plato's wet dream

Okay, so with that done...

I’ve decided to post my simple musings here, where perhaps other people would like to contribute to the discussion. I know many people enjoy AUs like me, and I always like to hear their reasoning for things like this.

Character Essence

First I guess we have to think about what makes a character who they are, since this is what the whole issue seems to hinge on. I’d imagine if I were asked to loosely define a character, I would say that broadly speaking they are a person (not necessarily a human person) in a work of fiction. This is good enough in that it seems to capture what I think of as the concept of 'character', but it's not helpful in so far as it gives us nothing to really differentiate one character from another.

So maybe what distinguishes a character from others is their personality. But if this is the case, it certainly does not encompass the whole idea - otherwise we would have no real way of distinguishing between characters who are as people the same, but end up in different circumstances that force them to act differently (an example of this would what I call type-b parallels within a same story, where characters with the same essential personality are thrust into different circumstances, probably to highlight their differences or make a thematic point). Probably a bigger issue here is that characters personalities change, sometimes almost to the point of becoming unrecognizable, or at least significantly different as a matter of personality (Jaime Lannister in season 1 vs season 4 of Game of Thrones, Bucky Barnes compared between Captain America: The First Avenger and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Powder/Jinx or Jayce over S1 of Arcane to name a few examples). Still, we would generally consider someone whose arc includes a strong change ‘the same character’, even if they are not the same personality.

Obviously things like ‘character name’ or how they look don’t really seem to work on a fundamental level. I think a little closer to the mark is something like ‘the story the character goes through’, i.e., the events that happen to them or action they take over the course of canon. These define the arc, because you bounce the character off the events around them to form an image of how they change (or how they stay the same, in the case of flat arc. Basically imagine this as mapping their internal journey as a function throughout the story) or a deeper look into their psyche.

I think this is where me and my friend would diverge, because while I think characters’ specific stories and events are important, this view sort of misses why they are important.

Why tell stories?

The story is about something. I suppose the conventional term for this ‘about’ would be the ‘theme(s)’. The story - and therefore the character’s arc - has some essential components that align with the theme, or else act as a mode of its expression. What I’m saying is that in terms of narrative layers, the theme is probably the most fundamental. What comes on top of that - places, names, specific events - map onto the theme and all those core ideas underlying the narrative, usually in a way that follows ‘narrative beats’ (in that, moments in the story that are significant to the theme) that are usually not one-to-one specific to that situation. Often these involve exploring questions about human nature, psychology, morals, etc., which don’t in themselves require a specific context to be followed to a T.

By the way, I’m not saying it’s just this that differentiates a character, that would probably be too reductionist, but at least for me when I analyze a story, this is mostly what makes a character ‘who they are.’ Themes, beats.

Which is why I think AUs have great potential to be fully in-character and in line with ‘who the characters are’ in canon (if that is indeed the goal. To be honest though, I don’t always see the point of writing strong OOC on purpose because here you’re certainly not writing about the canon character anymore) while also adding fun new elements and worlds into the mix. This way you can change events dramatically, but as long as they have the same thematic relevance or fulfil the same beat in the story as in the original, it is hardly out of character at all.

Compatibility

Of course this works better for some universes than it does for others. Some thematic beats are simply too fine-tuned to the story - for example, I have trouble visualising a drastic AU of something like Better Call Saul that keeps up with even most of this stuff. ‘A drastic AU’ here would be something like removing the ‘lawyer’ element from the story completely. I mean, one of the other reasons you probably couldn’t do that is because ‘law’ is among the themes of BCS. Some themes necessarily imply certain content, so you can't really write about these characters without writing about the law somehow.

On the other hand, other arcs are very adaptable to this kind of AU-fication. An example that springs to my mind is the MCU (not 616!) Tony Stark’s arc. It’s fairly complex, but after some reflection - and drawing on a LOT of SteveTony AU fics done well - I've found the themes are very ‘universalizable’.

