[ SECRET POST #5510 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5510 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 63 secrets from Secret Submission Post #788.
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/yZj8IB9.png

Transcript by OP

[fscom]

I used to happily skip over all the "mundane AU" fics. But after I found one really good one, I can't stop thinking that there must be more out there. I just don't have the patience to trawl for another treasure among all that "meh". And I'm still not willing to try out Coffeeshop, College, or High School AUs.

[(Anonymous)]

Hard same! To the whole secret, from the wanting more now that I've found one or two really good ones, to still refusing to touch high school AUs with a ten-foot pole. Solidarity, OP.

[(Anonymous)]

Lmao the best (semi)mundane fic I've ever read is TECHNICALLY a Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr Coffee Shop AU. As in, Charles owns a coffee shop, and a lot of Coffee Shop AU tropes are present. They still have their powers, though, and it's mostly about mutant politics and activism lol. Mercy of the Fallen (the AirDrop Security Update 2.0) by pocky_slash btw, it's fantastic - https://archiveofourown.org/works/1565411.

[(Anonymous)]

Amen.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't care much for baseball but that one ASOIAF baseball AU where Jaimie is playing a perfect game while freaking out about all the drama going on is such a classic.

There are some AUs that are great because they are just great stories. I wish I had a "actually really good not just popular" filter on AO3 but we don't so I browse.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah good mundane AUs are really good. But almost none are good.

I will say I also avoid HSAUs and I honestly don't even understand the appeal. It just seems like the most annoying setting possible, with the least amount of things you can do with it, and the writing is rarely good.

[(Anonymous)]

The only high school AUs I tend to like are the ones that find ways to map canon trauma onto the genuinely excruciating experience of being a teen with very little agency in a weird artificially constrained society. And even then it's like, maybe three fics I can think of off the top of my head that I really enjoyed.

The thing about high school is that everything FEELS so big because you've never dealt with this shit before, it feels epic, it feels like the end of the world - like canon stuff actually is - but there's this hope of just. just SURVIVING it. and getting to make a new life of your own if you can just figure out how. IDK I think there's some powerful and compelling potential there. Key word potential.


....the other possibility is people who write good comedy, because high school is ALSO inherently absurd and teenagers are absurd and a good hs romcom can be hysterical

[(Anonymous)]

I feel you. I hate mundane AU's so much. Especially high school. But once in a while there is this one fic...

[dancingmouse]

Am I the only one who actually likes Coffeshop/School AU? Like, I like seeing other people's interpretations on which roles certain characters would be in (Would Superman be a Jock? A Nerd? A Theater Kid?), or seeing just how well a character would make a crazy Starbuck's order.

[(Anonymous)]

Nope, I love pretty much all AUs! They're not all good, but it's not as if being canon-compliant is a guarantee of quality in fic either.

[(Anonymous)]

The sheer mundanity of those situations is so painfully tedious compared to the much more interesting Canon of my fandoms.

[iff_and_xor]

I appreciate you sharing why you like them, I hadn't really considered why they might work for some people and not others. Personally, those stereotypical high school roles (or possible coffee orders) don't really resonate with my experience or interest me as character archetypes. I would be much more interested in imagining how characters would fill other sets of roles, like members of a scientific expedition or a theater production or an intelligence organization.

And you're certainly not alone out there -- I know those fics get a lot of involvement -- but it's true that HS AUs don't seem to be popular here or on r/Fanfiction.

[(Anonymous)]

Once in awhile they're okay, but then you get the high school aus where the author seems to have no idea what an American high school is like aside from watching Mean Girls or Glee. Or if the characters aren't American and they're shoved into an Americanized school setting.

[pantswarrior]

I am generally far more interested in fantasy/sci-fi settings overall, so often the only AU I'm interested in is the canon-divergence sort where one thing happened differently and it snowballs...

But in my fandom, 20 years ago when it was active, one of our very good writers randomly did a HS AU. And basically said she took inspiration from John Hughes films. And I don't even ship the main ship in it, but dang, she nailed it and made it not only cute and nostalgic but also really uncanny, like it was a mundane prequel to the entirely fantastical canon story and set up all the weird interpersonal dynamics that you see during the game. I'm still kind of baffled that it worked, but she WAS a very good writer. =)

Other than the very rare exceptions like that though... I have no interest in high schools or coffeeshops, so no desire to see characters who are normally in more interesting-to-me settings dropped into one.

[(Anonymous)]

I've found ones that I liked before, and I don't skip over them just because they're mundane AUs. I've also written some and had a lot of fun doing it. It's a challenge to keep characters in-character while writing them in a different setting like that, so I have to be really familiar with the characters.

[(Anonymous)]

I find most good writers don't go straight for the AUs when they start writing for a fandom, so one way to find the good AUs is to look at what else the authors have written. If they've got works that don't rely on popular fic templates, they're probably approaching their AU with some fresh ideas, too.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, so many of them just don't have any suspense, or high stakes, or even one percent of the energy and drive that the canon does. But occasionally...

[fizzyrose]

I think the determining factor for me is whether or not the AU allows for more character exploration and drama, regardless of how interesting or exciting the setting and plot are by themselves. There are some canons where, while very interesting and all, don't allow for the characters to to be themselves or explore different aspects of their relationships in the way "mundane" AUs allow for. They give the characters a lot of breathing room and whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing entirely depends on the person writing it. There's plenty of interesting plots to work with in mundane/modern AUs it's just whether or not the writer is able to utilize that and to make the bits that are low stakes still enjoyable to read.

I think high school and college AUs are so popular because for a lot of fandoms it's one of the only settings where the characters regularly interacting with each other would make sense (because they'd probably never meet or independently choose to be around each other) aside from maybe office AUs. Office AUs are the worst to me personally. And these are usually very familiar to the people writing them, no world building required.

[meadowphoenix]

I think, especially in more high-conflict genres, mundanes are hard to make interesting, because the type of conflict the characters show themselves in simply isn't there.

So when I find a good one, one that is able to really understand the core motivations, they're really good, imo because you still have the internal conflicts of the characters to drive the plot.

[(Anonymous)]

I3m skittish about AUs but will read them. I'm picky, though. I skip high school, college/university, coffee shop, bakery, florist, tattoo parlor, modern-day, and fusion with any media I'm unfamiliar with. I used to be extremely hesitant to read vampire AUs since there was a time 10+ years ago when there was So. Much. Vampire AU fic and so much of it was crap. Vampires don't pop iip so frequently anymore so I'm more likely to give those fics a chance.

[(Anonymous)]

I like AUs.

But usually only if they are in a comic strip or cartoon format. Otherwise I can't be assed to bother.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm just officially too old to care about high school AUs unless the characters are teachers. I've tried a couple college AUs if the other tags appeal to me, but even there, like... I'm so much more invested if it's someone going back to finish their education as a 'real adult', or again, if it's focused on professors, or maybe post-grad/doctorate students.

There are a couple of good coffeeshop AUs out there, but there's just so much to wade through, I can't blame you not wanting to bother searching through the immense body of them to find the gems. I like a fun AU but I get so tired of interesting canon settings only getting the most run of the mill mundane AUs.

[(Anonymous)]

High School AUs creep me out, especially explicit ones. I'm a grown ass man, I don't want to read about underaged kids fucking.

[(Anonymous)]

For me, in SFF settings, the worldbuilding is a huge part of what I love about the canon. Taking the characters out of that and putting them in some mundane modern world job is inherently a subtraction of interest.

The other way around is MUCH better: take characters from a canon set in the modern-day mundane world and put them in a SFF AU where they're Elves or necromancers or vampires or spaceship crew members and I am so here for THAT!