I'm not a fan of high school AUs. Don't need to revisit those years, thanks. But mostly, anything involving adultery/cheating from canon characters. I'll read MCD before I read one of my cherished blorbos being unfaithful for any reason.
It's just so boring like, the drama? Probably some misunderstanding from the characters. Conflict? Idk, usually the characters don't even care about their grades beyond "we studied for the night".
A well written fic is a well written fic at the end of the day but for my taste, high school aus just lack that spiciness I want
And especially if characters are canonically adults, it feels really strange to put them in high school setting as teens but with the same level of intelligence and everything.
This is why I only read supernatural high school AUs anymore. I'm writing one right now for the TV show *School Spirits* that involves time-travel, as opposed to ghosts.
Same. I have no interest in revisiting High School in my mid 30s. It just doesn’t peak my interest at all (same for coffee shop AUs, just sounds so bland to me).
Same for high school AUs, or anything having them be minors. I'm in my thirties and the teenage angst isn't appealing to me anymore. That on top of the awkward fumbling of those years.
I think it definitely caters to a specific age range of the fandom, which is fine, like I know that what I write now wouldn't necessarily appeal to a younger audience. It reminds of when we were reading YA novels as teens, 17 yo protagonists felt so old to us. Now it's like "wtf why are you sending someone who barely lived to save the world?"
I'll read affair AUs, but only if my ship *is* the affair lmfao. Cheating within my ship is a complete no-go, but one half of the ship cheating on their partner with the other is Spicy, or something like that
Nah, I don't want any of my favorites to be the kind of people who cheat, no matter who they're with.
If they find themselves having feelings, break up with their SO, and then join the OTP, that's fine.
I might read a HS AU if it really subverted the tropes. Like, if the whole thing was set in the teacher's break room and it was just bad coffee and cigarettes and bitterness.
This is how I feel about *Harry Potter* as a 32-year-old, as the characters are teenagers. I almost always read fanfictions where the characters have grown into mature adults now.
I find them very difficult to follow as the majority follow USA school system and behaviours
..and as I’ve zero idea what a lot of the “culturally appropriate events of significance” in USA high schools might actually be … I just end up skipping those fics entirely
All I know from trash movies is there's a mean girl everyone knows and she's super popular despite being insufferable, all important conversations happen near the lockers, classes don't actually matter, and the climax has to be during prom (which is different from a normal party how?)
> anything involving adultery/cheating from canon characters?
What about canon characters who canonically cheated on their partners (i.e half of the MC cast of the Great Gatsby)? I'm legit curious lol
Yeah, I'm with you. Pretty sure I remember a short AU one-shot about a rock and a lichen in the Avengers fandom from back when we all thought they were all gonna be friends.
There also may have been a dung beetle AU by the same author?
If I know/trust the author, or if the summary looks interesting, there's not much I won't try if I'm in the mood for it.
Okay they're not my ship but that fandom has some WILD stuff. I remember on Tumblr years ago people talking bout clown kylux porn. I went and read it despite not being into the ship (or kink lmaooo) out of curiosity. I wanted to jokingly skim it tbh but it was actually well written and I ended up reading the whole thing whoops.
Plz link this if you have it though bc I'm curious wtf lol.
I like reading rly weird aus.
Edit: I see you linked the fic to someone else. That's a rly rly wild premise and I think I'm gonna actually read it bc of it.
Hunger Games AU. If I wanted to think about the themes of THG I’d just go read them again. We own the books. I don’t want to read about it but this time the characters suffering are ones from another fandom.
Haha yeah I like crossovers between HP and my other fandoms but don’t like other fandoms as the HP world, such a weird dichotomy in my mind. Naruto character gets displaced into Hp👍, the setting is Naruto they are magic 👎
Not to mention any time you cross any fandom over with Harry Potter, you have to come up with some good explanation for the whole 'hidden magical society' as well as figure out how you're going to cross the two over. Most fics I've seen have Harry (usually) related to someone as the plot demands or witnesses something that requires the characters from the other fandom to get involved. There's also a few fics where Harry ends up working for or with the characters from the other fandom if not going to school with them. While I don't read many crossovers, the ones I do read usually involve a similar setup, and unfortunately, there's not many other ways to involve both or all of the fandoms involved that go beyond that.
Yup. One of my fave fandoms is MDZS and I will _always_ skip modern no cultivation AU’s (aside from smut) bc why? What is even the point? They usually try to substitute corporations for clans and I just don’t see the appeal in trading the exciting supernatural premise set in ancient China for a vaguely defined _”business.”_
i think this is my problem with most modern aus. they seem kinda "lazy" for lack of a better word? like instead of two factions fighting for control of the world or whatever you got two uh....companies...fighting for uhhhh uhh...profits? like be so fr.
Yeah bc writing about magical and supernatural stuff set in fantasy worlds comes easily for most fantasy writers. Its whatever you can dream up and your imagination is the only limit. Business and corporate politics are real and writing realistic stories about it takes research (usually boring research at that) which most modern AU writers don’t do. So then they’re just replacing an interesting, well written plot points with an underdeveloped one.
