What's in a story?

[leyenn]

In my pre-sign-up dilemma for au_bigbang, I had a fairly central thought. What constitutes an AU, in your brain? I'm making a list of all my AUs (if in trouble, make a list!) and I keep coming across something I've added to the list and then thought 'no, you know, that's a story, but it's not a full-blown AU'. Jack/Sam/Daniel getting together during Upgrades

Comments

[svilleficrecs]

I'd say that one possible mitigating factor, particularly in the case of 4 (and slightly 3) is that (for me, at least) an AU is something that is deliberately changed by the author, and not a case of Jossing or just writing in open canon.

That is, if I'm writing during season 1 of SGA and write about how John Sheppard has never been married, and then later in the series we find out that he has been married, that S1 written fic isn't automatically AU. It's just jossed fic that sprung from S1 canon, rather than full series canon. I realize that this is debatable/possibly hair splitting, but in a sense, almost all fic with any major extra-canon plot points (even if they mesh with canon) could be considered AU. And in open canon, you're constantly in danger of having your fic become looser-definition AU.

So, for AU to have a meaning that isn't so broad as to be meaningless in a fanfic context, I'd add that it has to be an intentional skewing of canon/characters. And... IDK, for my money, I think you'd have to do some refining so that, for example, slashing of only-het-in-canon folks isn't defined as AU. I think it's debatable whether making an only-shown-as-clearly-het-in-canon person gay in your story constitutes a "fundamental difference", so it's all very murky, but whatever you come up with should, I think, not be so broad as to include jossed-by-subsequent-canon, garden variety slash, or other stuff that falls under regular fanfic definitions but not under "I am deliberately fucking with this universe on a fundamental level."

[leyenn]

Yes, I totally hadn't even considered the whole writing in open canon aspect (possibly because I do it so rarely now... oh I feel fannishly old ;) but yes, you're totally on the money there. At the time of writing, your story about John never being married is not intending to be AU, because you've not diverged from any canon that you're aware of. At one point I planned a Star Trek Titan story before the novel canon came out - if I'd written that, I wouldn't then have thought I was writing AU, whereas if I wrote it now, I would, because there's canon there now to consciously fuck with.

I totally don't see writing an only-shown-as-het character as gay or in a gay relationship as being a fundamental difference; I guess, if in canon it was explicitly stated that a character was straight, had always been straight and would never do another person of their gender ever, then writing them as gay after than would be a fundamental fucking with that canon, but I never really come across canon - personally, I mean - where that's the case, so I just didn't think of it that way. The bit about pairing changes = interpreation of canon needs work, I feel.

Yay, have I written actual meta? :D