Fandom Snowflake Challenge #3: AUs

[razielim]

SFC #3 - "Put some favorite characters into an AU, fuse some favorite canons together, talk about your favorite AU/fusion tropes, or tell us why AU/fusions aren’t your cup of tea."

I don't have a favorite AU trope, I kind of just make up my own as I see fit, but damn do I love AUs. All of my longer fics are all AUs and I don't know any other way to function. I like the idea of writing a long canon-rooted fix-it fic, say for Teen Wolf, rewriting everything after S2 to actually be good and do the characters justice, but I never have the creative impetus to follow through. I also love reading long canon-verse fics, perhaps even more than I love reading long AU fics, but writing them? Nope, doesn't happen.

I skew towards AU so much that it constantly frustrates me that I'm writing fic instead of novels, and that I can construct all these ideas and romances for characters I already love but can't just... create myself some characters that I love enough to write about at length.

Though it has literally just occurred to me that perhaps what I need to do is take my characters that I sort-of-love-but-not-enough-to-make-it-past-a-first-draft... and throw them into an AU. That's actually not a bad idea...

I actually subverted my love of AUs a little recently, in The Jasmine Dragon, by writing a coffee shop AU that (BIG SPOILERS, SORRY) slowly is revealed to have never been an AU at all.

I think that's as close as I'll ever get to writing canon-compliance.

Hmmm...

I'm still thinking about that whole idea of just placing my OCs into a new universe and seeing if that helps. Maybe I like the idea of Prince Vanse being a renegade captain, it was important for me to conceptualize him as such to fall in love with him and develop him into the character that he is, but I just really don't fucking want to write about ships and sailing, not even after going through all the trouble of learning how to paint ships specifically for Vanse's sake. It's really not a bad idea.

Comments

Go for it!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Though it has literally just occurred to me that perhaps what I need to do is take my characters that I sort-of-love-but-not-enough-to-make-it-past-a-first-draft... and throw them into an AU. That's actually not a bad idea...<<

There are only so many character archetypes and plot patterns and tropes. Pick an AU that you love, put your characters in it, and just file off the serial numbers. Many of the really strong other-world or other-time AUs are close enough to original for that to work, the characters and plot are already aspected away from the originals.

Re: Go for it!

[razielim]

Think bigger, darling! I already built non-fandom original characters for which I've written full novels. But since I don't feel interested in editing/polishing those novels... the idea is to throw them into AUs, leaving the original setting behind as some half-remembered past life, and see if I like those books better!

But you're absolutely right. If that doesn't work, it's gloves off. I'm stealing, filing off serial numbers, and remixing left and right until I stumble across something I'm in love with. :)

Re: Go for it!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>I already built non-fandom original characters for which I've written full novels.<<

Yay!

>> But since I don't feel interested in editing/polishing those novels... <<

That's frustrating.

>> the idea is to throw them into AUs, leaving the original setting behind as some half-remembered past life, and see if I like those books better! <<

Good idea. If it's not working, try a new solution. I hope the AU idea pans out!