take Big Macintosh and slap him in the role of Clark Kent discovering his powers. I went and told a story completely original to both MLP and DC Comics.

Does a story based on something like Pink Floyd's The Wall count as a crossover? Because the fic "Bricks in the Wall" does that. It's amazing....

624219
Interestingly that's almost exactly one of the things I was thinking about. When its just general themes and things like that it suddenly becomes a bit more difficult to categorize as anything other than simply crossover in general.

The fic I had been writing that initially got me to ask this question is now officially published on the site. Generally I hate advertising my own work and such like this (hence the spoilers) but it seemed relevant enough to mention its existance. Its all loosely based of songs by Iced Earth which also made me realize we don't actually have a Music Crossover section in the Crossover overarching group option, so I think it will ultimately end up in just the general miscellaneous Crossovers.

624219>>624353 Something like that would go in the Other Crossovers folder.

Ah perfect, thanks.

598767
Wait, is there a folder for that?

755739

wait, a folder for what?

755867
Assimilated lore

755868

Oh, this group doesn't organize like that. It's organized based on the whats crossed over. Because I'm super OCD i would have folders for everything, but that's also why I don't have a group.

I've realized that my fic falls under a reimagining pretty much right on
I hope that doesn't irk anypony
But I think reimaginings fall under the Crossover category as a sub genre

From what I can tell from some of my readings, is that Re imaginings do what you said. Basically jsut swap ponies for the original characters. But then you have (imo) legit crossovers, which use a source as a base.
I.E. the Fallout: EQ series is the most well known. It takes from the source, and uses that developed kind of world (the post-apac) to tell an original story.

We seriously need a Reimagining tag - one of my stories that I hope to post today is a Reimagining of Tangled, but I'll need to put it as a crossover since we don't have that kind of tag yet.

Separate Genre. These so called reimagnings are nothing more then blatant plagiarizing the character, settings, and someone other's writing ability and just placing another set of characters there. It shows a lack of creative or ability to come up with an interesting idea when your story is just Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast, but with ponies.

I feel that they should have separate folders and tags, it just helps keep things better organised, and helps people find what their looking for.
1209476
Most good reimaginings also change the storyline, so that is a bit unfair.

Not the ones I seen. Just replacing characters name and descriptions with names and descriptions elsewhere without even slightly changing the dialogue and whoever thumbs me down, you know I'm right. I've seen it.

597923
I generally consider a story to be a crossover as long as some of the elements from the source material remain untouched, even if its not individual characters. However i would consider something a re-imagining if none of the source material's original elements actually make their way over, but the story still uses a similar structure and plot to the original (Fallout Equestria fics being the most notable example).

2949503
Interesting. I like that view on it I am just now getting into Fallout Equestria and realizing very quickly that it really does fit the reimagining category as a perfect example. I'm starting to see more and more stories put the style to good use.

I'm actually working on an assimilated lore. It's inspired by Halo, Titanfall, and Avatar, while crossing over Doom, Evangelion, and CoD as well as including Marvel OCs.

What about a story that is based on based on a story/legend in the same vein as bigfoot and the wendigo, and using a ponyized version of a real town, but the town is only oc's, and some of the are directly based on happenings in the most famous part of the story/legend?

The Ponymarillion collab fic I've been "working" on for a long time would probably fall under Assimilated Lore.

However it's heavily based on the original book, mostly for story homage reasons (i.e. Tolkien's lore is kept and integrated into the pony character where possible) because the lore fits so well -- in most cases -- and where it doesn't, it fits well in a reverse-typecast character portrayal sense, so there are meta reasons for referring back to poems and passages from the book (like Bored of the Rings but crossing the line twice into serious territory). Assimilated Lore makes the most sense, because it's similar in concept to Fallout: Equestria. But yeah, there's a couple places where it falls into "like the book, but ponies"... especially the intro -- but not totally because I explicitly ruled that out (i.e. the fic didn't come together and make sense, as worthwhile, until I started to integrate the two creation myths and all the origin stories and so forth.)

Unfortunately I'm limited by my fictional writing ability with dialogue and such, which is ironic because the original book has next to no dialogue and is all flowery exposition, which is my comfort zone... that and simple parody. So I'll probably collab with someone who's good at introducing dialogue into a historical setting.

3618520 Twin Peaks... of Ponyville?

IMO, crossover does not necessarily have to include characters from two pieces of media interacting. It's just about there being a fusion of elements of both stories, characters being only one of said elements. For example, I would consider Silent Ponyville to be a crossover because it combines the characters and setting of FiM with the themes and narrative style of Silent Hill. The line between a crossover and "being inspired by X" can be ambiguous, but most genre borders are.

Re-imagining crossovers are just a subgenre of crossover where each contributing series gives very different elements.

Personally, I feel that there should be a specific name for the crossovers that really do have characters crossing over into each others' stories. Maybe "Direct" Crossover?"

I don't think this thread needs to be stickied anymore, so I'll be unstickying it.

Feel free to reply to me why you think this isn't so.