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Okay. So I have a small problem with Sanctuary. Or rather, with writing fic for Sanctuary. *grins faintly* See, I have this thing where I don't really feel settled in a fandom until I've written a full-on, transplanted-to-another-genre AU for it. This is a legacy from my DC Comics days, when canon was an optional thing at best, and superheroes translate really nicely to any number of other genres. I got the noir AU, the steampunk AU (more than one), the pirates AU, the vampire AU, and so on. Supernatural, for some reason, I missed (unless you count mythology crossovers), possibly because there I was reading rather than writing the AUs, but even Good Omens got the Noir treatment from me.
But Sanctuary? Any genre shift you care to name, is kind of already in canon. Steampunk? The main character is a Victorian mad scientist, and one of the supporting characters is a Victorian cyborg. Dystopia? Had that episode. Superheroes? Also had that episode. Werewolf AU? Hello, Henry, with Tesla doing backup on vampires. Noir is problematic, because the Five were there in the 40s/50s, but I keep bumping into headcanon putting them in very disparate places, and anyway any crime plot with the Five runs headlong into John and the Ripper, which bumps us back to Victoriana a bit.
But. But. I am not dismayed, because there are still options. There's always the pirate AU, with young merchant sailor William Zimmerman captured and brought about the black ship Sanctuary, with her daring captain Helen Magnus, who is not what she seems, nor are her goals simple piracy. There's the fantasy AU (more than usual, I mean), where you translate Victorian mad science to Victorian mad magic, and see where you end up. Nikola would be an awesome perfectionist mage, I think, and he and James could have arguements on the proper use of alchemy, and why attempting to take over the world via the dissemination of an alchemical power source that lets you control other mages is, at the very least, not cricket, old boy. Heh.
But I keep coming back to Noir. Because ... Because I have a long-standing love affair with the genre, because the world of secrets and shadows and broken heroes it portrays suits Sanctuary rather well. And then ... because I realised that Helen and her men provide a kind of awesome gender-flip of the traditional noir roles.
There's Helen herself, the hard-bitten protagonist, the crusading detective or newshawk, looking to shine light on a dark world, the one standing up in the darkness. There's Will, the young ingenue who through some misstep or plot is caught up in Helen's dark world of crime and shadows, who proves himself to be more of a tough cookie than one would suspect. There's Nikola, the amoral femme fatale who nonetheless can be persuaded to help through a betraying softness of heart, and a promise to make it worth his while. And then, of course, there's John, that dark, mysterious beauty who long ago stole our hero's heart, and then betrayed her, the one who got away, the one who haunts her still.
James is a bit harder to place, mind, but I'm half tempted to put him, as the character who inexplicably knows things, as one of the typical noir knowledge brokers, and make him either a barman or a madame. *grins* I'm sort of leaning towards the latter, and him and his consigliere Declan can run the most renowned 'gentleman's club' in Sanctuary City. Helen's oldest friend, who made the cardinal mistake in his youth, falling in love with the wrong man, hence the faint taint of bitterness and cynicism of a world-weary madame. Heh.
You can fill in the others around them, too. Ashley, the up-and-coming young gun, unaware of her parentage, who doesn't understand with the cynical older detective looks out for her, or the mysterious stranger dogs her footsteps. Kate, the mercenary, gun-for-hire who turns out to have a sense of honour, or at least decent business, and comes down on the side of angels when the bullets start flying (Kate doesn't change much, does she?). Henry ... again, harder to place, since Noir doesn't have a wide variety of female roles, but I suppose every noir needs a Mr Fixit. Nigel, of course, is the classy cat burglar hiding his wrong-side-of-the-tracks origins.
One of the reasons I love Noir is the dichotomy, the balance between light and dark, good and bad, and the greys in between that make it hard to tell, that mean one change of POV can turn the whole thing on its head. Adding Sanctuary to that gives you a whole other layer, the male/female balance of roles, and how they change drastically with just a switch of POV.