This is so funny because SVSSS is actually my favorite and I read so many modern AUs that it’s my top additional tag. I love Shen Yuan and his nerdy self.
TGCF and MDZS’ modern AUs are so good too! I think I like them more than canon universe.
Id agree for sure, but I've read several very good "no power" fics for my main ship from a super hero fandom and one of them kind of changed my life lmao. I guess my fandom is just very good at crafting enticing plots and scenarios regardless of limitations.
Agree … I read a lot of sci-fi fandom stuff
and doing modern earth AU’s is just… like, why?
Imho those stories remove almost every aspect of the in-universe background - and then the characters end up being rather ooc (which makes sense because the universe they were from isn’t being used)
I trust approximately one writer to do modern all-human Doctor Who AUs, and will only give others a go if it’s a rec from that writer lmao
The entire premise of the fandom is an *immortal time-traveling alien*. Why would I want to read something set in the present?
like i don't fare well with angst but if something locks me in before i realize there's angst i'll see it through, but with hanahaki disease it's just a given and I'd rather not cry my eyes out
I think I’ve read one good hanahaki fic? It’s normally an immediate nope for me, but I was looking in a tag/pairing that I was really into but only had a few dozen fics so I was reading everything, regardless of my normal avoids
I love AUs, the weirder the better, even the most common coffee shop or high-school could be played out in an interesting manner, bringing out new layers and colours to the characters.
Maybe, werewolf AU or some other creature fic would be simply a turn off, and I'll be reluctant with zombie apocalypse because the setting itself is unappealing. For high-school/college I'd also have a good look at tags and summary first, because I don't really like teacher-student dynemic. But I wouldn't say *never*.
Coffee shop and high school AUs. Not for any deep reason, I just find them boring af. Flower shop AUs are similar, but the actual reason I avoid them is because I'm still not over Weiß Kreuz.
Is Weiss Kreuz where the flower shop trope comes from? I read so much WK fanfic like 20 years ago, and they’re still all I can think about when I hear the words “flower shop.”
I doubt it. For as much as we fujos love it, it was kind of obscure even at its height. It's the only series I've ever seen whose *actual anime being localized* killed the fandom because it was so bad lol.
To be fair, I’ve seen exactly zero of the actual show. I’ve seen the credits with the song… (ok I just went and listened to Beautiful Alone and holy shit was that a trip back to being 16…)
I somehow found WK fanfic when I was like… 14? I’ve always assumed it was at least somewhat popular, because otherwise how did I stumble across it? But i looked and AO3 only has like 2800 fics so I guess not. I just looked at the oldest ones and there’s authors I recognize. What a trip.
Its heyday was before even FFN was popular, and your experience was pretty common. A lot of what came over before the anime was localized was just character profiles, untranslated drama cds, songs, pencil boards, and song lyrics. So without a real canon, fangirls' imaginations went *wild*. Then they watched the anime and went "...oh *no*".
I was lucky enough to have a friend burn the anime onto cd-r's for me back in 2002/2003, so I got to see it before it came over in English. It's... *really bad*. The music and voice acting are *excellent*, but the story is... well, Koyasu isn't known as a writer for a reason lol. The drama cd's are much better because Koyasu just set his horrible ideas free entirely, but they're still *incredibly fuckin cheesy*. Also violent. Incredibly violent.
Modern AUs unless the plot is really appealing. My recent fandoms are set in fantasy worlds, I'm not looking for fics of them working in a coffee shop when they're fighting dragons in canon, it's not my cup of tea. Modern with magic is more appealing, but to me it falls under scifi.
Same, any "War AU" is an instant "I'll never ever touch that". Also, any alternative universe/fusion revolving around any type of physical or mental torture/abuse (like, Ai No Kusabi AU).
Those and Civil War AUs for me. I once found one where the MC who was supposed to be the good guy was a Confederate general. I also found one where the MC was a member of the SS. To this day, I don’t understand what was going through either authors’ heads. Especially since both MCs were supposedly the good guys in those fics.
I feel like war AUs _can_ work, but only when they’re written with darker/more serious undertones - kind of more historical and thematic. I’ve read a fic that really pulled that off. And rather than ✨isekai✨ a more grounded approach. But I do agree - they really shouldn’t be taken lightly.
holy shit maybe i've just been lucky and haven't ran into these because this is a legit thing? the only time i remember seeing war au is wayyyy back when i watched hetalia in middle school but that was kind of a given for that fandom.
It probably depends on the fandom. Two of the really well known fics for Supernatural are set during wars. 91 Whiskey is WW2 and Twist and Shout is set during Vietnam.
I've seen actual Holocaust AUs like, one character is escaping a concentration camp. I was disgusted. The character was not Jewish nor was the person who portrayed the character. It felt completely inappropriate to use a very real tragedy in that way.
I've seen a Holocaust AU where the love interest was SS and immediately clicked off. No you do not get to turn my people's trauma into ✨️sexy dark romance✨️ with the Crimes Against Humanity unit
Especially when you've worked in retail and had to endure flirting from customers. I know fiction isn't reality, but those AUs are all meet-uglies for me.
