Well, I'm trying to keep within the boundaries of whatever shreds of a mindset I can deduce from fragments of canon. One 'fic in which I've really screwed with the characters is the WIP "Catria In Gaiden-land," wherein the "canon" Catria ends up interacting with an army composed of the Gaiden characters and generic recruits from FEDS, and the "paradigm shift" involved is quite unsettling. I actually like that 'fic quite a bit and hope to finish it some day, but it's pretty out-there; even the characters Catria knows from her real timeline (like Marth) are considerably different from how they "ought" to be because well, most of the people they've cared about are dead and their battles have been won at such a horrible cost. FEDS positively invites this kind of speculation because the gameplay mechanics are sick (let's deliberately kill Tiki so we can score some more weapons, yay!).
There is something to be said for writing off the deep end, though. One of the best Gundam Wing 'fics I ever read was an AU in which the five pilots were kids with psychic powers who were kept in an psychiatric ward by the "doctors" (the guys who designed the Gundams in canon). Despite an utterly bizarre premise, it somehow was truer to the characters than 90% of 'fics featuring the boys blasting up colonies in their mecha, and it was a darned good piece of writing too. There was another fantastic one that I never saw completed that featured the characters set in the Christian kingdoms at the time of the Second Crusade (IIRC)-- exquisitely researched, beautifully in-character, and totally WTF. "AU for the hell of it" can, at its best, be an eye-opening experience.
It's always a tightrope walk. I have been severely tempted to try an FE3 Western AU based off the Bob Dylan song "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts," but I have so many things in the air that it'll just have to wait its turn. Part of the challenge of AU is repurposing the characters so they're true to themselves and to the demands of their new setting. Heroes often turn into supporting characters and vice-versa. :)
no subject
There is something to be said for writing off the deep end, though. One of the best Gundam Wing 'fics I ever read was an AU in which the five pilots were kids with psychic powers who were kept in an psychiatric ward by the "doctors" (the guys who designed the Gundams in canon). Despite an utterly bizarre premise, it somehow was truer to the characters than 90% of 'fics featuring the boys blasting up colonies in their mecha, and it was a darned good piece of writing too. There was another fantastic one that I never saw completed that featured the characters set in the Christian kingdoms at the time of the Second Crusade (IIRC)-- exquisitely researched, beautifully in-character, and totally WTF. "AU for the hell of it" can, at its best, be an eye-opening experience.
It's always a tightrope walk. I have been severely tempted to try an FE3 Western AU based off the Bob Dylan song "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts," but I have so many things in the air that it'll just have to wait its turn. Part of the challenge of AU is repurposing the characters so they're true to themselves and to the demands of their new setting. Heroes often turn into supporting characters and vice-versa. :)