(Belated) Snowflake Challenge #3, also accidental Yuletide rambling

[lurking_latinist]

In your own space, put some favorite characters into an AU, fuse some favorite canons together, talk about your favorite AU/fusion tropes, or tell us why AU/fusions aren’t your cup of tea. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Well, I was *going* to finish up an AU prompt meme that I owe to romanajo123 from literally months ago, but RL has been very much demanding the priority this week (general exams, yay! XD) so instead I will simply make the resolution of doing it very soon. It was a great prompt and I look forward to finally doing it when there is brain!

In general, I don't think I've ever done a fusion fic or setting-change AU longer than the mini-ficlets from the prompt memes, and for me that seems to scratch the itch. Once I've found roles for everyone, that's what I wanted out of the fusion--no need to keep going! But then I'm not a very plotty writer in general. Of course, I write mainly in Doctor Who, and you can already put them in pretty much any setting canonically, so the whole question is a bit moot actually!

(I think I would draw a lot of fusions and setting AU if I were a visual artist, because that's the same thing--just the vignette of character + setting is exactly what I want. I did draw an eighteenth-century Mel Bush once. She had a polka dot apron.)

On the other hand, I really enjoy good crossovers--especially when they act as a sort of quasi-meta, a way to comment on characters and characterization, by bringing either two similar characters or two very different characters together.

On the crackier side, I love those fics that bring together characters played by the same actor. I was listening to The Eternal Summer and thinking that it's at least my second-favorite audio drama in which Peter Davison gets trapped in an English country village by alien forces, and maybe I would write a crossover with it if I can keep this WtOVPIC writing streak up.

Oh, yeah, I never said what I wrote for Yuletide, did I? Well, at least not here, I've been talking about it everywhere else I think! It was two fics for Welcome to Our Village, Please Invade Carefully, an assignment ("Bestride the Narrow World") for thisbluespirit and a treat ("Dear Villageswap Author (Probably Lucy, Let's Be Honest)") for isis. I got lovely comments from both recipients and was pleasantly surprised to see how many people knew the fandom enough to enjoy the stories! The first was what counts as plotty for me, while the second was exactly as meta as the title suggests, so I felt like I stretched myself a bit, which was nice.

It was also my first time writing in a non-Who fandom other than one previous exchange, in which I wrote in Discworld and had a very difficult time feeling right about the fic (even though I did eventually get it to a level that I thought was a nice gift, and the recip was pleased). So I wondered if I just wasn't cut out for multifandom exchanges, but I think it's that I'm not cut out for writing fic for books (or at least, single-author books with strong authorial voices). Which makes me a bit sad, because I read far more books than I watch TV or even listen to audios, but maybe it's something I'll learn how to do in time. The thing is that I got very hung up on the difficulties of Not Being Terry Pratchett. So you'd think I'd get hung up on Not Being Eddie Robson in writing for WtOVPIC, but you see there's no narrative voice to imitate. The transition between media seems to free me up enough to be able to add my own thing. Who knows why. Although I do think having actors' voices helps.

Comments

[paulamcg]

Thank you so much for sharing! Your post has really made me think... about various things, as there's so much that's interesting here. <3 When you say that mini-ficlets ... scratch the itch, I realise that for me it's enough to read small setting-change AUs, and I don't feel the urge to write even those myself. It's so fascinating to hear how much fun and how much work big fusions can be. I'm in a totally different place from yours, because I can't even imagine how I'd write on the basis of other media than books. And even worse, I'm stuck only in the HP fandom, writing canon-divergent fic. But that doesn't mean I'd ever wanted to write with the fiction voice from the HP books, let alone be the writer of that canon. (Heavens!) :)