A Question about Fannish Terminology

[attackfish]

sholio wrote an essay just recently about why Steve/Bucky AUs don't work for her (the AU part, not the Steve/Bucky part) and quite apart from the contents of the essay, it got me wondering about what we call AUs in fandom currently.  Back when I got started, *crotchety old fan voice* things like high school AUs and coffee shop AUs were called "ARs", or Alternate Reality fics whereas  "AU" referred more broadly to both ARs and also "what if" stories.  However, sholio only talked about AR-style AUs, and a number of her points don't really work for what if AUs.  A while back, I ran an Avatar: the Last Airbender AU meme, and after getting almost exclusively AR prompts (and most of those for fusions) I had to explain that what if prompts were definitely also accepted.  I periodically see meta about how the writer of said meta doesn't think AUs are enough like canon, then goes on to describe only AR-style AUs.

Did the meaning of AU narrow  and I didn't realize it? I would kind of like to know, most of what I write other than drabbles are what-ifs.  What if Lupin bit Snape when they were in school, what if Azula captured Zuko at the beginning of  "The Southern Raiders," what if Iroh died when he drank white jade tea. The story I'm working on right now is a what if: what if those Earth Kingdom soldiers in Book One had managed to capture Iroh and Zuko and take them to Ba Sing Se.  If these aren't AUs, I kind of would like to know what to call them.

Comments

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

And then if you do make a distinction between types of AUs, comes the question of where you draw the line between canon-divergence and AR. For example, I have a fic in the White Collar fandom, where Neal is secretly a dragon. Nothing else is different, and no one knows until after Neal is out with the anklet, but it presupposes a world in which dragons exist. Is this a really out there canon divergence, or is it an AR? What about if canon characters switched places, say Ozai is the chief of the Southern Water Tribe, and Hakota is the second son of Azulon, father to the non-bending Sokka and firebending prodigy, Katara? What about if Korra instead of Aang were the frozen Air Avatar who had to save the world from the hundred year war, would this be a fusion, since they are technically different shows?

(As for Azula,I tend to really dislike AUs focused around her, because they tend to be written by people who think her psychopathy is because of how she was raised, whereas my experience with my first stalker, and knowing how young my stalker started, started, I think it's inborn. However, would not being a bender and prodigy, and not having the favor of a powerful adult to give her license to operate change the expression of her lack of empathy and willingness to use others? Hell yes. Also, I think Ozai would till become Firelord, because his ambition was for himself, and he was only ambitious for his children only so far as it served him and fed his ego.)

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

Exactly. (BTW, your Dragon!Neal is one of my favorite stories - I was just reading it again about two or three days back :D ) Also, Hakkoda as Azulon's son and Ozai in the Watertribe? Wow, that would really change things so much, wouldn't it? I can't really imagine it - Hakkoda seems to lack Ozai's ruthlessness, so would there be a war at all? Would the Watertribe be determined to take revenge for what the Fire nation under Azulon put the world through? So many possibilities.

I agree about Azula - I can't ever see her becoming a warm-hearted, nice person. Most likely, she would have found new ways to be manipulative and domineering, using her cunning to abuse those beneath her (and as a Fire Nation Princess, there are still many of those). Even as a child, she is already cruel and without conscience; she's also highly intelligent and very resourceful, so she probably would have still been feared and respected even if she wasn't a bender. I don't know whether different circumstances could have helped her to find a role where she could channel her personality in a way that wouldn't be harmful to other people - she really is a psychopath, and I don't have enough information and education in psychology to tell whether she could have been taught to handle these tendencies and become a better person or not.

I really dislike when fiction describes some people as being "born bad", because that seems like disregarding free will and taking away the responsibility for your actions; I believe that everyone has the potential for both great good and evil. It's one of the fascinating dilemmas in (fan)fiction - what you're born with, what are the outer circumstances, what choices you make - and how that reshapes you and the world around you. But Azula is a psychopath - no questions there.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Well, there would have been a war, since Sozin started it, but would Hakoda have tried to supplant Iroh? would Katara and Sokka be a team, would Sokka be jealous, what would Ozai and Azula do as nearly powerless peasants? All these questions, and the AUs I've found with this premise never answered them to my satisfaction.

I believe that everyone has the potential for both great good and evil.

I believe that everyone is capable of great good and great evil actions, but my experience leads me to believe that not everybody is capable of good motivations. However, the most dangerous people usually aren't psychopaths, but people who were born capable of empathy and understanding and choose instead to disregard it. On the flipside, could Azula have been taught to prove how great she is by doing charitable works? Would this make her a good person if she were only doing it for self aggrandizement? Would that matter to the people for whom she built hospitals and wells?

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

Great points!

You may be on to something with the actions/motivations distinction. In certain circumstances, I can totally see Azula doing just that; actually doing something that would help people but for her own selfish reasons. Could I see her becoming selfless? - not really. Could she recognize her emotional shortcomings and choose this path as a way to deal with them? That I don't know. Maybe one day, if she became mature enough... If she recognized her inability to feel compassion and empathy and choose to do charitable work both for her grandeur AND as a way to do something considered "noble", would that be a good motivation? And no, the majority of the people she helped probably wouldn't care.

It just proves that there are few things that are clearly black or white. People, actions, motivations... it's rarely simple, and different view points may both look justified from their own perspective.