The AU Genre

[Eleventh Hour]

Something that's perplexed me for years now is the fic genre of AU. Not as much on HPFT from what I've seen, but everywhere else (FFnet, AO3, Tumblr, etc.), I see a lot of things tagged as being AU. I feel like it's such a broad genre that isn't as well defined as others. The "Humor" genre makes you laugh. "Angst" makes you mopey. "Romance" makes you go awww! "Fluff" makes you all warm and fuzzy inside. But AU? What does it even mean?

I think it's the name that throws me. AU, at first glance, sounds like it should be a literal alternative universe. But, very few fics I see being tagged with this actually follow that. It seems like anything that diverges from canon can be classified as AU, whether it's something as simple as changing major canon events (i.e. James and Lily didn't die), switching character's identities (i.e. what if Hermione was a Slytherin? What if Draco was a Muggle?), making an OC a major character who impacts the canonical plot, etc. And I'm not saying any of this is bad or that I'm against it; I'm just trying to figure it all out.

So what I'm wondering is, at what point is a fic an AU and not just a canon divergence? Because I feel like there has to be a line somewhere; if deviating from canon is all it takes for something to qualify as an AU, then most fanfic would be deemed as such. Is the genre subjective? Does it vary by author/fandom/etc.? Does how much a fic diverges from canon play a factor? Does it even matter? Am I overthinking this?

I'd love to hear your thoughts! 

 

[facingthenorthwind]

I believe that in common fandom use (e.g. if you look at the tag trees on ao3), AU is a much broader category than I think you're using it in your post? Any canon divergence is, by definition, AU [M to be safe]; same with switching houses or identities. In terms of whether the AU is significant enough to label the fic as such is up to the individual author -- you're right that many fics take liberties with canon that would technically make them AU but wouldn't actually identify them as AU (e.g. I have written multiple fics where I've blatantly changed the canon about quidditch to make it more functional, but I wouldn't describe either of those fics as AU, just.............. Canon Improved™). 

So I guess I'd say that it's an AU if the canon divergence is significant enough to have an impact on the plot. When it's changing the quidditch timetable because I'm still angry they only get six quidditch games a year, that's not actually important. When Sirius refuses to hand over Harry to Hagrid on Halloween 1981, that's significant enough to be an AU. In my head, EWE (Epilogue What Epilogue) fic isn't even necessarily AU, but that might just be my feelings on the epilogue.  

It's an interesting question, I enjoyed thinking about it!

[Eleventh Hour]

18 hours ago, facingthenorthwind said:

So I guess I'd say that it's an AU if the canon divergence is significant enough to have an impact on the plot.

I definitely agree with this. I've always been of the opinion that if the canon divergence drastically changes the plot, especially to the point of altering the canonical ending, then it's AU. But, if it just changes minor-ish things and/or doesn't alter the canon ending much, if at all, then it isn't AU. But, that's just my definition of it; obviously many people think differently! It's just interesting to hear about how other authors define it. I don't venture out of HP much, so I do wonder how different the "rules," so to speak, are in other fandoms.

[Oregonian]

Since AU matters only if you, the author, are posting the story on a moderated archive, then a practical definition would be that AU is whatever will cause the moderator to reject the story if it is not so labeled.  In minor areas, such as "Did Hogwarts have a student choir?", it shouldn't matter, so long as the addition is canon-compatible.  After all, the seven books present only Harry's point of view, and if he wasn't a singer, he would never have mentioned a perfectly canon-compatible choir.

And nothing is ever 100%.  The Ravenclaw students need to correctly answer a riddle to gain access to their common room, but I could believe a story about a Ravenclaw who figured out a way to bypass that requirement and to come and go without answering the riddle.  That wouldn't be AU, it would just be one of the realistic variations of life.

Canon has expanded to include the contents of Pottermore (which I don't really keep up with) and the transcripts of various interviews that JKR has given over the years (the contents of which I'm not totally familiar with either), so it is easy to contradict some factoid unknowingly.  One must have sympathy for the Validators who, I suppose, are expected to keep up with all this material.  I had a story rejected some years ago because it assumed that two certain characters were still alive, whereas JKR had said in some obscure ('obscure' because I hadn't seen it) interview that these characters had most conveniently died (in the prime of life, for no good reason, in a country with modern medicine), so of course they couldn't be alive in my story.  My validator and I agreed that these illogical deaths were just a convenient but implausible way of getting the characters out of the way, but nevertheless there it was, so I had to relabel the story as AU and resubmit. 

