The Basics:

Occupation: Test Engineer (Depuy Synthes)

Favorite Movie(s): The Dark Knight, How to Train Your Dragon 2

Favorite Song: Gone Home (Journey's End) by Hyperduck Soundworks

Favorite Game: Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Bayonetta 2, Skyrim

Favorite Item: Amiibos!

Me and Writing:

I've been writing since I was the wee age of 13, and now I'm 26. So just half my life. Sounds pretty good, until you realize that nothing has been published and my greatest strength from this is writing professional papers, where I can't be nearly as fluid, creative, or overall free. So I write fanfiction, where the world is set and the characters are there. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of ideas and working projects for actual publication, but mixtures of confidence, time, and overall skill keep me pursuing them past the notes (extensive notes) that they are. Maybe one day...

Thoughts on Crossovers:

Depressing note aside, I do prefer to write crossovers stories, mostly because I know they have the absolute most potential. I think this for two reasons.

1) There is no way anything you write in a crossover can possibly be construed as canon. People aren't going to say that "Master Chief never teamed up with Commander Shepard" because the whole point of a crossover is to combine two stories that are obviously their own tales, but see how well the mend.

2) The opportunities are nigh endless. Yes, there are some stories that are just better than others, but you can combine almost anything with anything, kinda like shipping ponies!

I do have personal rules and pet peeves that I believe have to be followed for a good crossover story however. While they are not set in stone, they aren't inscribed on sand either. They are guidelines that give you a lot of promise for your crossover, should you ever chose to write one. Or, just a general way to find the good ones, when you go searching. The rules are below.

Crossover Rules

1) The combination is fluid, not jagged

This may seem like a weird place to start, but just imagine if Louise from the "Familiar of Zero" summoned the god damn Master Chief into Tristian. No matter the jokes you make, that wouldn't work. He's an already super powered space faring marine that has guns, GUNS, and the skills to use them. At most you'd get a few jokes about space travel then a bland story. A better combination that I've seen, Fate series aside, is with Assassin's Creed. The setting is very similar, bar the magic, but the differences are subtle enough that the characters still interact without focusing on every little difference. That's the key.

Any kind of crossover that you do has to be believable. This is easiest when you think of genres. Fantasy to Fantasy, Scifi to Scifi, those are clear. A bit of tweaking and you can get Star Wars and Mass Effect rolling. The same with Legend of Zelda and Lord of the Rings. The elements are all there, just a bit of combination questions and you'll be good!

2) Overpowered is Overdone

A very common trap writers fall into is having a single character come in and be overpowered in said universe. Sometimes this makes sense, other times it doesn't, but it never goes over well. You basically have a character then in a universe with nothing to fear. I forget who said it, but the quote goes "Heaven is Boring, Hell is a Story." You need suspense to create a plot. Be it on the battlefield or speaking of politics, there has to be a sense that something could go wrong. Double the points if you write it as doing just that!

If characters are going to be overpowered (as I am also guilty of), you have to justify them. Justify and THEN tone down. In my story "Unknown Legends" a LoZ/RWBY crossover, Link is blatantly seen as overpowered among everyone else. It makes sense, when you think of how he kills "Ancient Grimm" and giant dragons a pretty regular basis (Hyrule Warriors anyone?). However, suspense is gone when you put him in a battle. The solution? Either limit him or put him on the other side. Now instead of fighting to his full strength, he's lost half his gear! Or, instead of fighting side by side with Ruby, he's against her! See, the tension comes back. You still have to be careful though, as the sudden "they're evenly matched" doesn't make much sense if one character is described as being better than the other earlier.

3) Deviate, but don't Destroy

Quoting Zoom now, "Break the sound barrier and you get a sonic boom. Break the time barrier and you blow reality away." Basically, use the excuse of melded universes to change some things from canon. These changes keep readers from reading what can usually amount to fix fics, which only have life for about a month after writing. Deviations are small changes, not extreme ones. Like, if you did a LoZ crossover, Link goes to the zora domain first because it's close to him. Logical, different, and easy to follow. Destroying would be something along the lines of Zelda suddenly being evil and Ganondorf the good guy. That's a 'what if' fic by itself. Changing characters AND the story makes it hard to read a fan fiction. Don't do it.

Deviations can eventually become major though. Again using the Assassin's Creed/Familiar of Zero crossover I mentioned, majority of the tools brought from the other world are Pieces of Eden or Papal Staff. These are hinted at first, no one noting them because THEY NEVER KNEW WHAT WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO BE THERE, but then as the story goes on, the changes can alter the entire plot. This is well done in this story, because you no longer know what to expect, BUT you can still follow without stopping to wonder what happened.

Stories:

My stories, as said, are focusing on Crossovers right now because I get the most enjoyment out of them. They can be bad, or can they, but that isn't to mean they shouldn't be attempted. I try and combine worlds that make sense, or at least have enough similarities to make you believe they can be melded with a bit of metal and carbide smelting. Like LoZ to RWBY may seem extreme, until you describe that both are about kids trying to stop giant monsters from destroying the land they protect. That's not including the Faunus to Races of Hyrule, the Rupees and Dust, Health and Aura, Magic and... magic, Sages and Maidens, the list goes on!

I like writing stories like this because they make sense. I won't write something like Bayonetta and Steven Universe because that's stupid. The two couldn't be more different and attempting to put them together is not only impossible, but a mess. On the other hand, something like Bayonetta and Hellsing would make sense, as they are both dark, mature, monster/angel hunters with big guns, lots of tools, and a penchant to employ what they hunt.

But I hate Naruto. I will never read a Naruto Crossover. Over saturation leads to hatred over here!