Fanfic Chop Suey - Television Tropes & Idioms

You know this is out there somewhere.

"People Who Write Erotic Versions of Star Trek Where All the Characters are Furries, Like Kirk is an Ocelot or Something, and They Put a Furry Version of Themselves as the Star of the Story"

— Lowest rung of the Geek Hierarchy

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The habit of many fan creators of adding elements to their fan works not because they're organically connected to that fandom, but because they happen to also be fans of those other things. Similar to Author Appeal, but often much more blatant.

The proof looks something like this:

I like Fandom A.
I also like Fandom B, Song C, Subculture D, Sexual Practice E, Religion F, Political Stance G, and/or Literary/Artistic Style H.
Therefore, Fandom A will go together well with any one or more of Items B-H.

Sometimes this works very well; Tropes Are Not Bad. At other times, this becomes an Author Tract, a confused mess, or just stupid. The inverse also happens: authors writing as if everything they detest is universally loathed.

One common form is the conversion fic, where a character or Mary Sue starts preaching the author's brand of religion, with overwhelming success.

The name of the trope comes from chop suey, a dish originally created out of all the ingredients the chef happened to have on hand that day.

Nothing to do with Chop Sockey (then again, who wouldn't want to mix a little kung fu in with their Harry Potter?). Also do not confuse with Fanfic Mary Suey, though they can overlap. Not to be confused with Patchwork Fic, which blends elements from different continuities of the same series. See also Anachronism Stew, Present Day Past, Fusion Fic, and Film Fic common results.

Note that it's not the number of hobby-horses being ridden; one is enough, as long as it's a clear case of Author On Board. See Mega Crossover for the common subtrope when it's just multiple fandoms involved.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

This is the very reason for "Linkin Park Z" (i.e., Dragon Ball (Z) music videos set to Linkin Park songs), despite the fact that most Linkin Park songs are relatively dark and brooding and have little to do with the more cheerful and combat-oriented Dragon Ball sagas.
A fic where Rei Ayanami revealed her love of Dungeons & Dragons. After that the whole thing dissolved into an Author Tract about how people can't appreciate modern fantasy.
Neon Exodus Evangelion is a Neon Genesis Evangelion Mega Crossover, whose authors were also clearly into New England college life, antiauthoritarianism, motorcycles, the Titanic and the UK. But not, however, anything the original creators of Eva had done with the themes and characterization.
- The same authors' flagship series Undocumented Features is another example.
Shinji and Warhammer 40,000 has one chop suey element, but it's right there in the title, and used with style.
There is one Tenchi Muyo! fanfic where Tenchi and his crew gave in willingly to Kagato because he threatened them with country music.
Another Tenchi Muyo! example was alien princess Ayeka listening to the 1997 song "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks (real subtle there) despite the fact that she had never been to Earth, and the song wouldn't be written for 700 years.
Knight Of Lolicon: In addition to the premise, at some point the writer must have just felt like throwing in obscure anime that only fellow otakus were likely to have seen, and made the fic nigh-unreadable to anyone who isn't familiar with Magical Girl and Shoujo series targeted towards young girls.*
The reason this counts as an example is because the other series in the Mega Crossover are Shounen fighting anime, and most anime fans are unfamiliar with both genres.
There are also a lot of Shout Outs towards things that make little sense in context.
Nyoron Churuya San (a Haruhi gag manga) is largely based on Churuya's desire for smoked cheese — which exists because the author really likes smoked cheese.
Decks Fall Everyone Dies: the Yugioh characters with their Abridged Series personalities in the plot of Moulin Rouge! with whatever songs the author wants to parody.

Comics

The Darker Knight is a Batman Troll Fic in which Batman saves random celebrities and rock bands and fights against a zombie apocalypse with characters from other comics, cartoons, and movies. Hilarity Ensues.

Film

Similar to the "pepperjack" example in Literature, one AU High School Musical fanfic had Gabriella and Troy share a mutual dislike of eggs. To say nothing of the setting, namely casting Gabriella as a well-off Jew and Troy as one of the Hilterjüngen in Nazi Germany. Luckily, the author canceled the fic after coming back from a long hiatus and realizing that it was kind of terrible.

Literature

Harry Potter fans (among others) call these elements "pepperjack cheese", or just "pepperjack", after a Harry Potter fanfic in which Hermione expresses a fondness for pepper jack cheese, a mild cheese with jalapeño peppers that's popular in parts of the United States but basically unknown everywhere else. England, of course, is part of "everywhere else", and it's nigh-impossible to obtain there.*
You can occasionally find it in fast food restaurants, but you certainly couldn't in The Nineties when Harry Potter is set.
- The author boldly stated in her notes that Hermione liked it now because she (the author) liked it. It was such a blatant example (and relatively early in the sporking journal's history) that it soon became shorthand for "the characters must like what I like!"
- My Immortal possibly parodies this trope. Everyone turns into a ~~gothic~~ goffik ~~Satanist~~ Stanist who swears a lot and sticks their middle finger up at preps. They also develop an unhealthy preoccupation with slitting their wrists.
- There is a fic about Harry Potter battling the threat of communism. It had Lucius Malfoy as a communist who was taking over the Ministry of Magic, and they planned to defeat him by... pointing out the fallacies of communism. The first Harry Potter book is set in 1991, the year the Cold War ended.
- Musical choices are a very common element. Fanfic writers will often put Hogwarts students (even pureblood wizards like Draco) in shirts advertising moody American Muggle bands that hadn't even been formed at the corresponding timeline.
  - Reign O'er Me by cts actually makes a minor plot-point out of Sirius Black being passionate about The Who. The fact that The Who were primarily a Mod band while Sirius is a committed Rocker (albeit born well after they declared a ceasefire) is never addressed, but after the chapter where he somehow persuades them to do a private gig for Harry's 16th birthday party nobody really cares.
- In one conversion fic, Harry Potter abandoned "witchcraft".
- At the opposite extreme, a Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings crossover where Hermione is in an orgy with elves and claims that soon, all religion will fade away. Just like in Middle Earth. This disregards Tolkien's own religious beliefs.
- Another Harry Potter fanfic, The Girl Who Lived, features as its main character a Gender Flipped version of Harry - who's also a nudist druidess. As can be imagined, this results in a ton of things being thrown into the plot that have absolutely nothing to do with the series, including a reference to Mallorn trees...
A Drizzt Do'Urden fanfic that was slightly more nuanced than the standard. Catti-brie wanted to try bondage, and while Drizzt is at first interested, being from a society that is controlled by a frothing boot-on-the-neck abusive matriarchy, he started freaking out. He got used to it in the end, though.
Fics in which the characters eat the author's favourite meal are quite common, and often not particularly problematic, but see the above mention of Pepper-Jack Cheese - it doesn't work when the food is not accessible or there would be other reasons for the characters not to eat it. For example, there was once a Lord of the Rings fic which featured the elves making a pizza, and another one which showed the Fellowship enjoying cheeseburgers. Worse, perhaps, was the Redwall fic in which the herbivorous-plus-fish-eating Talking Animal Abbeydwellers were depicted eating chicken - to quote a commenter on LiveJournal:
"Good God, have they read the books? One of Brian Jacques' favourite ways to show the bad guys were particularly evil was to show them eating some sort of bird!"

Live Action TV

Stephen Colbert The Hedgehog!◊
A curious Star Trek: The Next Generation/Battlestar Galactica (original) crossover fanfic had this as the climax, with a Mary Sue Enterprise crewman precipitating the rapture with a piano recital. It took a good chunk of both series humans (save for a beffudled Picard, musing on whether he could find faith), and even some Cylons, which were revealed to be lizards in silver armor. (This last is a reference to the little-known novelization of the original pilot movie, which was adapted from an early script that predated the Executive Meddling which turned the Cylons into robots in the first place.)
There was a BtVS fanfic wherein 9/11 brought Spike to tears. And not in a jealous "Why can't I be that evil?" way. In a woobie needing-a-cuddle-to-make-the-bad-go-away way.
One author has produced a few short Doctor Who Meta Fics in which Ninth and Tenth join the Eleventh Hatedom, and lambast him whenever he enters This Time Round.
There's also a Doctor Who/The Prisoner crossover fic. The "new Number Two" convention from The Prisoner is compared to Time Lord regeneration, which provides the sole hook for combining the two series. It's very weird.
And while we're still on the subject of Doctor Who, the Fan Verse of Rich's ComixBlog includes characters from Forever Knight and Jem becoming companions of the Doctor.
An otherwise well-written Babylon 5/Battlestar Galactica (revival) crossover seemed to indicate that NCAA basketball was a major obsession of the Earth Alliance.

Music

With Strings Attached is what happened when the then 15-year-old writer got into The Beatles and Dungeons & Dragons simultaneously, though the final product (which she finished when she was 44) went far, far beyond anything as simpleas D&D.

Musical

Fans of the Rocky Horror Picture Show will often take characters from other canon sources and "cast" them according to their personalities in the show. Sometimes this can result in some bizarre castings (such as Otacon playing Dr. Frank-n-Furter or Wash playing Eddie). There may or may not be fanfiction based on this practice.
- The Rocky Horror Discworld Show (with Carrot and Angua as Brad and Janet and Lord Vetinari as Frank) isn't just fanfic — it's a genuine amateur stage production with permission from Richard O'Brien, and based on an idea by Terry Pratchett.

Tabletop Games

"A Crushed Empire", a long-gone Warhammer 40,000 fanfic where the Emperor is evil, all non-humans are trying to be friendly and everyone converts to Christianity. That the instigator is a Dark Angel (read:uber-fanatic) who Wangsts just because his home planet got hit by an Exterminatus. The sequel is just as bad, as the races well known for their Fantastic Racism and Omnicidal Maniac tendencies are being nice to each other, and the Marty Stu Dark Angel-wannabe somehow banished the Chaos Gods. The cause of all this? The Bible.

Video Games

One Super Mario Bros. fanfic had a Koopa kid converting another to Christianity via Easy Evangelism for no good plot-related reason.
- One Sonic the Hedgehog fic has a female velociraptor (with wings) who converts Sonic and the other Freedom Fighters to Christianity.
The Command & Conquer story Tiberium Wars (no, not the official novelization) is a fanfic example done right. The author is clearly a big fan of Warhammer 40,000, especially Gaunt's Ghosts, and this shows up in his portrayal of Nod which definitely has elements of the Imperial Guard and Space Marines. Not to mention all the other subtler shout outs (and not just to Warhammer 40,000).
Halo: Combat Evolution is a fic that combines the Halo universe with realistic combined arms tactics. The only jarring notes are a) the occasionally poor spelling and grammar*
The writer may not be a native English-speaker.
, and b) someone denigrating something by saying it displayed incompetence the likes of which hadn't been seen since "the Bush administration of 21st century Earth". This is the rough equivalent of comparing modern-day politics to the behavior of Henry VI*
His mental breakdown triggered the War of the Roses.
.
There are myriad fanfics that have Osama bin Laden being skewered by Cloud's BFS.
There is a fanfic out there called Return to Atlantica which, besides being a terrifying behemoth (one chapter, one hundred and sixty-six thousand, two hundred and eighteen words), contains everything from Pokémon to The Little Mermaid to Spyro the Dragon to Super Mario Bros..
A fan of the Legacy of Kain series starts pulling the characters out of the video games. Since they are in the "Real World," they can watch movies and play video games, including their own. Due to the nature of the magic involved, the characters will occasionally run into characters like Dante from Devil May Cry and Cloud from Final Fantasy VII. Razzy Plush, Sequel to Razzy Plush, and Plus Kain: The Convention Adventure.

Web Original

Draw Your Own Story, while not exactly a fanfic of anything, bases its insane plot upon, among other things, an insane mish-mash of a thousand works with little or no explanation as to why are they all here together. Let's quote from the work page: Starcraft, Spongebob Squarepants, The Fairly OddParents, Cthulhu, Star Wars, Dune, Ozy And Millie, Sonic the Hedgehog, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil, Metroid, Fallout, Dead or Alive, Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Command & Conquer, Civilization and more.
The Protectors of the Plot Continuum refer to this phenomenon as "Pepperjack Cheese", after the Harry Potter example given in Literature.

Western Animation

A Daria fic, in which shy, insecure Stacy Rowe, who is obsessed with being popular and liked by others was also secretly a fan of the Dead Milkmen. More inexplicable references to and even cameos by bands that it was clear the author loved followed.
Transformers fan-artists pretty much consider anything fair game for turning into a robot. Anything at all.◊ In some continuities they're Armed With Canon.
- It's the same thing with the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fandom. Any character from any work of fiction can become a pony. Crossovers with Doctor Who are popular, as well as Portal. But by far the weirdest crossover fic would have to be "Waking Nightmares". It's a very well-written fanfic that somehow combines Friendship Is Magic, Team Fortress 2, and Slender Man, who is now "Slender Mane" or "Slender Pony".
  - Sometimes they still manage to find something that just doesn't work; a picture depicting the core Apple family mourning the death of Steve Jobs was declared incredibly silly, and somewhat disrespectful to both Jobs and ponies.
  - Though the Doctor Who crossovers are somewhat justified; there's a background pony with an houreglass cutie mark who resembles the 10th Docter, his (fan)name is Doctor Whovers
Kim Possible is sent to kill bin Laden, and in the process she lectures him sternly on the treatment of women in Muslim countries.
There's an Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic featuring Zuko and a Mary Sue starting a communist revolution.
- The same author also wrote a fic where the Avatar Gang formed a band. Zuko started dressing like Marilyn Manson. The other characters somehow knew who Marilyn Manson was.

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