I tend to be a bit more formal when defining alt-universe vs alt-canon, especially for video games that are multi-pathed or that leave more than half of the story as missing scenes.
Alternate Universe = Radical divergence from canon by doing any one or more of the following:
1. Alternate setting: Placing the characters a different setting. For Dragon Age examples include coffee shop AU, roaring 1920s AU, "Dragon Effect" (dragon age characters living entirely inside mass effect's universe), ...
2. Alternate physics/rules: Radically altering how the world works. For Dragon Age examples could include everyone is a mage, magic no longer exists, A/B/O dynamics exist among the entire population, ...
3. Alternate history: Radically altering how major historical events shaped the current world. For Dragon Age, Tevinter still rules all of the known world in 9:30+, the Qun rule most of the Free Marches, etc.
4. Cross-overs & pastiches: Merging of two or more universes. For Dragon Age, merging Thedas with one of the Final Fantasy universes, characters can travel across the two maps and engage in each other's affairs. Rewriting DA2 where Hawke is a fictional creation (hawke doesn't exist) and the entire story is a tongue-in-cheek pastiche with "Fight Club" ("hawke" is the fictional persona of the story's narrator, a la tyler durden)
5. Alternate erotic characterizations/situations: Characters and situations are purposefully changed to provide a story vehicle for porn, PWP, and/or erotica. For Dragon Age, s/D societies within the Circles, contemporary BSDM kink with paper-thin fantasy veneer, etc.
6. Swap-verses: Cast is genderswapped. Society's levels are power-swapped. etc. For Dragon Age, the elves are in power and the humans live in slums. DA:O with bumbling Warden Alice, the almost ex-templar; Stena the Qunari warrior woman, Anorick the ambitious son of female war Hero Loghanna, etc.
Alternate Canon (and canon additions) = Adherence to canon while making minor changes, minor additions, or specific canonical selections or branchings.
1. Alternate character paths: additions or changes that change a character's plot arc *without* changing the larger story arc. For Dragon Age, DA:O's events play out exactly the same as in game except the warden recruits extra characters (Ser Gilmore, Shianni, Cullen) into the party. DA2 as-is but with the inclusion of Templar Knight Captain Cullen written as if he was a recruitable, romanceable "DLC" character.
2. Additions that don't break canon, aka "Gap Filler" and "Missing Scenes": When there is no evidence that some event did not happen, declaring that they event DID happen during an off screen time gap. For Dragon Age, assuming that Isabela/Aveline sex for the sake of sex occurred. Assuming that Hawke frequently has dinner with Bran to discuss politics after Hawke is declared Champion. Etc. The key is that they don't break existing canon but, instead, weave into the canon.
3a. Canonical branchings (aka, local canon): Declaring that a game-possible event is canon within a universe. For Dragon Age, the official post-game comics are Alt-canon/local canon with King Alistair and all of the other assumptions that have been made about DA:O+DA2. Anyone writing a story about how Warden Brosca defeats the archdemon while romancing Alistair is writing local canon. Etc. One alt-canon does not invalidate another alt-canon: Alistair, Bethany, and Carver each have many possible alt-canon lives, all equally valid but all cannot simultaneously coexist (Bethany cannot simultaneously be a warden and a circle mage and dead at the same exact moment in time).
3b. Unsupported canon-parallel branchings: Declaring that a theoretically possible or probable event is local canon within a specific universe, particularly when the game doesn't have branching paths or doesn't address certain branches. Example from FinalFantasy XII (which has ZERO on screen romance despite all the eye-sex and a non-branching storyline), Penelo's very close canonical friendship with the (very) young Lord Larsa (next in line to become emperor) is amended/changed in fanfic to have Larsa declare that he plans on proposing to Penelo. (This doesn't effect the main story line at all but -- oh wow -- it adds one hell of a complication!)
Could be either AU and Alt-Canon, depending on how much it changes the canonical story
1. Averting Death: Keeping canon generally the same except a character who is confirmed as dead or believed to be dead is instead kept alive. If this change happens early in the canonical story, it can radically change the canon and becomes more of a "what if" AU. From Dragon Age, both Bethany and Carver survive. Wesley survives but Aveline does not.