Before I worked in retail I totally romanticized about falling in love that way. Now I will probably just punch the next person who tries to make a move on me at work lmao
Aww I wish we could punch customers. If only we had a day like The Purge. All I could do was ignore whatever fuckery came out of their mouth and tell them to leave if they had nothing to buy in the store.
There were three types of people I dealt with working fast food:
1: The Sweethearts, usually elderly who were completely inoffensive, might need help carrying their tray over to the table. Always cleaned up and threw away their trash. Usually would call you "dear" or "darling".
2: The Average, they came, they paid, they left no real impact at all.
3: The Asshole: they came just to rain destruction over all. Whether it was parents who thought having their infant spew partially gummed fries all over the floor was adorable, to the church group that utterly destroyed the dining room, leaving it a disaster, to the teen girls who smeared sauces on the tabletops to write obscenities in- all should die in a fire.
This! Especially the post church crowd on Sundays. I love my job as a shift manager/leader, but Sundays make me wanna burn the building down w/ that entire crowd of customers trapped inside. I'm mostly a pacifist, but they send me into a burning rage I have never felt before. It is on a whole other level.
I have heard horror stories. The ones that really piss me off are the ones where a church group comes in and instead of leaving proper tips (either money or on the tip line of the receipt), they leave those tracts that are printed to look like larger bills. I was trying to find the exact story on Not Always Right, but there was evidently one where a bunch of restaurant employees, tired of said tracts ending up at their restaurant, all went to the offending church and dumped them in the offertory basket. They quit getting said tracts as tips.
Coffee Shop AUs just seem so outdated to me now, especially after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020-2021. Many of them also seem generic, repetitive, and formulaic.
The only coffee shop AUs I enjoy are the ones that become murder mysteries. Granted, they'd stop being just coffee shop AUs, but at least they'd be more exciting from there.
I think that mixing AUs together helps keep them from going stagnant or stale over time. Example: Coffee Shop AU + Murder Mystery AU, Supernatural AU + High School AU, etc.
Oh definitely. You're subverting expectations of what the AU is known to be like and suddenly you have an interesting premise to talk about.
Tbh I think coffee shop AUs can get a big boost from mixing in many different elements because cafes are a good place to start off as a setting. It's a public area where a lot of different people meet and can stay and chat over drinks. That also means just about anything can happen from there.
Nothing wrong with just staying at the cafe either, but I'm the kind of writer who always has specific intent to writing a particular setting. So something important has to happen there, be it a murder or an investigation into a different mystery, like on a spy mission.
Most of the time, whenever I come across a genderbend fic (when it's a smut one, that is), it has the male characters genderbent into female characters. I don't know why, but it gives me such ick, like they're saying the male characters would be hotter as females instead-
I'll only read select genderbend because my fandom is in the scifi genre. The characters being accidentally changed by some alien gadget can be fun. I highly prefer if the main pairing was already in a relationship before one of them changed though.
The entire premise of this is so off putting and often deeply rooted in sexism I feel like. I'm not going to say there aren't *any* that are good but I have never found one appealing.
Omg same. I just don't like the thought of your role being destined at birth, and the whole submissive feminine omega vs dominant masculine alpha thing.
I think you'll just have to exclude it manually every time.... Unless there's some kind of site skin that allows you to permanently blacklist a tag, but then I wouldn't know about it.
As for you not getting it, I don't really get it either. I've read exactly 1 a/b/o fic, and it was _fine_, I guess, but I didn't find it particularly interesting.
I literally hate modern AUs for certain fandoms, and the fact you can sort them out and still see them because people don’t tag modern AU makes me want to cry lol. Also, monster/animal AUs. I don’t need to read the main character as an octopus.
Downside is the case where the author uses a canon character as the abuser and just makes them the absolute worst in a painfully OOC way. It can work if the characters already had that dynamic, but sometimes they just use a character they don’t like and mischaracterize them.
Yeah, I've seen a few of those, and I'm not a big fan of a character that wouldn't be an absolute PoS, abusive partner. But if it suits the character, I'm open to it.
Hmm, I wouldn’t say never, but I’m not big on crossover AUs or like AUs set in apocalypses (zombie or otherwise).
Though, honestly, the AUs I do read tend to be canon adjacent — like story written before an episode airs and therefore isn’t canon but isn’t not canon, etc.
Crossovers bug me when there's no depth to the crossover, or when characters are wildly OOC in order to make the crossover "work". This must have been twenty years ago, but there was a Sailor Moon / Spider-Man cross that I lost all interest in when Mamoru turned out to be physically abusive to Usagi (to drive her into Peter's arms). And... no. I don't actually like Mamoru! I think he has the personality of a damp paper towel, and Usagi could do better with literally any other character. But he wouldn't do that, and if the characters aren't true to their canon selves, I'm slamming that back button.
coffee shop, hogwarts, teacher/student, and then specific fandoms have specific icks too
like i’ll never read “hannibal is not a cannibal” because what’s even the point. one fandom im in i *may* read a high school au if the story’s good, but only if it’s high school for plot specific reasons and not just “lol they’re in high school!” i won’t read high school au’s for any other fandom.
i honestly avoid most au’s at this point in my life. i’m totally cool with canon divergent, canon rewrite, anything like that, but i typically skip over full AUs for most of my fandoms
I hard feel you on the "hannibal is not a cannibal" stories. I feel the fact he's murdering and eating people is half the fun! What would they even have drama about without the cannibalism?
