#and instead choose to lean heavily on shallow fanon tropes and stock fanfic genre conventions.

[handdrawnfantasma]

thinking this morning abt a post i saw a while ago which i should have saved bc it had things in it that i disagreed with that i now cannot quote with any accuracy (life tip: save the posts u disagree with bc it means that when u finally figure out WHY u disagree with them you will actually be responding to what was actually there instead of your plato’s allegory of the cave version of it)

anyway

the post in question, iirc, was talking about like........ i think the crux of one of its arguments in support of its point was this idea of fanfiction being somehow unable to draw or explore characters with the same depth as an original work - so you can already see why i disagreed with it in spite of the fact that the main point it was trying to support was one that i DO agree with - which is that the trend of turning your fanfic into Original Fiction Do Not Steal by just “filing the serial numbers off” needs to stop bc it’s a bad way of trying to create original fiction. anyway one of the points the author made in support of their main statement was that true fanfic should be rooted in the love and exploration of the original world and therefore the original work, and so that’s why so many AU fics fall flat

and i just had to stop and pause to reassess how apparently the way this person approaches the very concept of AU fanfics is apparently so diametrically opposed to my own bc i AM The AU Warlock who is only capable of writing really weird niche AUs, and i don’t think i have ever approached any AU without this being my driving mission statement:

[ image ID: the Parks and Rec “It’s about the cones” meme with the subtitle text changed to read “It’s about the shared narrative themes” ]

ANYWAY i don’t know if i had a point with this post at all, but it really is interesting sometimes to get a glimpse of how some people truly live in an entirely different world to the one you inhabit huh

#what time is it? Time For Fel's Opinions #for real though i. i have never been capable of even coming up with a CONCEPT for a 'normal' au. #the closest i think i've ever come is the as-yet-unwritten Amelie AU concept i came up with for jmart? #but even that came about bc i realised that Amelie is EXACTLY the sort of person you would get if you had a Lonely-Web-Beholding-aligned-- #person who somehow managed to remain benevolent. #i have more thoughts that were going thru my head about this but they're too long for tags #and also i'd want to find the original post again first #bc like. i agreed with the 'u cant just make an original work by filing serial numbers off ur fanfic bc then u remove all the actual-- #personality of the characters u were writing for' point but like. #look. i'm not saying there aren't some very bland cookie-cutter AU fanfics out there that do not give a whit for characterisation and themes #and instead choose to lean heavily on shallow fanon tropes and stock fanfic genre conventions. #we've all seen it. #but making the statement that all AU fics fall under that banner is a Bold Fucking Claim my guy #like yes ok ok my own jimmies are personally rustled by this bc my entire brand is #'weird niche AUs with a heavy emphasis on exploring the canon themes and characterisation within a different context to the canon universe' #but i've also read a fair amount of AUs that REALLY sink their teeth into studying the characters and themes bc the AU setting allows them #to look at it from angles that canon simply cannot! #ANYWAY