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]

I think I'm in your camp in terms of usage, but the interesting thing is that people seem to agree on the differences, just use different terms to describe them :). Am feeling less stupid over being ignorant now, though ;).

Though I have a quibble with your definition *in* the poll...
I think "warning! seriously ooc" would be a good warning for H/D in High School in Japan ;-)
But that depends... I think taking characters out of their environment and keeping them *true* to their character is what distinguishes a good AU/AR, while OOC-ness violates their character rather than their environment (and that can also happen in bad non-AU/AR fics)... Ok, I might have stopped making sense here halfway through...

[snorkackcatcher]

I defined AU and AR off-the-cuff as different degrees of separation from the original canon, with AU more specific than AR. Others would probably define them the other way round. The point being that when people started writing this sort of story, they just applied the labels indiscriminately to anything that varied from the basic canon, and there's not much hope of getting them to all agree on precise definitions now. :)

I think taking characters out of their environment and keeping them *true* to their character is what distinguishes a good AU/AR, while OOC-ness violates their character rather than their environment

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. Like (say) Joe Macbeth -- an old gangster B-movie in which Joe rises to the top by killing the Boss only to meet his comeuppance -- has many of the same themes as the original Macbeth, but Joe isn't quite the same character because his world and assumptions are different (he's not a noble-born, for example), and some don't map across well (e.g. the witches). If that makes any sense. :)

I must admit, I suppose I do tend to prefer stories that are actually set in the canon Potterverse, or match my own definition of AU (what follows from a specific change).

[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.

[chthonya]

I think taking characters out of their environment and keeping them *true* to their character is what distinguishes a good AU/AR, while OOC-ness violates their character rather than their environment

Whereas for me, the environment is a character, and putting the HP characters in a completely different setting (without good canon-grounded reason) feels weirder than suddenly introducing an exchange student to Harry's year-group.

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Ah, but for me it's *supposed* to feel weird, and the fun thing is the similarities being gradually revealed. The only thing I need to find in an AU/AR are the character traits of the protagonists - i.e. even if their history is somewhat different, Harry should be recognisable as Harry and Draco as Draco even if they're battling corporate overlords in a cyberpunk universe (*points over at liriaen*). Everything else is fair game for me :).

[chthonya]

Yeah, I can theoretically see the appeal of that, though all the other-world fanfics I've seen have been too way-out for me to get into (or perhaps poorly characterised).

Hmmm. I guess I see the characters as being part of and growing from their environment, and so putting them elsewhere doesn't feel like HP fanfic to me, in much the way as crossover fic doesn't feel like HP fanfic so much as a hybrid of HP and something else. AR could be characterised as crossover with an 'original universe', it seems to me.

I wonder if the environment is so important to me partly because I'm British? Part of the appeal of the books to me is that they tap into some archetypes of Britishness, and I miss those aspects when the environment is changed - an original character in the 'canon' environment is much less jarring.