To illustrate, here are the main things Tony's story is about: sacrifice/selflessness, redemption, purpose (very big in Iron Man 1), moral choices like security vs freedom (Civil War), identity I guess (big in IM3), security taken on its own (obsession with extra-terrestrial threats after what he saw in the wormhole in Avengers 1 is the cause of PTSD in IM3, creation of Ultron in Age of Ultron and the whole thematic thing they did with Thanos in Infinity War), dealing with strong emotions (Civil War. This reminds me: there’s a good video by Pillar of Garbage that touches on this, titled “Steve Rogers, the MCU and American Exceptionalism”, the section called “How Civil War backs Steve” is the relevant bit)…

So there’s a lot to draw from. And what I mean when I say this kind of arc is 'universalizable' is that a lot of these can be mapped onto other stories without losing much of this meaning. This is coincidentally why I believe AUs “before ‘modern science’ was a thing” still work for Tony, because nowhere in his arc is Tony necessarily a scientist. I see it more as a tool for these themes than a theme of its own. It seems there are many beautiful AUs out there where Tony is not a scientist/engineer, yet remains in character (though I guess if you consider it a necessary part of his character, he isn’t in-character, and my argument is circular. I don't think it is though. I might make a post about this sometime...).

Anyway. That's some stuff in favour of AUs from a the story structure standpoint. They can be non-OOC.

Now, of course, an AU is not bad if it isn’t in line with what the original story was about. Well, okay, firstly there’s probably gradations of how close you are in terms of loyalty to the shape of the original story. Some AUs are almost one-to-ones moved into a different setting, some are a little more vague but follow with the general idea and map onto the most important things in the original story. If your criterion for a 'good' AU is just characters staying in character (which in my view is a little... shallow) then I guess you have a way of differentiating between fics. Personally, I think a lot goes into a good AU, and being in-character or OOC is just one factor (though not a small one).

Interpretation

There's just one more thing to talk about, and that of course is the matter of interpretation.

Different people may interpret what a character's story is about very differently. This is a complicated question that tracks back to the nature of truths and all kinds of things that are beyond the scope of this post, so I'll only touch on this briefly. Coming back to the Tony Stark example (I swear I have others, but months of reading SteveTony are... showing). I have seen people claim that Tony's arc is essentially about him realizing that 'making weapons bad' and finding ways to right his wrong and become a better person. I don't think this is... entirely wrong. That does happen in the first Iron Man movie.

But the broader point is: the people who claim this and me have looked at the same material and drawn different conclusions. Is either of us mistaken?

I think the answer in this case is yes. The reason is evidence. There is a lot more evidence against the above statement than for it (this doesn't mean my vision of Tony's arc is accurate, mind you, only that this one is inaccurate) which I think resolves the question nicely.

Some people think that discussion about literature consist of nothing but opinions, and evidence is... irrelevant. I disagree. Value-statements are certainly opinions, but examining a character's arc is not entirely a value-statement, a lot of it is working with material. The material is the story, and a lot of it can be used as concrete evidence - events, things characters say or do, things they think even. These do form a picture, and while it's sometimes hard to find a single thing they point to, it's usually pretty easy to weed out things they definitely don't point to.

Now of course, I think some variation will exist without any statement being correct or incorrect, but most of the time for the fundamental ideas in stories there will be a bunch of clearly wrong interpretations, and very strong - true - evidence that shows why those interpretations are wrong.

Endnotes

Anyway, wrapping up, that’s my thoughts on AUs and why some of them may fall flat for people like my friend. I think for a guy like him, the reason he hasn’t read many good AUs is that he hasn’t read many in general, so there’s not a big sample to draw from. And then once you’ve made a judgement about a kind of fic, you don’t try it again, so you never really end up changing your mind even if there is a chance that it might be.

If any of y’all have thoughts on this (you like AUs/dislike AUs, maybe your ideas about what makes a good AU) I would love to read them. Drop a comment!

Issue #500 -- you know, a milestone issue, nice big number -- features an alternate future in which the Mandarin has chained Tony to a post and is addressing him only as “pig.”

#520, which is set back on regular 616, features the Mandarin calling Tony up, making Tony punch himself in the face, and forcing Tony to call him “master.”