Canon or AU - Discuss

[BenRG]

I thought that the time has come for someone to start a new thread on this board. As no one else seems willing to do so, I have decided to do it myself.

What is better for fanworks -
sticking to the canon or creating an AU (Alternate Universe)?

I have to say that I usually tend to drift towards 'alternate universe', but not too dramatic a difference. My characters are still recognisable as the canon characters and most of the background is identical. If I am guilty of 'tweaking' sometimes, to make the characters, technologies or abilities more to my liking... Well, that is a fanwriter's perogative, isn't it? ;-)

Seriously, though, I have read a large number of Alternate Universe stories (and Sailor Moon fanworks are particularly notorious for this) that so completely change the characters and their situations that, apart from the names, they are unrecognisable. Is this really a valid form of fanwriting, or is it just trying to get your original fiction noticed by using the character names from the famous work of a different author? I would say that, in a few cases, AU stories really do cease to be valid fanworks. Their divergance from canon is so extensive that they aren't really derived from the original in any way apart from a few names.

However, this should not be interpreted as a blanket endorsement of absolute adherence to canon. A fanwriter must be willing to turn down a few unexpected paths and take the characters to places and situations never seen in the canon. Otherwise... well what is the point? You might as well just read the canon books or watch the canon show/film. In a more general sense, the canon should not be considered the absoloute limit of what you can do in your story. Just because it has never happened or been seen in the original does not mean that you can't do it in your fanwork.

So, what are your opinions on the value of canon and the place of the AU story?

 

[Barb]

My own opinion is if you begin writing a fanfiction and make the characters or settings so much to your own liking that they are unrecognizable to fans of the show, you'd be better off canning the whole thing and writing an original story with original characters. Some 'tweaking' as you put it is necessary, depending on the plot of your story. Too much tweaking, though, tends to remove the 'fan' part of fanfiction.

You have to be balanced, really. There are those who follow canon so religiously that their stories suffer for it. It's similar to the person who flamed BenRG for naming the attacks wrong in his fics. So what if the attack isn't exactly the same, or if you invented a new type of attack? It's the writer's prerogative, isn't it?

 

[Orange Soda]

I think I've bounced between the two to some degree. I always tried to keep the characters in-character, but humor came first, and as such I tended to bring the situations wherever the heck I felt like.

A lot of my early stuff was written for the purpose of making fun of various cliches that seemed to exist within the site I was writing for at the time. Also made a few short one-joke fics.

With the exception of a series of fics where I threw Team Rocket into various parallel universes, the only ones I wrote that I suppose would fit under your Alternate Universe descriptions would be some (possibly all, though I doubt it) of the ones where I was including myself (I seem to recall someone saying in some thread that he/she had never seen any guys included themselves in. Well I did.). I did some weird stuff in those, including creating an evil clone of myself (and naming him Grape Soda). Then there was one of such where I included various other characters created by other authors at that site (with their permission, of course). As such, I had to include their various idiosynchrasies, and also included some in-jokes from the message board, but overall, it made for a pretty interesting read, as it was probably the most thought-out fanfic I ever wrote (Best? I dunno, but I think TRF-Chan thinks so.).

But I'm digressing. Long story short, when I write, this is my list of importance: 1. Humor, 2. In character, 3. Everything else.

 

[vanished]

I like writing canon fics for humour, just little one-shots that could fit anywhere into a given series. I also like writing fics that are neither really AU or Canon, because they're set in the [distant] future of the show - one cannot predict what's happening in the show, so you can't really define whether that's AU or Canon.

And I like writing AU... but AU that could still fit into the show at some point, or, at least, one that's remotely relevant to the show...

It doesn't really bother me... if I have an idea that's remotely fun to write, I'll write it, AU or no.

 

[A Concerned Solomon]

Whenever you try to stick too close to canon, some detail is going to show up from some future episode and slam your attempt anyway. So, um, just watch out. Many fics centering around Mewtwo seem to create their own universes, with a decent measure of success. There are also some that don't seem to want to make any kind of decision, and as a result leave the reader trying to figure out what universe they're dealing with, above all else.