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Crossover Thinking

@crossoverthinking.bsky.social
3 followers 0 following 30 posts

Just brainstorming a massive crossover fictional universe. If you have any idea's, feel free to chime in!

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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 15h
Alfred should try to disuade Bruce from his vow of vengeance. But eventually he realizes that the best thing that he can do is create a safe space for Bruce's anger So he trains him on what he learned in the Great War. He takes him to train at a local boxing gym, owned by Ted "Wildcat" Grant
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 15h
Alfred tries to get custody of Bruce and Philip fights it at first, thinking Alfred just wants to keep access to the Wayne's fortune But Philip must eventually admit that Alfred is perhaps the only person that Bruce feels comfortable with enough to be even slightly vulnerable
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 15h
But back to plotting young Bruce. I think after his parents' death, he'd be sent to live with his uncle Philip Kane. And I think this is when Bruce started his vow to become a vigilante And while nothing comes of it just yet, his observant cousin Katherine Kane notices the change in Bruce
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 21h
That would put Bruce as being born I the early 20s and his parents dying around the mid-20s It also means he'd be doing most of his advanced training during the late 30s and early 40s, right when the war is hitting.
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
But the two get back and Thomas falls hard for Martha Kane. And the two court and get married very quickly
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
A brief side note, I'd have Lord Peter Wimsey and Bunter meet and befriend Thomas and Alfred
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
But it definitely means that Thomas Wayne was in the UK fighting during the Great War And then after the war, Thomas brings Alfred to the US. He pays him to be a butler but he's more a confident and friend
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Ultimately I think Batman needs to be told in the late 40s where he's dealing with crime bosses like a pulp hero and then goes a little into the 50s where there are superhero and super villains
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I realize that the big thing I have to tackle is Batman He's such an important part of DC's heroes timeline. So you need Batman to lock that in And once you have DC locked, it makes it easier to lock in Marvel and Image
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I realize now that I should probably break down what the thinking is between these ages
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I feel you have Deathlok first and it is rough and ragged. Then you get the Universal Soldier style hero (they can be Korean or Vietnam vets depending on when it's set) Then RoboCop is bringing foreign military tech to the US
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I'm trying to figure out the augmented human evolution. Like where do RoboCop, Universal Soldier, Deathlok, Million Dollar Man / Bionic Woman, et al fit in with each other? What's the timeline?
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
If you do not know @eriklarsen.bsky.social's Savage Dragon, it's a comic that has found itself growing in real time, starting back in the early 90s as one of Image's first books Over the last 3+ decades, we've seen Dragon have a son (Malcolm) and seen Malcolm grow up and even have kids of his own
Dragon's son Malcolm being bornMalcolm as a teenagerAn adult Malcolm as a police officerMalcolm with his wife and three kids
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
So that's what I'm doing but I'd love for anyone out there, if you feel so inclined, to chime in with suggestions. I only know the fandoms I know after all, so if someone can offer good advice or insight about a character / story / era, please let me know! But in the meantime, let's crack on…
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Here's how I've broken down my own "ages" for where my stories will fall. This lets me tell stories with a HP Lovecraft monster that's set close to the beginning of recorded time to stories set in the future with Starfleet boldly going where no one has gone before, and everywhere in between
Deep Time (Pre-10,000 BC)
Dreams & Blood (10,000 – 5000 BC)
Swords & Sorcery (5000 – 2000 BC)   
Heroes & Kingdoms (2000 BC – 1 AD)
Empires & Eagles (1 – 700 AD)
Shadows & Faith (700 – 1100)
Kings & Crossroads (1100 – 1500)
Gold & Gunpowder (1500 – 1700)
Crowns & Commerce (1700 – 1800)
Reason & Steam (1800 – 1900)
Pulp & Shadows (1900 – 1939)
World War II (1939 – 1945)
Atoms & Cold Wars (1945 – 1956)
The Dawn of the Superhero (1956–1969)
Mutants & Metahumans (1969 – 1984)
Secret Wars & Infinite Crisis (1985)
Decay & Darkness (1986 – 1999)
