Policy Discussion

[singularitymods.livejournal.com]

Some of Singularity's players have questions about the game policies on AU character applications. This post has been put up to allow players to approach the staff to ask questions, offer suggestions, and voice concerns regarding those policies. The moderators are also available via IM/PM [contact information] if any player does not feel comfortable discussing their concerns in public.

As of the end of this application round (August 15th), AU applications will be closed until this matter can be resolved. This ban on AU apps does not apply to the exceptions listed in the AU policies (malleable protagonists and canon AUs).

Comments

[selfgovernance.livejournal.com]

I think this in particular comes back to a tonal shift. At the end of the day, no matter how you swing it, A:TLA is a children's show. That means the characters don't go around saying 'fuck' or 'damn' or 'shit', they don't get hideously tortured and at the end of the day, they win the good fight. They have their quandaries and their hardships, but even though A:TLA is a fairly mature show overall, that deals with mature themes, it's still at its core meant for children. I think conserving tone is every bit as important as conserving characterization in an AU.

For example. Suddenly, in Canterlot, aliens attack! And all the ponies have spent the last five years fighting in a brutal alien war! Rainbow Dash suddenly has an eyepatch, and maybe Fluttershy is missing a limb and etc et al - of course this is a fairly extreme example (and as you mentioned, the characterization would be what suffers there) but the tone is so drastically different that even if you did manage to write ALIENS ATTACKING CANTERLOT in the world's most IC, compelling way possible, the change in tone would still have the potential to make people uncomfortable, because they come expecting ADORABLE FRIENDSHIP PONY POWERS and they get greeted with Fluttershy having a bionic gun-leg or something.

Essentially, because RP is a collaborative writing effort, it's not always necessarily about what one player wants to do. Because while playing grimdark, somber Aang might be extremely fun for the mun - and maybe even for a few other people who like exploring those options, I know I certainly wouldn't want to have to interact with an Aang like that if I were playing a castmate. As someone who's played Zuko (a million years ago and very briefly), I can safely say that it would probably break my characterization of Zuko to be around that sort of Aang. That doesn't mean the other person is a bad writer, or that I myself am, it just means that I'm adhering to the characterization of a tonally different source material. Suddenly, I have to pick two options. Play Zuko as someone who's seen this sort of thing occur in the past and chosen to ignore it (and I'm talking serious heavy duty torture, not at all equivalent to Zuko being burned by his father or Aang being lightning-fuu'd by Azula), or picking to play Zuko who knows that that sort of thing doesn't happen in his world by dint of it being a world for the imaginations of children to run riot in, which means automatically that he has to react to this Aang as if he's an intruder, an imposter or simply someone entirely outside of his world or scope of experience.


TL:DR, some AUs make it hard for people to write around them based on tonal shift and source material!