Snark incoming.

[krait]

Possibly one of the most useful features of a sci-fi/fantasy fandom: it's really easy to weed out fics you don't want to read, just by checking to see which ones can't spell the fandom-specific made-up words correctly. Kismesitude? Paidi Aiji? Valdemarian? NOPE, sorry, no +1 hit count for you!

(Also useful in these fandoms: excluding "human AU" from your search results; but that's another rant for a different day.)

Comments

[krait]

WORD. And wow, never thought I'd be happy that Foreigner fandom is so small, but I guess at least it does mean that we don't have the critical mass needed to achieve whatever madness makes a fandom decide that "what if they were all a clique of human college students" AUs are the only kind of fic that needs to be written... *sigh of relief*

I mean, really; now I'm trying to picture it, and I just can't! College student!Banichi? High school romance!Jago/Bren? Pfeh. Does not compute.

On the other hand, maybe I'm going at it backwards. Maybe the reason Foreigner is a tiny fandom is because it's too hard to imagine an all-human AU? Perhaps "ability to inspire human AUs" is a necessary component for becoming a large fandom... *ponders*

[cheyinka]

I can't picture it even as a joke except for that one summary, and that took me a good five minutes to come up with. I mean, I've read "everybody is a normal human on earth" AUs for Stargate Atlantis, and some of those are okay, but their aliens are humans, just humans who weren't born on Earth. Anything with nonhuman characters? Nooooope. (Both the "no human AUs" and "spell canon terms correctly" rules work for Babylon 5 fanfic, too, not that I expect they wouldn't.)

[pebblerocker]

I would friggin' LOVE to read about Banichi in his equivalent of college, studying to be an incredibly good assassin. But only if it's set on his world, in his culture.

AUs that take people in a mundane setting, like a cop show, and put them in a magical fantasy or on a spaceship, can be pretty amazing. I don't get the impulse to make things LESS interesting.

[krait]

Oooooooh, yeah! Alien-assassin-college!Banichi would be awesome. :D But I suspect that would be almost entirely lacking in the cliches of the bog-standard College!AU that seems to be popular.

take people in a mundane setting, like a cop show, and put them in a magical fantasy or spaceship

Yes, I like Fantasy!AUs (especially Temeraire fusions; they're a major weak spot) and InSpace!AUs of non-magical fandoms. I even enjoy AUs where a mundane setting has been replaced with another mundane setting (What if Clark Kent had been adopted by a Kansas farm couple in 1805 instead of the modern day? That might make a really cool AU!) It's strictly the magical-to-nonmagical switch that I find unappealing!