[ SECRET POST #5030 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5030 ⌋

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


01.



__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________


03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 21 secrets from Secret Submission Post #719.
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]

01. https://i.imgur.com/2rp1smD.png

[(Anonymous)]

My old school understanding of AU was that you changed one event or several events in a character's past and wrote an AU based around what would have happened then. That was how most fic seemed to roll with it anyway.

NOW it's all high school AUs and coffee shop AUs and shit where, exactly as you describe, they erase all history. They are not my cup of tea.

I very much miss the old school type of AU fic.

[(Anonymous)]

There have always been both types for as long as I've been reading fic. There are always trends within bigger fandoms, but there have been both types of AUs for a long, loooooong time.

"Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence" is the AO3 tag for the type you're thinking of. There are plenty still being written.

[(Anonymous)]

There are two different types of AUs.

One is the kind you're talking about: canon AUs, where you change one particular aspect of the canon and write about how the canon would have changed had this thing happened/not happened.

The other is taking the characters and slotting them into a different setting. For instance, I have one friend who wrote an AU where she took the characters from one particular canon and rewrote them into another canon, giving them appropriate histories/backgrounds to make them fit into the new canon while also staying as true to their original incarnations as possible. I would personally say that if someone does this type of AU but makes no attempt to recreate the characters' history/backgrounds within the new setting (within the constraints of the new setting, obviously, because there are many things you won't be able to replicate exactly), that's just lazy, poor writing all around.

[(Anonymous)]

I love Canon Divergence and Canon Setting AU both, and there are times I prefer them to canon setting docs.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel you, anon. I was deep into The X-Files fandom for many years, and 99% of the time, AU just meant canon divergence. Even if it was only minorly canon divergent, we'd still call it an AU.

There were a few full-on, new-school AUs of the sort we see so much of today. There was one particular BNF who was known for her totally out-there AUs (which would not seem out there at all by modern fandom standards). But the vast majority of AUs were simple canon divergence.

I will maintain until my last breath that some canons work really well with AU premises. So I don't hate them across the board. I had a great time reading hundreds of perfectly delightful Johnlock AUs, for example; that particular canon just transferred into all sorts of different contexts extremely well. That said, I've had more fandoms where I didn't like AUs than fandoms where I did. AUs are probably sixty or seventy percent of my current fandom, and I have zero interest in a single one of them. :/

[(Anonymous)]

I used to disdain these AUs, but canon in my fandom started to irritate me so much that this way, I can enjoy the personalities and beauty of my ship without being monumentally miffed at what the showrunner's doing.

(I considered myself very much a true-to-canon-events shipper.)

My show is going away soon, so I'm glad I can still enjoy the characters doing other things in AUs no matter what happens.

[(Anonymous)]

Alternatively: AUs prove that a ship is so strong and meant to be that no matter what the circumstances (angsty or otherwise) and history, the couple will end up together. Also not all AUs get rid of history in exchange for meet-cutes. And the possibilities are endless, even if there are common tropes. You seem to have a very limited understanding or definition of what AUs are.

I mean, you also seem to think that everyone shares your opinion of what the appeal of a ship is and so what would "kill" it. That is so ludicrous, it's not worth commenting on further.

[(Anonymous)]

AUs prove that a ship is so strong and meant to be that no matter what the circumstances (angsty or otherwise) and history, the couple will end up together.

Yeah, this is how I tend to see a lot of those kinds of AUs, too. I do love stories that explore the characters' history as it stands in canon, and I agree with the secret that a lot of my favorite ships are the sort that tend to have a history of some kind, because it provides a great foundation to build on. But yeah, it can be very interesting sometimes to see what would've happened had they met in another way, or another lifetime, or whatever, too.

[philstar22]

But if they aren't the same characters and don't have at least somewhat similar history, to me the ship isn't the same ship anymore. It is something original with the characters names stuck on. It doesn't show that the characters are always meant to be together because it isn't the same characters.

[(Anonymous)]

Can you read? “So many AUs” doesn’t mean “ all AUs” or even “most AUs” so what is this definition nonsense about? Also it’s an opinion expressed in a secret, of course it’s subjective and why would there be an expectation for everyone to share it? You’re taking it so personally it’s blinded you to text and reason apparently. Are you guilty of deluging fandom with shitty AUs by any chance?

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, when it comes to shipping I fundamentally disagree that two people will always end up together no matter the circumstances. Even without long histories, a lot of my ships are ships because a particular set of events in canon forged the dynamics that I perceived as shippable. I legitimately believe that a lot of my pairings wouldn’t work out if they just met in uni or something.

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes the canon history between two characters can make their relationship unhealthy or weird in a way you're not comfortable with, and sometimes those things won't be revealed until after you started to ship it.

You might find out they're married to someone else, or one of them has done something unforgivable, or they grew up seeing the person you ship them with as a father figure or any number of other things.

