Six Degrees of Alternation
I’m getting the idea, from the ongoing discussion of AU’s, that AU’s are different things to different people. I’ve come to the conclusion that travel between the canon universe and the AU, and the degree of technobabble excusing the AU, are issues of story structure rather than of AU type. I think I can come up with six different types of AU if I try hard enough, and make up names for them to boot:
The Borg AU Classification
- Far Alternate: the most extreme AU vision changes the setting to something entirely alien. The characters are transported into medieval times, the Paleolithic or (in the case of non-scifi shows) outer space. Apparently this sort of AU is more popular in other fandoms than in Trek.
- Near Alternate: the domain of inversion-universes, where the characters and settings are similar, but universe-level details have been changed - e.g., the Federation is now the bad guys, or all the male characters are now women, or Chakotay is the Starfleet officer and Janeway is the Maquis rebel. Such an AU is not rooted at any particular decisive event or turning point.
- Timeline: the classic AU, rooted at a certain point of past canon - one decision is decided differently, and the rest of the show is changed. This is the “It’s a Wonderful Life” approach to fanfic. Such an AU can be spotted by the question it answers, such as, what if the Maquis had mutinied? (See MJB’s Revolution.)
- Canon AU: a Near or Timeline established in canon. The classic canon AU is the Mirror-Mirror Universe, although the Year of Hell and the Admiral’s timeline would also qualify. See, for example, DQ Babes in the Mirror-Mirror Universe.
- Divergent Canonical: a divergence that begins with the canon universe, and ends up places canon is unlikely to go. Although similar to Timelines, Divergent Canonical has a break point which is not sharply defined and therefore is not central to the structure of the AU, making this approach the most open-ended and fruitful. Divergent Canonical stories are the longest - once you start diverting, it’s hard to stop. Such stories, if written before the fact, may be considered simple fanfiction. (The show may end this way.) If written after the fact, some may be more properly considered fanfix than AU. (The show should have ended this way.) See, for example, Virtual Season 7.5. There are non-fanfix examples as well; see The Captain and the Counselor series.
- Convergent Canonical: the stealth AU tweaks the past in such a way as not to disturb the present. Like Divergent Canonical, Convergent Canonical may be considered simple fanfic. No known rules of canon are broken, but this approach usually pushes the envelope beyond what is decent and believable about canon. For example, any fanfic in which Tom Paris is Kathryn Janeway’s father, or in which Janeway and Chakotay met at Starfleet Academy, had a love child, and were brainwashed to forget it all (e.g., Regression) would qualify as Convergent Canonical. Bonus points if the love child is Tom Paris.
What’s left? What makes a story truly canonical? In some sense, everything we write is AU; only the screenwriters are writing canon. I believe the question of classifying fanfic explicitly as AU is rooted, not in canon, but in fanon. That is, a typical J/C-happily-ever-after story is fanonical for the J/C subgenre and therefore not an AU, although according to the list above it would qualify as Divergent Canonical. Likewise for any other common pairing, and possibly even obscure or squicky pairings.
On the other hand, any time you change the universe, rather than just the characters and pairings, you’re deep into the AU realm - even if you do it manually, by, say, letting the Borg win. An AU is like obscenity - you’ll know it when you see it.
I think that’s enough fanalysis for one night.