Drunkard's Walk Forums

Once upon a time in a subsection of the fan fiction community there was a distinction between a crossover fic and a fusion fic.

A crossover fic meant characters from one series got dropped into another. E.g. "Ranma goes to Juban and meets the Sailor Senshi."

A fusion fic implied rewriting of the two histories to justify that they were always the same setting. E.g. "Buffy Summers was never a Vampire Slayer. She is however a licensed Vampire Executioner in the State of California and is not happy that her colleague Anita Blake is intruding in her territory."

Now it has been many years since I bothered grumbling about fanfic being labeled as crossover fic when it was clearly fusion fic; but this morning I noticed that the Battletech / Girl Genius fic I was reading (Natasha Kerensky and the Adventure of the Purple Fang) was tagged as 'pastiche.'

From the context of that one fic, 'pastiche' might refer to something like fusion fic once did. 

From the context of skimming the first couple pages of AO3 results for that tag it is a mystery what 'pastiche' refers to.

Have other people encountered 'pastiche' in the fic they read?

If so, what meaning was applied to it?

"Pastiche" in any other context means "copying the style of" or "stylistic parody". I've never heard of it being applied to any variety of crossover fic.

And back in the 1990s, at least, a "fusion fic" was one where characters from one property took on the roles of characters in another property -- like the cast of Ranma as the command crew of the USS Enterprise. (A common one. And Ryoga was always the navigator.)

(07-26-2022, 01:07 PM)Bob Schroeck Wrote: [ -> ]"Pastiche" in any other context means "copying the style of" or "stylistic parody".  I've never heard of it being applied to any variety of crossover fic.

And back in the 1990s, at least, a "fusion fic" was one where characters from one property took on the roles of characters in another property -- like the cast of Ranma as the command crew of the USS Enterprise.  (A common one.  And Ryoga was always the navigator.)

Oh yes, I have encountered that use of pastiche. Thank you.