December 2nd // Masterlist
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alasse_irena: Talk about alternate universes! What are your favourite AUs to write in? Why?
AUs are great! I really enjoy reading and writing them, and am really happy to ramble on in this post! I'm going to make a separation between Alternate Universe and Alternate Reality (what-if fic) here, just for clarity, and mostly talk about the former. Maybe I'll talk about the latter in one of my empty slots!
The point of them, for me, is that they're additional ways to explore canon characters away from the canon source. What if their backgrounds were even more contrasted than in the source canon? What if most of the canon problems they face could be solved with magic; what new challenges would they face then? What if they were penguins? (I was in SGA fandom. My "this is too ridiculous a scenario" bar is set pretty high.)
I don't think, though, that all canons work equally well with regards to housing AUs. I think it's about the relative importance of plot vs characters as the main driver. So I've never had any interest really in reading AUs for Battlestar Galactica, where the setting the characters are in (fleeing for their lives as the surviving remnants of genocide) is what they're reacting to and what drives the plot. It's hard to imagine putting them in a different universe without having to fundamentally alter lots of things about their characterisation, and tbh I'm not sure I'd be terribly interested, since those characters in that setting and having to make these choices as a result is what makes me love the show. On the other hand, White Collar has a group of characters in a fairly generic setting who pretty much drive the plots themselves as they make choices which are due to their personalities, and it's the relationships between them which are the most important parts of the show. So there's loads of room to explore things like varying the power imbalance between Neal and Peter, or giving some of the characters magic, or having them fight together to survive the zombie apocalypse, and seeing how the character dynamics alter.
My favourite type of AU to write, as people who've read my fic might have noticed, is canon fusion. I mean, I do like worldbuilding for myself! But something just pings my enjoyment about mashing favourite canons together! And in ways different from "char from X meets char from Y" — I'm not quite sure why exactly, but I actually don't often enjoy that. I think I just always feel some wrongness about people meeting other people whom they shouldn't.
Actually, now I'm typing this, I guess that canon fusions are my way of writing fic about canons where the setting drives the plot! Like, I love The Hunger Games but it's a complete plot already, so I didn't want to write about established chars — I wanted to throw in characters from other places and see what they'd do. Or Fallen London, which is an incredibly atmospheric setting but the player is the main character and others are described sparsely/enigmatically, a choice which totally works for playing the actual game but doesn't really inspire me to read or write fic about anyone. But throwing other characters in… well, I guess the 40k AU of Fallen London whichsholio and I have written with White Collar characters speaks for itself there *gg* (Btw, since I'm talking about it, we literally just finished uploading everything we've written in this 'verse to AO3, including some bits that we hadn't previously published to our journals. Series link here And we're really happy how many people we've managed to get into playing the game via these stories!)
Also, canon fusions give loads of freedom to pick and choose the bits you like from both canons. As illustrated by the fusion WC fic I wrote with Bioshock Infiinte — I had major major major issues with the game, but really loved the wordjumping mechanic (which was pretty underutilised tbh until the last section.) So I got to play with that, and also got to play with writing a quite different version of WC's Elizabeth. Probably it's only a matter of time until I write a fusion with BSG…
I like other AUs too! I do really enjoy silly-cute AUs where everyone is in very different situations to canon. Bookshops! (I'm writing a bookshop AU right now after having become frustrated by how most bookshop AUs don't really feature the actual bookshop and running a bookshop enough :P) Fighting zombies! Running a farm! Where they don't know each other but all crash on an island together! Although I'm not a fan of coffee shop AUs, possibly because they're everywhere. Hmm, what other AUs annoy me… ones where all the characters are amazing and selfless and all run charities and stuff or basically earn their living doing similar perfect things which are not at all their personalities. Ones where the characters have never met before but immediately start treating each other as lifelong friends. Ones which have really cool settings and don't use them at all!
Tell me in the comments: what are your favourite AUs?
