Animation Source Forums

Well, the second half of my Balto/Lady and the Tramp crossover story has posted!

I invite everyone to have a look! It's ten entertaining pages, and should prove a worthy salute to two great cartoon universes, and the awesome characters in them!

http://baltosource.timduru.org/fanfic.php?ici=1&num=1183&lang=2&nsite=1

(Please feel free to comment on the story after you've had a read!)

I'll be sure to check it out. I liked the first one!
In the future, may I suggest advertising your fics in your signature?
That way, people will see it every where you post.

-LWf

That's a good thought, Lonewolf! I hadn't considered that.

Now that I've completed the fan fiction, allow me to offer some fun thoughts and some trivia:

1. In Part 2, I noted something I forgot to in Part 1: that the park the ceremonies and picnic are held in is called "Veterans Park".

2. Late in Part 2, I gave Rosy's father (and, thus, the family) a last name: Johnson. This is not official, and I know of no official last name for the characters. However, for the sake of the fan fiction, I used a little "poetic license".

3. In Part 2, some of the lyrics of two songs are shown. These are two real songs which were popular in the 1920s. The first was the dippy little innuendo known as "I Wanna Be Loved By You", which was originally sung by Helen Kane (who became the model for the cartoon character "Betty Boop"). The song ACTUALLY was recorded in 1928. However, I once again drew on a bit of poetic license to move it back a few years so that I could have a flapper in a dance parlor singing it (and especially the "boop boop ba doo" line! LOL). If you are interested in actually hearing a bit of the song (and getting a mental picture for when you read the fan fic, if you haven't already), check out this hyperlink to Amazon.com, where the CD "The Roaring Twenties" is featured. Track #3 (if you scroll down) is that song, sung by Helen Kane herself...if you have either Windows Media Player, or Real Player, you can hear a sample of it! It's priceless! http://www.amazon.com/Roaring-Twenties-Various-Artists/dp/B00004TJB2/ref=pd_sim_m_4/104-1590620-9239122?ie=UTF8.

4. The song which is sung by Tony, near the end of Part 2, is the romantic Italian piece "O' Sole Mio". It was originally written in 1898 (the year before the town of Nome sprung up), and performed only in Italian. Enrico Caruso often sung it back in the day. English words were later used in some performances (which may not exactly match the original Italian lyrics)...and you've probably heard those sung by Elvis Presley. Here, for your listening pleasure, is a link to where you can hear a sample of that song, as sung in the original Italian: http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=6410019 (Windows Media Player or Real Audio), and Elvis Presley singing the English version (Track #7 "It's Now Or Never"): http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=2045496&BAB=E.

5. I never particularly cared for Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp's Adventure. Unlike the original Lady and the Tramp, and so many other classic Disney movies, this one is saddled by a couple of problems: 1) the production team's puzzling need to turn it into a musical, with many corny songs sung by the characters (a common problem in modern cartoon movies, Disney or otherwise); 2) a whiney, bratty protagonist (Scamp), with a mismatched voice actor (Scott Wolf, whose voice, although very good, is too old for the physical representation of the character in my opinion). STILL, I felt there were some characters that were salvageable from that movie: Buster, Angel, Francois (the French bulldog), Mrs. Mahoney (the large woman who gets dumped, unceremoniously, on her duff and loses her wig), Danielle, Collette and Annette (Scamp's sisters...especially goofy, dopey Danielle!), Reggie (the big, mean alley dog) and the dog catcher (with his Don Knotts-sounding voice).

6. As I had mentioned, the Lady and the Tramp cartoons are set either in the 1910s, or the 1920s. More likely the 1910s. The clothing, vehicles and settings lend themselves to it. Someone on Balto Source also told me that he saw, in the scene where Jim Dear bathes the puppies, a headline for the sinking of the Titanic on a newspaper laid out on the floor. This would place the date of the second movie squarely in 1912. Back in 1955, however, when even Walt Disney himself worked on the original Lady and the Tramp, no attempt was made to pin the date down specifically. Still, for my purposes, and the purposes of this fan fiction, it is set in 1925. More "poetic license".

7. Notice, if you will, that in Lady and the Tramp 2: Scamp's Adventure, Scamp wants like anything to be "a wild dog". At one point, in a disagreement with his father (Tramp), he lets loose with a howl, claiming that that is what wild dogs do. Er...since I set my fan fiction in between the two L&T movies, I thought about something only just recently (after they were completed). Early in Part 2 of my fan fic, Balto calls to his team with a wolf-like howl, which catches EVERYONE'S attention! Could it be that Scamp (who is a background character in my fan fic, and younger than he would be in L&T 2) picked up the howl thing from Balto? That, almost a year later (in my timeline), he was trying it out for himself because he wanted to be "a wild dog"?