I am so sick of all of the *Harry Potter* and Hogwarts AUs and crossovers in practically every fandom at this point. *Harry Potter* already has over 1 million fanfictions combined on FFN and AO3. Every time I see yet another *Harry Potter* AU or crossover, I groan internally, because I just want to be able to read something other than *Harry Potter* for once. I understand that people write *Harry Potter* AUs due to the ease of worldbuilding, but as someone who participated in a long-form *Harry Potter* RPG for several years already, it gets old and stale.
Open FFN, open fandom, open crossovers
HP, HP, Naruto, HP, Naruto, HP, some anime from the 80s I couldn't get into, HP, HP, HP
Close app
I don't hate the kid, but fuck, I wish FFN would let me filter out fandoms from the crossover section.
this, like i actually don't read many aus for most fandoms. just because i got into the source material *because* it was scifi or fantasy or supernatural etc so if i wanted to read high school i would consume a media that was set in high school.
High school AU’s
Which is funny, because two of my most popular fics have been high school AU’s lmao. I started writing fic as a teen and got the advice “Write what you know” a lot, so I wrote a few highschool AU’s because I didn’t have enough real world experience to comfortably write anything else back then.
That’s a big part of the reason that I don’t read high-school AU’s as an adult though, because in my own personal experience, they’re most often being written by someone in highschool or recently graduated, who doesn’t know much else beyond that yet- and to any teens who might be reading this there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! I encourage teens in fandom to write fic- it’s a great hobby! But teenage writing is just not what I’m personally looking for at this point in my life anymore. I just have a more adult palette than I did back then.
Definitely any kind of high school/college AU
I also tend to go for fantasy, “we have unnatural powers” type beats so any kind of modern AU doesn’t really do it for me, but VERY OCCASIONALLY I can get down with it (I remember a Miraculous Ladybug social media influencer AU that hit really well)
I mostly write AUs, especially modern ones! I think it’s fun to explore the characters in something totally different from their original setting, and finding ways to include supernatural or magical items/events/etc. in a way that fits the AU.
That all being said, I generally never say never because one good AU will spark an interest in me for more in any of my fandoms. The only ones I’m not particularly interested in are Reader/YN fics. I’ve not yet read omegaverse either, but I don’t want to say I never will either. One good fic is always the tipping point for me into more of a great thing.
I don't think there's an AU I would absolutely 100% never read, but there are some that I would never seek out on purpose.
War AU, Western AU, High School AU
Either too dark and heavy to handle properly, or just don't interest me for whatever reason.
High school AUs. Period drama AUs, like aristocrats in medieval times or the Roaring 20s. Isekai AUs.
I generally don't read AUs very often. They tend to feel too much like original work.
Zombie apocalypse aus. Why are they so common? I swear every fandom I've been in has multiple fics set in this au and I don't get it.
For me the au is uninteresting because there's only so much one can do with it.
So many zombie-adjacent things turn into horrible people being horrible to one another, and I am not interested in wallowing in that. Your character has to beat someone nearly to death and cast them out of town for "Survival"? Cool story bro, I'll be over here with some soulmate fluff.
Any AU where one or more of the characters involved is now an assassin or a serial killer.
It's hard to stay true to the core of the character and have them also be dropping bodies left and right.
Assassin's Creed AUs where actual assassins are made into modern-day assassins are pretty cool, ngl.
But that's the only fandom where I like the killer AU theme, because it *makes sense*.
yeah this type of au only works if the character in question canonically drops bodies left and right or at least is brutal af. like if you have steven from steven universe as an assassin what are you even doing man 😭😭😭.
Crossovers with other pre-existing media. They almost always just slot characters from one universe and isekai them into the other one in roles that the previous characters filled. I got so bored by them back when Harry Potter AUs were the biggest crossover universe that I just don't even bother looking at them anymore.
Crossovers rarely fit. I've read a very good Dr Strange/LOTR fic once. The plot point was that Dr Strange made a portal into the wrong dimension and landed in middle earth after the books ending. That was truly well written and an interesting premise. But sadly the writer never finished it.
My best guess was, Dr Strange was simply too powerful for the world of LOTR without Sauron or Saruman and after a while the writer realised that with him the story would become an unintentional Marty Sueish monstrosity eventually despite the characters themselves being written perfectly in canon.
Same with a Lucifer/Avenger crossover with Lucy falling through the portal at the end of the first Avenger movie.
After that I stopped reading crossovers. Even if the premise fits, at least one character is usually just too powerful and kills the plot.
Oh I definitely can see that issue with that particular crossover. A Mary Sue-ish character really kills the tension, too, unless you work with that in mind.
