Where's the line for AU and other works inspired stories drawn.

[ConcubusBunny]

Hello, guys, gals and enby pals.
Now, while preparing some more stories that I want to start publishing soon (hopefully I've learned my lesson and wait till I finish the first season or t least half f it while before I start posting) which were all AU's of a series that I love, but not really wanting to change the canon timeline so most was after current story was over or before it began where I could loosely base the canon story just told with my perspective of story telling.
While I was making a few of the AU's, something weird happened, I remembered the holy words of @KoyukiMegumi telling me to just make it an original series.
Which made me take a step back and reanalyze lot of what I pan to make and I wonder where is the line drawn AU's and your own original work inspired by anther author?
Where is it that the multitude of AU's not tied to the canon story anymore should just be an original story, especial when the majority of the cast save for the (MC's) are part of the canon story.

 

[atgongumerki]

if AU is fanfiction, then what makes them into AU is their use of characters and the world of the source-material

So I would argue that if you change the name of source-characters, and isekai the whole cast into another world, that would suffice for me to say it is an original piece of fiction ... well not really you'd have to change a bit more than just the names (for example the ability-system and such, but using the original characteristics of chars is fair play in my book)

 

[Ai-chan]

First of all, what is AU?

 

[SuperHeiyan]

First of all, what is AU?

Good question, because the answer is in the name itself.

AU can't be not tied to original story.

Personally I don't like Alternative Universes in most cases since they are mostly just reusing your own or someone else characters to not make a new ones. But there are cases of "done right" where change divergence affects following events in complitely believable way.

As an example there is Fate / Stay Night where routes quickly turns into their own alternative universes under your own eyes but there is also Fate / Extra, which reuses some characters but mostly their image and actually have good and very distinct writing in the early games or even unholy Kaleido Illya and Fate / Grand Order which are of the worst kind and just plainly ridiculous fan service money squizing nightmares.

 

[gogo7966]

First of all, what is AU?

au as in alternate universe

 

[RepresentingCaution]

Pretty much every fictional story is AU the way I see it. It's on a spectrum. If the president is the same and stuff, then that's a universe very close to our own. If world leaders are different, but pretty much everything else is the same, that's mid-level AU, like my story. If you've got aliens and furries and stuff, that's high-level AU.

 

[Ai-chan]

au as in alternate universe

Oh, ok. People should use the full word. To Ai-chan, AU means Astronomical Unit which obviously doesn't fit the thread.