question about popslash

[psocoptera]

Can anyone think of a popslash AU in which NSync existed but one person of the slashed couple was not in it (but the other one still was)? (As distinct from total AUs where they were all college students or whatever.) Or, say, XMFC stories where one of Charles and Erik still has their canonical powers, but the other is not/has never been a mutant?

(Backstory: I've been reading a lot of hockey RPF and I've realized that I don't care for stories in which one dude is still a world-class NHL celebrity and the other is, like, a sales clerk. No offense to any particular story! I get that the idea is supposed to be that even though one of their lives took a totally different turn they were still meant to find each other, just, something about the inequality of it, where one of them still gets to have their superpowers (effectively) but the other one doesn't, bothers me. Mundane AUs where the powers don't exist to be had, where we see what the interactions of everyone in a given character-set would be like ported into a different context, feel very different to me than these half-AUs. But now I'm trying to think if there's ever been a half-AU I did like. I know SGA produced some stories where one of John and Rodney wasn't involved in the Stargate program but the other still was, and I didn't much like those either...)

Comments

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

Confession: I recently stumbled across a Hockey RPF 101 link (Fandoms I Have Loved) and an now trying to figure out who's the sales clerk. (Kaner?)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I've seen Kaner as a barista, Kaner as a librarian, Kaner as a trainer, Sidney Crosby as a trainer, Geno Malkin as a trainer, Geno as a vet... nobody actually a sales clerk, exactly, I just didn't want to point to something specific.

It occurred to me thinking more about this, though, that the very first hockey RPF story I read, that I can recall, was a half AU where Jeff Skinner is Eric Staal's nanny. (Er, for Staal's son.) And I liked that just fine, and still do. The thing is, Skinner and Staal might as well be any two guys, to me, I have basically no canon or fanon knowledge of them except for that story. (In fact when I was trying to remember it, I was misremembering Jeff Skinner as Jeff Carter, who also shows up in hockey RPF and about whom I also know next to nothing.) Or there's this awesome actor RPF story "The Giraffe Notes" about a relationship between Andrew Garfield, who I think played Spiderman in a movie I didn't see but saw a commercial for, and Jesse Eisenberg, who I think I thought was Michael Cera - anyways, my point is I could barely pick either of these guys out of a lineup, and so imagining a world in which Garfield is still an actor and wins an Oscar while Eisenberg is a copyeditor does not hurt, because the only reason I even have any idea that real Eisenberg has a film career in the first place is that I looked it up at some point. It's once I become familiar with a character in canon or fanon that it's weird to see them diminished while their opposite number isn't.

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

huh, this is a super interesting question and I have no memory of such a popslash story. But I am commenting to say that it's fascinating that exactly what you don't like is a thing that I *enjoy* about those kinds of AUs. I have a long-running email thread with a baseball RPF friend about Lincecum as a superstar pitcher, and Posey having had to drop out of baseball in high school and winding up becoming a carpenter (who is then called in to make some custom shelves.) OK, a lot of the point here is that he has a tool belt and stuff, but ANYWAY, exactly what I dig is that the power dynamics suddenly change completely, and need to be re-explored from within the new perspective.

I love the diversity of what everyone finds interesting :)

Yeah, Stargate is the one that comes to mind -- that Astolat fic with John as the mail-order bride, for one, and I think there were others.

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

I can't think of any equivalents off the top of my head in K-pop RPF (to actually try and answer your question).

Eisenberg's actually a writer as well -- I think he just staged a play off-Broadway -- so that's not too much of a stretch. (Not as much of a stretch as Librarian!Kaner, she snarked snottily.)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I went and reread that Astolat story, and IMO it doesn't fit the pattern I'm describing, because John still gets to go to Atlantis, fly puddlejumpers in spaaace, sit in the chair and have a mystical connection with the city, pretty much all of the best parts of his role in canon, without the burden of command which he arguably doesn't so much want. (I very vaguely recall some other story though in which John and Rodney meet on Earth and, like, have a nice little house together or whatever, and every so often Rodney goes off on "business trips" and it turns out late in the series he's been involved in the Stargate program all along and never even told John and John does not ever get to go fly puddlejumpers in space and is basically just a regular guy (restaurant owner? housewife? handyman? some real-world job).)

I don't want to ask you too many questions about your Posey carpenter AU because, Iike, I don't want to sound critical of something that works for you! I also love the diversity of interests! But maybe I will say some more things about hockey AUs and if anything happens to be relevant you can share your thoughts. ::grin::

So one thing that is weird to me in the Kaner-isn't-on-the-Blackhawks AUs is that the Blackhawks in those worlds always still seem to be the team they are with Kane, as far as winning the Stanley Cup, etc. Which seems weird to me, because fanon, and as far as I can tell *canon*, is that Kane was an essential part of those wins, and so to say "well in this world he was a barista but the Hawks still won" erases his contribution. (And this is what made me ask about popslash in particular, because NSync having all their real-world successes with one of the boys missing makes me sad.) I don't think I've ever read it explicitly the other way, where the Hawks season actually plays out differently, although that also seems weird to me, if at least part of why we like these guys is their winningness, to write an AU where they aren't so good. Some stories are pretty vague about the hockey at all, but I think part of what throws me is that I still find myself wondering about things like whether or not they won the Cup even if the story never says anything about it.

And then, also, I want to think some more about that idea of "winningness", which. I think, in my personal head, there are some characters who I think of as being, like, innately awesome, and some characters who I think of as being mostly circumstantially awesome, and, this is maybe unfair to real people, but athletes, actors, and pop stars especially tend to fall into the "circumstantially awesome" category in my head, whereas fictional heroes get to be innately awesome. Like, if James Kirk's life takes a left turn at Tarsus IV and he ends up a sex slave instead of a starship captain and then Spock, who is still in Starfleet, meets him under those circumstances, he is still James T Kirk and probably blazingly heroic/charismatic/etc in some different and interesting way. Whereas Patrick Kane minus the jaw-dropping stick-handling and the Stanley Cup is... just some guy. Justin Timberlake as the local real estate agent who big pop star Chris is using to buy his next mansion is... just a bizarre premise, to me, which might have something to do with why nobody actually ever wrote that story ::grin::. (Unless it ends with Justin Getting Discovered Too. Hrm, I hadn't thought about Kris/Adam slash until right this minute, but I feel like I've read a whole lot of it in which only one of them had a successful music career, and the other one was all *kinds* of different things, and that usually did work fine for me. Maybe because I cannot name a single Kris Allen song, so I don't feel a sense of loss at the idea of his music career never existing, and whatever Adam's alternate life path was it always seemed to involve Being Amazingly Glam in some form or other, which seemed like the key element for his life satisfaction ::grin::.)