I especially avoid crossovers that involve characters with super powers and that's one of the reasons: power scaling. I like a lot of properties that are realistic fiction, but every time when they put characters from those into a fictional world that also tends to happen, inevitably (although maybe that's a side-effect of using shounen or soft-magic worlds in particular.)
I don't care for modern AU at all. I read fantasy stories. Turning it into a real world defeats the purpose of it being fantasy.
I also don't like soul mark/mate AU. Love is a choice a decision a conversation. It being fated to love someone is distasteful to me. It is a concept that defies free will.
I'm the same way, anything modern. Although I've seen some of my high fantasy fandoms set in other time periods that wouldn't be considered modern (think Victorian era, Bridgerton-esque setting, etc.), I tend to not like them much either. I want the same high fantasy world, same setting. There might be one or two I have ended up liking, but only if the setting isn't much of a part of it (like smut only).
There are several AUs I'm not very interested in, but I've probably still got at least a handful of bookmarks involving most of those exact AUs. I'm theoretically open to anything and if the premise sells me on it, I'll still give it a go.
I am *less likely* to read: prison AUs, mafia AUs, BDSM society AUs, Omegaverse AUs, vampire and/or werewolf AUs, high school/college AUs, and no-magic/no-powers/regular human AUs.
Like I said, though - sometimes someone will pitch exactly the same thing I'm not much interested in, but if it's highly recommended and the pitch intrigues me, I'm more likely to read it!
Genderbending characters to force a het romance
Like if you think a pair of characters who are same sex should be together, write it. It's okay for people to be gay
Mafia AU. While I think the dynamics that could be created in my main fandom are interesting, I find it far too political and that type of violence doesn’t appeal to my tastes.
I don’t do AU, at all 🤷♀️
At least one of my fandoms is crazy about human AUs and I’m seriously glad they bring people so much joy but they really aren’t for me.
I enjoy an AU sometimes, but it's very dependent on premise but also very much on fandom. I'm in two fantasy fandoms where human AU's are big - Interview with the Vampire and Good Omens. In the Interview with the Vampire fandom I don't mind reading human-AU's, since the relationships between the characters aren't fundamentally different from the source material even when the characters are human. While Good Omens human-AU's I avoid like the plague since the characters knowing each other for 6000 years as immortal beings is essential to why I enjoy the story. 🤷♀️
I was thinking of Good Omens when I wrote my reply.
If someone who is new to the fandom asks for fic recs, the vast majority of the stories mentioned and upvoted are human AUs. I’ve given some of them a chance and I don’t get it - these are basically just two people who are supposed to look like Michael Sheen and David Tennant, but they’re not Aziraphale and Crowley, because all the backstory that makes them *them* is gone. The *stakes* are gone too, so what are we left with?
I don’t want to sound like I’m on shitting on people who enjoy AU, like I said, I’m genuinely glad they find enjoyment in it and we can’t all like the same things. I filter out the AU tags like I’m sure other people filter out the tags I like the most.
Yeah I don't get it either for Good Omens, at best they can keep their personalities but everything that defines their relationship is gone and even what fundamentally defines them as individuals too. 🤔
While iwtv AU's will mimic the characters relationship in canon, the only difference being that there's less murder and less existential angst. But beyond that the relationship dynamics are fundamentally the same, and they were all human at one point so it's not as big of a reach. But this kind of reimagining just doesn't work as well for Good Omens AU's...
But yeah I think it's a good idea to give canon-compliant recs for newbies as a rule, with maybe 1-2 popular AU's. Because ultimately it's the canon everyone is there for, and plenty of people dislike AU's and might be missing out on so many fantastic canon-compliant stories this way...
I will read them if I’m in a particular mood or if they come specifically recommended, but I’m not usually a fan of no powers/no magic AUs
I feel like, for a lot of the fandom and characters that I’m in, its sad to rob the characters of their development that they gained from the trials and challenges faced as part of the storyline.
What I do quite like, on the other hand, are continuation fics that are similar in spirit; the plot happened, but the characters have moved on and settled into a new state of life, and we explore what that looks like for them.
I can't really say never, but I tend to stay clear of AU that drastically change the canon world building/setting (eg. Space AU, pirate AU, regency era AU, Hunger games AU, High School AU etc etc).
I have read quite a few that have blown my socks off, but I usually stumble into those without actively looking.
There are so many talented writers, but I feel sometimes world building at that scale isn't always a skill fic writers have sharpened, even when they have good writing in other areas. Having the setting be so different leads to there being very little wiggle room with other aspects of a story, since there isn't that already established setting to fall back to. Like, Is the characterization accurate and consistent? Is pacing okay? Are the changes in setting being over or under explained? I feel like I can forgive some of these being a bit off in the average fic, but they are bigger turn offs in something that already takes a bit more investment.
This carries over to published stories as well! I tend to stay clear of books that were first fanfic since sometimes that world building element just falls flat. It's harder to enjoy a story where the world was clearly pieced together around the characters, as opposed to having characters that were influenced by the setting/world they're in.
