SQUEE CHALLENGE: Deep Thoughts: Fandom trope or kink you love and why.
Deep Thoughts: Fandom trope or kink you love and why or That time, when I used squee meme as an excuse to ramble about AUs
Okay, so I'm not 100% sure it counts as fandom trope, but whatever. I don't really care. Close enough as they say.
To clarify I want to say that many people, over the years, used many terms for AUs and used the term AU in many different ways as well. Personally I mostly use three different names for stories that could classify here. (At least I do on my delicious account and I see no point in not using them here.)
- 1) Fussion. Which is a story in which you take characters from one canon and toss them into another. It's a mix of AU and crossover, but in difference to crossover it doesn't include characters from both canons. Just world from one, characters from the other. (Example: Bulwark Series by kellifer_fic in which characters from Teen Wolf exist in the world of Gilmore Girls and sort of in place for the characters originally from this show.)
2) AU-ish. (You can see plainly that this one is my informal describer.) Those are the stories, where mostly everything is the same, but not so much. For example (and there were plenty of fics like this, but I suck at keeping links) Harry Potter still lives in the same world and most of the things still happen, but he was sorted into the Slytherin and not Gryffindor and how does this affect things. (I also include gender/sex swaps in this, though I usually classify them seprately as well. And since I sucked at link providing for Slytherin!Harry, have some awesome and funny female!kirk/Spock fic.)
To AU-ish fics I also often add stories that go AU after certain moment, because for example the next season/book wasn't out yet, when the story was posted. That sort of thing.
3) AU, full AU. Basically you take character and drop them in a different world that is not another fandom's playground. So, all the stories where Jensen and Jared are rodeo cowboys, Derek works in a coffee shop or Sherlock is a storm chaser. You catch the drift.
And in this post I'm going to talk only about full AUs, because I feel like it. (And this post would be way too long if I were to explain why I love all those types, because the reasons slightly vary.)
First of all let me tell you that I don't always love AUs and when I joined the fandom I even disliked them. To be fair, I still believe there are fandoms that are more suitable for this kind of things and Harry Potter (the fandom I started with) was definitely not one of them. (At least not for me.)
I think AUs work better in fandom in which the universe is somehow less important or more obvious. Not to say it's done badly or anything, but just... less important to the plot, less interesting and new to the audience. For example, for me, the main essance of Harry Potter books were not the characters (though I loved them dearly) or the plot (though I followed it with rapt attention), but the whole, complex, detailed, amazing world. With such nicely built world, which is so different from your own, you just sort of want to play in it, know more about it, make up details about it and not erase it completely. That's why in this fandom, I rarely read full AUs.
I got most obsessed with AUs in RPF fandoms, because quite frankly I didn't much care for two actors once again realizing their feelings for each other, while they worked on another season of their show, etc. etc. etc. I read plenty of fics like that and some of them were really good. But 1) repetitive, 2) the world in the story was boring and typical and too much like real world, 3) it brought on more of the fans, who were a bit... not like the fans I like to asociate with. (I'm putting it nicely, but what I mean is: they were batshit crazy, convinced they know the truth about actors' private lives and wanted to bloody murder everyone who was with those actors and was not part of the OTP. I will not get into defending or condamning RPFs now, but this attitude I would always like to stay away from.)
After that I've built up a taste for AUs, though I find that I like them less in fandom based on actual stories. Mostly because I love the world building in the stories. Sometimes AU can make me cringe and hate it just after reading the summary. But sometimes the new built world is so epic that I fall in love with the AUs all over again.
What I love about AUs? (And lets assume I'm speaking about well done AUs, because obviously the sucky ones may not have what I love in the AUs.) First of all: exceptional world building. Second of all: epic command of the characters. Third of all: The magical interactiveness of it all.
To write a good AU you need to create a new world that will convince readers. Sure, you can always catch a few just by having a good idea, but not many will fall for it, if the execution of said idea sucks ass. The AU should be different enough to catch attention, be used for something more than just any mistake of the canon fact could be, but still stay close enough to not be a completely different thing.
You need to have epic command over the characters and write them well and know them well. Because not only you're writing someone else's characters (as always in fanfiction), you're putting them in a different world and you need to predict how that would change them, how would they react to that. You need to make them slightly different, because you've changed the whole world around them. But you can't make them completely different, because that's just pointless. If you want to do that, just write an original story.
Because see, that's the thing about AUs, you're writting a new world with old characters and every one of your readers knows it. Sure, you can read AUs without knowing the canon, just like you can read any fanfiction, but I will never be convinced it's as much fun as reading them while knowing the whole canon story. It just adds another level to the story.
For example, I've once read a really good story in the X-Files fandom, which was all about merman!Krycek. It was a slash story and it was actually written in a way I found slightly disturbing, but it still remains one of my favourite examples of an AU well done.
Especially one aspect of this story: In this fic, Mulder is obsessed with mermen instead of aliens. (And has more success in that work as well, I guess, but not by much.) Now, if you ever watched X-Files, you know that Mulder's obsession with aliens is heavily rooted in the dissapearing of his sister. Basically Samantha (the sister) is the string Mulder is tugged with for the whole series. You can't go all AU and ignore Samantha. So, in this story, young Fox Mulder and his sister Samantha were out in the sea on a boat, Samantha fell into the water and almost drowned, because Fox couldn't do anything to help her. However she didn't drown, but was saved by a merman, which started Mulder's epic obsession.
Now, this was a detail in a story. Sort of a filler that took not more than few sentences, but this? This is for me what makes AU so good. In completely different world you're establishing the same characters and you make them fit in there. And it takes mad skills to do well, but sometimes it's worth the effort.
And to finish this rambling post, have three lovely AU vids for my three lovely OTPs of the moment. (Though I'm still sorta pissed at sterek, but oh well. The vid is great.)
Let's hit them one more time - Teen Wolf AU - Sterek
Click to viewWhen I come around - Sherlock BBC AU(ish?) - Mystrade
Another place and time - Star Trek AU - Spork
PS. There will be more squee posts soon. I have plenty to do and my time to complete the challenge is ending. D: