Meta Month, Day 28: More thoughts on AUs

[mark_asphodel]

This is kind of a follow-up to some musings on AUs over at amielleon’s journal (locked post).  AUs are great fun, after all... and greatly frustrating.  To keep it simple, we'll just look at AU adaptations of individual games or gameverses, not mash-ups/crossovers.

 

Ammie was talking about world-transposing AUs-- the different kinds and the pitfalls thereof.  On the other hand, how about AUs that instead extract a key theme or concept from the canon and run with that, tailoring everything to fit the theme?  I guess this sort of AU might run into the “fridge magnet poetry” kind of world-transposition AU that Ammie identified, except the amount of game material that gets shaved away in the course of the adaptation makes it something other than world transposition, IMO.

For example, take my failed NaNo project from last year:  the FE3/12 War of Heroes storyline recast as a modern day corporate takeover drama, focusing on the themes of loyalty and betrayal, and cutting all the religious elements out entirely.  No magic.  No dragons.  No endgame with Gharnef and the captive women.  Just a straight-out political struggle for dominance, with no room for two winners.  It follows the plot, or at least the initial, surface plotline.  The bulk of the characters have their roles to play.  But without the spiritual dimension to Marth’s victory over Hardin (and Gharnef, Medeus, etc), the meaning of the whole piece shifts.  Hardin putting a revolver to his own temple in the CEO suite of ARC Industries sort of captures the idea of the Dark Emperor standing at the throne in his ruined palace, daring Marth to come and kill him... but not quite.

 

Or, you could take a facet of the spiritual aspect to the War of Heroes and run that.  Strip it down to that confrontation between Marth and Hardin, with Hardin as a hard-driving political reformer, and Marth as the charismatic preacher-boy (think Eli Sunday without the malice) who first bolsters and then frustrates Hardin's ambitions. You could set it in an early 20th century milieu of city bosses, Prohibition advocates, and radio... or a 1980s atmosphere of Wall Street, Iran-Contra, and televangelists.  Or Renaissance Florence.  Or 1750s England.  Or...  

A core component of FE3/12, the affection and trust and shared sense of purpose gone horribly wrong, would be there, and the “magic” might even be there too, in a way, but maybe some other things wouldn’t.  Like pilgrimages to the Ice Temple to retrieve sleeping princesses.  Or massive armies sacking entire countries.  Instead of a full-scale war, you would end up with a more intimate kind of struggle-- There Will Be Blood, with or without the bowling alley brawl as its denouement.

[Ten to one, the bulk of the readers would end up sympathizing with Hardin.  Especially if his actual wartime atrocities don’t end up so atrocious in translation.  Then again, often a single murder can alienate readers more than the wrecking of an entire nation.]

Or focus on something else and make that the core of the AU: the human plight of the Grust kiddies and the inner conflict of their supporters.  The “failed state” theme that surfaces again and again in the War of Shadows.  Or the deeper thread running under it all, the folly and corruptible nature of humanity-- which arguably gets as close as you can to the genuine core of the storyline (especially wrt FE12).  All of these are true to the source material.  None of these are the exact story we get in the games.  But why do we want that exact story when we already have the games (in some fashion)?

And you can do the same for any of the other games, too-- the “obsession” angle in FE8, or the “failed heroes” motif in FE4.  Grounding an AU in one aspect of a game and doing it successfully may well make for a better story than trying to transpose the entire game, lock-stock-and-barrel, and making a partial success of it.  And someone may squawk because you omitted their favorite character or prevented their OTP from happening, but hey-- there’s always another AU to write.  Right?  Write.

Comments

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

I guess if the immediate personal things are all you're interested in, that might sound really fun, but for me, it's the combination of those personal factors and the larger than life struggles they form around that interests me. It's really hard to translate that to an alternate setting without feeling stiff or silly.

Yeah. I mean, if your absolute favorite characters are Lyn, Kent, and Sain, then I guess recasting them in a "new girl in town" romantic comedy will tickle your fancy. They're not my favorite characters and watching Kent and Lyn hook up while Sain looks on with a smile isn't really going to excite me. Same goes for Seth and Eirika having a white-dress modern wedding. Same goes for a billion jillion AU Ike/Marth romances over the in SSB section, some of which do bear a passing resemblance to canon characterization but can't hold my interest for more than two chapters. With nothing at stake, to me it turns into Two Guys and a Girl, or That Guy and That Chick, or Those Two Prettyboys.

[raphiael]

Yes, definitely. A Soren who spends his time reading big books for fun is not quite the same as a Soren who's trained himself to become a tactical mastermind, either. There's only so far you can go with the analogues without being totally over the top or nonsensical.

I wonder if there's really a way to make the characters seem right while leaving bits like that out, though. There has to be some balance between floofy sitcom nonsense and gritty global conflict driven AU, right?

[hooves.livejournal.com]

I agree there should be balance, but where is that balance? Obviously you can't make Lyon or even Eirika or Valter the same exact person they are in the games. You can make the similar enough to please the fans (for the most part), but you can't ever make them a carbon-copy. It doesn't work that way.

Though I think I like AU fics for the sole reason that the struggles in an AU are usually...small, intimate. Not on a global scale-- teenagers saving the world.

I'd love to see an AU fic where, say, teenage FE characters have to overcome something major on their own-- but it doesn't have to be global anything. For all I care it can be a teenage pregnancy. (Just an example.) It's certainly not global, but to a group of teenagers it might FEEL global.

^I mean, if we're going with teenage heroes again.

But then again, making, say, Serra or L'Arachel into mid 30s adults issssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss against canon and it's AU so I can safely say that a mid-30s AU L'Arachel is not going to be like the one in the games. In fact. They shouldn't be imo. Not in a modern AU. None of the cast, particularly the main cast, should feel exactly the same. Or there's something wrong.

I mean, Lyn can be all ragey over some drunk guy in a semi kersplatting her parents but he's going to jail or prison or some shit, and it's not like she's going to contemplate murdalizing him when he gets out. (Because it'd be a while? Because it's illegal? Well duh.) That strips part of her character away either way: you have to choose: is she going to be amazingly full with the desire to get revenge and try to kill the guy, which goes against all the rest of her character?

I mean, there aren't exactly modern-day equivalents to bandits destroying an entire settlement of people unless you wanna go back to the 1800s and do Cowboys vs. Indians stuff. But that's not exactly modern, you know? And a drunk guy running over her parents isn't even REMOTELY like seeing them be mercilessly slaughtered along with only God knows how many other people.

But we have to also make allowences for modern-day bringing up. Death was a big deal to Lyn, definitely. I mean, in the canon. But she lives in a medieval fantasy world where death happens, bandits do kill people for trinkets (or for fun), and murder plans are just hush-hush among the villagefolk but all plans are totally out in the open-- just, nobody chooses to act on stopping them.

They way her people and, especially, parents, died had a big impact on canon Lyndis. But on a modern-day person? It'd probably traumatize the fuck out of them.

[kyusil.livejournal.com]

Though I think I like AU fics for the sole reason that the struggles in an AU are usually...small, intimate.

I think this is very true. My favorite AU fic and one of my favorite FE stories in general (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7215075/1/Consolation_Prize) did this seamlessly: not performing a cast transplant, but building the world around the perspective of one character and her personal struggles. It felt wonderfully real, both to Florina and to the world the story created, and it managed to hook me even though I'm rather lukewarm towards these two characters. I didn't need a grand struggle to care about what happened, but the story didn't feel pointless, either.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, "Consolation Prize" is phenomenal. But it pretty much took the approach I'm advocating above-- the author isolated one thing to focus on, and stripped away everything that didn't accomplish that goal. The small-scale drama worked because the focus was razor-sharp. There was absolutely nothing unnecessary in that story. Florina's personal struggles felt real in part because there was nothing to dilute them, or distract the reader from them.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

though I think I like AU fics for the sole reason that the struggles in an AU are usually...small, intimate.

Those can work really well-- I'm glad Kyusil linked to "Consolation Prize," because I was trying to remember that story as the sole example I've seen of a modern AU that worked completely. Though I did like a lot of what you did in... that story where Lyn was raising Sue as a single mom? There were some really vivid parts in it, like the birthday party scene. Kinda felt Rath got the Innes treatment there, though.

I think a pitfall of many modern AUs is that they don't have that kind of tight focus seen in "Consolation Prize," or they start out with focus but then lose it. And then you either have something that's trying to follow the canonical plot and failing because the pieces don't fit, or something ditches the plot but ends up losing the sense of whatever struggle there was-- personal, interpersonal, or otherwise. And since there's not the canonical anchor points to fall back on, the story kind of goes off a cliff, Wile E Coyote style..

Canonical anchor points, after all, being a big part of what makes fanfiction, well, fanfic.

[hooves.livejournal.com]

Kinda felt Rath got the Innes treatment there, though.

Yeah, I never got to explain what happened at all in that one. Never got far enough. I assure you, though. He's not a bad sort of guy in it. It was just one of those relationships that ended up not working out.

At least that was my intent but I haven't read it in so long I don't remember what I actually wrote. >_>

Good point though, re: canonical anchor points. Or any anchor points. And focus. I mean, I think a lot of them end up as pair the spares, or a better example: Let's Include Everyone. Where it's fairly likely in an, idk, FE8 AU, that all of the characters who see each other and get to know one another, might not do so in an AU. Having Lyon already know the twins? Makes sense. Having the twins know THE ENTIRE CAST? ...Eh. That makes a huge cast to play with, and it doesn't work very well in a modern setting imo.

[hooves.livejournal.com]

I mean, some dude walked into an iHop here in Ohio and blew up a bunch of people. THAT kind of shit traumatizes people. Nobody sees it coming. It just happens. You get a call one day that your military son was out with his friends for breakfast and he was shot by a random ass guy and killed. No rhyme. No reason. He just DID IT. That's pretty traumatizing. (IMO.) Now imagine almost everyone you've ever known your entire life dying in one day. I mean, that's what Lyn went through.

There is ABSOLUTELY no real world equivalent to this. Or to the Demon King, or Ashnard, or even the beginning of Marth's journey.

I mean, there are real world equivalents to tragedy-- the Holocaust, for example-- but then you run into all sorts of other problems by writing, idk, Marth and his family as a prominent Jewish family on the run at the height of the Holocaust.

^I mean, an interesting concept to be sure, but I doubt it'd be very well-received.

And of course, as something modern-day-2011? Yeah, even less likely we'll find some real-world equivalent if we want our characters to be somewhat normal, to not be dabbling in all sorts of drugs (though drug-addicted Lyon is kinda interesting haha) or living on the bad side of town.

And of course, monarchs/leaders of powerful countries/etc have no real-world equivalent that even makes sense. A powerful CEO is about the closest you can come. A millionaire who designs clothes or a pop star-- and THOSE things are even LESS relateable to the average reader than, idk, average-normal Ike and his buddy Soren whose parents were drug addicted alcoholics and left him in the care of random ass crazy people.

The latter isn't very ACCURATE, no, but neither is average-working-class Ike BECOMES A WORLD CLASS HERO. Or L'Arachel is a pop star making millions and her slave...I mean...assistant lugging all the equipment is Dozla. (And maybe Rennac.)

There are a lot of fun ideas, but none of them are going to be canon. And they're AU. So why should we WANT them to be a carbon copy of the canon material? We've played that game before, you know? Heard that tune. Etc.

Of course, sweet perky happy Lyon with his bffs Eirika and Ephraim might ring untrue, so it's better to at least give him some reasons for being, well, different. Because even if he's not some happysugarfest to read about, he shouldn't be the same EXACT person he was in the canon, because he didn't go through the same things.

(And similar =/= same, nor does it yield the exact same results.)

[raphiael]

I briefly considered an AU with a schizophrenic Lyon, actually. I wrote "Emperor" instead, and I'm not entirely sure there's a whole lot of difference.

Yes, definitely. I think there's nothing wrong with wanting to read or write those cute happy AUs. There's clearly an audience for it, though they're not my thing, usually. But like you said, I think if you want to create a thought-out AU, you have to consider that the characters won't be the exact same. I mean, obviously you can't take it too far -- the characters have to be recognizable. But when everything around them changes, why should the characters be the exact same?

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

but then you run into all sorts of other problems by writing, idk, Marth and his family as a prominent Jewish family on the run at the height of the Holocaust.

Or Russian nobility fleeing the Bolsheviks. I did think about trying that one, actually.

The latter isn't very ACCURATE, no, but neither is average-working-class Ike BECOMES A WORLD CLASS HERO.

He could've made it in the Soviet Union. They were into that kind of thing.

Anyway, regarding pop stars: I tried and tried with that FE8 rock band AU for fe_fest last year, and it just didn't work. It was, "OK, Innes is pushy as fuck, and Lyon's insecure and smoking weed and dropping acid, and Joshua is just sort of skating by and not contributing, and Ephraim is oblivious to it all and just wants to play his guitar, man. Damn, I should've just taken an article on Pink Floyd and changed the names, because that's EXACTLY what this is. So, is there any point to this, or does Innes just fire everyone?"

Rock music stories have trouble succeeding if there's not actual, you know, music to help the audience care about these people.

[hooves.livejournal.com]

I wondered about your rock band AU when I typed the pop star thing. :P

Every time I see a band AU in a fandom I am just never impressed by it. Sometimes it can make a good story? But more often than not it doesn't. Though I daresay for the most part, it's because, say, InuYasha. There had to have been like 30 band fics. They had the main cast shoved together, but without reason. Any reason. No indication on how they met or anything.

To me, that feels...wrong. The cast met by TOTAL CHANCE (or fate or something) in the anime/manga. So for them to just be like bffs already makin' a band? Just. What. how did this. Even. what.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

They had the main cast shoved together, but without reason. Any reason. No indication on how they met or anything.

Also, most "rock band' AUs deal with types of bands I'm not interested in. They bear no resemblance to the bands that move me-- Beatles, The Who, Pink Floyd, R.E.M., even U2-- as having "mythical" narratives. It's about as realistic as Josie and the Pussycats.

I think I'll post an analysis of the failed AU. That should cheer me up.