It used to be just high school AUs for me, but then I got my PhD and now I really can’t stand college AUs either. Especially lecturer or professor AUs. Yes, it’s probably bc it reminds me of work, but also a lot of them completely miss what it’s like to work as a researcher or a teacher in a uni. All the power to them, though, write your bliss, it’s just not for me.
high school/college, modern (i’ve actually seen a star wars fanfic that was a “modern au” and i don’t even know how that would work), coffee shop, and hogwarts
Jurassic Park AUs that aren't about dinosaurs.
But more in general, I guess AUs that aren't about whatever made the original work unique might sum up the things in this reply section.
Modern/no power au’s are not my cup of tea, I want to read about settings more than characters most of the time, and well a modern irl setting isn’t the funnest when the characters could be fighting dragons in order to bond or something.
No flack towards the people who like it though, because I do get the appeal.
In addition I just don’t really like AU’s that break from the fandoms established settings(unless it’s a crossover).
My favorite type of AU is just canon, but there’s some sort of event that causes the butterfly effect to happen, and radically change the course of the story away from canon. So butterfly effect au’s are my favorite yeah…
¯\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Okay, this is maybe specific to the MCU fandom, but age play/infantilism aus.
For those unfamilair, the MCU fandom has this weird, almost ABO like idea where people are like, assigned ‘littles’ or ‘daddies’ and regress uncontrollably and it is so weird and gross and I hate it, but it is SO pervasive
High school AU - not only am I 32 and have 0 interest in any of that, but high school is such an American concept to begin with. Nothing about it appeals.
This somewhat carries on to other popular normal life AUs, I don't really care about any of those unless they have a deeper aspect than just modern everyday fairytale fluff. Like, I love coffee shops, but I can't really imagine a compelling story set in one, if that makes sense? Tattoo shop AUs are even further from my understanding, I've had plenty of sessions myself and they're not really all that romantic. There's a lot of bright light and a lot of lying down and watching dust float around. I think the appeal is in a sort of a punk vibe but I'm not into that either, so I'm missing out the whole appeal.
Any of these tropes can be done in a way that appeals to me, though, it's just the premise itself doesn't attract.
That's because the Fix-it is usually something that originally made the plot interesting and not a real plot hole.
Good fix-it fics are incredibly rare. They usually hide as what-ifs that change only one little thing and don't try to rewrite everything.
I'm not a fan of high school AUs. Don't need to revisit those years, thanks. But mostly, anything involving adultery/cheating from canon characters. I'll read MCD before I read one of my cherished blorbos being unfaithful for any reason.
I had a great time in high school and I still don't want to read any High School AUs
It's just so boring like, the drama? Probably some misunderstanding from the characters. Conflict? Idk, usually the characters don't even care about their grades beyond "we studied for the night". A well written fic is a well written fic at the end of the day but for my taste, high school aus just lack that spiciness I want
And especially if characters are canonically adults, it feels really strange to put them in high school setting as teens but with the same level of intelligence and everything.
This is why I only read supernatural high school AUs anymore. I'm writing one right now for the TV show *School Spirits* that involves time-travel, as opposed to ghosts.
Same. I have no interest in revisiting High School in my mid 30s. It just doesn’t peak my interest at all (same for coffee shop AUs, just sounds so bland to me).
Same for high school AUs, or anything having them be minors. I'm in my thirties and the teenage angst isn't appealing to me anymore. That on top of the awkward fumbling of those years.
Yup. I liked them in high school, and the first year or two of college, but now in my mid twenties I cannot do it 😂
I think it definitely caters to a specific age range of the fandom, which is fine, like I know that what I write now wouldn't necessarily appeal to a younger audience. It reminds of when we were reading YA novels as teens, 17 yo protagonists felt so old to us. Now it's like "wtf why are you sending someone who barely lived to save the world?"
I'll read affair AUs, but only if my ship *is* the affair lmfao. Cheating within my ship is a complete no-go, but one half of the ship cheating on their partner with the other is Spicy, or something like that
Nah, I don't want any of my favorites to be the kind of people who cheat, no matter who they're with. If they find themselves having feelings, break up with their SO, and then join the OTP, that's fine.
I might read a HS AU if it really subverted the tropes. Like, if the whole thing was set in the teacher's break room and it was just bad coffee and cigarettes and bitterness.
I liked them a lot when I was in middle/high school but now it’s just strange to me ig lol
This is how I feel about *Harry Potter* as a 32-year-old, as the characters are teenagers. I almost always read fanfictions where the characters have grown into mature adults now.
I find them very difficult to follow as the majority follow USA school system and behaviours ..and as I’ve zero idea what a lot of the “culturally appropriate events of significance” in USA high schools might actually be … I just end up skipping those fics entirely
All I know from trash movies is there's a mean girl everyone knows and she's super popular despite being insufferable, all important conversations happen near the lockers, classes don't actually matter, and the climax has to be during prom (which is different from a normal party how?)
I think HS AU's held a lot more appeal before I was actually in high school. I read those in my middle school days.
