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What do you feel are the keys to writing good crossover fanfiction?

What are the worst things one can do in a crossover fanfiction?

What is your opinion of Crossover relationships?

discuss, I'll add my opinions later.

I've seen some really great crossovers, and then some horrible ones. The majority of problems ive seen is that it's the same thing over and over, one side beats the BEEP out of the other... the end. A struggle between say the rebelleion and the empire, spills over onto the federation... NEXT.

If are gonna do a crossover, do something original, don't do something that's been done before, even if you have a planet like tatoone, rise up and become the imperial capital, and form the Republic of Farmers, and invade the Federation with pitchforks, atleast it would be original. That's the key.

Also another important factor, is to have an understanding of both sides, have some knowledge about star trek, and star wars if thats what you are writing about, because you don't want to write non sense. You need some grasp on it.

Worst thing that someone can do in a crossover, is kill it, even before it gets of the ground. Don't show all the cards at once, leave something up your sleeve, and dont have something drag on to long, say a war, include some other events in the story line, because its just about one thing, then it gets boring really quick.

Character relationships are alos important, do something un expected with the characters, and dont have the federation, join the rebel cause and the cardassians join the empire, like bad guy, with bad guy, and good guy with good guy. Why not have the federaiton join the empire for once?

I think, the most important thing, is originality, do something that hasnt been done before.

The best crossovers are either some very similar groups, or extremely opposite groups. One of the best Beast Wars fanfic series I've ever read (late into the series) introduced Pokemon, and it worked. Why? Because the author was able to be creative.

Also bad is crossovers where one side or the other doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell.

Ex:

Fed Shuttle gets transported into the SW universe. Proceeds to lay the smack down on a SSD and it's fleet of escorts single handedly. BORING

Tie Fighter gets transported to the Trek universe. Proceeds to kill everything in it's path because it's armor is impervious to phasers. BORING.

Gotta have at least near enough capabilities so that the story is interesting. Also good is if a slowly being ground down opponent pulls something and turns the tables, like have a major fleet engagement be won by the "loosing" side. Keeps things interesting, even though we might "know" that they'll lose in the end because they are the "bad guys", having competent, 3d bad guys is always a good thing IMHO.

Also keeping faithful to the core tentants of a universe.

Take Stargate for example:
The Go'ould got kicked of Earth 10,000 years ago, not 5000, not 2000, but 10000. This is important as it shows how stagnent the Go'ould are, and is a major plot point for why Daniel Jackson was considered a loony! He believes the Pyramids were over twice their age and biudl by aliens!

If your going to change something like that, explain that you've made that change some were in the story or in the disclaimer!

I've read Highlander/Sg-1 crossovers which really streached my Suspension of Disbelive were they say Methos is 5000 years old and was arround when the Go'ould were there! (With no explanation of WTF happened to the extra 5k years)

I think if you've got the other aspects of a good story in general (any type of story) what you have to try for in a crossover is impartiality. You should know and understand both sides and not just corn hole the side you don't like because you don't like them. If one universe is technelogically inferior to the other, that's fine, they'll have the lower hand, but you still need to look at things from their perspective too. I hope I worded that correctly...

What I feel needs to be done in order to write a good crossover:

It all depends on the type of crossover you write--but I must have good world melding. Too many times I've seen bad world melding leading to one series being reduced in order for the crossover to be done as the author wishes.

IE: WIllow (From Buffy) goes to Hogwarts for no good reason and must get a wand even though she has a differenet form of magic all together--which is far more powerful than Potter Magic.

That's one thing...I'll add more later