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ladybusiness2021-12-21 05:52 pm
helloladies) wrote in ladybusiness2021-12-21 05:52 pm
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Guest Post: The Layered Pleasures of Alterative Universe Fic
One of the staples of fanfiction these days is AUs (short for Alternative Universes). I read a lot of AUs, and I want to talk about what they tend to do and why I enjoy them. These fics change key things about canon while keeping others the same. The interplay of familiar and unfamiliar elements is really fun! AUs might also mix the source material with elements that are familiar, either parts of contemporary life, or from other texts, or just familiar tropes. I adore how AU’s can highlight what is really essential about the text.
Personally I love a good space AU: Characters I love plus space worldbuilding is a great combo! AUs often lower the stakes and let the reader focus on the characters and relationships. A lot of my favorite AUs are essentially romcoms. I believe that AUs are pretty similar across transformative fandom, but most recently I’ve been reading a lot of Untamed fic so I’m going to use examples mostly from that fandom.
There are four aspects of the story that are important for creating AUs: characters, relationships, setting, and plot. AUs typically alter several if not all of these elements, and part of the pleasure of reading AUs is the layering effect of how these four aspects are similar or different to what happens in the source material.
Characters are the heart of fanfiction and AUs can highlight what the author sees as essential to the character. AUs ask: If events were different, how would the characters react? Or if the character was in very different circumstances, what would they be like? Both these questions are about the essence of the characters, and they allow fic authors to really showcase their own take on these characters.
In some ways this is a transformation, but often the focus is on keeping key aspects of the character the same as the world around them changes. For example, how do Wei Wuxian’s genius at inventing and talent at cultivation translate to a no-magic setting? I’ve read AUs where he’s everything from a space mechanic to a librarian.
There’s a lot of joy in recognizing something you love about a character in a different circumstance. That "oh yes they would totally do that" moment. This can be very mundane, like how a character's fashion sense would translate into a setting with different options. But can also address deeper aspects of a character. I always love moments that highlight Wen Qing’s pragmatic caring, or Lan Wangji’s deep sense of justice.This reinforces the reader's feelings about these characters, making them more intense.
Fanfic loves to explore relationships between characters while changing things about the story. In a canon divergent AU, a key relationship might be the point of divergence. What if those two characters met in a different way? What if a character were raised by different people? For instance, there are many AU’s in which orphaned Wei Wuxian is adopted by different people than in canon and these explore how that would change him and change the story.
Again, there’s pleasure in seeing the source material reflected in and refracted through the author’s choices. These kinds of transformations can also allow us to see the characters’ relationships in a new light.
When characters are put into a new environment, relationships between them may need to be altered to fix the new environment. In settings change AUs—that is AUs with totally different settings than the source material—a new setting can reflect the characters' relationships in fresh ways. A recent episode of Fansplaning discussed how AUs need to transfer the "nexus of relationships" between settings.
For example, if all the characters now work in a hospital, what roles do they occupy, and how do those roles map to those the characters had in the original setting? (This kind of role change generally also reflects ideas about the character! In the hospital example, each character's medical specialty would be part of their characterization too.)
Setting is one of the most obvious changes made by AUs. Whereas with characters and relationships AU writers try to keep things mostly the same, AU settings are often wildly different from the text. But these new settings generally have some relationship to the original setting. Even in setting change AUs where the world works very differently than the canonical world, the locations within the world can be reflections of the locations in the text. Maybe the castle is now a nightclub, the spaceship a coffee shop, or the neighborhood a space station.
I really enjoy these kinds of transformations. When done well, they take the vibes of the location and transfer them to a new setting that works as its own world. In SFF the world often feels like a character in its own right, so this kind of reimagining has a lot to say about the nature of the world.
Plot is the most complex of the aspects to transform. A good AU strikes a balance between new and familiar events. Some setting change AUs are simple retellings, but personally, I don’t often enjoy those. Instead, I want the events in the fic to echo those in the source material while still feeling fresh. In “seldom all they seem” the two main characters are engaged in childhood, but that doesn’t stop war from breaking out, and thus many of the key events in canon still happen.
Even canon divergent AUs often feature events from the source—especially when the fic diverges from canon early in the original storyline. Like the way that characters in Yuri on Ice fics tend to skate the same programs even when their personal history is different. Sometimes it can feel like an event happens in a fic because that’s what happened in canon, rather than the event being a natural outgrowth of the events of the fic.
However, when the events in a fic echo those in the text without feeling forced, it creates an emotional resonance between text and fic. The reader's feelings about those events in the source make their feelings about similar events in the fic more intense and vice versa. When you layer in echoing events across multiple fics, readers can experience deeply layered emotions.
A type of AUs that is worth discussing separately are crossovers and fusions, where characters, settings, and/or plot events from multiple texts are mixed together. This puts the texts in direct conversion with each other, and often highlights similarities between the various texts. As an example, “master of foolhardy plans,” an Untamed/Queen’s Thief fusion, highlights the similarities between Wei Wuxian and Gen; Lan Wangji and Irene; and their relationships. A reader familiar with all the source material will get a layering effect
AUs allow fic readers to experience the characters, relationships, settings, and plot points that they love in a way that’s “the same, but different”. The way an AU echoes the events in the text allows the reader to experience the emotions they felt when consuming the source material, and layer them with new meaning from the fic. All of these meanings layer together to strengthen the reader's feelings about the text.