From
alasse_irena: Talk about alternate universes! What are your favourite AUs to write in? Why?AUs are great! I really enjoy reading and writing them, and am really happy to ramble on in this post! I'm going to make a separation between Alternate Universe and Alternate Reality (what-if fic) here, just for clarity, and mostly talk about the former. Maybe I'll talk about the latter in one of my empty slots!
The point of them, for me, is that they're additional ways to explore canon characters away from the canon source. What if their backgrounds were even more contrasted than in the source canon? What if most of the canon problems they face could be solved with magic; what new challenges would they face then? What if they were penguins? (I was in SGA fandom. My "this is too ridiculous a scenario" bar is set pretty high.)
I don't think, though, that all canons work equally well with regards to housing AUs. I think it's about the relative importance of plot vs characters as the main driver. So I've never had any interest really in reading AUs for Battlestar Galactica, where the setting the characters are in (fleeing for their lives as the surviving remnants of genocide) is what they're reacting to and what drives the plot. It's hard to imagine putting them in a different universe without having to fundamentally alter lots of things about their characterisation, and tbh I'm not sure I'd be terribly interested, since those characters in that setting and having to make these choices as a result is what makes me love the show. On the other hand, White Collar has a group of characters in a fairly generic setting who pretty much drive the plots themselves as they make choices which are due to their personalities, and it's the relationships between them which are the most important parts of the show. So there's loads of room to explore things like varying the power imbalance between Neal and Peter, or giving some of the characters magic, or having them fight together to survive the zombie apocalypse, and seeing how the character dynamics alter.
My favourite type of AU to write, as people who've read my fic might have noticed, is canon fusion. I mean, I do like worldbuilding for myself! But something just pings my enjoyment about mashing favourite canons together! And in ways different from "char from X meets char from Y" — I'm not quite sure why exactly, but I actually don't often enjoy that. I think I just always feel some wrongness about people meeting other people whom they shouldn't.
Actually, now I'm typing this, I guess that canon fusions are my way of writing fic about canons where the setting drives the plot! Like, I love The Hunger Games but it's a complete plot already, so I didn't want to write about established chars — I wanted to throw in characters from other places and see what they'd do. Or Fallen London, which is an incredibly atmospheric setting but the player is the main character and others are described sparsely/enigmatically, a choice which totally works for playing the actual game but doesn't really inspire me to read or write fic about anyone. But throwing other characters in… well, I guess the 40k AU of Fallen London which
sholio and I have written with White Collar characters speaks for itself there *gg* (Btw, since I'm talking about it, we literally just finished uploading everything we've written in this 'verse to AO3, including some bits that we hadn't previously published to our journals. Series link here And we're really happy how many people we've managed to get into playing the game via these stories!) Also, canon fusions give loads of freedom to pick and choose the bits you like from both canons. As illustrated by the fusion WC fic I wrote with Bioshock Infiinte — I had major major major issues with the game, but really loved the wordjumping mechanic (which was pretty underutilised tbh until the last section.) So I got to play with that, and also got to play with writing a quite different version of WC's Elizabeth. Probably it's only a matter of time until I write a fusion with BSG…
I like other AUs too! I do really enjoy silly-cute AUs where everyone is in very different situations to canon. Bookshops! (I'm writing a bookshop AU right now after having become frustrated by how most bookshop AUs don't really feature the actual bookshop and running a bookshop enough :P) Fighting zombies! Running a farm! Where they don't know each other but all crash on an island together! Although I'm not a fan of coffee shop AUs, possibly because they're everywhere. Hmm, what other AUs annoy me… ones where all the characters are amazing and selfless and all run charities and stuff or basically earn their living doing similar perfect things which are not at all their personalities. Ones where the characters have never met before but immediately start treating each other as lifelong friends. Ones which have really cool settings and don't use them at all!
Tell me in the comments: what are your favourite AUs?