*grins, muses* This is what I love about AUs. Figuring out how people change between worlds, and how they stay the same. Some make the transition better than others, of course. But some fit right in, and hardly change at all. And it's interesting seeing who does and who doesn't, and why ...
*shakes head* I should write a Sanctuary AU. Definitely. For the sake of tradition, if nothing else, just to say, I have done this. Heh. *grins* I should work on that, yes?
But Sanctuary? Any genre shift you care to name, is kind of already in canon. Steampunk? The main character is a Victorian mad scientist, and one of the supporting characters is a Victorian cyborg. Dystopia? Had that episode. Superheroes? Also had that episode. Werewolf AU? Hello, Henry, with Tesla doing backup on vampires. Noir is problematic, because the Five were there in the 40s/50s, but I keep bumping into headcanon putting them in very disparate places, and anyway any crime plot with the Five runs headlong into John and the Ripper, which bumps us back to Victoriana a bit.
But. But. I am not dismayed, because there are still options. There's always the pirate AU, with young merchant sailor William Zimmerman captured and brought about the black ship Sanctuary, with her daring captain Helen Magnus, who is not what she seems, nor are her goals simple piracy. There's the fantasy AU (more than usual, I mean), where you translate Victorian mad science to Victorian mad magic, and see where you end up. Nikola would be an awesome perfectionist mage, I think, and he and James could have arguements on the proper use of alchemy, and why attempting to take over the world via the dissemination of an alchemical power source that lets you control other mages is, at the very least, not cricket, old boy. Heh.
But I keep coming back to Noir. Because ... Because I have a long-standing love affair with the genre, because the world of secrets and shadows and broken heroes it portrays suits Sanctuary rather well. And then ... because I realised that Helen and her men provide a kind of awesome gender-flip of the traditional noir roles.
There's Helen herself, the hard-bitten protagonist, the crusading detective or newshawk, looking to shine light on a dark world, the one standing up in the darkness. There's Will, the young ingenue who through some misstep or plot is caught up in Helen's dark world of crime and shadows, who proves himself to be more of a tough cookie than one would suspect. There's Nikola, the amoral femme fatale who nonetheless can be persuaded to help through a betraying softness of heart, and a promise to make it worth his while. And then, of course, there's John, that dark, mysterious beauty who long ago stole our hero's heart, and then betrayed her, the one who got away, the one who haunts her still.
James is a bit harder to place, mind, but I'm half tempted to put him, as the character who inexplicably knows things, as one of the typical noir knowledge brokers, and make him either a barman or a madame. *grins* I'm sort of leaning towards the latter, and him and his consigliere Declan can run the most renowned 'gentleman's club' in Sanctuary City. Helen's oldest friend, who made the cardinal mistake in his youth, falling in love with the wrong man, hence the faint taint of bitterness and cynicism of a world-weary madame. Heh.
You can fill in the others around them, too. Ashley, the up-and-coming young gun, unaware of her parentage, who doesn't understand with the cynical older detective looks out for her, or the mysterious stranger dogs her footsteps. Kate, the mercenary, gun-for-hire who turns out to have a sense of honour, or at least decent business, and comes down on the side of angels when the bullets start flying (Kate doesn't change much, does she?). Henry ... again, harder to place, since Noir doesn't have a wide variety of female roles, but I suppose every noir needs a Mr Fixit. Nigel, of course, is the classy cat burglar hiding his wrong-side-of-the-tracks origins.
One of the reasons I love Noir is the dichotomy, the balance between light and dark, good and bad, and the greys in between that make it hard to tell, that mean one change of POV can turn the whole thing on its head. Adding Sanctuary to that gives you a whole other layer, the male/female balance of roles, and how they change drastically with just a switch of POV.
*grins, muses* This is what I love about AUs. Figuring out how people change between worlds, and how they stay the same. Some make the transition better than others, of course. But some fit right in, and hardly change at all. And it's interesting seeing who does and who doesn't, and why ...
*shakes head* I should write a Sanctuary AU. Definitely. For the sake of tradition, if nothing else, just to say, I have done this. Heh. *grins* I should work on that, yes?
