fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4153 ]

[ SECRET POST #4153 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4153 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Power Rangers Hyperforce]

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[That 70s Show]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #594.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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01. https://i.imgur.com/OQb1kmQ.jpg

I don't understand. The examples you give seem to be exactly what you don't want to read? Can someone clarify this?

I guess OP just really cares about the fact that something supernatural exists somewhere in the world, even if the characters aren't actively involved in it?

Thanks. Not sure I really understand, tho.

DA

Like if Peter Parker didn't get bitten by that spider, but the Avengers still existed in his universe. Or if Spock was human, but Vulcan and Starfleet were part of that universe. Or if, in Teen Wolf, there were still werewolves and other supernatural creatures, but the main character didn't become one.

This is what I meant, yes. I know it's a weirdly specific requirement for AUs, but I need to have at least some strong, obvious hints that magic, aliens, or whatever still exist even if it's not an important point in the fic.

Re: OP

ailurophile6 - 2018-05-18 23:35 (UTC) - Expand

OP likes canon divergence AUs that still take place in the canon universe, but with tweaks. Like "What if everything else was the same but John died instead of Mary?" and not "What if monsters/demons/angels/magic weren't real and the Winchesters ran a diner and Castiel was a trucker who met Dean when he stopped by with a delivery of premade pie crusts?"

I think it's a basically a question of what elements of the original canon you think are interesting. For me, and I think for most people, I'm not solely interested in the fantastical or supernatural elements of a given canon. I don't care about Spock because he's a Vulcan; I'm interested in his character, as a character. So, when it comes to fic and AU, different people are going to focus on different things.

I mean, sometimes those stories are boring anyway, but I don't get the idea that the only appealing thing about these stories is their supernatural or sci-fi elements.

I'm not sure that's the best example to pick, since the fact that Spock's a Vulcan, or more specifically a half-Vulcan, is a huge part of his self-identity and his struggles with the different elements of his nature. Experiences and identities are also huge parts of who characters are, and depending on their importance you have to ask how much of the character is left/changed without them. If Spock wasn't a child of two worlds and didn't have to struggle so much to find a balance between them, how much would he still be Spock?

I mean, I know there are close mundane equivalents, especially in sci-fi like Trek TOS where a lot of the stories were based on loosely-disguised real world issues. You don't have to focus on the exact experiences themselves to explore the character, and as you say different people are interested in different elements of a story/character. But you also say that the supernatural/sci-fi elements are not the only appealing thing, and the inverse of that is also true. Sometimes the supernatural/sci-fi elements do bring things to stories and characters that mundane equivalents can't. Spock as a man from two planets, Spock who struggles with his own emotions but can feel those of others with a touch, Spock as a man who can literally gift his soul to someone else to stay alive and be forced to deal with the fallout from that ... those are all also parts of who he is, and they're parts that I think a mundane AU would find difficult to replicate. The world a character lives in informs a lot of who they are, after all.

I definitely take your point, but I'm not sure I agree with it.

The thing is, at the end of the day, no AU is capable of accurately representing every element of the source canon. If they were capable of doing so, they wouldn't be AUs. Every AU (really, every fanfic) has to depart from the source material, at least in some sense. So we're always going to be talking about translation from the source material to a new idiom, and distance and alteration, and stuff like that.

So, yeah, a Spock who isn't half-Vulcan and half-human isn't going to be exactly equivalent to TOS!Spock. But it can still be close, and it can still be recognizably the same character, and you can still potentially do interesting things or tell interesting stories or get a different angle on the character by transposing them to a different setting or context. Even though, no, it won't be exactly the same.

(Also, "fully human Spock" was actually an example of the kind of AU that OP said that they were fine with, just for the record. Also, there are actually multiple canonically different Spock characters in the Star Trek universe who have distinctly different life experiences while still being recognizably the same character already, so this kind of thing isn't even really limited to fanfic.)

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-05-19 00:43 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-05-19 05:22 (UTC) - Expand

This. I feel like once you start taking a character too far away from the canon circumstances that shaped their life, they stop being that character and start being just an OC with a familiar face. In which case... why not just write an OC? Why try to pretend that this OC with Spock's face has anything to do with the actual canon Spock? Because it doesn't, not when you strip him of all of the elements from his canon that make him who he is.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-05-19 05:19 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-05-19 15:20 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-05-19 07:21 (UTC) - Expand

I am getting daily dosed?

I can do like canon divergent AU's, which is what I think your second paragraph is referring to? But full human-AU's where the characters are in ordinary mundane settings without any of the fantastical elements of the canon universe are so... boring to me.

If I like a world for it's magic or technology then I want to keep that, not erase it and just slap the same names on the characters in the fic as if that makes them the same people.

People can write and enjoy all the mundane AU's they want but I'll never understand the appeal.

Some people care more about the characters than about the setting...

+1, but why get into it with someone who insists they'll never understand, lol

The characters are heavily influenced by their setting and often don't make sense when removed from it

some people think the characters would be exactly the same with the same personality quirks, motivations, likes/dislikes, etc when removed from their fantastical setting but...that's just not true. it's pretty rare that a character could develop similar traits when not influenced by what is/isn't normal in their "world" or what happened to make them what they are.

If you took my favorite character out of his canon setting he would not be even remotely the same person. His entire personality and motivations were shaped by what he experienced in his canon.

the characters are heavily influenced by their settings so removing them from it allows people to explore different facets of them through thoughtful extrapolation

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-05-19 15:37 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-05-19 15:38 (UTC) - Expand

I'm....similar, I guess. I mean, I'm a little confused by your examples. And it doesn't bother me that people like those kind of fics - I just have zero interest in them myself. MCU or X-Men AUs with no powers? No thank you. Teen Wolf all-human AUs? I'll pass. Merlin non-magical AUs? Yeah no.

On the other hand, I do love AUs that take totally normal human canons and add powers/magic/sci-fi/dragons/etc. Gimme.

But then I've always kind of been that way, I have little interest in regular normal drama (with some exceptions) unless there's a genre twist somewhere.

Yeah, I completely agree. It's just... boring.

I can understand why people are fond of AUs. I prefer the "What if X had happened instead of Y?" kind, but I can understand why people might do the others. Except for High School AUs. I will never, for the life of me, understand the appeal of High School AUs. High School was physically and emotional hell. Who would want to revisit it? I mean if it was like teenage superhero balancing fighting evil and doing homework, that is compelling, but with most AUs, there aren't any powers or anything fantastic and the biggest thing that happens, is the prom.

i don't get it either but my theory is that the characters are somehow easier to ship when all the interesting parts are taken out of the story and they're placed in a boring cafe/high school/denny's.

That's probably because you can post the same fic to 3 different fandoms with swapped names and nobody will notice.

Buffy All-Human AUs are the only ones I can't deal with. Other canons I can still find the characters interesting without the supernatural elements.

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