So I was reading through Carrotglace's "A matter of force"...

[Shay Guy]

...and I was wondering: does "Invoked Crossover" count as a self-insertion trope? I've never seen anyone else but him do it, though he does it
over and over.

---

Pronounced "shy guy."

[Bob Schroeck]

When you say "Invoked Crossover", do you mean the insert character forcing crossover elements into his own story? I think that's pretty unique to
him.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Necratoid]

I think we'd have to break it down more to clarify what exactly an 'Invoked Crossover' actually is. For instance in 'The 'Three Magical
Knights' its not a crossover so much as Carrot and Dan LARPing in elements of Slayers to screw with things... and Carrot was following Dan's lead if I
recall correctly. 'Insertion: Reflux' Carrot picked elements and inserts to screw with a random Ranma and then seasoned to amusement. In Gaijin, the
SI is actually warping reality around him by making random choices (like using Spiderman as a cover identity)... who is apparently using the same method that
the (Sailor Moon 1st season) Greater Big Bad used to become the Greater big Bad in the first place. Only he doesn't really know why this is happening,
kind of like .a certain Melencholy character that has the world out to get him and is aware weird things are occurring... and the are hostile. 'A matter
of force' appears to be a character that is psychical picking up on crossovers before they come into play. Insertion is a mixed bag of cHaoS.

So to be a trope we'd have to actually be rather specific on what the trope in question is based on in the first place.

[Morganite]

"Invoked Crossover" sounds to me like a character doing something that turns a series that's not a crossover into one that is. (a la shouting
"This is now a Naruto crossover!", and Konoha appears out of nowhere, ninja and all.)

I think the only example I've actually seen of this would be in one of metroanime's stories where someone had turned a universe into an "A Wind
Named Amnesia" crossover to wipe out a development they didn't like.

-Morgan.

[Epsilon]

It's not unique to Carrot. For instance, there was a Buffy/Potter crossover in one of the threads here recently which basically featured Xander Harris
doing an Invoked Corssover to Star Wars.

Basically its whenever a character in a story deliberatly invokes another series outside of the ones actually in it to justify adding in new factors to the
story, as a deliberate in series call out to another existing fiction (rather than as a shout out solely on the part of the author). For example, if a
charcater in a Sailor Moon fanfic starts training in the Bakusaitenkestu training regime specifically because she saw too many episodes of Ranma 1/2 then that
is an Invoked Crossover. On the other hand, if she just goes through some generic Training From Hell that happens to look (and have vaguely the same effects
as) the Bakusaitenketsu training that's more of a shout out or an outright case of cribbing then an Invoked Crossover.

The key difference is that a: the character in the story is emulating another fiction and b: the character knows this and c: it works. In most cases the
fiction borrowed from remains fiction, though it can lead to an "Invoked crossover arms race" as other character begin to (consciously or
unconsciously) emulate the other fiction. If the crossover element later turns out to be actually true ("What do you mean Yu Yu Hakusho is a
documentary?") it becomes a normal crossover.

As another example, I remember a Ranma 1/2 fanfic where Ranma learned to fly by watching reruns of Dragonball on TV, another where he learned the Hadoken from
playing the arcade games and so on. These would be Invoked Crossover elements.

-------------------

Epsilon

[Foxboy]

May want to see if you can include the references where someone does this as a joke, and it spirals out of control as everyone ELSE takes it seriously...
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

The entirety of Shinji and Warhammer 40K would seem to count.

--Sam

"I name you, TITANICUS! PRINCIPIO ETERNUS!"

