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I've kind of had this in my head since before the MCU AU fest - a little bit of meta on fusion AUs.
Quite frequently my problem with fusion AUs is that writers get too caught up in the plot of the original fusion-universe story and try to follow it too closely.
My view is that once characters have been transplanted into a new, fusion canon from their 'home' canon, all bets are off. So maybe Natasha is a graduate of the Academy in a Firefly-verse; that doesn't mean she needs to be 18 years old, have an (over)protective older brother, and carry the burden of the deepest, darkest secret of the Alliance. She doesn't need to be on the run from the Alliance – she doesn't even need to be a Browncoat!
Just because the storytellers of the fusion canon made certain choices doesn't mean you need to remake them. These aren't the original characters – they're new characters with their own history and background – events that made them who they are
The other thing is that the storytellers of the original canon frequently made sexist, racist, and other problematic choices in the stories they told. An absence of non-white people in positions of significance in the story. Women refrigerated for the sole purpose of increasing male angst. A single female character in the canon who's expected to carry the entire burden of womanhood on her shoulders. Why would you even want to replicate such storytelling? To say nothing of how it completely screws over any sense of surprise in the story if you follow the original plot exactly.
My rule of thumb for writing fusion AUs:
1. Take the characters you're fusing into the AU world and find the best match for the characters given their backstories in their home universe.
2. Take elements of the story of the AU world, and elements of the story of the home universe, and fuse them together.
3. Adjust each as necessary. Go out on a limb. Don't just rehash the original story - make it better!
An excellent example of this is from Heroes In The Sky - a Pacific Rim fusion into the Firefly-verse.
Characters from PR with relevant backgrounds: check.
Echoes of the Firefly universe and the events in it: check.
New dynamics, developments, and interesting/intriguing developments: check.
I don't know why I'm thinking of this right now. I'm supposed to be getting my head into MCU canon-compliance...
Quite frequently my problem with fusion AUs is that writers get too caught up in the plot of the original fusion-universe story and try to follow it too closely.
My view is that once characters have been transplanted into a new, fusion canon from their 'home' canon, all bets are off. So maybe Natasha is a graduate of the Academy in a Firefly-verse; that doesn't mean she needs to be 18 years old, have an (over)protective older brother, and carry the burden of the deepest, darkest secret of the Alliance. She doesn't need to be on the run from the Alliance – she doesn't even need to be a Browncoat!
Just because the storytellers of the fusion canon made certain choices doesn't mean you need to remake them. These aren't the original characters – they're new characters with their own history and background – events that made them who they are
The other thing is that the storytellers of the original canon frequently made sexist, racist, and other problematic choices in the stories they told. An absence of non-white people in positions of significance in the story. Women refrigerated for the sole purpose of increasing male angst. A single female character in the canon who's expected to carry the entire burden of womanhood on her shoulders. Why would you even want to replicate such storytelling? To say nothing of how it completely screws over any sense of surprise in the story if you follow the original plot exactly.
My rule of thumb for writing fusion AUs:
1. Take the characters you're fusing into the AU world and find the best match for the characters given their backstories in their home universe.
2. Take elements of the story of the AU world, and elements of the story of the home universe, and fuse them together.
3. Adjust each as necessary. Go out on a limb. Don't just rehash the original story - make it better!
An excellent example of this is from Heroes In The Sky - a Pacific Rim fusion into the Firefly-verse.
Characters from PR with relevant backgrounds: check.
Echoes of the Firefly universe and the events in it: check.
New dynamics, developments, and interesting/intriguing developments: check.
I don't know why I'm thinking of this right now. I'm supposed to be getting my head into MCU canon-compliance...
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This tends to one of my criticisms of otherwise well-written fusion stories, too. If you try to be faithful to the original, I've always felt you can either follow the overall structure of the narrative, or you swap in certain characters; you can't do both.
(My favorite fusion, of course, is just using the world-building and then populate with the other canon -- there are some fantastic HP and His Dark Materials fusion stories in particular out there.)
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