[ SECRET POST #3161 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3161 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 042 secrets from Secret Submission Post #452.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. http://i.imgur.com/kAfnyFg.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

I get this feeling that this type of AU is so popular because it lets people relive their HS days in a safe, and often very idealised setting. There's a lot of media telling us that those are the best times of our lives, but for many people it's anything but. So they live vicariously through AUs with their favourite characters.

[diet_poison]

I've always heard that about college, not high school! And ironically I had a MUCH better time with high school than college.

However, I choose to believe my best days are still ahead of me. /corny, but true

[(Anonymous)]

Huh, interesting. I always assumed it was high schoolers trying to find ways to better relate to characters, but that could be as well.

(Although I dunno, the media does a fairly good job of showing HS as terrible. It's just that it normally does a horrible job of showing why HS can be terrible, and has unrealistic outcomes.*)

*In fiction: New girl makes new loser friends on the first day.

Realistic outcome: New girl makes casual friends who dump her when she needs someone to eat lunch with. Makes one or two friends halfway through the year, but never has lunch periods with them. :P

[diet_poison]

Okay. I mean writers write what they want to make you happy, not impress you. Nobody's paying them to be the next Tolkien, so ultimately it doesn't matter what their worldbuilding ability is (according to you); they're just having fun. And they're successful because plenty of people do like them or they wouldn't be so popular.

(Besides, I definitely do not thing high school is THE most pedestrian setting out there and I also think it's interesting. This may be because I actually liked high school for the most part, but eh.)

[(Anonymous)]

To be perfectly blunt: sometimes creativity and imagination are not what one wants when reading fanfiction. Sometimes it's not the muscle one wants to exercise when writing fanfiction. And that's fine. There are many different things fanfic can provide, and it's silly to pretend otherwise let alone get up on a high horse about it.

[(Anonymous)]

HS AU is a unique environment. How many other places forcibly squish so many random people of varying interests into one building then force you to hang out with them for 8+ hours a day? Then create artificial social structures by differentiating you into remedial, standard, and honors classes, then again by year?

A professional or work environment isn't the same, as everyone has other tasks to do, generally the same idea of what they are working for or at, chose to be employed there, and aren't forced by teachers to interact with each other...

[(Anonymous)]

High school AU's were only ever fun to me if they involved characters that are already teenagers. Anything else makes little sense. In general, I have no interest in HS stories mainly because I'm a lot older now, but they're alright for some pairs or situations. I used to enjoy this one HS au series because it involved a pair from a video game that didn't have a ton of fiction written for it.

[blitzwing]

I don't like them either, but the ones I hate the most are coffeeshop AUs.

[(Anonymous)]

People don't usually chose a cliched setting to be edgy, so that's a somewhat unfair expectation. How about reading something else? Or write an HS-AU with a surprising twist yourself?

[(Anonymous)]

"if you write this thing I don't like , I will avoid all your work forever because it means you must suck at writing"

AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Wait you're serious? Have even more laughter.

Like I get it. I get that High school AUS are often bland unless something unique is done with them. That's true, tbh. But this attitude of "I will avoid everything you write and assume things about your ability if you write it" is stupid, and petty. Don't get me wrong, you're perfectly entitled to avoid anyone you want. But going on about how you avoid people because they wrote one thing that you think isn't "creative enough" because it means everything else they write must be equally sucky? It makes you look immature.

I have seen people who wrote fantastically fascinating AUs and worldbuilding stuff and then wrote a oneshot about a popular pairing or something incredibly common. They write both, the same person. The fact that they wrote either says nothing about their writing ability or creativity as a whole. People are more than That One Thing They Wrote.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree they are boring, but I don't condemn anyone for it.

I assume the majority of HS AUs are written by people in HS or recently out of it, so I have some sympathy for why they get written.

I had a nice time in HS but it's been 17 years since I graduated and I just have no interest in reading about it just for the sake of reading about it. Fiction about teens or set in school (like Harry Potter) is okay but taking adult characters and de-aging them and putting them in school is just uninteresting to me. I'd rather see those characters in the adult world where I live and where they were when I discovered them.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not fond of them either, but they especially annoy me when they squish a bunch of non-American characters into American high schools.