2. Deviated character paths and "what ifs": What if Alistair tries to be king and a grey warden at the same time? What if Cullen did his job and mage!Hawke was taken to the circle during Act 1? What if Hawke is forced into an arranged marriage but everything else plays out the same?
...
Getting back to what I wrote in my original post, while all of those different categories of AU and Alt-Canon provide space for interesting stories, in my experience, the kinds of stories that actually SAY something about the original story require some sort of metafictive device, else it is impossible to provide that layer that SAYS something.
Genderswap and powerswap AU are great for metafictive explorations where as alternate settings tend to be hit and miss, mostly miss. Alternate erotic characterizations/situations rarely have metafictive components although there are a few writers who specialize in this but the ones I thinking of aren't DA writers.
In my experience with AUs, I'm most likely to see interesting metafictive explorations that say something about the original media when the writer has something to say and uses alt physics/rules or swap-verses as the device for setting up what it is that they want to explore. Most of the AUs I've read feel far more like borrowed character fiction, which is fine in its own right. I've written a lot of it. But it usually isn't saying very much about the canon.
On the other hand, alt-canon and straight-up canon additions adhere much closer to canon so there is a lot more opportunity to say something interesting about the canon itself (metafiction) while also telling a story (fiction).
My original point up above is that assuming someone is comfortable with writing, it is far easier to just tell a story that you feel like telling rather than tell a story that simultaneously says something about the original canon. One of my disappointments with dragon age fanfic (much of my own posted fic falls into this category) is that so much of it is stories that people feel like telling, which is great and many stories are well written, but so little of it seems to actually SAY something about the canon itself.
For the characters and situations I'm most interested in, it is actually quite difficult for me to find fanfic that adheres to canon and to characterizations that simultaneously feel "in-character" (to me) while also saying something *more* than what canon already says.
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branchandroot
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Date: Sunday, 26 January 2014 04:17 am (UTC)Lots of different taxonomies for AU are here: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Alternate_Universe
Here's how I tend to break it down:
Alternate Universe = Radical divergence from canon by doing any one or more of the following:
1. Alternate setting: Placing the characters a different setting. For Dragon Age examples include coffee shop AU, roaring 1920s AU, "Dragon Effect" (dragon age characters living entirely inside mass effect's universe), ...
2. Alternate physics/rules: Radically altering how the world works. For Dragon Age examples could include everyone is a mage, magic no longer exists, A/B/O dynamics exist among the entire population, ...
3. Alternate history: Radically altering how major historical events shaped the current world. For Dragon Age, Tevinter still rules all of the known world in 9:30+, the Qun rule most of the Free Marches, etc.
4. Cross-overs & pastiches: Merging of two or more universes. For Dragon Age, merging Thedas with one of the Final Fantasy universes, characters can travel across the two maps and engage in each other's affairs. Rewriting DA2 where Hawke is a fictional creation (hawke doesn't exist) and the entire story is a tongue-in-cheek pastiche with "Fight Club" ("hawke" is the fictional persona of the story's narrator, a la tyler durden)
5. Alternate erotic characterizations/situations: Characters and situations are purposefully changed to provide a story vehicle for porn, PWP, and/or erotica. For Dragon Age, s/D societies within the Circles, contemporary BSDM kink with paper-thin fantasy veneer, etc.
6. Swap-verses: Cast is genderswapped. Society's levels are power-swapped. etc. For Dragon Age, the elves are in power and the humans live in slums. DA:O with bumbling Warden Alice, the almost ex-templar; Stena the Qunari warrior woman, Anorick the ambitious son of female war Hero Loghanna, etc.
Alternate Canon (and canon additions) = Adherence to canon while making minor changes, minor additions, or specific canonical selections or branchings.
