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

[opusculasedfera]

I believe the current common term is Canon AU, though most people would say just that they were writing "an AU where Azula captured Zuko, etc." to use your example. I remember the term AR, but I don't think it's in use now at all, except possibly in the oldest fandom spaces where people are still discussing long defunct shows.

It's perhaps not so much that canon AUs aren't happening now, it's just that they tend to come up less in meta because people seem to have fewer issues with broad trends in them (except perhaps fandom specific ones, if there's a spate of "latest huge spoiler in $show never happened!"), whereas a lot of people have Views on how to determine which elements of character and setting-as-it-defines-character (e.g. the Steve+Bucky longstanding friendship in the post you linked) are most crucial to correctness in ARs.

[lizbee]

I've been wondering the same thing! Especially because I keep seeing a list of any-fandom "AU" prompts that don't even need to be AU. "Drunk at a party" could happen in nearly any fandom, and so forth.

[sholio]

Yeah, I realize, reading this, that I should've specified I meant total AUs and not any AUs. The terminology I'm familiar with is total AU (i.e. coffee shop AU, space AU) vs ... well, I've heard a lot of different terms for the other kind, the kind you write: canon-divergent AUs or canon-based AU or what-if AU or alternate timeline are all things that I've heard people call them.

In any case, it seems like AU is still generally used as an umbrella term for all forms of non-canon-compliant fic, whether a branching timeline or a completely different universe -- well, to the extent that I'm clued into popular fannish terminology myself, which is ... not very. XD I guess for myself, when I say "AU" without specifying a type, it's total AUs I'm talking about (as my meta shows, I guess!) but it certainly doesn't confuse me when people say "AU" and mean a fic of the turn-left-at-canon type.

In any case, I'm sorry for being confusing with my own imprecise use of terms!

[(Anonymous)]

they are AUs, AU just pretty broadly means 'not canon'

[frith_in_thorns]

I would call all of those things AUs, but to specify I'd call the what-if ones canon-divergent AUs and then the others also specify according to type, ie no-serum AU, coffee shop AU, space AU etc.

(That's also how the AO3 tags work, helpfully for me!)

[sheenianni.livejournal.com]

I call them AUs or canon-divergence AUs, and they're my favorite type too :) But I think the fandom definition is a bit unclear - some people only mark the alternate realities stuff as AU, leaving the what-ifs without a proper label. I'm glad someone wrote a post about this, because lately I've been asking the same thing myself - I used to write only what-ifs AUs but recently began to explore the "real" AUs which are actually ARs, and it felt weird to mark them both the same when ARs include a brand new world while the what-ifs only branch off at a specific moment. Then again, a divergence can cause such a big changes that you pretty much have to rebuild everything anyway (like, what if Azula wasn't a bender? Imagine how much that would change everything... what would the dynamics be in the Fire Nation royal family? Would Osai still become a king, or would Iroh take that position? Would Azula still grow up to be abusive to everyone around her, or would she develop a more thoughtful and somewhat kinder personality? What would have happened with Ursa? Would Zuko ever get burned? What about Mai and Ty Lee? And we haven't even left the Fire Nation yet...).

To save myself a headache, as long as it's not canon (and not, let's say, a missing moment or possible future), I mark it as AU.