unkxwnspecies

[unkxwnspecies]

In another life, perhaps you’d be real — part 1

Online Alternate Universes in Social Media

POV: You’re someone who’s reading about alternate universes for the first time.

A myriad of screenshots of a conversation between two people pop up on your Twitter timeline. You don’t know either of them, but it’s a story of how they met, how they fell in love, and eventually, how they break up. A screenshot of a short narration follows —

You don’t know these people, but for some reason, you’re invested and heartbroken. You feel as if you’re the one in the relationship, that it’s your love that isn’t enough. It just feels too real.

Perhaps that was the point.

Alternate Universes, or AUs for short, as implied by the name, are set in a different timeline, in a different world. It could eerily resemble the reality that you live in, the people that you are close to, and even the experiences you’ve had to endure. It’s romantic in nature, usually imagined between a celebrity or a fictional character. Doubts may come to your mind as you start thinking to yourself, “what makes this different from fanfictions?" Format.

from catslikenma on Archive of Our Own and @/h6nemiya on Twitter

From Messenger, to iMessage, or even to Twitter posts, AU writers can easily mimic the ways of social media. Using a few applications, authors bring these stories to life in a format they find unconventional yet convenient, and their readers feel the same. Mixed with traditional narrations and even text dialogue edited in a video, AUs just continue to grow both as a concept and a form of literature, as considered by many.

The target audience used to be so niche, only limited to people who are involved in fandom culture because Twitter was too broad as a social media platform. People had their own “sides” or “parts” in the application. But with the emergence of Tiktok and its feature of auto-swiping uploaded photos, coupled with audio that adds to the ambiance of the story, AUs have started to reach people that were initially unaware of the existence of this kind of concept, people like you.

The first time I met you

The mundane life you live may get tiring from time to time, and escapism can come in the form of screenshots under the caption “POV: You’re starting to fall in love with your roommate.” Even if you’ve never had a roommate, you indulge yourself in what it would look like to have one, let alone fall in love with them.

Getting to know you a little bit more

The inspiration for these stories come close to a lived reality, imagined in a more exciting way, weaved by the minds of hopeless romantics that constantly think about “what if things were like this.” It’s creative — it’s madness, yet it’s so normal.

The effort put into bringing these concepts and ideas to life comes with a good amount of phone storage to accommodate the overwhelming number of screenshots, along with phased out applications that can generate these made-up conversations and other forms of social media posts. From Social Dummy to Social Maker, these applications are enough to help anyone build the world of an online story — all you need are characters, a plot, and the realistic monologue that goes on in your head distributed to different chat bubbles.

Finding solace in your messages

All this effort and for what? A 4-picture paneled tweet on Twitter? A sliding photo compilation on Tiktok with some cheesy background music that goes “it’s been raining in Manila, hindi ka ba nilalamig?”?

You might start looking for a deeper purpose, for some reason that goes beyond “just because,” but sometimes it is what it is. AUs are created and read for a variety of reasons, all depending on who consumes and creates the content. But generally speaking, AUs are a form of entertainment, a form of escape for both the reader and the writer. Leisure is definitely one of the main reasons why it exists and continues to exist.

Pahinga, for the simplest reason.

And for you, it may not seem all that much, but it is that much — in both a good and a bad way. Good, because a variety of realities manifest in these AUs, from getting an NBI clearance to transferring from one university to another, it’s all real for someone, somewhere. It’s a glimpse of life itself, and you learn and appreciate something new in such a simple way.

— part 2 disclaimer: screenshots are created and captured from Social Maker

[unkxwnspecies]

In another life, perhaps you’d be real — part 2

Online Alternate Universes in Social Media

part 1

Facing reality with you

Yet when too much reality seeps into fiction, it’s inevitable for other people to merge it all together, or somehow want fiction to become reality and find ways to try and make it happen. It’s toxic and unhealthy. It ruins something fun and innocent just because people let the delusions take over instead of making peace with the fact that at the end of the day, this is all fiction; and that the celebrity you’re reading about isn’t studying to become a lawyer at the University of Santo Tomas — because he isn’t real.

Separating you from the rest of the world

To you, it may seem crazy that people let this affect their lives, and maybe it is to some extent. But believe it or not, AUs help in keeping people’s sanity, in keeping them from quitting their jobs or in keeping them going to get a degree. The age range for readers and writers can go from 11 to 35 years old, from 5th grade students to working adults to even mothers who already have their own families. They consider it like a friend, someone they can run to after a long and tiring day when nothing seems to be going right.        

I run to you after everything

It's really fascinating how a bunch of screenshots could mean and do so much, especially just behind a screen as small as your phone. But readers, in the name of their support for the AUs they love, want these to be immortalized on their shelves in the form of books. When these AUs receive numerous requests for it to be published, their wish is granted by the writer. Lots of preparation is done – from changing the names of the celebrities to avoid copyright, to finding fan artists willing to draw visuals for the book itself.

@/shuahonglyfans on Twitter

@/sehunsilog and @/fromblessme on Twitter

It might be a waste of money for you to buy something that you can access for free online, but the readers buy the book out of love, and the writers publish their works out of demand. Capitalizing off of their creations is the least of their concerns, as these books are reasonably priced with very generous freebies that the readers proudly show off. AUs have a whole community of readers and writers that share their love for stories that has reached them in many ways.

So, the next time you see the words ‘POV’ at the start of a TikTok video, or a tweet that has an ‘x’ in the middle of two names, maybe you’d like to stop by for a quick escape from your mundane hours of using social media.

Accepting goodbyes and welcoming new beginnings

— end

disclaimer: screenshots are created and captured from Social Maker.