(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
icarus_chained Feb. 7th, 2014 09:08 pm)
icarus_chained Feb. 7th, 2014 09:08 pm)There are moments when I realise that the continuum between fanfic, AU and original story can be very, very short when it comes to my writing. It makes me wonder somewhat about my writing impulses.
There are several original worlds/storylines that I basically run as comfort stories in my head. I mean, when I'm walking or thinking or somewhere without access to external stories, or when I'm lying abed trying to sleep and kind of failing at it, or just when I want to ramble around in some world that isn't this one, I tend to grab around among the stories in my head until I find one that feels good right now, and let it run awhile.
I'm mentioning this now because I was running one earlier, and tracing it back through earlier iterations out of curiosity's sake, and abruptly remembered that that story had initially started out as a fandom AU. It'd been more or less morphed beyond all recognition by the present iteration, but it had actually started as a mental fanfic.
And there are a couple of those, now that I'm remembering them. I tend to write AUs at the drop of a hat, and to imagine AUs for half the bloody canons I've ever seen/read, and some of the ones I don't end up actually writing as fanfic have a tendency to shift on me. Just as an illustration, a couple of the ones I actually ended up writing fragments of in their orig-fic forms:
There are several original worlds/storylines that I basically run as comfort stories in my head. I mean, when I'm walking or thinking or somewhere without access to external stories, or when I'm lying abed trying to sleep and kind of failing at it, or just when I want to ramble around in some world that isn't this one, I tend to grab around among the stories in my head until I find one that feels good right now, and let it run awhile.
I'm mentioning this now because I was running one earlier, and tracing it back through earlier iterations out of curiosity's sake, and abruptly remembered that that story had initially started out as a fandom AU. It'd been more or less morphed beyond all recognition by the present iteration, but it had actually started as a mental fanfic.
And there are a couple of those, now that I'm remembering them. I tend to write AUs at the drop of a hat, and to imagine AUs for half the bloody canons I've ever seen/read, and some of the ones I don't end up actually writing as fanfic have a tendency to shift on me. Just as an illustration, a couple of the ones I actually ended up writing fragments of in their orig-fic forms:
Fantasy, Mythology, Westerns, Cyberpunk and the Apocalypse
- One of my oldest original stories posted online, Dust, originally started life as an apocalyptic Alfred & Bruce & J'onn fic back in my DC Comics days. The general shape of the characters remained the same (the Old Man, the Boy and the Dreamwraith, respectively), but the shape of the story and the nature of J'onn/Dreamwraith changed a lot on me. Still, this one did stick relatively close to the original iteration, especially compared with some of the others.
- There are a couple of stories that identifiably sprang from my GO/SPN/Mythology days, including Twilight Travellers and Kingfisher. They're really more direct mythological riffs, but that fandom period was the one that made me want to play around in that sandbox again, so there's a fairly clear spring-point. You could also argue (and some people have) that Genesis Apocalyptos, while ostensibly still a GO Space Opera AU, has really drifted rather far into original territory as well. (I do worry sometimes about the line between my AUs and my original stuff, in both directions. Are the AUs too far, or the originals still too close?)
- Both the Thorngod Priest universe and the North American Magic universe were originally offshoots of a Magnificent 7 fantasy AU that never got written. TP kept the Western atmosphere/props but took a sideline out into a more overt fantasy universe with a different world/political situation/magical ruleset, while NAM instead took the magical layout from M7's our-world setting and updated it by a century and a half to get a modern urban fantasy setting.
- Meanwhile, and still in M7, the Vampire Teeth universe sprang up from almost exactly the same place, but going the supernatural-creature urban fantasy route instead of the urban magician one (though it has those too). The stories set in America in that universe have a more direct link back to the original idea (the San Fran vampiress and the Blue Lacquer vampire were originally going to be OCs in the fandom AU), while the British segment of the stories (the Cold War vampire with the microchip tooth and the London ward sorceror) started borrowing from things like Charles Stross' Laundry Series and James Bond and this completely separate Person Of Interest Highwayman AU that I did, and ended up somewhere completely different.
