selenak

My Five Things Which Never Happened Between Kira and Dukat is up, beta-read thanks to

kathyh, here. Once again, thanks everyone for the feedback. Writing another Five Things... after the Warren one made me wonder what it is about the format that appeals to me so much, when I'm usually not that fond of AUs. Probably because in the Five Things... stories I read - and I tried to make this true for my own efforts as well - the usual trapfalls of many an AU fic, blatant wish fulfillment at the expense of character and/or universe were avoided, because in this format, we always start with canon and take one twist. Just one. Sometimes it can change a life entirely; I remember reading a Five Things Which Never Happened To Aeryn Sun in which Aeryn did what Xalax Sun did before here, sold out the man she loved for her child. Which I can see Aeryn doing, and that is why it worked for me.

It's interesting to look at canon AUs in this regard. On BTVS and AtS, we have several of them. Still ruling, not just because it's the first but because it's such a goldmine for fanfic and such a dark dystopia, is the Wishverse based on the season 3 episode The Wish. The twist being that Buffy did not come to Sunnydale in Welcome to the Hellmouth. Incidentally, one of the reasons this outclasses the final Highlander episode which are based on "what life without Duncan MacLeod would have been like" is that The Wish postulates her friends influenced Buffy just as much as she did them - it's not a one-way street, and Wishverse Buffy doesn't just have a scar on the face, she's Buffy drained of any passion, joy and empathy in the inside. Ats' Birthday pales for me in comparison, because Birthdayverse Cordelia - i.e. Cordy as she would have been if instead of hooking up with Angel in L.A. she'd have become a moviestar - is far too nice and tainted by that unfortunate AtS season 3 travesty, St. Cordy. (Season 3 BTVS Cordy, which presumably this Cordelia would have developed from, would have saved the girl, too, but told her what a stupid ninny she was to mess with black magic in the process, and she definitely wouldn't have kissed Angel, whom she had hardly spoken to in Sunnydale.) Back in Sunnydale, there's again the world as depicted in Normal Again, season 6. (Normalverse?) Which does work for me and fascinates me, but doesn't get that much fanfic attention because of the rather depressing premise - no slayers, no vampires, and instead Buffy in an institution.

And then there are the two big canon AUs: BTVS has the world before Dawn, and the world after Dawn, i.e. after the monks did their spell and rewrote history. Now I know there are some stories out there that speculate on how the Scoobies recall the events of the first four seasons with Dawn in them. But has anybody ever tried to write the last three seasons without Dawn? Obviously the biggest difficulty is season 5 as its emotional core is the Buffy-Dawn relationship. But if you find an alternate reason for Buffy to sacrifice her life, which given her profession shouldn't be too difficult, you could do 6 and 7. Except that I'd say without Dawn, Buffy's season 6 post-mortem depression might have become self-destructive enough to get her killed again.

AtS, on the other hand, has the world with Connor, and the world without Connor, and currently we're still all trying to guess how everyone renembers the past two years after the mindwipe. In fanfic terms, the premise would be "What if Darla had never returned after Epiphany?", I guess. And the fascinating thing about the current season is that it shows Fred, Gunn and Wesley going through their own series of "Five Things". Because clearly the writers' answer to "what if Wesley hadn't become alienated from the group via Connor (but still have been somehow involved with Lilah)?" is "Another Way For Wes To Access His Dark Side". And Gunn who does not remember Wesley keeping a secret from the rest of them and making a fatal decision does the same thing himself.

Gotta love AUs. Sometimes.