Personally I love a good space AU: Characters I love plus space worldbuilding is a great combo! AUs often lower the stakes and let the reader focus on the characters and relationships. A lot of my favorite AUs are essentially romcoms. I believe that AUs are pretty similar across transformative fandom, but most recently I’ve been reading a lot of Untamed fic so I’m going to use examples mostly from that fandom.
There are four aspects of the story that are important for creating AUs: characters, relationships, setting, and plot. AUs typically alter several if not all of these elements, and part of the pleasure of reading AUs is the layering effect of how these four aspects are similar or different to what happens in the source material.
Characters are the heart of fanfiction and AUs can highlight what the author sees as essential to the character. AUs ask: If events were different, how would the characters react? Or if the character was in very different circumstances, what would they be like? Both these questions are about the essence of the characters, and they allow fic authors to really showcase their own take on these characters.
In some ways this is a transformation, but often the focus is on keeping key aspects of the character the same as the world around them changes. For example, how do Wei Wuxian’s genius at inventing and talent at cultivation translate to a no-magic setting? I’ve read AUs where he’s everything from a space mechanic to a librarian.
There’s a lot of joy in recognizing something you love about a character in a different circumstance. That "oh yes they would totally do that" moment. This can be very mundane, like how a character's fashion sense would translate into a setting with different options. But can also address deeper aspects of a character. I always love moments that highlight Wen Qing’s pragmatic caring, or Lan Wangji’s deep sense of justice.This reinforces the reader's feelings about these characters, making them more intense.
Fanfic loves to explore relationships between characters while changing things about the story. In a canon divergent AU, a key relationship might be the point of divergence. What if those two characters met in a different way? What if a character were raised by different people? For instance, there are many AU’s in which orphaned Wei Wuxian is adopted by different people than in canon and these explore how that would change him and change the story.
Again, there’s pleasure in seeing the source material reflected in and refracted through the author’s choices. These kinds of transformations can also allow us to see the characters’ relationships in a new light.
When characters are put into a new environment, relationships between them may need to be altered to fix the new environment. In settings change AUs—that is AUs with totally different settings than the source material—a new setting can reflect the characters' relationships in fresh ways. A recent episode of Fansplaning discussed how AUs need to transfer the "nexus of relationships" between settings.
For example, if all the characters now work in a hospital, what roles do they occupy, and how do those roles map to those the characters had in the original setting? (This kind of role change generally also reflects ideas about the character! In the hospital example, each character's medical specialty would be part of their characterization too.)
Setting is one of the most obvious changes made by AUs. Whereas with characters and relationships AU writers try to keep things mostly the same, AU settings are often wildly different from the text. But these new settings generally have some relationship to the original setting. Even in setting change AUs where the world works very differently than the canonical world, the locations within the world can be reflections of the locations in the text. Maybe the castle is now a nightclub, the spaceship a coffee shop, or the neighborhood a space station.
I really enjoy these kinds of transformations. When done well, they take the vibes of the location and transfer them to a new setting that works as its own world. In SFF the world often feels like a character in its own right, so this kind of reimagining has a lot to say about the nature of the world.
Plot is the most complex of the aspects to transform. A good AU strikes a balance between new and familiar events. Some setting change AUs are simple retellings, but personally, I don’t often enjoy those. Instead, I want the events in the fic to echo those in the source material while still feeling fresh. In “seldom all they seem” the two main characters are engaged in childhood, but that doesn’t stop war from breaking out, and thus many of the key events in canon still happen.
Even canon divergent AUs often feature events from the source—especially when the fic diverges from canon early in the original storyline. Like the way that characters in Yuri on Ice fics tend to skate the same programs even when their personal history is different. Sometimes it can feel like an event happens in a fic because that’s what happened in canon, rather than the event being a natural outgrowth of the events of the fic.
However, when the events in a fic echo those in the text without feeling forced, it creates an emotional resonance between text and fic. The reader's feelings about those events in the source make their feelings about similar events in the fic more intense and vice versa. When you layer in echoing events across multiple fics, readers can experience deeply layered emotions.
A type of AUs that is worth discussing separately are crossovers and fusions, where characters, settings, and/or plot events from multiple texts are mixed together. This puts the texts in direct conversion with each other, and often highlights similarities between the various texts. As an example, “master of foolhardy plans,” an Untamed/Queen’s Thief fusion, highlights the similarities between Wei Wuxian and Gen; Lan Wangji and Irene; and their relationships. A reader familiar with all the source material will get a layering effect
AUs allow fic readers to experience the characters, relationships, settings, and plot points that they love in a way that’s “the same, but different”. The way an AU echoes the events in the text allows the reader to experience the emotions they felt when consuming the source material, and layer them with new meaning from the fic. All of these meanings layer together to strengthen the reader's feelings about the text.
★forestofglory.