Snowflake Challenge #3: addendum
Reading other people's answers to the AU question, it seems to me that there are widely divergent ideas on what constitutes an AU.
For me, an AU is a different world setting. Whether it's real-world with Our Heroes working as entrepreneurs/farmers/roller derby professionals, or a fantasy world with peasants, wizards or dragons, or a futuristic world with spaceships or robots, that's surely an AU.
For me, something like magic does not *necessarily* mean an AU. In popslash, I've read plenty of stories in which there is Something Weird, but the story is based in canon, so I don't count it as an AU. If someone becomes invisible, or gains telepathy, or Wakes Up As A Girl, or swaps bodies-no, not an AU. Just* Crack. A setting where all of them are superheroes, or magicians, or have the ability to channel the colour green (I don't know, it's just an example), that's an AU.
But it's sometimes hard to tell where the line is. Is a gender-swapped story in which Character A has *always* been of the opposite sex an AU? I'm inclined to narrow it down more and call it a gender swap, and regard that as a separate category... yet mostly, the genderswaps I've read have been temporary, and usually crack, so maybe a "the world has always been this way" story is properly classified as an AU.
Is a canon-divergent story an AU or an 'Alternate Timeline' or some such? I'm inclined to call it a 'fork in the road' story, because it starts with canon and goes somewhere else, whereas to me, an AU does not start with canon. But there's a case to be made for calling such stories AUs.
Is an A/b/o story an AU or does it get its own category? (My opinion: the latter. So that I can avoid it, and the people who want to read it can find it.) Maybe it's a specific AU-there's a huge list of them on AO3.
A story in which there are vampires but within the canon setting - gets a 'vampires' tag but not an AU tag. To be an AU, the setting would have to be not-canon. If, say, Joey goes vampire hunting late at night while he and the guys are rehearsing for the next tour, that gets a vampire tag. If all the guys are vampires who live in Brooklyn and have elaborate lifestyles which enable them never to see the sun, that's definitely an AU. With a vampire tag. If Lance is impregnated by an alien, that's crack. If Lance and the rest of them are aliens and live on Planet Zooglecrab, it's an AU. Somewhere in between the two there is probably a line.....
Some people label as AUs what I would label as crack. Other lines are harder to define.
Opinions?
* Crack is not "just" at all, it is awesome, but perhaps that'll show up in later prompts. This entry was also posted at https://pensnest.dreamwidth.org/722033.html. Please comment at Dreamwidth if you can-you don't need an account.
For me, an AU is a different world setting. Whether it's real-world with Our Heroes working as entrepreneurs/farmers/roller derby professionals, or a fantasy world with peasants, wizards or dragons, or a futuristic world with spaceships or robots, that's surely an AU.
For me, something like magic does not *necessarily* mean an AU. In popslash, I've read plenty of stories in which there is Something Weird, but the story is based in canon, so I don't count it as an AU. If someone becomes invisible, or gains telepathy, or Wakes Up As A Girl, or swaps bodies-no, not an AU. Just* Crack. A setting where all of them are superheroes, or magicians, or have the ability to channel the colour green (I don't know, it's just an example), that's an AU.
But it's sometimes hard to tell where the line is. Is a gender-swapped story in which Character A has *always* been of the opposite sex an AU? I'm inclined to narrow it down more and call it a gender swap, and regard that as a separate category... yet mostly, the genderswaps I've read have been temporary, and usually crack, so maybe a "the world has always been this way" story is properly classified as an AU.
Is a canon-divergent story an AU or an 'Alternate Timeline' or some such? I'm inclined to call it a 'fork in the road' story, because it starts with canon and goes somewhere else, whereas to me, an AU does not start with canon. But there's a case to be made for calling such stories AUs.
Is an A/b/o story an AU or does it get its own category? (My opinion: the latter. So that I can avoid it, and the people who want to read it can find it.) Maybe it's a specific AU-there's a huge list of them on AO3.
A story in which there are vampires but within the canon setting - gets a 'vampires' tag but not an AU tag. To be an AU, the setting would have to be not-canon. If, say, Joey goes vampire hunting late at night while he and the guys are rehearsing for the next tour, that gets a vampire tag. If all the guys are vampires who live in Brooklyn and have elaborate lifestyles which enable them never to see the sun, that's definitely an AU. With a vampire tag. If Lance is impregnated by an alien, that's crack. If Lance and the rest of them are aliens and live on Planet Zooglecrab, it's an AU. Somewhere in between the two there is probably a line.....
Some people label as AUs what I would label as crack. Other lines are harder to define.
Opinions?
* Crack is not "just" at all, it is awesome, but perhaps that'll show up in later prompts. This entry was also posted at https://pensnest.dreamwidth.org/722033.html. Please comment at Dreamwidth if you can-you don't need an account.