[(Anonymous)]

I have no real opinion on high school AUs. But I would like to point out that high school AU is often found on lists of cliches/tropes, so for people who like to fill out those lists (or play bingos, etc.), they will write a high school AU and still be a very creative person who is able to world-build with the best of them.

If all someone wrote was high school AUs, then maybe you could say something about their creativity, but to write off everything an author writes for writing ONE HS AU is silly.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm like this with high school AUs, coffee shop AUs, bakery AUs... really, any AU that isn't SFF or western.

Judge away, IDGAF.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I wish there were airport AUs, train station AUs and highway maintenance AUs over the usual pedestrian settings as well.

[nightscale]

I don't get the appeal either tbh and don't care for them at all but I wont swear off an author for writing them though, I just wont read those stories.

What do you want to see in a high school story setting/AU?

[(Anonymous)]

For those who think that these AUs are failing their potential and not considering other experiences.

http://fandomsecrets.dreamwidth.org/1273483.html?thread=858768267#cmt858768267

I'm curious to hear what people would like to see done with this.

Hmm...

[(Anonymous)]

One story setting, especially if you don't read it, doesn't tell you much about the author, but whatever, I guess.

I like many different sorts of AUs. I like to see characters I like in different settings. There is no one genre of AU that I have read that has been uniformly terrible - the quality depends on what it always depends on, which is the skill of the writer.

And you know what, there are a fair amount of adult characters in many different canons that act like teenagers sometimes (or even much of the time), so at least in High School AUs it makes sense.

[(Anonymous)]

What I'm getting about this secret is that you hate fun.

Who would want such a judgmental and condescending person reading their stuff?

[annethecatdetective]

I think you're going to miss out on a lot of good writing if you assume that anyone who writes a high school AU is going to be a bad writer-- for one thing, people have different reasons for writing them! Someone might write a high school AU to fill a request/swap, for instance, when it normally wouldn't be something they themselves are interested in. Someone might write a high school AU to explore something about the (for lack of a better word) genre and its associated tropes. Not necessarily a deconstruction, but a deeper look at it. Some people might actually be writing twists on the usual.

And exploring different aspects of high school life isn't necessarily bad. Are a lot of HS AUs kind of same-y? Sure. And I'm not always interested in them. But sometimes someone takes a question like 'How would X's life be different if they met Y at a young age?', or 'How would A live their life in a modern setting instead of in the past/future/some high fantasy world?', and there's nothing inherently uncreative about writing a story to try to answer those questions. You're not obligated to like these stories or to read them on the off chance that a writer is doing something different from the kinds of stories you don't find interesting-- if you don't care for them, I'm not here to tell you you should like them or even that you should like certain ones but not others. But I do think that a lot of good writers do dabble in these AUs for one reason or another, and they might have other stories that you would like, that aren't high school AUs/AUs at all.

(and full disclosure, I've written high school AU stuff on request. Although I made most of the characters teachers instead of students, because at the time I wasn't really interested in turning adult characters into teens in that fandom. In other fandoms, though, I would not be opposed to writing HS AU stuff if requested, because some people love reading them for different reasons, and I like to write things that people want)

(as a side note, I admit I would absolutely love a story that started out with everyone in a cafe or ordinary modern-day high school, only to suck them into something fantastical, I think it would be kind of funny to subvert the HS/Coffee shop AU with a totally expected beginning and then something similar to the regular world of the source material. So if anyone's seen something like that, let me know)

[(Anonymous)]

As a lover of High School AU, any thoughts on how to make it unique?

Not being an ask, genuinely curious.

[(Anonymous)]

So I write two high school AUs because I got prompted, and you automatically ignore the 80 other things + all the different prompts in my prompt collections.

Cool, I don't want you reading my stories anyway. You don't sound like a fun person to interact with anyway.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

To everything in your secret OP.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm so with you there, OP.