Entry tags:
Musing on MCU (well, Steve/Bucky specifically) and AUs
Important Adult Stuff squared away for now. Hello, LJ/DW; let me goof off on you.
(Also, now that apparently I am in this fandom and sticking around for awhile, I guess I need to figure out which tag(s) to use for it. MCU? Avengers? Captain America? Why so confusing?)
I ran across a post recently at![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cesperanza's DW on the MCU not being a very easy-to-AU fandom for her, which is my experience with it also. And I've kind of noticed in the past that some fandoms (White Collar, SGA) are very easy for me to read/write AUs, while others (Avatar: The Last Airbender is my ur-example of this) are pretty much impossible, or at least very difficult. I've generally attributed it to some characters being more firmly rooted in their particular storyline/milieu than others. And while that is a big part of it, I also realized that I actually have read and enjoyed some AUs in MCU fandom, it's just that most of them don't really do it for me, so ... well, rambling thoughts under the cut.
cesperanza writes, of Steve and Bucky, they seem to me so specifically of a time and place (hence making them hard to AU), and while I think that's definitely a big part of it for me, there's also another big thing, which is that they don't fit the typical romcom plot trajectory at all and that's what most people seem to try to do to them in AUs.
A few years back when SGA was big (and SGA was a VERY heavy-on-the-AUs fandom), I remember there was a piece of meta floating around that pointed out AUs are a sort of test to define the most critical, key aspects of a character -- well, at least according to the person writing the AU and/or the general fannish consensus. Is fighting aliens in outer space a key aspect of John Sheppard's character? How about being military? Laid back and goofy? Dangerous? Emotionally repressed? Growing up on Earth? Being human?
For me, I think, the problem I have enjoying AUs in this fandom is not just that Steve and Bucky are very specifically children of 1920s/30s Brooklyn displaced into the modern world (though that is certainly part of it, and when I'm writing them, that's a big part of their characterization). It's that they grew up together, and essentially defined themselves in part by way of each other, as siblings do. And most people don't AU them that way. I think it might be an accidental side effect of Steve and Bucky not really being a typical fannish pairing in that they've known each other a lot longer than big fannish pairings usually do.
In most fandoms, the trajectory of the major fannish pairing(s) -- whether you "ship" them in a romantic or a gen kind of way -- follows a pretty romcom-typical "meet and get to know each other" trajectory on the show itself. Even when they already knew each other before the start of the show/movie/whatever (like, say, Starsky & Hutch) they definitely met as adults, when they were already defined as people. And the majority of AUs follow that trajectory also -- there's some kind of meet-cute followed by getting to know each other.
But Steve & Bucky didn't. And yet, the vast majority of AUs that I've seen for them shoehorn them into typical meet-cute, get-to-know-each-other romcom-type plots: Bucky is a rock star and Steve gets hired as his bodyguard, Bucky is a firefighter and Steve is the hapless guy whose building is on fire, etc.
The only AUs I've seen so far that really clicked for me on a Steve/Bucky level almost invariably pair them with other people but also keep their personal history as close to canon as possible given the different AU circumstances, like this Pacific Rim AU (the infodumping is a little clunky, but I liked the character dynamics with Steve, Bucky, and Peggy) or this coffee shop AU of all things. (Thor doesn't really work for me in the latter fic, at least not as anything other than an OC, but Steve and Bucky do).
I think it also comes back to another thingcesperanza said in her post, which is that the MCU characters feel a lot more defined than characters in a fandom like SGA. And I think that means you have to haul along a lot more of their baggage and backstory when you import them into another reality. At least ... well, obviously I don't want it to sound like you can't write an AU, or enjoy an AU -- I mean, this is clearly a personal-taste thing on my part. And I imagine it varies from AU to AU, and from character to character. (In the above example where I said Thor didn't work for me, I think that what I would've needed is a lot more of the fish-out-of-water-foreigner aspect of Thor's character to have been ported over to the AU. In a modern no-powers AU I could see Thor as, say, a prince of some minor European royalty who came over to the U.S. because his family kicked him out. But I can't really see him as just an American kid whose family is rich.)
.... so basically I think that's how MCU AUs work for me, or don't work -- you need to keep a lot more of canon somehow, and in particular, Steve and Bucky don't really feel like Steve and Bucky to me if they don't have that shared history. The fish-out-of-water quality isn't strictly necessary, but the shared background is (and preferably some kind of trauma/disability on Bucky's part). I find it interesting that very few people seem to be writing AUs that keep their history intact, though, unless they're paired off with other people. (Which personally I'm fine with; I'm usually more interested in gen than in pairing fic anyway, and as long as the friendship/sense of connection is still there, I'm happy ...) But yeah, I wonder if it is at least partly a function of most writers being used to a particular kind of romance narrative, where two people meet and fall in love, as opposed to falling in love when they've already known each other for a long time. So it tends to seep into AUs even when it's not part of the canon narrative for those characters.
