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I love writing TMNT AUs. It's the nature of the franchise in general--it's been interpreted and reinterpreted over and over again (and heck, "Turtles Forever" basically made AUs canon). But it's also fun to explore the turtles in different settings and situations. Everything else may change, but the theme of family never does.
I've been kicking around a bunch of AUs by this point. Most of them, as with most of my fiction ideas in general, don't really end up going anywhere. I had an idea for a pirate AU that seemed fun, but didn't have a story attached; I actually planned out a Foot TMNT AU (in which the turtles were raised by Shredder) and wrote some chapters/snippets/drabbles for it, but lost interest. I got pretty far with what I call a Separated AU, in which the story follows the beginning of the 2003 series pretty closely except the turtles were separated after their mutation and have to reunite. That one was pretty interesting, but I only wrote it because I was interested in what the turtles' interactions would be like as they tried to get to know each other; after that, it became more or less similar to the canon and became boring.
As anyone who's been following my LJ recently probably knows, my post-apocalyptic AU is currently my baby, the one that I'm most serious about and that I put the most effort in. Funnily enough, it all started with a bunch of turtle designs that I doodled while listening to "Radioactive" and then fell in love with. Somehow, a story attached itself to those turtles, and that's how the project was born.
The Post-Apoc. AU is a dark one. (Not on the level of SAINW, but then, SAINW is just plain brutal.) I always end up writing fairly dark stories, which probably says something about who I am as a person, and I'm pretty influenced by the 2003 series, which also had its really dark moments. I wanted to explore the theme of the turtles being seen as monsters, which is something I've felt is never fully explored in turtle canon. I also wanted to explore the usual theme of family and the strength of family bonds, so of course I ended up writing situations in which those bonds are sorely tested. And, of course, there are themes of loss, of difficult choices, of the struggle to do the right thing.
Too often, I think, we use death and violence as shorthand for evaluating which stories are "dark" and "gritty." For me, stories with too much death can, at worst, cause Darkness Induced Audience Apathy, in which the audience stops caring and/or believing in the world of the story simply because everyone dies and suffers horribly; at best, it's an amateur attempt to inject emotional drama in the story by killing off bucketloads of forgettable secondary characters or subjecting the protagonist(s) to arbitrary torture and trauma. When executed properly, it does convey a tragic atmosphere and ratchet up the emotional stakes of the story. But again, it's often executed poorly more often than it's executed well.
The thing is, a dark story executed well doesn't have to be filled with a triple-digit bodycount and chapters of endless angst. You can write about loss without dealing with death; you can have characters suffer emotionally without suffering physically.
When I say my post-apoc. AU is "dark," I mean that it's a story in which the protagonists are forced to confront the worst aspects of themselves, to doubt themselves, to fail in the face of overwhelming obstacles and to slowly recover from their failures. It is a story with four protagonists who have good intentions, but they find themselves in a world of gray morality, where "right" and "wrong," "good" and "evil," are not so easily discerned. They make choices, and those choices have consequences that they must deal with. They are faced with the worst humanity can offer, and they are challenged to retain their optimism.
But I'd like to think that, in the end, it's a hopeful story. In spite of everything, they manage to make friends. They are taken apart, but they build themselves back together, stronger than before. At the center of it all is that fiercely loyal family bond. And for them, that's enough.
I've been kicking around a bunch of AUs by this point. Most of them, as with most of my fiction ideas in general, don't really end up going anywhere. I had an idea for a pirate AU that seemed fun, but didn't have a story attached; I actually planned out a Foot TMNT AU (in which the turtles were raised by Shredder) and wrote some chapters/snippets/drabbles for it, but lost interest. I got pretty far with what I call a Separated AU, in which the story follows the beginning of the 2003 series pretty closely except the turtles were separated after their mutation and have to reunite. That one was pretty interesting, but I only wrote it because I was interested in what the turtles' interactions would be like as they tried to get to know each other; after that, it became more or less similar to the canon and became boring.
As anyone who's been following my LJ recently probably knows, my post-apocalyptic AU is currently my baby, the one that I'm most serious about and that I put the most effort in. Funnily enough, it all started with a bunch of turtle designs that I doodled while listening to "Radioactive" and then fell in love with. Somehow, a story attached itself to those turtles, and that's how the project was born.
The Post-Apoc. AU is a dark one. (Not on the level of SAINW, but then, SAINW is just plain brutal.) I always end up writing fairly dark stories, which probably says something about who I am as a person, and I'm pretty influenced by the 2003 series, which also had its really dark moments. I wanted to explore the theme of the turtles being seen as monsters, which is something I've felt is never fully explored in turtle canon. I also wanted to explore the usual theme of family and the strength of family bonds, so of course I ended up writing situations in which those bonds are sorely tested. And, of course, there are themes of loss, of difficult choices, of the struggle to do the right thing.
Too often, I think, we use death and violence as shorthand for evaluating which stories are "dark" and "gritty." For me, stories with too much death can, at worst, cause Darkness Induced Audience Apathy, in which the audience stops caring and/or believing in the world of the story simply because everyone dies and suffers horribly; at best, it's an amateur attempt to inject emotional drama in the story by killing off bucketloads of forgettable secondary characters or subjecting the protagonist(s) to arbitrary torture and trauma. When executed properly, it does convey a tragic atmosphere and ratchet up the emotional stakes of the story. But again, it's often executed poorly more often than it's executed well.
The thing is, a dark story executed well doesn't have to be filled with a triple-digit bodycount and chapters of endless angst. You can write about loss without dealing with death; you can have characters suffer emotionally without suffering physically.
When I say my post-apoc. AU is "dark," I mean that it's a story in which the protagonists are forced to confront the worst aspects of themselves, to doubt themselves, to fail in the face of overwhelming obstacles and to slowly recover from their failures. It is a story with four protagonists who have good intentions, but they find themselves in a world of gray morality, where "right" and "wrong," "good" and "evil," are not so easily discerned. They make choices, and those choices have consequences that they must deal with. They are faced with the worst humanity can offer, and they are challenged to retain their optimism.
But I'd like to think that, in the end, it's a hopeful story. In spite of everything, they manage to make friends. They are taken apart, but they build themselves back together, stronger than before. At the center of it all is that fiercely loyal family bond. And for them, that's enough.