And, actually, it was a POI AU that started me back thinking about this tonight. Because for the past few days the original story that's been my comfort story was, again, originally a POI AU that never got written. Someone prompted me to write a Finch/Reese fantasy AU for a meme (which I never managed to do), and at some point while trying to plot that one out it went and morphed on me, and I ended up here a couple of months later abruptly remembering that my black eunuch necromancer and his necromancer-hunting lady knight were originally Harold Finch & John Reese, respectively -_-; Wow, that one wandered on me.
*muses* And looking at it, it's AUs for fandoms I usually read more than I write that end up getting actually written after they morph, I think. If they're in one of my main-phase fandoms, there's more chance they'll actually get written as the fandom AU, while the ones in less-written fandoms will have the chance to morph further towards original.
I wonder about my story-creating impulses, though. If I lose control of an AU, it can wander a long way before I catch it again. And I also have this tendency to randomly throw elements of anything I liked into a mental gumbo and when some of them manage to clump together into something with some semblence of a narrative, I'll jump on it and happily run with it in about six different directions simultaneously.
And sometimes I do wonder if the results might be overly divergent for fanfic, and overly derivative for original -_-;
Ah well. I tend to enjoy them regardless, so I don't suppose it matters. Heh.
- One of my oldest original stories posted online, Dust, originally started life as an apocalyptic Alfred & Bruce & J'onn fic back in my DC Comics days. The general shape of the characters remained the same (the Old Man, the Boy and the Dreamwraith, respectively), but the shape of the story and the nature of J'onn/Dreamwraith changed a lot on me. Still, this one did stick relatively close to the original iteration, especially compared with some of the others.
- There are a couple of stories that identifiably sprang from my GO/SPN/Mythology days, including Twilight Travellers and Kingfisher. They're really more direct mythological riffs, but that fandom period was the one that made me want to play around in that sandbox again, so there's a fairly clear spring-point. You could also argue (and some people have) that Genesis Apocalyptos, while ostensibly still a GO Space Opera AU, has really drifted rather far into original territory as well. (I do worry sometimes about the line between my AUs and my original stuff, in both directions. Are the AUs too far, or the originals still too close?)
- Both the Thorngod Priest universe and the North American Magic universe were originally offshoots of a Magnificent 7 fantasy AU that never got written. TP kept the Western atmosphere/props but took a sideline out into a more overt fantasy universe with a different world/political situation/magical ruleset, while NAM instead took the magical layout from M7's our-world setting and updated it by a century and a half to get a modern urban fantasy setting.
- Meanwhile, and still in M7, the Vampire Teeth universe sprang up from almost exactly the same place, but going the supernatural-creature urban fantasy route instead of the urban magician one (though it has those too). The stories set in America in that universe have a more direct link back to the original idea (the San Fran vampiress and the Blue Lacquer vampire were originally going to be OCs in the fandom AU), while the British segment of the stories (the Cold War vampire with the microchip tooth and the London ward sorceror) started borrowing from things like Charles Stross' Laundry Series and James Bond and this completely separate Person Of Interest Highwayman AU that I did, and ended up somewhere completely different.
And, actually, it was a POI AU that started me back thinking about this tonight. Because for the past few days the original story that's been my comfort story was, again, originally a POI AU that never got written. Someone prompted me to write a Finch/Reese fantasy AU for a meme (which I never managed to do), and at some point while trying to plot that one out it went and morphed on me, and I ended up here a couple of months later abruptly remembering that my black eunuch necromancer and his necromancer-hunting lady knight were originally Harold Finch & John Reese, respectively -_-; Wow, that one wandered on me.
*muses* And looking at it, it's AUs for fandoms I usually read more than I write that end up getting actually written after they morph, I think. If they're in one of my main-phase fandoms, there's more chance they'll actually get written as the fandom AU, while the ones in less-written fandoms will have the chance to morph further towards original.
I wonder about my story-creating impulses, though. If I lose control of an AU, it can wander a long way before I catch it again. And I also have this tendency to randomly throw elements of anything I liked into a mental gumbo and when some of them manage to clump together into something with some semblence of a narrative, I'll jump on it and happily run with it in about six different directions simultaneously.
And sometimes I do wonder if the results might be overly divergent for fanfic, and overly derivative for original -_-;
Ah well. I tend to enjoy them regardless, so I don't suppose it matters. Heh.
Tags: