Notes on AUs

[icarus_chained]

As in, why I love them, to read and to write.

Alternate Universes (AUs)

Probably my absolute favourite kind of fic to write, and to read. Why? Because ... because of the possibilities, and the strange meeting the familiar, and the feeling of exploration with friends at your side, in the form of characters you know and love.

For the record, although I have written and read and adored AUs that branch directly from actually canon, or exist in the same universe with characters in different positions in life ... my favourites are those that take characters and build a whole new world or society or time around them. Victorian AUs and fantasy AUs and alien AUs and fusions and ... actually, the possibilities are endless. Part of the reason I love them. Anywhere your imagination can go, you can bring your favourite characters along for the ride, and discover new worlds together.

That's a big part of why I love writing AUs. It's like the best possible meeting of original fiction and fanfiction, the best of both worlds. The characters you love, and the world you build around them. The multiverse fanned out around you, ready for your selection. It gives you lease to explore the extent of your imagination, and invite readers into your world guided by voices familiar and loved. As a writer, AUs bridge the gap, letting fanfiction speak of deeper imaginings, brought close and ready to be shared. The strange revealed through the familiar.

But more than that, it's the feeling of layers that does it for me. Of worlds layered over worlds, and knowing spread across realities. Because you know these people, these characters, and even as the plot hurtles you along unfamiliar paths, and throws you against unfamiliar sights, with all the dizzy joy of exploration, there is a sense of safety, a secret, almost smug sense of knowing something the story doesn't, of knowing these people in a way they don't even know themselves. Like every in-joke you ever seen all at once. You've seen them in a different life, and you have faith in them even in this new and rushing world that the writer has spun. Everything else around may be new and different and strange, but these people are your friends, and safe in a way strangers are not.

As an exercise in writing, AUs are strenuous, maybe. You have to build a world, a society, either from scratch or borrowed from time or other fictions, and then you have to insert your characters into it. Well, actually, I usually build the worlds up around the characters, but the fact remains that you still have to find a way for the two to mesh, and be believable in context. So, strenuous. Difficult. But ultimately rewarding. Because characters are exactly as adaptable as real people. You put them in a completely different situation, and they cope or react as they can.

The difference with AUs is that, as far as the characters are concerned, this is the world they've always lived in. This is their canon, whatever in-jokes or alternate understandings the writer has in their heads. They have to react as that character would react if they had been born in that situation. That does, occasionally necessitate changes from canon counterparts, because breeding may beat feeding, but there is no doubt that upbringing shapes how you, and they, view the world they live in. Sometimes with AUs, what makes sense in canon strikes discordant in the world you have built, and that is something to watch for. The essence of the character remains constant, the intrinsic self, but certain reactions and views are changed by the world you have put them in, and you've got to keep an eye on which you think is which.

As to what kind of AUs I like writing ... well, I've a soft spot for Victorian/Steampunk (*grin* Could you tell?), with the brass and gear aesthetic and the polar societal ideals and realities, and fantasy, with all the myriad worlds and species and options it contains, and noir, with its world-weary, wartime, black-and-white atmosphere and shady moralities, and feudal societies, with their honour and slavery and rigid rules and heroic mavericks and knights, and sci-fi, with aliens and space-opera and first-contact, and murder/mystery, a-la Agatha Christy and Conan Doyle, for the claustrophobia and suspicion and layered characterisations, and supernatural, because sometimes you just want to see Alfred Pennyworth as the most dignified werewolf ever to howl politely at the moon ... basically anything I read in books, I like to read in AUs, or write in AUs, or consider as possible AUs.

So. Basically, I love AUs. They're the perfect bridge between original fiction and fanfiction, the best of both worlds, a fabulous playground to bring out the full potential of every character you love and cherish, and showcase the worlds and ideas and societies that tumble through your imagination in search of a story to hold them. Characters to take you by the hand, and guide you out into the multiverse and all its layered and scintillant possibilities. Writer or reader or idle spectator, there is something for everyone, just waiting for the right combination of character and idea to bring to life.

The possibilities are endless, the characters eternal, the worlds waiting just around the corner. Grab a hand, and follow on!