[Simplicius]

I think a Female Harry story is the best test for the AU qualification. In many, the events of the story remain almost perfectly canon compliant and literally the only difference is that the main character uses female pronouns and, usually (but not always), has different relationships. That's an AU, in my opinion, as is even something as minor as, let's say, sorting Cedric Diggory into Ravenclaw.

That's why I'll use the 'AU - Canon Divergence' tag on pretty much any long-form story I produce (because the appeal of writing fan-fiction, to me, is always in changing canon). That said, there are a few other issues.

Sometimes a story can be canon compliant up until an ancillary work like the Cursed Child. Should that still be tagged as an 'AU'? I think it should be tagged just as 'Not Cursed Child Compliant', but that's just me. You can even find work from the early days of the fandom that tried to be canon compliant and faithful but was rendered AU by later books. If Blaise Zabini is a girl in your story, but shows up for a single scene in a thirty thousand word story, is that 'AU'? The answer, in my opinion, is yes but I'm a pedant.

It might be helpful if there was a tag like 'Canon Parallel' or something, to indicate that the work follows canon quite closely. Then again, I'm sure that's covered by something like 'Minor AU Elements' or something.

[Elena]

AU = Alternate Universe - Not Canon.

Basically anything that's not Canon compliant becomes AU. For example, I'm writing a new Dramione in a Post-War setting. Mostly everything will be Canon Compliant, except my ship. The Dramione part makes it AU. 
 

I have other stories that go WAY AU, so not just shipping non-canon ships, but I'll have Characters that are still alive, the war might not have happened yet so I'm telling the battle based on my story line, not what JKR wrote.

[lostinthelightss]

There was some discussion about this a little bit ago regarding whether things should be considered AU if they don't follow Pottermore, [redacted]'s interviews, etc. and at least personally, I only consider the books/movies canon. While I enjoy everything else, I think the only reason you should be seriously using AU is if it directly contradicts canon. So my AU story where magic doesn't exist and NextGen is set at Muggle college is an AU because it doesn't follow the books in that all these characters are magic.

But I would also label it AU if Harry dated Parvati Patil for any length of time, but not if Ron did secretly (i.e. kept it from Harry). Because the books are focusing on Harry and we know how oblivious he is, I would argue there were lots of things he just didn't mention and therefore it's up to us to fill in the gaps. I am 1000% here for emma's issues with the number of quidditch games, and although I would consider it canon-divergent, I personally wouldn't call it AU even if it does directly contradict canon because she's right and it is dumb.

I guess if it wouldn't dramatically change canon as in book-canon because everything else can be argued, I wouldn't be upset if it wasn't labelled AU. But because everyone has different definitions of canon, I don't think there's a definitive version of AU either.

[shadowycorner]

Basically anything that's not Canon compliant becomes AU. For example, I'm writing a new Dramione in a Post-War setting. Mostly everything will be Canon Compliant, except my ship. The Dramione part makes it AU. 

The funny thing about that is that it could still be considered Canon in my mind if it for example happened before the epilogue and eventually the ship sank, or if it happened after the epilogue. But I see what you mean.

I think I'll be repeating what other people have said, but minor deviations like adding more quidditch games, changing up classes at Hogwarts, improving things to make sense actually :D is like Emma said, an improvement or expanding the canon. I've read a fic recently that takes a lot of magic stuff, house-elves, magical law and just adds a BUNCH of new twists to it. Is it AU? I wouldn't say so because the actually canon doesn't dispute it, it just doesn't describe it in any way. 

AU, if we don't think of only the obvious things, which are Muggle AU, are when a major plot point gets twisted. It's where something that didn't happen in the books but could've actually did. Ginny dying in CoS, Ron not being a part of Harry's life, Sirius keeping Harry as a baby, not going to prison, Hermione being a Slytherin.

Oh and also when it comes to Cursed Child, I kind of don't consider it Canon, just as all the Pottermore or game additions. Plus most of JKR's ramblings.

 

[Darling_take_off_the_mask]

23 hours ago, maraudertimes said:

But I would also label it AU if Harry dated Parvati Patil for any length of time, but not if Ron did secretly (i.e. kept it from Harry). Because the books are focusing on Harry and we know how oblivious he is, I would argue there were lots of things he just didn't mention and therefore it's up to us to fill in the gaps. I am 1000% here for emma's issues with the number of quidditch games, and although I would consider it canon-divergent, I personally wouldn't call it AU even if it does directly contradict canon because she's right and it is dumb.

