When AUs Don't Work

[redbrunja]

 So I recently read an excellently written AU that left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Not because it took a loved character down a darker path, aligning her with the villain instead of the hero (that is what AU is for) and I spent some time pondering why this fic didn't work for me.

What I realized was that the best AUs keep the characters themselves even as they make different choices. At the end of this fic, the character in question didn't feel like herself. Because of the parameters of the AUs, one relationship she had in canon (a pretty important one, too) doesn't exist and there isn't a good replacement for that relationship OR ghosts of that relationship in a different form.

Thus, by the end of the fanfic, I had no emotional connection to the characters and felt like they were paper dolls with familiar names.

Comments

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

That one where Pepper works for Obadiah instead?

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I didn't want to name names, but yes.

I mean, the writer clearly had chops! ...it just didn't work for me. And I actually figured out what I would have needed to make it work: either I wanted to see Tony and Pepper falling in love DESPITE them not working together or I wanted to see Stane needing Pepper as much as Tony does/did. THAT would have made it feel like it was still Pepper, even while the author added in the elements of physical abuse.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

Yes, I also thought the Tony/Pepper dynamic was missing in that fic. For me I also felt like the moral core of the character was dramatically altered. Pepper cleaning up Tony's one night stands was understandable, but Pepper cleaning up Stane's...abuse victims wasn't. And then there was the murder, which also didn't make sense to me. I think in the comments the author implied that Obadiah used a drug to provoke that reaction, which was more understandable to me.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Pepper cleaning up Tony's one night stands was understandable, but Pepper cleaning up Stane's...abuse victims wasn't.

Not without a lot more codependency on her and Stane's part, imho.

And then there was the murder, which also didn't make sense to me. I think in the comments the author implied that Obadiah used a drug to provoke that reaction, which was more understandable to me.

Okay, that did not come through at all in the fic. I got the feeling that she was mentally compromised from her exhaustion, but not that Stane was drugging her.

[aj.livejournal.com]

*nod* I kind of felt that way about that one too. Where the prose was good and the idea was good, but the very nature of the AU just turned me off of it. There are times when I remember that there's just some stuff that, despite being good, just do not resonate with me.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Exactly.