I feel very similarly as you about AUs. I love little twists that take canon in a different direction, or explores alternate realities branching off from canon, but I just don't *get* coffee shop AU style things. They'd have to be so incredibly well done to even remotely work. Instead they almost always just feel like a mix of 1) original fiction 2) author being too lazy to research canon. It might work for a real world fandom like Glee, but when you start trying to sell me nu!Spock as a stoic barista instead of among the last of his race then yeah, you're missing a huge part of characterization. And even if you try to give Erik some ~tragedy~ to represent the Holocaust it just tends to come off as cheap (and in that case actually disrespectful). It doesn't surprise me that some people are into Coffee Shop style AUs, but it does surprise me just how *many* people are into them. In some fandoms they far out number the stories actually based in canon. And for me it's like, what is it about Draco that you like so much in canon to want to write fic about him... and why doesn't it translate into this leather pants rentboy fic that seems nothing like him? It's the way they claim to love a canonical character but then seem (to me) to fail to represent him/her in their fic that I don't get. The character they end up writing isn't the canonical character at all by then. I'm sorry, Thorin Oakenshield is not a geologist major at an underfunded university.
Ah well. I've written a lot more fic than I've read for those reasons and others.
And here's a question: 3. Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?
Ah well. I've written a lot more fic than I've read for those reasons and others.
And here's a question:
3. Is there a trope you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole?
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