8. Did anyone notice that the "good Samaritan" who appears, early in Part 2 trying to help up Mrs. Mahoney (after she's fallen) is the same fellow who appeared in L&T, when Tramp takes Lady to the city zoo to try and free her from a muzzle? Heh heh...I thought that guy deserved a chance to provide a bit more comedy relief!

9. As I said in the opening comments of Part 2, I did my best not to sink to the level of "typing" the characters to their usual routine too much. I wanted to breathe new life into them, while remaining loyal to what they were in their respective movies. So, while they still are true to who they were, I wasn't simply recycling dialogue from the movies...but adding new twists to classic lines and behavior. Hope you liked that!

I'd also like to add this:

Die-hard fans of Balto 1 will note that I have changed the musher of Balto's team somewhat (the animated musher and team). In Balto 1, he's a tall older bearded man with a straight American accent in his voice.

In the real history, he was 21 year-old Norwegian Gunnar Kaasen, protege to then legendary musher, racer, dog trainer and breeder Leonhard Seppala (another Norwegian). They had both worked for the Pioneer Gold Mining Company, owned by Jafet Lindberg (one of the "Three Lucky Swedes", though Lindberg himself was actually Norwegian too), running dog sled teams for the company (freighting, mostly).

The musher in my story is sort of a melding of the two...he's got the appearance and age of the musher in the animated feature, but the name, nationality and accent of the real Gunnar Kaasen.

I loved as ive said before baltoseppala...it was truly amazing!But I seriously think that maybe you should fit 101 dalmatians in with one of your next crossovers!I mean Id love to see Balto's expression seeing that many puppies and pongo and perdita are just wonderful,brilliant characters in my opinion.They both have alot of courage and perhaps theyd be able to meet lady and the tramp as well?That would be a VERY interesting storyline do you agree?I think it would be fun to play around with.......

LOL - maybe, kadaj...but there's no reason you cannot write that if you like the concept. See, I'm the kind of writer who straddles himself over a very thin line...the line of what I consider to be an obligation to believability. No offense to you (because yours IS a very good idea, and could be a lot of fun!), but I force myself (by my nature) to restrain my crossover ideas to ones which could conceivably happen in the real world.

Which means, basically, I ask myself (as I did when I considered the Balto/L&T crossover) questions like: given the characters and settings, could this happen...even in a cartoon world? Is it plausible? (It just so happens that it was for Nome Meets Snob Hill, because both cartoons are set in the early 20th century...within the first twenty-five years of it!)

But I really don't mean to shoot down your idea. It's just something I can't see myself writing, because I need the inspiration and motivation to write it, and the question of plausibility. For that setting, for me, it wouldn't work.

YA.Actually I already started writing one!!!lol so i was hoping I could get to you before you decided to write it.Because if I had started writing it and you decided to as well it would cause alot of conflict here on balto source,agreed? So its better this way but maybe if I finish this story without getting writers block lol that youd be a bit inspired to write something like it.but who knows?only time will tell ps so far my 101 dalmatian/lady and the tramp/and balto crossover has turned out pretty good. Im quite proud of it.

Wow, BaltoSeppala! You really did your research!

(I noticed some of those little bits that your mentioned - the big lady with the wig, the guy from the first film, the newspaper headline about the Titanic) I like your style a lot! You have a lot of potential, I'll tell you that!

Ah, it's good to see more authors write, while keeping the personalities of the characters intact.

Nice reference with the "howl" thing . . . I saw that too . . . (heheh, what if Scamp found out that Balto was half wolf?)

Keep it up, Seppala! I can't wait for your next piece!

- Juuchan17

I wish you the best of luck with it, kadaj, and I look forward to reading it when it's finished!

As to conflict arising from what you mentioned? PFF. Not likely. I own no rights to any of those characters, so I wouldn't feel protective. Besides, I'm not like that. If you look at the history of my posts in the True Story board, you'll see I am very eager and willing to share things I find or work up...

heh heh...thanks so much, Juuchan! I will do my best to give you and everyone else good reading material! You know, a good story has details (not an overbearing amount of them, maybe, but details nevertheless)...and background research can only help in writing a good and dynamic fan fiction!

actually baltoseppala what i meant by conflict arising is people thinking either you stole my idea or i stoile your idea if we chose to right the same thing Ive had TO many problems with iggnorant people here on balto source.....over really IDIOTIC things.

LOL - well, I certainly understand that! I've encounted my share of people who seem to look for and even thrive on conflict. And if they don't like your opinion, they'll flame you as long as they can. And there are some who have a support network of friends who get behind them and make things worse. So I do sympathize.

But back to the subject matter of the topic (so that THIS doesn't get locked!). Let's try this:

I will be making a sequel, because enough people have contacted me, or posted, asking for one. That much is certain. However, I give you permission to develop your own spin-off story. I only ask that you don't make it a straight sequel to mine...meaning the gang goes to Nome. At least, not until I've posted mine. Then you can write your own if you wish. Still, if you want to do a Balto/101 Dalmations crossover, like you suggested, then I say go for it.