(Also, now that apparently I am in this fandom and sticking around for awhile, I guess I need to figure out which tag(s) to use for it. MCU? Avengers? Captain America? Why so confusing?)
I ran across a post recently at
cesperanza's DW on the MCU not being a very easy-to-AU fandom for her, which is my experience with it also. And I've kind of noticed in the past that some fandoms (White Collar, SGA) are very easy for me to read/write AUs, while others (Avatar: The Last Airbender is my ur-example of this) are pretty much impossible, or at least very difficult. I've generally attributed it to some characters being more firmly rooted in their particular storyline/milieu than others. And while that is a big part of it, I also realized that I actually have read and enjoyed some AUs in MCU fandom, it's just that most of them don't really do it for me, so ... well, rambling thoughts under the cut.cesperanza writes, of Steve and Bucky, they seem to me so specifically of a time and place (hence making them hard to AU), and while I think that's definitely a big part of it for me, there's also another big thing, which is that they don't fit the typical romcom plot trajectory at all and that's what most people seem to try to do to them in AUs.A few years back when SGA was big (and SGA was a VERY heavy-on-the-AUs fandom), I remember there was a piece of meta floating around that pointed out AUs are a sort of test to define the most critical, key aspects of a character -- well, at least according to the person writing the AU and/or the general fannish consensus. Is fighting aliens in outer space a key aspect of John Sheppard's character? How about being military? Laid back and goofy? Dangerous? Emotionally repressed? Growing up on Earth? Being human?
For me, I think, the problem I have enjoying AUs in this fandom is not just that Steve and Bucky are very specifically children of 1920s/30s Brooklyn displaced into the modern world (though that is certainly part of it, and when I'm writing them, that's a big part of their characterization). It's that they grew up together, and essentially defined themselves in part by way of each other, as siblings do. And most people don't AU them that way. I think it might be an accidental side effect of Steve and Bucky not really being a typical fannish pairing in that they've known each other a lot longer than big fannish pairings usually do.
In most fandoms, the trajectory of the major fannish pairing(s) -- whether you "ship" them in a romantic or a gen kind of way -- follows a pretty romcom-typical "meet and get to know each other" trajectory on the show itself. Even when they already knew each other before the start of the show/movie/whatever (like, say, Starsky & Hutch) they definitely met as adults, when they were already defined as people. And the majority of AUs follow that trajectory also -- there's some kind of meet-cute followed by getting to know each other.
But Steve & Bucky didn't. And yet, the vast majority of AUs that I've seen for them shoehorn them into typical meet-cute, get-to-know-each-other romcom-type plots: Bucky is a rock star and Steve gets hired as his bodyguard, Bucky is a firefighter and Steve is the hapless guy whose building is on fire, etc.
The only AUs I've seen so far that really clicked for me on a Steve/Bucky level almost invariably pair them with other people but also keep their personal history as close to canon as possible given the different AU circumstances, like this Pacific Rim AU (the infodumping is a little clunky, but I liked the character dynamics with Steve, Bucky, and Peggy) or this coffee shop AU of all things. (Thor doesn't really work for me in the latter fic, at least not as anything other than an OC, but Steve and Bucky do).
I think it also comes back to another thing
cesperanza said in her post, which is that the MCU characters feel a lot more defined than characters in a fandom like SGA. And I think that means you have to haul along a lot more of their baggage and backstory when you import them into another reality. At least ... well, obviously I don't want it to sound like you can't write an AU, or enjoy an AU -- I mean, this is clearly a personal-taste thing on my part. And I imagine it varies from AU to AU, and from character to character. (In the above example where I said Thor didn't work for me, I think that what I would've needed is a lot more of the fish-out-of-water-foreigner aspect of Thor's character to have been ported over to the AU. In a modern no-powers AU I could see Thor as, say, a prince of some minor European royalty who came over to the U.S. because his family kicked him out. But I can't really see him as just an American kid whose family is rich.).... so basically I think that's how MCU AUs work for me, or don't work -- you need to keep a lot more of canon somehow, and in particular, Steve and Bucky don't really feel like Steve and Bucky to me if they don't have that shared history. The fish-out-of-water quality isn't strictly necessary, but the shared background is (and preferably some kind of trauma/disability on Bucky's part). I find it interesting that very few people seem to be writing AUs that keep their history intact, though, unless they're paired off with other people. (Which personally I'm fine with; I'm usually more interested in gen than in pairing fic anyway, and as long as the friendship/sense of connection is still there, I'm happy ...) But yeah, I wonder if it is at least partly a function of most writers being used to a particular kind of romance narrative, where two people meet and fall in love, as opposed to falling in love when they've already known each other for a long time. So it tends to seep into AUs even when it's not part of the canon narrative for those characters.
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