Minor grumping.

[krait]

Dear Homestuck authors:

If you are writing an all-human AU, please tag your fic with that!

Hint: tagging it with plain old "AU", or any subcategory thereof (such as "college AU") does not remove the need for a "Humanstuck" tag.

Thanks.

P.S. - I realise this is a matter of personal taste, but why do you all write so much humanstuck fic?! Your fic would be a thousand times better if it were, say, a coffee shop AU or college AU or rock band AU, or whatever, and did that without ducking out of the issues that come along with mixing two disparate cultures and species! Call me a one-trick pony, but watching humans and trolls pair up and accomplish life goals is ever so much more interesting when you don't take away two-thirds of the potential conflict before the story even starts.

Sigh.

P.P.S - Star Trek fandom, this goes for you, too. (I haven't been reading you nearly as much, lately, but that may change when/if I see the movie, so you can't hide forever!)

Comments

[soc_puppet]

OMFG, humanstuck /)_(\ Just - argh. 100% with you on that.

I got into speculative fiction for the speculative parts. If you take away the speculative parts, then it's just fiction, and I am left cold. Give me situations that I will likely never see in real life, and then we'll talk.

S'why I rarely go for extreme AUs in general. Coffee shop and Bakery AUs tend to be exceptions, but I still prefer them with at least a nod to the speculative elements in the original canon.

[krait]

Heh, yes. Why. I can't think of a single AU scenario that wouldn't be more interesting if the characters were still two different species! Fiction thrives on conflict; why would you surgically remove a great source of conflict?

Especially since, let's face it, pretty much every single humanstuck AU erases the cultural differences entirely; it'd be one thing if the trolls were, say, foreign exchange students, but they're virtually always American just like the kids. No culture clash to be seen, just a bunch of boring white American teenagers.

There's four thousand shows about that kind of cast if that's what floats your boat, so please stop stripping the aliens out of my sci-fi in order to generate more?

There are a couple of human AUs I have read and enjoyed, but they're pretty rare, and now I'm sick enough of it that I search "-humanstuck" on AO3 when I'm craving fic.

[soc_puppet]

I've got a friend who's totally into speculative fiction but can't for the life of her figure out where to start with worldbuilding. When the world is already built for you, though? No excuse. Part of a character for me will always be their backstory and the world and elements they grew up with. Take that away, and no matter how carefully you try and weave in similar elements and backstory tidbits a part of me will always think I'm reading original fiction with characters who happen to somewhat resemble someone familiar.

I'd maybe buy all the trolls speaking English at least, but all of them being white and US-ian is just anathema to me. I'm too used to them having black hair and at least somewhat darker skin. GingerKat in particular is an instant backbutton for me, because way to reinforce negative stereotypes about redheads, fuckfaces. (Also because he's frequently a main character in what I read, and that just means if we're going to have any diversity it'll probably be Conveniently Diverse Friends Group rather than EastAsian!John. Blech.)

Yes yes yes, exactly. Exactly to all of that.

[krait]

I'd maybe buy all the trolls speaking English at least, but all of them being white and US-ian is just anathema to me.

Yes! It's probably kind of telling that the few humanstuck fics I do like tend not to have the kind of homogeneity problems that most humanstuck fics do.

[novembermond]

yes, this. I really want to able to weed those out and not find out that there are only humans five §§ in. and homestuck fandom even has the perfect term for it to tag with. (of course homestuck has a term for everything).

[krait]

Yes! I have picked up fics where I had to skim two or three chapters to find out if it was humanstuck or not! That's ridiculous. Especially since, as you point out, homestuck has a perfect term/tag for everything!