1. Alternate character paths: additions or changes that change a character's plot arc *without* changing the larger story arc. For Dragon Age, DA:O's events play out exactly the same as in game except the warden recruits extra characters (Ser Gilmore, Shianni, Cullen) into the party. DA2 as-is but with the inclusion of Templar Knight Captain Cullen written as if he was a recruitable, romanceable "DLC" character.
2. Additions that don't break canon, aka "Gap Filler" and "Missing Scenes": When there is no evidence that some event did not happen, declaring that they event DID happen during an off screen time gap. For Dragon Age, assuming that Isabela/Aveline sex for the sake of sex occurred. Assuming that Hawke frequently has dinner with Bran to discuss politics after Hawke is declared Champion. Etc. The key is that they don't break existing canon but, instead, weave into the canon.
3a. Canonical branchings (aka, local canon): Declaring that a game-possible event is canon within a universe. For Dragon Age, the official post-game comics are Alt-canon/local canon with King Alistair and all of the other assumptions that have been made about DA:O+DA2. Anyone writing a story about how Warden Brosca defeats the archdemon while romancing Alistair is writing local canon. Etc. One alt-canon does not invalidate another alt-canon: Alistair, Bethany, and Carver each have many possible alt-canon lives, all equally valid but all cannot simultaneously coexist (Bethany cannot simultaneously be a warden and a circle mage and dead at the same exact moment in time).
3b. Unsupported canon-parallel branchings: Declaring that a theoretically possible or probable event is local canon within a specific universe, particularly when the game doesn't have branching paths or doesn't address certain branches. Example from FinalFantasy XII (which has ZERO on screen romance despite all the eye-sex and a non-branching storyline), Penelo's very close canonical friendship with the (very) young Lord Larsa (next in line to become emperor) is amended/changed in fanfic to have Larsa declare that he plans on proposing to Penelo. (This doesn't effect the main story line at all but -- oh wow -- it adds one hell of a complication!)
Could be either AU and Alt-Canon, depending on how much it changes the canonical story
1. Averting Death: Keeping canon generally the same except a character who is confirmed as dead or believed to be dead is instead kept alive. If this change happens early in the canonical story, it can radically change the canon and becomes more of a "what if" AU. From Dragon Age, both Bethany and Carver survive. Wesley survives but Aveline does not.
2. Deviated character paths and "what ifs": What if Alistair tries to be king and a grey warden at the same time? What if Cullen did his job and mage!Hawke was taken to the circle during Act 1? What if Hawke is forced into an arranged marriage but everything else plays out the same?
...
Getting back to what I wrote in my original post, while all of those different categories of AU and Alt-Canon provide space for interesting stories, in my experience, the kinds of stories that actually SAY something about the original story require some sort of metafictive device, else it is impossible to provide that layer that SAYS something.
Genderswap and powerswap AU are great for metafictive explorations where as alternate settings tend to be hit and miss, mostly miss. Alternate erotic characterizations/situations rarely have metafictive components although there are a few writers who specialize in this but the ones I thinking of aren't DA writers.
In my experience with AUs, I'm most likely to see interesting metafictive explorations that say something about the original media when the writer has something to say and uses alt physics/rules or swap-verses as the device for setting up what it is that they want to explore. Most of the AUs I've read feel far more like borrowed character fiction, which is fine in its own right. I've written a lot of it. But it usually isn't saying very much about the canon.
On the other hand, alt-canon and straight-up canon additions adhere much closer to canon so there is a lot more opportunity to say something interesting about the canon itself (metafiction) while also telling a story (fiction).
My original point up above is that assuming someone is comfortable with writing, it is far easier to just tell a story that you feel like telling rather than tell a story that simultaneously says something about the original canon. One of my disappointments with dragon age fanfic (much of my own posted fic falls into this category) is that so much of it is stories that people feel like telling, which is great and many stories are well written, but so little of it seems to actually SAY something about the canon itself.
For the characters and situations I'm most interested in, it is actually quite difficult for me to find fanfic that adheres to canon and to characterizations that simultaneously feel "in-character" (to me) while also saying something *more* than what canon already says.