Twilight of the Superheroes (2000 – 2012)
Apocalypse & Aftershocks (2012 – 2040)
Ruins & Renewal (2040 – 2050)
Blood & Stars (2050 – 2060)
Frontiers & Federations (2060 – 2065)
Worlds & Wonders (2065 and beyond)
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
And because like the tone or style of story changes over the years, I straight up stole a page from the RPG games from White Wolf, where they would have their games set in the modern day but then also have sourcebooks around the Dark Ages, Sorcerer's Crusade, Wild West, Victorian, Great War, etc.
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Continuity is when things from the past affect things that are going on in the present. What happened before informs what happens next. That’s what I’m going for. A decision in 1931 could have drastic consequences in 1972
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
A quick word on the distinction between CONSISTENCY and CONTINUITY. Consistency means a rubber band reality; things can stretch without breaking and will return to the way you remember it. Think of the Simpsons, you could not watch an episode for a decade and come right back with no learning curve
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
So that's how I got the idea to take characters from different fandoms and smash them together and then allow those characters to bounce off each other in a way that actually has an impact and develops continuity (not just consistency) over the years.
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
We wouldn't have stories like Savage Dragon or Spider-Man: Life Story, MC2, Dark Knight Returns, Cerberus, Batman Beyond, Old Man Logan, Kingdom Come, Alan Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes pitch, and more if it wasn't fun to imagine where some of these people ended up
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
And I know that I'm not alone with people who like to imagine these comic characters not set into a perpetual second act.
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
That was just part of what I wanted to do. I also liked how the LXG moves through time, which has fascinated me since I started reading @eriklarsen.bsky.social's Savage Dragon. Even the MCU does it (more for ‘dealing with aging actors’ rather than ‘evolving characters’ but it ends up pretty similar)
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Then writer/editor Win Scott Eckert came in and said, “what if we could turn this up to 11?” He began to pull in even more characters and fandoms. By 1997, Eckert had named the project The Wold Newton Universe, or WNU (funny to think that he beat the MCU to the branding punch by more than a decade)
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Farmer took this real incident and used it to explain Tarzan, Doc Savage, Lord Peter Wimsey, Solomon Kane, Captain Blood, Scarlet Pimpernel, Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty, Phileas Fogg, Allan Quartermain, the Avenger, James Bond, Sam Spade, Nero Wolfe, the Shadow and more!
en.wikipedia.org
Wold Newton family - Wikipedia
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Then I found out the fan fiction style called Wold Newton, inspired by the writer, Philip José Farmer. Farmer’s premise was that a meteorite landed in Wold Newton, England as two carriages rode past. The ionization in the meteorite gave the people in the carriages a little something special
en.wikipedia.org
Wold Cottage meteorite - Wikipedia
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The origin for this came about when I read Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as well as Kim Newman's Anno Dracula, Alien vs Predator, the shows Dickensian and Penny Dreadful, and more
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
But I think I've finally just hit a point where I'm going to just pontificate and ideate on Bluesky and invite other people to chime in. Even if no one gives their two cents, at least I can say that I got these thoughts out of my head and on to paper
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
At different times over the years I've tried to make the project work in a couple of different ways. I've tried straight fan fiction, I've tried gathering a group together to see if we could crack this nut, and I even tried a RPG universe, inspired by the Poet’s “World of Darkness: Mutants” game
The skeleton of a RPG website that I made; which had rules and a wikiA frame-based website for the Poet's "World of Darkness: Mutants"
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I've had this idea in my head for a while but it's always been a little too big to wrap my arms around. It was this idea of a crossover fiction project that encapsulated as many fandoms as I could cram into one timeline, and then try to have it make at least *some* sense
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Crossover Thinking @crossoverthinking.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I just love crossovers...
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