AUs let you take the characters out of the situation and put them in a new one where you can still imagine them naked together without it being weird.

Also sometimes you stop watching things after the first or seconds season because the plot sucked, but you still like the characters. Just me? Lol.

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly if something kills the ship for me in canon then AUs won’t salvage it. It’s pretty hard for changing status quo to affect how I feel about a ship in the first place, if it’s really that drastic I’m never going to get over it.

[(Anonymous)]

Non-canon AUs are interesting because they allow you to ask, on the one hand, how do you reinterpret the dynamics of these characters and their relationships in a totally different genre? And second, what new things about these characters and their relationship, what new angles and new spins, can we get out of this new totally different setting? So it's not about getting rid of their history, it's about reimagining that history in a different context.

Obviously that's, like, a best case scenario and lots of AUs are just cookie cutter but I like them a lot when well executed

[(Anonymous)]

MTE. It's not so much the AU premise itself, but rather how authors approach it.

[philstar22]

I'm with you. I love ships where the characters have long histories together.

[(Anonymous)]

YES. Not my cup of tea, either. Also AUs that completely ignore something supernatural that's a huge part of the canon. Like Twilight without the vampires. It feeds into the history-stripping thing you mentioned, but I suppose it's possible to trade monsters for thugs or something to recreate the history in another setting? Just... no thank you.

[(Anonymous)]

I would at least take, say, mafia over vampirism if the author takes care to preserve canon relationships and bonds.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Some more thoughts on this because y’all left some fascinating comments...

I think there are characters and ships that more easily lend themselves to different settings. I used to read a lot of non-canon AUs for, say, Bagginshield, not only because canon was heartbreaking but also because The Hobbit is already the story them meeting and developing their relationship. Their history is being built before our eyes. You can take that preset and place it in a lot of other situations and have it work out reasonably well. Just preserve the dynamics that made people ship it in the first place.

In contrast, take another Tolkien OTP of mine, Fingon/Maedhros. I totally get that some people don’t want to deal with the fact that they’re related, but if they’re not at least old friends with feuding fathers, what’s the point?? We already know barely anything about these dudes because of the way The Silmarillion was written. Once the ship got a bit popular I started seeing more AU fics for it and a lot of them read like a buffet of fanon tropes with no connection to the actual characters.

[(Anonymous)]

I have a mix feeling about AUs depending on the fandom I'm in - In something like Naruto where the story is a bit shit but has really good characters, AUs work perfectly for it.

Although with that being said it also depends on a variety and types of AUs that are available - like back in my Attack on Titan fandom phase, there was a LOT of reincarnation AUs that tied into the relationships characters had in the main series but would also be set in another world like a modern AU (which I absolutely loved to read tbh).
On the other hand, in my current fandom there's like 80% of Highschool & college AUs - which wouldn't be so bad if the majority of the fandom wasn't on the younger side and badly copying each other's ideas/head canons so that there's very few interesting fics to read but idk.

[(Anonymous)]

I completely agree! Not begrudging other people's happy wish-fulfillment fic (as I know if I say anything to imply fluffy cutesy content isn't "as good" it puts people on the defensive) but I am completely baffled by the takeover of AUs... I couldn't tell if this was just in my fandom, or if this shift had happened in ALL of fandom. FS suggests the latter. In years past I feel like I didn't mind AUs with an actual plot to them, and I know those still exist, but I've even become wary of THAT because of the oversaturation in the market. To be honest, I think there's a bit of a problem regardless of if it's a fluffy coffeeshop AU or a dark supernatural AU with NEEDING to write the characters meeting for the first time so that you can fill space talking about their appearance and how attracted they are to the other and whathaveyou. It's like, people laud crafting a whole new story from the ground up and when done well I can understand why, but I think fandom overlooks the storytelling chops it takes to actually utilize the history canon has given you and build a compelling story about their relationship and their real problems without needing to fill space with the "first meeting, describing how I wish the character looked, cute misunderstanding, falling in love" dance we've all seen a thousand times.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm of the (rather extreme, I guess) opinion that every fanfic that is not a direct transcript of canon scenes (and so, 99% of all fics and 110% of non-boring fics) is an AU, so I don't see the point in thinking of one kind of AU as better than another simply because it is ~closer~ to the source material. I'd much rather read a good fic written by someone who understands the ship so well they can have fun exploring it in different contexts than a fic by someone who is so uncreative they can't diverge from what's "on the screen".

I mean, do I prefer canon-inspired AUs to, say, high schools and coffee shops? Yes, I do. But I've still read high school and coffee shop AUs that show much greater care and appreciation for and insight into the characters than canon-compliant fics.

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting. For me, I really like pining and awkward situations and complicated feelings, so I like to hit the reset button and portray that part of the relationship 100 times in 100 different ways. I tend to latch onto a certain dynamic from canon and like to capture the same thing in as many settings as possible.

[(Anonymous)]

Me, in the Old Guard fandom. Every damn day.