[Shepherd]

Although it wasn't quite an Invoked Crossover, this does bring to mind an old Highlander fanfic where Duncan, Amanda, and Mythos were playing a game of
truth or dare (it didn't work very well since Mythos would always take truth and amanda would always take dare). Duncan eventually hears the story of how
Mythos and Amanda first met in medieval England during the time of the crusades. Mythos was making a living robbing travelers (since all of the brave people
were out fighting in the holy lands) when he met Amanda and wound up partnering with her. He'd step out in the road and shake down travelers while Amanda
would use her acrobatic talents to zip around in the trees and shake a bunch of branches to simulate an entire band of criminals. When he is eventually caught,
Amanda shows up at the trial to claim that she is a noble maid and that Methos is a nobleman who'd been deprived of his lands and fortune. When a bunch of
the peasants watching the trial support her claims, Methos is quite confused until Amanda notes that he tips VERY well while drunk. Thus we discover that
Methos and Amanda were once Robin Hood and Maid Marion (and the entire band of Merry Men).

Even farther afield (and well away from any crossover elements), there was also a Highlander fic with a similar vibe where it turned out that "The
Game" was utter nonsense. Back when the four horsemen rampaged across the world, they got bored and decided to hold a contest with the prize being
leadership of their group for the next several decades. They each traveled in a different direction with the intent of taking as many heads as possible before
their next meeting. To make things harder, they added a few rules to their game (one-on-one combat, hidden from humans, and not on holy ground). Methos was
shocked and horrified when he met an immortal centuries later who seemed to think that "The Game" was something else entirely. An eternity of
immortals butchering each other over absolutely nothing.
----------------------------------------------------

"Anyone can be a winner if their definition of victory is flexible enough." - The DM of the Rings XXXV

[Norgarth]

To expand on Epsilon's mention of the B:tVS/Potter/Star Wars fic (Jedi Granger): The initial crossover has Hermonie's parents being Xander and Dawn.
Xander while doing some shopping in Diagon Alley is jumped by some DEs, whom Xander defeats with a 'lightsaber' built by Andrew in his role as
'Q' for the Watcher's Council. Xander claims to be a jedi and introduces the Aurors to the 'documentries' produced by a Mr Jucas as
evidence.

Things start to rapidly snowball from there.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Necratoid]

I think there should be a different name for some of these aspects. For instance, when characters are doing invoking of fictional (relative to the
dimension(s) the story takes place in), and consciously splicing in things they see as a good idea from a fictional source, we can call it a Invoked crossover
(The Three Magical Knights), but I think its a different, but related, thing when a character invokes a crossover and things start to run in parallels to the
invoked crossover via people that haven't heard of the series in question (Gaijin). The second case I'd want to call an invoked fusion, it seems like
a parser issue that I want to tweak the name there.

So would 'Invoked Fusion' make sense in the case that an invoked crossover starts corrupting the time line or whatever to the point that the one
invoking the crossover ends up more than LARPing the crossover?

Edit: It suddenly occurs to me that when viewed in these terms the anime version of Martian Successor Nadesico is basically the story of one deranged fanboy
pilot trying to invoke a crossover... and somehow convincing other that this is a good idea... fighting a group of people that started off trying to invoke a
crossover and having their descendants living in a invoked metafusion. Meta as they are aware they are doing this. Trippy.

[zojojojo]

I think the best example we could list of an "Invoked Crossover" would be Quincy in DW2 trying to get superpowers in his world... and succeeding!
-Z, Post-reader at Medium
----
If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

[Necratoid]

Quincy wasn't trying to invoke a crossover... he was trying to play the super villain/hero home game. Sure he ended up accomplishing pretty much the same
thing, but the crossover (which was with his own old RPG character and not someone else's fictional character, as far as he was concerned) isn't what
he was doing. I think it was more of an attempt at professional alchemy (if I do enough purposefully evil things, I'll be a villian... on a large enough
scale I'll be a SUPER Villian... Super Heroes arise to stop supervillians...) than an invoked crossover. He wasn't trying to invoke a crossover so
much as spawn super heroes by doing his best to be a super villain and getting the natural opposition to attack him.

[Bob Schroeck]

Precisely, Necratoid. He didn't want specific superheroes to show up, he just wanted superheroes in general.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.