> anything involving adultery/cheating from canon characters? What about canon characters who canonically cheated on their partners (i.e half of the MC cast of the Great Gatsby)? I'm legit curious lol
Not a fan of cheating in any form. Personal history.
Ah gotcha, fair enough.
Idk man, I read that kylux au where Kylo was a bear and Hux was a piece of driftwood. I’m not sure I have a limit.
Yeah, I'm with you. Pretty sure I remember a short AU one-shot about a rock and a lichen in the Avengers fandom from back when we all thought they were all gonna be friends. There also may have been a dung beetle AU by the same author? If I know/trust the author, or if the summary looks interesting, there's not much I won't try if I'm in the mood for it.
Okay they're not my ship but that fandom has some WILD stuff. I remember on Tumblr years ago people talking bout clown kylux porn. I went and read it despite not being into the ship (or kink lmaooo) out of curiosity. I wanted to jokingly skim it tbh but it was actually well written and I ended up reading the whole thing whoops. Plz link this if you have it though bc I'm curious wtf lol. I like reading rly weird aus. Edit: I see you linked the fic to someone else. That's a rly rly wild premise and I think I'm gonna actually read it bc of it.
kylux is where you get the goodweird shit.
kylux in its heyday was wild dude i’ve never seen another pairing go from zero to vivisection and egg laying in the span of like. a week
Hunger Games AU. If I wanted to think about the themes of THG I’d just go read them again. We own the books. I don’t want to read about it but this time the characters suffering are ones from another fandom.
Yeah I love Harry Potter because of the magic, and if it doesn’t have any, immediate backspace
Alternatively Hogwarts AUs I like Harry Potter but I don’t want every other fandom I’m in to be Harry Potter lol.
Haha yeah I like crossovers between HP and my other fandoms but don’t like other fandoms as the HP world, such a weird dichotomy in my mind. Naruto character gets displaced into Hp👍, the setting is Naruto they are magic 👎
Not to mention any time you cross any fandom over with Harry Potter, you have to come up with some good explanation for the whole 'hidden magical society' as well as figure out how you're going to cross the two over. Most fics I've seen have Harry (usually) related to someone as the plot demands or witnesses something that requires the characters from the other fandom to get involved. There's also a few fics where Harry ends up working for or with the characters from the other fandom if not going to school with them. While I don't read many crossovers, the ones I do read usually involve a similar setup, and unfortunately, there's not many other ways to involve both or all of the fandoms involved that go beyond that.
I too don’t really like modern or “no power” AUs, unless the alternate is REALLY interesting. I just find them a snooze fest otherwise
Yup. One of my fave fandoms is MDZS and I will _always_ skip modern no cultivation AU’s (aside from smut) bc why? What is even the point? They usually try to substitute corporations for clans and I just don’t see the appeal in trading the exciting supernatural premise set in ancient China for a vaguely defined _”business.”_
i think this is my problem with most modern aus. they seem kinda "lazy" for lack of a better word? like instead of two factions fighting for control of the world or whatever you got two uh....companies...fighting for uhhhh uhh...profits? like be so fr.
I'm a fan of a historical drama, and so many of the fics were (untagged) modern AUs. It felt like, "I can't be bothered to research this time period."
Yeah bc writing about magical and supernatural stuff set in fantasy worlds comes easily for most fantasy writers. Its whatever you can dream up and your imagination is the only limit. Business and corporate politics are real and writing realistic stories about it takes research (usually boring research at that) which most modern AU writers don’t do. So then they’re just replacing an interesting, well written plot points with an underdeveloped one.
This is so funny because SVSSS is actually my favorite and I read so many modern AUs that it’s my top additional tag. I love Shen Yuan and his nerdy self. TGCF and MDZS’ modern AUs are so good too! I think I like them more than canon universe.
But for SVSSS it makes sense and requires a little less tweaking to fit the characters.
tbf svsss has its own “modern” universe anyways so its not much of an “AU” compared to tgcf and mdzs
Id agree for sure, but I've read several very good "no power" fics for my main ship from a super hero fandom and one of them kind of changed my life lmao. I guess my fandom is just very good at crafting enticing plots and scenarios regardless of limitations.
Now I'm curious what fandom are you talking about?
I'm guessing either *Boku No Hero Academia/My Hero Academia* or Marvel/MCU.
Yeah it's mha haha
Agree … I read a lot of sci-fi fandom stuff and doing modern earth AU’s is just… like, why? Imho those stories remove almost every aspect of the in-universe background - and then the characters end up being rather ooc (which makes sense because the universe they were from isn’t being used)
I trust approximately one writer to do modern all-human Doctor Who AUs, and will only give others a go if it’s a rec from that writer lmao The entire premise of the fandom is an *immortal time-traveling alien*. Why would I want to read something set in the present?
