The Problem with Shared Universes

[rickgriffin]

Okay now just think about this for a moment

Say you have one film company, Disney perhaps, who takes a large chunk of their canon and starts making crossovers, a la House of Mouse.

So then eventually they realize that the crossovers are the best thing they're doing anymore and declare that all of it, all of it, is in the same universe.

Does nobody really consider for a minute that maybe, just maybe, forcing disparate series to play together actually create more problems than it has potential for interesting stories?

[ChewyChewy]

I'd imagine there would be continuity problems, certainly....

[Dubiousity]

You could pretty much say the same thing about DC Universe.

[IceKitsune]

Okay now just think about this for a moment

Say you have one film company, Disney perhaps, who takes a large chunk of their canon and starts making crossovers, a la House of Mouse.

So then eventually they realize that the crossovers are the best thing they're doing anymore and declare that all of it, all of it, is in the same universe.

Does nobody really consider for a minute that maybe, just maybe, forcing disparate series to play together actually create more problems than it has potential for interesting stories?

I kind of agree with you Rick. IMO Crossover are cool when done every once in a while (I really do love a good crossover) but when you start getting into shared universe there are problems because it causes to many inconsistencies in the world. I mean when you do the occasional crossover you can ignore the inconsistencies and problem for the sake of a good story (or at least explain them away easily) but when its a shared universe (depending on what series are sharing the universe anyway there are some that could work in a shared universe) its just to hard too do it

[rickgriffin]

I was watching Atop the Fourth Wall when Linkara made one of his random diatribes against the Spider-man storyline One More Day.

He said that Mephistopheles should not have been the character to be the running villain of that storyline, because Mephisto doesn't "fit" with Spider-Man's world.

Um, hello? Mephisto is part of the Marvel Universe. Absolutely everything of that nature is fair game once you have a shared universe, and you cannot fall back on the style and tone of each individual title because it is immediately muddied, especially when a typically mad-science setting like Spider-Man has to share the same universe with magical powers and supernatural forces.

(Not that the "it's magic so we don't have to explain it" reasoning doesn't make sense by any stretch of the imagination)

But I never really got any of his arguments that certain parts of the comic universes have "nothing to do" with other parts.

[Liam]

Mephisto doesn't "fit" with Spider-Man's world.

Spidey was always a rather scientifically orientated series. It's more of a stylistic thing whether or not you think that and a stand-in for the devil equipped with all kinds of magic hokum go well together.

The actual problem with that story is the fact Quesada used massive character derailment and plot contrivances to satisfy his crude fanboy desire to bring Spidey back to his nerdy single self of Quesada's childhood.

[Frank]

You know the link I posted in the comments section for that strip? It also says that if Disney were to do that, the first problem is that since The Brave Little Toaster declares household appliances to be people too, every telephone smashed, every toaster broken, every car that is crashed, becomes a crime.

Second problem: Pocahontas declares "...every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name," shown graphically with the Grandmother Willow character. Consequence? When the villagers in Beauty and the Beast cut down a tree to ram the door of the castle, they were committing murder. Worse, when Hercules smashed his head into a river rock and broke it, he was also commiting a crime.

This could really go on forever but, yes, it does create way more problems than its worth.

[Sleet]

My preferred tactic is to keep it non-canon and go crazy. Trying to justify things just makes everything go wonky.

[Kyderra]

I'm sure saying Marvel characters and Disney characters are in the same universe will not cause any confusion or plot holes whatsoever.

[Sketcherofstuff]

This caused me to remember the rugrats/aliza(girl who talked to animals) movie. However VASTLY unlikely the movie was, I seem to remember that it worked at some level, since technically both shows could exist in the same world.

[Foxstar]

The fan's issues with One More Day I believe are more towards the hackeyed way it was done more then the idea of it being
done. People could deal with MJ and Peter being broken apart because of the pressures of his job even though for years most
writers had woven a pretty good story about how it's stressful, fustrating but it works. The idea that such a thing needed basically
Satan to come in and void it all for lolretcon is just too much to take, more so when people had single Spidey for years on end
and somehow he made it to a point so many nerds want..to be with that one person.

On shared universes, if it's done right, it can make for some great crossovers. It's not always done right though.

[Kyderra]

Do Aeris and Leo live across the street of Peanut and Grape?
cant they come over?, I heard they have a awesome new Wii game

[Sleet]

They're only in a comic every month or so because they spend most of their time in Babylon Gardens.

[Liam]

Do Aeris and Leo live across the street of Peanut and Grape?
cant they come over?, I heard they have a awesome new Wii game

>_> No, just no.

[Ebly]

peanut and grape in ina

[Liam]

peanut and grape in ina

Indonesia?

Indian National Army?

Iraqi National Alliance?

Iraqi National Accord?

Institute of Nautical Archaeology?

Ina, crater on the Moon?

Ina, Ibaraki/Nagano/Saitama, Japan?

[Ebly]

peanut and grape in ina

Indonesia?

Indian National Army?

Iraqi National Alliance?

Iraqi National Accord?

Institute of Nautical Archaeology?

Ina, crater on the Moon?

Ina, Ibaraki/Nagano/Saitama, Japan?

in the new age
one of rick's many other settings
though i'm sure all of those would be totally justifiable

[Senator_Sunburst]

He said that Mephistopheles should not have been the character to be the running villain of that storyline, because Mephisto doesn't "fit" with Spider-Man's world.

