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Challenge #3
In your own space, 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. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Today’s prompt seemed so simple at first gloss. When it comes to fic exchanges, I usually ask for no AU’s/crossovers/etc, and they don’t make up a huge percentage of what I seek out in my fic reading. However, when I look at the fics I’ve written, they are peppered in there. And that got me thinking about the seeming disconnect, and I think I’ve sorted things out a bit in my mind.
So. I think that I shy away from AU’s in my general reading because, when I want to read in Fandom A, I’m looking for something that reflects what drew me to that fandom—which is the intersection of the characters, world, and story. Since AU’s tinker with that intersection and break it up or twist/change it, it often blunts the effect of the fic or makes me feel more distant from it.
Having said that, I do like playing the “What if…?” game. What if Character 1 didn’t die? What if instead of making Critical Choice A in the story, the main character went off in another direction? But playing that in my head (or perhaps writing it in fic) and me reading/watching it are two different things.
Take, for example, Amazon’s adaptation of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I knew they were going to have to compress and condense because of the size and oftimes glacial pacing of the novels. However, the series feels more like an AU version of books than an adaptation of them. While some of the things they created just for the series really worked for me (e.g., the sequence in the camp with Logain, Stepin’s arc, Nynaeve’s first major use of the One Power, the more sinister bent of the Children of the Light), others really, really did not (e.g., changes to the Eye of the World, the battle for Fal Dara and fallout from the same, changes to Min and her visions, inserting non-book characters and spending so much time on them, what happens to Moiraine at the Eye of the World). Because I usually have strong reactions in terms of my response to AU’s, I tend to shy away from them unless I really like/trust the writer or the concept looks interesting and still feels like it works with the fandom source.
I do tend to read more AU’s in RPF than I do in FPF, and I think that’s because a part of RPF for me is always actors playing roles, and so RPF AU’s are like roleplaying inside roleplaying nesting dolls. While I’m not into high-school/college or coffee shop type AU’s, I do like ones that still have some fantasy/sci-fi/horror elements.
Some of you might be going, “But, Barb, most of your AU’s/crossovers are FPF. What’s up with that?” I plead guilty. However, in my defense, they are fics that feature actors from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films, actors I was writing Lord of the Rings RPF about before I started combining other films they starred in. Of course, it helped that they were both in films about spies/undercover agents and about supernatural deities, so there was a nice synergy to be had there.
Banner by Seleneheart.
In your own space, 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. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
Today’s prompt seemed so simple at first gloss. When it comes to fic exchanges, I usually ask for no AU’s/crossovers/etc, and they don’t make up a huge percentage of what I seek out in my fic reading. However, when I look at the fics I’ve written, they are peppered in there. And that got me thinking about the seeming disconnect, and I think I’ve sorted things out a bit in my mind.
So. I think that I shy away from AU’s in my general reading because, when I want to read in Fandom A, I’m looking for something that reflects what drew me to that fandom—which is the intersection of the characters, world, and story. Since AU’s tinker with that intersection and break it up or twist/change it, it often blunts the effect of the fic or makes me feel more distant from it.
Having said that, I do like playing the “What if…?” game. What if Character 1 didn’t die? What if instead of making Critical Choice A in the story, the main character went off in another direction? But playing that in my head (or perhaps writing it in fic) and me reading/watching it are two different things.
Take, for example, Amazon’s adaptation of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I knew they were going to have to compress and condense because of the size and oftimes glacial pacing of the novels. However, the series feels more like an AU version of books than an adaptation of them. While some of the things they created just for the series really worked for me (e.g., the sequence in the camp with Logain, Stepin’s arc, Nynaeve’s first major use of the One Power, the more sinister bent of the Children of the Light), others really, really did not (e.g., changes to the Eye of the World, the battle for Fal Dara and fallout from the same, changes to Min and her visions, inserting non-book characters and spending so much time on them, what happens to Moiraine at the Eye of the World). Because I usually have strong reactions in terms of my response to AU’s, I tend to shy away from them unless I really like/trust the writer or the concept looks interesting and still feels like it works with the fandom source.
I do tend to read more AU’s in RPF than I do in FPF, and I think that’s because a part of RPF for me is always actors playing roles, and so RPF AU’s are like roleplaying inside roleplaying nesting dolls. While I’m not into high-school/college or coffee shop type AU’s, I do like ones that still have some fantasy/sci-fi/horror elements.
Some of you might be going, “But, Barb, most of your AU’s/crossovers are FPF. What’s up with that?” I plead guilty. However, in my defense, they are fics that feature actors from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films, actors I was writing Lord of the Rings RPF about before I started combining other films they starred in. Of course, it helped that they were both in films about spies/undercover agents and about supernatural deities, so there was a nice synergy to be had there.
Banner by Seleneheart.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I suppose part of my problem with the Wheel of Time series is that streaming shows are only like 6 - 8 episodes long and sometimes only 25 minutes an episode (subtracting credits), so it feels like there's limited real estate. And you really want to focus on the things that really resonate with the source text. Sacrificing those things to add non-canon scenes and characters annoys me.
Ummm. Well... I should say that it can annoy me, since I think that Netflix's Bridgerton series does that deftly and well.
I am nothing if not a study in contradictions. ^_^
From:
no subject
I understand you'd rec Bridgerton?
From:
no subject
I read Regency romances. My sister does not. But we stayed up until 3:00 AM one morning binging the entire series.
The second season drops in March, so now is a perfect time to give it a whirl and see what you think.