A sign of an area maturing is the presence of parodies. I don’t have any cross-media parodies,but I’m sure there are plenty parodies of franchises. Take this one from the webcomic Penny Arcade (thanks Jeremy):Tycho,the in-comic character,has been hired to write 13 fantasy novellas based on a game franchise. He explains in the news section of the site:
So,as you can see,I’ve supposedly been “granted a contract”to write several novellas based on Epic Legends of the Hierarchs:The Elemenstor Saga. This is a “popular franchise”that began life as a CCG but now has a boardgame,a pen and paper variant,a Saturday morning cartoon,a series of limited edition busts,a CG animated direct to video feature,and upcoming MMO and a line of “totally street”hip-hop fashions –all of which strive to remain canonical.
This week I’ll be populating an extremely sparse wiki with a few of the basic touchstones of the franchise and its timeline. It begins with the birth of the first Magic Sword King,Ronard –and it culminates in the betrayal of Princess Crystalcrown at Mount Wor. There are other items in the middle there –like the discovery of High Elemenstation by the wizened Harbinger Portent –but there is also the execrable (some might even say blasphemous) Wizbits,an ill-advised foray into tween programming where four young wizards and their collectible familiars introduce no less than fourteen retail products per episode.
Well,in a recent post,‘Tycho’informs us that he has competition,but you can check out the wiki of his dastardly cross-media creation:The Elemenstor Saga. Very,very funny.
And then there is the bloody funny Young Guns versus Old Ones:a game where young marketers use new media tactics against the old media approaches. Very funny too.
Does anyone out there know of any other franchise or cross-media parodies? I’d love to hear about them.
