I am another lover of AUs. Not so much high school or coffee shop AUs, but situational or time period AUs.

I should clarify that my earlier haaaaaaate is for genericized, modern-day AUs (and that there have been a few exceptions to this hatred). I ADORE situational AUs (canon divergence, genderswap, etc.).

As for historical AUs, it all depends on the time period. I'm meh on Regency, but will drop everything for a WWI AU.

A/B/O is an occasional guilty pleasure, to be perfectly honest.

SGA is the ancestralhome of all crack, it is known.

Why did SGA have pon farr stories, exactly? Like, Atlantis made them do it?

Was the Harlequin Romance challenge a SGA specific thing? There were some really good AUs that came out of that. A lot of them were crack but it was the good kind.

Why did SGA have pon farr stories, exactly? Like, Atlantis made them do it?

More like the Goa'ould, back when they ruled the Earth. IIRC it was an attempt at population control that went wrong.

Was the Harlequin Romance challenge a SGA specific thing?

It was a very successful sga_flashfic challenge.

To quote the Doctor, so many species, so little time.

Every Fucking Author writes Modern AU. And I just don't get it. The universe is the whole damn point of the thing. The characters are so profoundly of their world that they cease to be themselves in significant ways if you move them to a modern setting.

I mostly agree with you; I think at some point the fandom saturation is so much that the characters become like kinderblocks. You can rearrange them and they still vaguely look like they did before, and that seems to be enough for most people. They are composed mostly of fanon and magazine shoots.

Occasionally, though, an author will really work to find the allegories between the story of the fandom's world and a different setting, and those modern!AUs (albeit few and far between) are a joy to read. Thought has actually been put into them. For example, I read a Hobbit modern!AU recently where Erebor was an Eastern European city-state that had retained its sovereignty, and the state had gone through a coup d'etat, which had resulted in the many deaths in the Durin family. Bilbo comes into play, and while it does occasionally bow to the whole Princess Diaries-romance novel soppiness, it was remarkably well conceived, because it wasn't "hey these people are pretty I bet Bilbo would look cute in glasses" nor was it "and then Bilbo becomes the QUEEN." It was really an account of what would have happened to a city-state like Erebor if it operated in the 21st century, with the modern "eh" towards monarchies.

So I defend the modern!AU, but only in the sense that the best exceptions thoroughly prove the rule.

Shawn and Gus, on the other hand, are basically the most married.

Yesssssss my precious.

A/B/O gets an automatic back button for me, which is ironic since I gather it originated in werewolf fics and I've been fascinated by werewolves since I was a kid.

It partly came through that, and then it also partly came through the "BDSM" worlds. Tepid bestiality + Fifty Shades of BDSM + bodice-ripper = a/b/o. Some of it is excellent. Most of it is horrible and uncomfortably hot. (In my experience, which is more extensive than I should perhaps admit to.)

You might like that Jaime/Brienne Regency AU story I mentioned above

thanks for that!

specifically because the author has thought a lot about translating the setting and making the characters work in it.

Mmmm please share!

Another modern!AU I recall--Downton Abbey, where the family was a corporation and Mary was trying to run part of it when the dude who kicked it came in as a ringer. It was very charming.

SGA is the ancestralhome of all crack, it is known.

I maintain that everything popslash cleared the way for the cracky joy that was SGA fandom.

And there was this fabulous (and sadly unfinished) Jaime/Brienne fic that was set in Regency Era England that I spent all night up reading a few months ago...

t perks up Vonnie, do we share a ship? I love sharing a ship with people. And, if I ever get hard up for reading material, I may go seek that one out (I am currently re-reading canon, so that's...not gonna be soon (As Ned Stark can't be Too Stupid To Live for too much longer, and those tend to be the chapters I put off reading)

I love AUs, myself. As long as it's well-written and the characters are still IN character, I have no problem seeing them in a new context. I've written modern day AU's for Star Trek characters, fusions with other fandoms (Firefly and Buffy, no surprise there), magical realism, it's all fair game to me.

See, the difference, for me, in moving a future to a present is that our imagined futures are inherently reflections of our presents. Whereas taking pasts (or fantasy that is strongly influenced by history) and dropping it into the present removes a huge amount of cultural context that profoundly shapes characters. Once you start removing some of those limits, then they stop being them in the same way. Removing cultural limitations from characters seems perhaps gratifying to the Id, but not as narratively interesting as adding cultural limitations (which is more likely in future to present AUs)

I will absolutely grant that there can be excellently-executed, well-thought-out Modern AUs for historical/historical fantasy canons. But, yeah, not worth wading through the 90% crap, for me. And there is sooooo muuuuuch craaaap

Contrariwise, legionseagle/A.J.Hall has an excellent, EXCELLENT Sherlock AU that is set in the Bronte juvenilia universe of Gondal, sometime in the 17th-ish century. I cannot say enough good things loudly enough.

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