Um, hello? Mephisto is part of the Marvel Universe. Absolutely everything of that nature is fair game once you have a shared universe, and you cannot fall back on the style and tone of each individual title because it is immediately muddied, especially when a typically mad-science setting like Spider-Man has to share the same universe with magical powers and supernatural forces.

One More Day was awful, but not because it used Marval Characters. Linkara should know this. There's tons of things bad about One More Day, why'd he have to talk about something that's perfectly reasonable?

You know the link I posted in the comments section for that strip? It also says that if Disney were to do that, the first problem is that since The Brave Little Toaster declares household appliances to be people too, every telephone smashed, every toaster broken, every car that is crashed, becomes a crime.

Second problem: Pocahontas declares "...every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name," shown graphically with the Grandmother Willow character. Consequence? When the villagers in Beauty and the Beast cut down a tree to ram the door of the castle, they were committing murder. Worse, when Hercules smashed his head into a river rock and broke it, he was also commiting a crime.

This could really go on forever but, yes, it does create way more problems than its worth.

Nah man, you can solve problems like that. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, we saw the statues move but it seems that Quasimodo was just seeing things based on lonelyness. Maybe Pocahantas is just seeing things based on beliefs, and the rocks and trees aren't really sentient things?

And there's nothing stopping us from going the Toy Story route with appliances. They're alive and all, but humans don't know this and treat them accordingly. The toys and appliances don't begrudge them of this necessarily.

I like doing things like this. Trying to make large crossovers work is great fun for me. One day I hope to figure out how to put every movie in the Disney Animated Canon (With the exception of weird things like The Three Caballeros), and their respective spinoffs into a single world and tell some big crossover story in it.

[Liam]

in the new age
one of rick's many other settings
though i'm sure all of those would be totally justifiable

*checks Rick's FA*

Oh, that. But would they work together?

[Ebly]

in the new age
one of rick's many other settings
though i'm sure all of those would be totally justifiable

*checks Rick's FA*

Oh, that. But would they work together?

they wouldn't at all
think of it as a parody of DC or Marvel or Take Your Pick They're All The Same

[Anthroguy101]

Sometimes crossovers make an interesting story. In fact, the whole basis of my Fantasy World Report idea is to "cross over" real-world elements in the Fictional universe for humorous purposes.

Examples below:
https://www.housepetscomic.com/forums/v ... ?f=5&t=524
https://www.housepetscomic.com/forums/v ... ?f=7&t=694

I can see how this can become a problem, especially when it comes to continuity, but Who Framed Roger Rabbit was one of, if not the best (and perhaps one of the only) "Shared Universe" movies in existence.

[Haru Totetsu]

The problem with some cross-overs is that they just...happen. There isn't anything that causes them, like a rip in time or a dimentional shift, it just happens without explination. Take Mr Griffin's example, The House of Mouse just came about with no reasoning scientifically or magically, they all just shared the same planet (which is impossible concidering where and when some of their adventures are based).

The closest explination has is the game series Kingdom Hearts, the Disney characters once lived in different world's that because of all sorts of dramatic unquestionable events became one world, or at least lived in the same universe, menaing they were only seperated by space and not starnge Gummi items. Its easy to imagine Spider-Man having magical encounters if he somehow gets flung back in time to when Merlin was around, but not so much in todays time frame.

They can live in a shared universe, so long as why its shared is explained to an acceptable degree.

[Shyanne]

Unless you did the crossover and split with the consequences of it and then at the end just do the "oh it was all a dream thing" lol

[Medli]

That just gave me the thought of something, like, a meteorite, is seen in a comic, but simply flies by.
Then in the other comic, the meteorite seen in the first one crashes down or something.

Sorry, wasn´t really constructive, but I felt like writing this instant thought down^^

[rickgriffin]

They can live in a shared universe, so long as why its shared is explained to an acceptable degree.

They can, but the story told is going to be inherently different than if the stories were standalone. Not understanding this distinction is what causes most shared universes to buckle under their own weight.

[exranio]

I never thought it mattered with house of mouse. I just thought of that as one big "its just a spinoof don't think about it" Whic is a phrase i just made up

[rickgriffin]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MST3KMantra

[Teh Brawler]

It's okay, guys.

Everyone's just pulling a DC and creating an entirely new dimension to house this new canon without messing with the canons of the other seventeen dimensions created to house the first seventeen versions of the characters.

GOSH DC annoys the fire out of me with that cop out.

[Anthroguy101]

This oh-so-classic example comes to mind

[Hypergenesis]

It's okay, guys.

Everyone's just pulling a DC and creating an entirely new dimension to house this new canon without messing with the canons of the other seventeen dimensions created to house the first seventeen versions of the characters.

GOSH DC annoys the fire out of me with that cop out.

I sure it's okay since I believe their name was optimal for their outcome. DC, as in disconnected , surely messed up their universe when they mixed them up without proper explanation of how completely separate world of separate times, place (intergalaxial scale) cultures could mix so well together. Anytime they made a crossover, a kitten (actually like a whole species of cats, but is was off set by the paradoxial cats that appeared) died from the time-space rift they created.

This just goes to show how true that mathematics is the universal language, if just ratings alone can merge dimensions, just think of what hexadecimal democracy could do.