Follow-Up Poll: AU versus AR

[kennahijja]

Alright, people - I ran into a definition problem with yesterday's poll. Basically, I used the options Alternate Universe (AU) and Alternate Reality (AR) because those often turn up as categories in archives, but I have no idea what they mean exactly.

Ok, I do know what area they cover - from 'nonmagical AU' to H/D as dragon riders in a fantasy dimension to Harry-in-Slytherin to Sirius/Remus living happily ever after after the war, no Veil. But the difference? Not a clue. So...


[Poll #785583]

And abuse the comments if you run out of space!

Comments

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Trouble is, the environment is a lot of what shapes their character and actually defines them as characters. A 'H/D in High School in Japan' story isn't really about Harry and Draco, it's about two characters who resemble them thematically but come from a different world in which the assumptions don't always map.

You're totally right. I think what I meant above was that even if it's AU/AR, the character dynamics remain similar, if not identical - even if they adjust to a different background/history. But they keep some characteristics, like behaviour patterns, attitude, way of speaking... I'd expect it to be a touch closer to canon characterisation than Joe Macbeth would need to be - where I'd be happy with a simple intertextual adaption of the themes of Macbeth, but wouldn't necessarily expect the character of Macbeth to be that close to Shakespeares. Am I that make any sense here?

[snorkackcatcher]

Yes. I've been thinking about that, and I suppose this whole situation is simply one of those where there are 'fuzzy boundaries' -- the underlying concepts of canon-compliant/AU/AR are distinct, but the exact cutoff point between them isn't. Like the difference between town and country areas, say --- you have a pretty good mental picture of 'town' and 'country', but it all tends to get a bit fuzzy in the suburbs. Likewise, once you start the game of changing Potterverse assumptions while keeping the characterisations similar, there comes a point where they really aren't the same characters, but it isn't easy to say whether the line's been crossed except on a case-by-case basis.

For example, to take some famous stories/series, I find the Paradigm of Uncertainty series to be wildly AU -- technically you could say it was compatible with canon up to PoA, but it just has the feel of a crossover in which Harry and Hermione (and some of the other characters, to an extent) are dumped into a universe with wildly different assumptions to the Potterverse. On the other hand, the long After the End, although GoF-based, feels very much like it takes place in a recognisable version of the Potterverse, even if the actual details are very different. While with the Draco Trilogy -- somewhere in between. It has many AU elements, but to me feels more connected to the book background than PoU is.

Regarding the specific example, I suppose another way you might define 'AU' and 'AR' is that 'AU' makes changes to the Potterverse, while 'AR' plonks versions of the characters into something totally different. So something like your Slytherin Lovers would be AU (Harry is a Slytherin -- and in addition bi -- but most of the rest of the background is assumed to be the same), but the hypothetical(?) Japanese story AR because nothing is the same except the character personalities and certain thematic elements.

Gah. Remind me never to get into literary theory discussions, I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about and am just making this up off the cuff. :)

[snorkackcatcher]

Oh, and an addendum on the 'cut' question, which I'd forgotten about -- better to have the whole thing above unless it's very long. The number of options is more important than the number of questions -- one question with 50 ticky boxes should probably go behind a cut, ten yes/no questions can be left above it.