I guess if it wouldn't dramatically change canon as in book-canon because everything else can be argued, I wouldn't be upset if it wasn't labelled AU. But because everyone has different definitions of canon, I don't think there's a definitive version of AU either.

Yes, this exactly. AU to me is sort of like obscenity -- hard to define, but you know it when you see it.  Things that aren't major plot points or characterizations I think don't need an AU tag -- and shouldn't have to have one because honestly might that not give readers the wrong impression? Like if I were on AO3 and saw a fic tagged AU I might skip it if I didn't want to read AU, but I'd hate for that to happen if it were so tagged just because some tweaks were made to Quidditch and class schedules.

I personally love what I call the canon-adjacent territory -- things that aren't directly canon, but things that aren't not canon (lol) either. Things that could very well have been happening outside Harry's POV, or things he just may not have noticed. (Btw, even though I take a lot of digs at oblivious Harry, I do love him and I do realize there are actually plenty of examples of him being insightful and perceptive.)

I'm perfectly happy to accept Pottermore stuff as canon, but if a fic disregarded that stuff I wouldn't consider it AU (I'm not even fully aware of all the PM information myself, so half the time I wouldn't even know). Where the books and movies contradict one another, I defer to the books as the original source (e.g. what the movies did to Ron  but don't get me started).  

I think Cursed Child is one of those things where people are so split on it that it's fairly accepted that you can write a non-CC-compliant fic and not have to label it as AU? If I were writing a next gen I'd probably just make sure to tag it or put a note that it's not CC compliant, to be safe.

It's occurred to me, actually, that I've written some things that I suppose are technically AU and I should probably tag them that way but I didn't think to because it's just a variation on a character or ship set within canon, where the deviation is made apparent in the tags or summary. Like for example, I wrote a challenge entry where Ron dies when he's poisoned in HBP. I didn't even think to tag it AU, but I did put notes that it was about killing my favorite character. Probably should go over to AO3 and put an AU tag on it? Or, say the fic involves a non-canon pairing -- if all other things in the fic are pretty recognizably canon, maybe it doesn't need an AU tag because the ship tag speaks for itself and gives adequate notice to readers?

[lostinthelightss]

45 minutes ago, RonsGirlFriday said:

I'm perfectly happy to accept Pottermore stuff as canon, but if a fic disregarded that stuff I wouldn't consider it AU (I'm not even fully aware of all the PM information myself, so half the time I wouldn't even know). Where the books and movies contradict one another, I defer to the books as the original source (e.g. what the movies did to Ron  but don't get me started).  

:chefskiss: (gif of timmy turner's dad in front of a pedestal going "IF I HAD ONE")

EXACTLY!!!! I use a bunch of info from the HP wiki that is mostly based off things said on Pottermore/in interviews, but this is 100% my view. The whole thing about Ron working at WWW is super fun to think about, but if someone doesn't have that in their fic is it gonna annoy me if they don't tag it AU? No. If they make Ron terrible at quidditch so much so that he never even played on the Gryffindor team and don't tag it as AU? Directly contradicts the books and is therefore in my mind AU.

Also canon adjacent IS MY NEW FAVOURITE TERM for missing moments my sweet baby Harry was too oblivious to notice!!! (I also love him even if he's a bit of a dummy  )

[TidalDragon]

From my perspective, the definition of AU is difficult to define because - as seen above - it's so subjective. I think opinions start to split on 'what is canon'? There are some people who reject all or part of the following: Cursed Child, Pottermore, interviews, collateral works like Quidditch Through the Ages, or even the epilogue. Some would also say that things that are largely irrelevant to advancing the plot aren't canonical (i.e. quidditch standings). Personally I reject the interviews and Cursed Child, consider Quidditch Through the Ages and Pottermore guidance, and wholeheartedly accept the epilogue. 

Then there are splits on what divergence constitutes 'AU'. Some people think even messing with the quidditch standings, etc is AU. Personally, I consider AU as more of a spectrum where Endpoint #1 is the last chapter of DH and Endpoint #2 is the epilogue. In my mind, anything that 'fills in' the space between those things wouldn't necessarily be AU because we have no idea what happened during that time. Then there's divergence, both minor (i.e. Harry was a Chaser instead of a Seeker) and massive (i.e. alternate sortings). And then there's AUs that change how magic works or the setting while still having magic incorporated. And finally muggle!AUs where there's no magic at all.

Personally I don't think things should be tagged as AU at all unless they change a character and/or major plot point(s), but it's all a matter of opinion.

Note: I (and possibly other people) will, however, list things as AU that I think fit more in what I believe to be the mainstream view of what constitutes AU.