Finally got back around to this post and it turned into an AU primer, so strap in lol.
Ok, so Jhoyan for me is a classic, fairly straightforward flagship: I write and envision them as a happy, as healthy as reasonable, affectionate, supportive, relatively well-adjusted (if co-dependent) couple who have an open relationship but share a level of commitment and devotion to each other well beyond what they have with anyone else. Their relationship development timeline runs alongside and interweaves with their career journeys, which is the focus of my hypothetical seven-fic saga that begins with Jump-Start and Electric Potential. They meet in 2018 at class-A Cedar Rapids after Jhoan's (first) trade and spark off an "it's complicated"-ship, get together formally in spring training 2019, are severely tested by separation, struggles, and injuries in 2021 but ultimately patch things up during fall instructionals that year, and strengthen their relationship as they establish themselves in the majors together in 2022.
I established this as my "canon" timeline specifically to give an easy-to-reference baseline for my fics and analysis. On-field events are the same as IRL; off-field milieu is a vaguely limited-WAGs, everyone-is-bisexual RPF melting pot. This means IRL events and interviews and such can pretty easily be analyzed and translated into an RPF context, creating a lower barrier to entry for myself and my readers to understand my work. From what I've seen this is how most people generally conceptualize RPF, but worth spelling it out, I think.
Most of my fics and concepts are based in this timeline, and most of my AUs hew as close to this timeline as possible outside of the AU-ness (that being my three main WIP AU fics: soulmate, position swap, and vampire/werewolf, as well as the blaseball AU and any and all gender-related AUs). On the total other end of the AU spectrum are my non-baseball AUs, which like most sports RPF non-sports AUs are pretty much just OCs/original stories, though I do try to keep those grounded in Jhoan and Ryan's backgrounds and interests. The thing about AUs, particularly in RPF, is examining how the changes to the universe affect their personalities and decisions. If the characters are too different, that's just OCs, and if they're exactly the same, what was the point of the AU?
Then there's my alternate team AUs, which I have two of and enjoy both greatly. A lot of the segments from Other Worlds From Our Windowsills also fall in this category: any AU where the divergence point is which team Jhoan and/or Ryan signed with, or a trade that did or didn't happen. The crux of these is that Jhoan and Ryan meet much later in their lives, so I can play with very different versions of their dynamic and initial impressions. I don't actually have an AU for Jhoan not getting traded (the second time), because we are honestly too much in the middle of the affected timeframe for me to even really map out the full implications.
And finally there's my relationship AUs, of which I have three, all merging my canon timeline with IRL events to create different versions of Jhoan and Ryan's relationship to explore different levels of angst and realism. These diverge at specific points in my seven-fic saga, as follows:
Dovetail AU (named because it dovetails back into IRL): AU from halfway through Electric Potential, where the second half of the fic never happens because Ryan chickens out of confronting his feelings and Jhoan doesn't reach back out to him. Jhoan meets Aida a couple months later as IRL, Ryan gets back together with Lexi, and life moves on, with those few months of more-than-teammates as a weird youthful fling that lingers in their memories. This AU mainly serves a specific fic concept I have where Ryan and Jorge Alcala (who still has a perpetual crush on Jhoan in this timeline because I want him to) both chicken out of attending Jhoan's wedding in 2024 and have a weird psychosexual time angsting over missed opportunities together in a Punta Cana hotel room.
Amicable Exes AU: AU from much later in my fic saga, where instead of re-committing to their relationship in fall 2021, Jhoan and Ryan instead agree to break up. It's otherwise still a standard RPF universe, just they're not together. This AU is the catch-all for if I want to write either Jhoan or Ryan in other ships and not have Jhoan/Ryan as an established relationship in the background. The general dynamic between them of "close and somewhat affectionate, but not uniquely close and not together" here is probably the most accurate read to IRL, and it fits analytically as well; their stats just haven't been in sync in the majors the way they were in the minors. This also makes post-trade relationships much easier to deal with; I can explore stuff like Jhoan/Rafael Marchan without having to handle the logistics of long-distance relationships or breakups or poly negotiations. The downside is I've projected very hard onto Jhoyan and the concept of amicable exes hits a little too close to home.
Cheating AU (named because, well, yeah): Kind of the opposite of the first two AUs, where Ryan is still with Lexi when he meets Jhoan, so he feels that spark but doesn't pursue it. They marry their respective spouses as IRL, but the unresolved tension and interest between them only grows, and they start an affair around the time Jhoan makes the majors. The affair waxes and wanes, with both of them at different times trying to cut it off in a crisis of conscience only to lapse back. This eventually culminates in a messy, indefinite break in the wake of the Phillies trade. This AU idea spun out of the trade itself and how… willing to move on they both seemed, and I wanted to explore that. I love the escapism of my limited-WAGs setting, but also cheating is a cornerstone of RPF, so making a little corner for that felt appropriate.
