fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3996 ]

[ SECRET POST #3996 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3996 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #572.
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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Maybe they like to take their favorite characters and put them in a setting not being explored by canon and see what happens.

I mean, if you read it and they don't seem at all like the characters, fair enough.

And sometimes, for some shows, it's really complicated to keep something resembling current canon, since the actual writers can't be bothered to keep the timeline straight or coherent, never mind the contradictory plot points and character traits.

It seems to me that once you strip them of the things that define them as characters and make them a lonely barista and the dude with the overly complicated coffee order, they're not actually your favorite characters anymore. At that point, you might as well admit that you actually ship Misha and Jensen and wish they were in a different show together.

This is more true for some characters than it is for others. The things that define some characters are mostly things that can be easily transplanted into other settings and scenarios. I wouldn't, however, say this is the case for Dean and Castiel specifically. They seem like they would be hard to relocate into an AU without losing a lot of what makes them them.

ayrt

Why would you strip them of the things that define them as characters? Are you saying that people can't have the same personality traits if they have different occupations? I can see how the being an angel would be a very defining characteristic, but maybe that lonely barista was raised in very bizarre cult. Maybe that dude with the overly complicated coffee order is a bounty hunter who likes to get his brother the most frou-frou order he can think up.

No, I’m saying that if you completely change someone’s background, upbringing and species, you’re going to fundamentally change that person, especially Dean and Cas, whose personalities are intrinsically tied into what they are and what has happened to them. You want an AU where depowered Cas and retired Hunter Dean open a coffee shop? That won’t change their personalities beyond whatever OOC hoops you’re jumping through to get them there because the things that made them who they are still happened. You take that away for your “normal human” au, though and...no. They wouldn’t be the same person. That’s not how people work.

DA

Yeah, this is an issue to think about when writing an AU fic for any fandom, but I think it's especially important in Supernatural, where it's such a huge part of the story that the main characters have pretty much had their lives and personalities destroyed (or at least irreparably altered) by the lives they've been forced to lead.

I suppose a creative pin on a coffee shop AU (like AYRT's ex-cultist/bounty hunter example) might work better but there would still be dramatic differences. And most coffee shop fics just aren't that creative, because as a general rule that's not what people are looking for when they read a coffee shop AU.

ayrt

They won't be the exact same person, but that doesn't mean they can't be in-character. If they have the same personality traits and similar behaviors to a point in canon, that's in-character. The Dean at the start of Supernatural is not the same person as the Dean now, but he is the same character. Background and experience do inform the person that someone becomes, but not all of a person's personality comes from those things. And traits that do come from background and experience can also come from different backgrounds and experiences. Fiction characters are constructed people and I believe that a writer can use a different construction to get them to the same place emotionally, behaviorally, and personality-wise. But if you don't believe that, then alright, those type of AUs won't be anything you're interested in.

Step 1: take any 2 random coffee shop/college AUs from different fandoms
Step 2: swap the names between these fics
Step 3: can you see any difference?

Destiel college AU looks the exact same way as a Drarry college AU or a Thorki college AU. If you want to see your favourite characters in a setting not explored by canon, you can grab any random college AU to another canon and you'll get the same results by copy-pasting the names of characters onto it.

ayrt

Not all AUs are coffee shop or college. The secret poster just wrote about human AUs. Maybe Dean is a mechanic and Castiel is an escaped mental patient who thinks he hears angels. Maybe Dean is a burnt-out former Marine who meets performance artist Castiel. Maybe Castiel is the sheltered youngest child of a messed up royal family and Dean is a crass knight. Maybe Dean's Batman and Castiel is someone Joker did experiments on. You can absolutely keep characters in character in AUs, you just have to have a little imagination. But, hell, let's go with a college AU, Dean is Good Will Hunting his way through failed projects at the engineering lab while being the night custodian and Castiel is the accounting student who changed his major to drama student after he had a near-death experience that changed his perspective and his behavior.

Honestly, none of those sound “in character” to me. They sound like cool stories, though. (Although if you make Dean a Dick Grayson-style Batman and make Cas a disillusioned member of the Lantern Core who’s got the Guardians of the Universe after him, you might Have something .)

ayrt

Well, they're just broad character sketches that could lead to personalities and behavior consistent with the characters. You'd have to fill in the details a bit, like you did.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3996 ]

Or they like AUs.

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Re: Or they like AUs.