On Creating The Multiverse

[fae_boleyn]

So, here is my much-delayed second essay/meta discussing fanfiction in general. I do want to add a disclaimer; none of these are supposed to be guidelines, per se, since I wouldn't want to tell someone how to write their fics. It's just what I've found to be true for me, and also hopefully to start discussion in the comments about what other people have found. So with that, I'm turning to a second topic - the AU, or alternate universe fic.

Technically, of course, one could argue that all fics are AU since they're not canon. Which is why I'm sticking to three different types of crossovers: turn left stories, moderate AUs, and extreme AUs. These are just my terms for them, I don't think there are official terms. I like having labels for things, it seems neater. (Bad Inception pun, ahoy!)

Ahem.

Anyway, so, starting with the turn left AUs. These are the stories which accept canon up to a point and then, well, turn left where canon turned right. I really should call these "turn right" fics just to be more original. But anyway. To my way of thinking, these are the easiest kind of fic, because once you make that turn, you can pretty much do whatever you want. For example, my series A Moment To Be Real accepts Primeval canon up to season 2, and while I have certain elements of season 3 (mostly cameos of characters not introduced until then) aside from that my characters took a completely different road from their canon counterparts. These are similar to post-canon fics because you get to decide where the characters go without the help of existing storylines, with the obvious difference that in a turn left fic, there is a storyline, you're just pretending there isn't.

Moderate AUs are trickier. These are the ones where you change elements of canon but not everything; the core of the story remains the same. Several of my Inception fics are this, most notably Illumination and the unfinished fic Architecture of Your World and Mind. These are tricky because they involve fiddling around with canon without completely changing the game. In Illumination, for example, I switched up some of the roles (Ariadne's and Robert Fischer's most dramatically, as well as who Arthur's partner was) and killed off a major character prior to the story who was still very much alive in canon. For Architecture, the change was subtler; I genderbent the characters of Arthur and Yusuf, though that required thought about how their being female would change their attitudes in what canonically seems to be a male-dominated business, as well as the dynamics with the characters I'm pairing them with. My Tudors fic Standing Outside the Fire is also this, basically following history with Henry VIII's Great Matter except that Anne Boleyn's family is higher-ranking and she has stepsiblings - the Seymours, Edward, Thomas, and Jane.

Then there's the extreme AUs. This is my stock in trade for all but a few of my Tudors fics, and the ones that don't fall into this category are all oneshots, except for SOtF. Handmaid involved the introduction of a loophole for Kings who needed heirs that nixed the need for any Great Matter at all, which meant that a change several centuries prior altered the entire landscape of Tudor England. Souls Run In Circles changed all of Henry's six Queens so that the royal-born were common-born and vice versa. SRIC in particular required some serious worldbuilding, which is the main thing with this kind of AU. You make your changes, and then suddenly the world you are working with is drastically different from canon, from the get-go.

The biggest thing, and the toughest, in any type of AU, is to try and keep your cast in character. It gets harder the more AU you go, because you have to step back and figure out just how the character as created in canon would be different if this or that happened. For me, that and worldbuilding is what I spend most of my time doing. I can get downright obsessive about my characterization and the dynamics between the cast. I also obsess over the world, what changes and what doesn't. I love doing it, though, so it's all worth it.

So, what about you? What kinds of AUs do you like to read, which do you write, and what do you find challenging or fun about doing it?