SA and I had a conversation the other day about the liberating aspects of the near-total lack of canon in Popslash.

Hunh. Really? I often find lack of canon to be personally prohibitive

Her point ( massively oversimplified) boiled down to "if nothing is true then anything can be true." Personally, I like the structure of canon - I like the mental exercise of figuring out where you can go while still working within certain boundaries. But I can see the appeal of the other side.

Personally, I like the structure of canon - I like the mental exercise of figuring out where you can go while still working within certain boundaries.

Yup. This is the same reason why I find crossovers to be so much fun to plan out and write--it's a challenge to be able to take two universes and figure out how to blend them without doing serious violence to either canon. Even more fun is finding the areas where Canon A can support canon and/or fill holes, tie dangling plot threads, etc. in Canon B.

Pirate!Batman! Pirate!Catwoman! God, that was a great Elseworld.

In a way, aren't Elseworld sort of like commercially sanctioned fanfiction?

You know, in going through the Batman Elseworlds, that's the only one I never got more than three pages into. Sure, there were others that I regretted getting far into (some of the authors were being too arch with the convention, and the Eliot Ness one was just irrelevant to anything Batty), but something about that one sent me to ShiftL.

In a way, aren't Elseworld sort of like commercially sanctioned fanfiction?

I don't think so, unless fanfic has a lock on AU. Because that's precisely what they are -- AU.

The Azrael/Catwoman crossover--was that an Elseworld?--was hysterically funny, Azrael doing his best Sam Spade imitation.

I love love love Gotham Noir, and would kind of like to see fic set in that Elseworld.

The really good Elseworlds are REALLY good. The bad ones are REALLY REALLY terrible.

And then there's Thrillkiller.

Which may be bad, but had my number from go.

Gotham Noir was cool, and he had a sensible girlfriend.

In Darkest Night was hysterical.

What did you think of Nine Lives?

I'm really, really looking forward to writing the rest of the Bart/Kon I started.

And I really need to finish that Robin thing before issue #127 comes out, don't I? (And then more Cass/Steph and Kon/Tim and Dick/Tim and Batman/Superman and Bruce/Cass and that crazybadwrong Elseworld Bruce/Tim and -- meep.)

I can see the appeal of the other side.

I can see the appeal, too, and maybe a reason why RPS in general doesn't grab me is because I'm more of a chaos-within-a-framework thinker than make-a-framework-out-of-chaos. If... that makes any sense?