And all I can think about the dislike is that there is no canon.
Well, some characters really need their 'verse to work, for me. Frasier and Niles in the Supernatural world was hysterical and cracktastic and I loved it but it wasn't the Cranes on their show. Making characters work outside of their world without it going as pure crack (nothing wrong but I think not what you are discussing) doesn't always work.
Then there is the my hed iz pastede on yay effect which happens so much more often then not when I try and read AUs. It's like an OC, but the author didn't want to say so.
And then there are AUs that are my favorite things to read and reread and reread forever. But there are so many AUs that I see and I will never click. They just don't appeal.
I tend to dislike AUs where they diverge from canon over specific peeves of the authors, like a character they dislike having died (or the reverse), but are otherwise in the same basic setting. But wildly different settings/plots with the familiar characters transplanted into them seem to suit me better. "Guns and Neuroses" was a sterling example of how well that can work.
I've read some lovely AU's and yet there was one character the author obviously disliked and turned them, wildly OOC, into the most heinous villian, when they'd been a canon good guy, and I just don't get it.
and I just don't get it.
I'm guessing the show on tv isn't the show they want, so they wrote their version. And, hey, more power to those people if they want to write their AU their way.
But I think that's why they often don't work for me. If I don't like something, I am more likely to slowly just wander away from it. I can see fix-its for an ep or so, but once you are changing the story, well, you're changing the story.
Flight of fancy things where it's people talking and "oooh, what if Char A were in Plot B or Story C" are excellent when they work outside of their circle but I think you usually have to be in on the original joke. Which is what fandom can be.
There's a word for the type of AU where the characters from one show are swapped into the setting from another show. (Like the Frasier/SPN one which I loved.) But I forget what it is.
I'm not sure I've read an AU that wasn't of this type. I heard of a good one that was SPN in the old west but I forgot to click the link and lost it.
Thank-you! (was driving me batty)
When I was composing this post in my head, I was thinking that I liked AUs from canons with strong characters. But, then I realised I'd have no interest whatsoever in a Buffy AU. I like that universe as is, and I like those characters in that universe.
On the other hand, I can read Supernatural AUs until the cows come home, as long as people respect the same things about the characters and relationships that I do. I think it is the relationships, actually. The interactions between the characters. I like seeing that translated into different worlds. My enjoyment of a show like Buffy is a lot less about the relationships and more about the mythology and the characters' places in it.
I tend to dislike AUs where they diverge from canon over specific peeves of the authors, like a character they dislike having died (or the reverse), but are otherwise in the same basic setting.
Yeah, I'm not too fond of 'fixit' AUs, but there are times when a 'what if?' scenario can yield some interesting results.
