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.