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.
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Epsilon
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.
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Epsilon