Rule 20: Don't give the crossed over characters some ridiculous new abilities just so they can survive in the world they've been crossed over into.

Example: Making immortals from Highlander completely and totally untouchable by magic so that they won't get creamed by wizards (who would simply put them in a Body Bind or Stun them, then chop their heads off if they didn't cut out the middleman and simply use a decapitating spell).

Why would a cutting curse not touch an immortal when bullets, knives, pointy sticks, car crashes, poison, electrocution, and a knee to the balls can all hurt them?

This goes double for Slayers from BtVS. Making it so spells just fizzle when they touch Buffy, simply so she doesn't get her ass handed to her by the first death eater or Slytherin school boy who decides to smack her bitch up is just lame.

First off, it makes her into super!Buffy in the context of the HP world, second, it's just plain Mary-Sue shit.

Most importantly, it's ignorant. Even if magic fizzled when it touched a Slayer, that doesn't stop someone from using magic to chuck a brick at her and cave in her skull. After all, the brick itself isn't magical (Mat Cauthon says hello).

On top of all that, it saps the tension and drama right out of a story when the new character can waltz through normally fatal situations, with as little care as Superman on the wrong end of a firing range.
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It's a good thing, too, since this rule is pretty much the saving grace of this rules list.

After all, without rule 1, the next three rules eliminate any story where the author attempts to competently blend two worlds instead of just plopping Harry into another world, or dumping a random character into the HP world.

Just inserting one character into another fandom comes very close to the same territory as just writing a crossover so two characters can get horizontal. They have the same pedigree, if you will.

Of course, sometimes limits like that are imposed due to time constraints.

Ugh. I'd like to veto this little addendum right now. Why? Because the fics that rape the shit out of Anita Blake's canon usually do so in order to pair Harry with every male in the book.

(I know! Let's make Anita a totally crazy, loopy, bitch so that all her lovers drop her like a hot rock and then emotionally-fragile!needy!Harry can bottom for all of them!) uke:

No thank you, Do not want, Kill it with Fire, et cetera.

Lulz. Well, there goes 95% of all crossovers. Though, the way most of them are written (see immediately above), that's probably a good thing.

This depends on the talent of the author... or the time they can afford to spend writing, rather than being a flaw in the concept of the crossover itself.

Just sayin'...

I reckon a thing bein' all holy-like is in the eye of the, uh... It's in the eye of that, er...

Gorram ruttin' fancy talk! I mean, I reckon that all depends on where yer standin'. After all, what's shiny to some folk may be gos se to everyone else.

I'll be in my bunk.

 

Exception: The Black Wizard by Azareos.

 

The Black Wizard was exactly the crossover I had in mind when I wrote that rule.

Warlocke: Regarding Anita Blake, I wrote that exception so that Nuhuh's fic-in-progress works within the rules.

Which was the intention. Trying to blend two worlds completely fails 100% of the time.

 

/nick Bioplague

What the fuck is this shit?

The Black Wizard was actually a guilty pleasure of mine, up until the massacre at Helms Deep.

 

I think a "go there and return" plot should be permissible. (The crossover novel I just wrote has such a structure: Harry goes to Elric's world, the two do stuff, then return to face Voldemort in the final battle). I agree that Black Wizard-style "zip back and forth whenever it's convenient" is fail.

 

Going back and forth is fail, but jumping from one cross to another is might be okay.

 

Exception: Denarian Quadrilogy by Shezza.

 

It's become a quadrilogy? When did that happen? I thought Denarian Lord was the last.

 

It's a pitiful attempt to make me write one more story. After DL, I'm going to stop flogging the Denarian horse.

 

Too bad, the Denarian Trilogy was one of the best Cross-overs we have in the Libraries.

 

...

...

...

There's only three fullstops to an ellipses. Fag.

Hah, that showed you!

 

ORLY, Nuhuh is writing an Anita Blake crossover?

I'll be in my bunk... again.

There's a lot of ground to cover between complete integration and integrating only the main character.

Complete integration would be very difficult and any attempts towards such a goal would almost certainly be met with failure, as per your '100%' assertion. On the other hand, merging two fandoms at more points than JUST the main character of one of the fandoms, I think, adds depth and believability to a story and that can only add to the enjoyment factor.