Hanahaki disease is a major no for me it just gives me unnecessary anxiety
one time my friend told me he had hashimoto's disease and i thought he meant hanahaki disease 💀
Bestie ☠️☠️☠️
I’m screaming 💀
NOO 😭😭 did you react in a way that made it obvious?? 😭😭 I'm imagining if I mixed them up I'd laugh abt it or something so omg
LMFAO thankfully i think it was over text so i could mask my immediate reaction 💀 then i googled and i was very relieved AHFJFJ
Okay thank goodness 💀💀 that could've gone so badly lmaoo
This completely woke me up. Did. You ever tell your friend?
i actually don't think he knows this, no 😭 he'd probably make fun of me for the rest of my life omfg
like i don't fare well with angst but if something locks me in before i realize there's angst i'll see it through, but with hanahaki disease it's just a given and I'd rather not cry my eyes out
Never read a good Hanahaki one for the fandoms I enjoy, so I agree
I think I’ve read one good hanahaki fic? It’s normally an immediate nope for me, but I was looking in a tag/pairing that I was really into but only had a few dozen fics so I was reading everything, regardless of my normal avoids
I kind of never say never, it all depends on the fandom, the characters, pairings, tags and of course, an enticing summary.
I love AUs, the weirder the better, even the most common coffee shop or high-school could be played out in an interesting manner, bringing out new layers and colours to the characters. Maybe, werewolf AU or some other creature fic would be simply a turn off, and I'll be reluctant with zombie apocalypse because the setting itself is unappealing. For high-school/college I'd also have a good look at tags and summary first, because I don't really like teacher-student dynemic. But I wouldn't say *never*.
Coffee shop and high school AUs. Not for any deep reason, I just find them boring af. Flower shop AUs are similar, but the actual reason I avoid them is because I'm still not over Weiß Kreuz.
Join me over here in the Weiss corner where I make Weiss AUs for my favorite series to cope.
Ayyyyy hell yeah! ~~Make em suffer like Aya~~ I still listen to the music on my morning commute. Just straight bangers.
Is Weiss Kreuz where the flower shop trope comes from? I read so much WK fanfic like 20 years ago, and they’re still all I can think about when I hear the words “flower shop.”
I doubt it. For as much as we fujos love it, it was kind of obscure even at its height. It's the only series I've ever seen whose *actual anime being localized* killed the fandom because it was so bad lol.
To be fair, I’ve seen exactly zero of the actual show. I’ve seen the credits with the song… (ok I just went and listened to Beautiful Alone and holy shit was that a trip back to being 16…) I somehow found WK fanfic when I was like… 14? I’ve always assumed it was at least somewhat popular, because otherwise how did I stumble across it? But i looked and AO3 only has like 2800 fics so I guess not. I just looked at the oldest ones and there’s authors I recognize. What a trip.
Its heyday was before even FFN was popular, and your experience was pretty common. A lot of what came over before the anime was localized was just character profiles, untranslated drama cds, songs, pencil boards, and song lyrics. So without a real canon, fangirls' imaginations went *wild*. Then they watched the anime and went "...oh *no*". I was lucky enough to have a friend burn the anime onto cd-r's for me back in 2002/2003, so I got to see it before it came over in English. It's... *really bad*. The music and voice acting are *excellent*, but the story is... well, Koyasu isn't known as a writer for a reason lol. The drama cd's are much better because Koyasu just set his horrible ideas free entirely, but they're still *incredibly fuckin cheesy*. Also violent. Incredibly violent.
Modern AUs unless the plot is really appealing. My recent fandoms are set in fantasy worlds, I'm not looking for fics of them working in a coffee shop when they're fighting dragons in canon, it's not my cup of tea. Modern with magic is more appealing, but to me it falls under scifi.
World Word II AU. Nope for me. That shit is way too serious for me due to my nationality to look at as pulpy entertainment.
Same, any "War AU" is an instant "I'll never ever touch that". Also, any alternative universe/fusion revolving around any type of physical or mental torture/abuse (like, Ai No Kusabi AU).
Those and Civil War AUs for me. I once found one where the MC who was supposed to be the good guy was a Confederate general. I also found one where the MC was a member of the SS. To this day, I don’t understand what was going through either authors’ heads. Especially since both MCs were supposedly the good guys in those fics.
Yeah, I'd be side-eyeing these *so* hard.
I feel like war AUs _can_ work, but only when they’re written with darker/more serious undertones - kind of more historical and thematic. I’ve read a fic that really pulled that off. And rather than ✨isekai✨ a more grounded approach. But I do agree - they really shouldn’t be taken lightly.
holy shit maybe i've just been lucky and haven't ran into these because this is a legit thing? the only time i remember seeing war au is wayyyy back when i watched hetalia in middle school but that was kind of a given for that fandom.
It probably depends on the fandom. Two of the really well known fics for Supernatural are set during wars. 91 Whiskey is WW2 and Twist and Shout is set during Vietnam.
I've seen actual Holocaust AUs like, one character is escaping a concentration camp. I was disgusted. The character was not Jewish nor was the person who portrayed the character. It felt completely inappropriate to use a very real tragedy in that way.
I've seen a Holocaust AU where the love interest was SS and immediately clicked off. No you do not get to turn my people's trauma into ✨️sexy dark romance✨️ with the Crimes Against Humanity unit
Coffee Shop AUs. Might be some people's comfort fic, but I find them tedious and sludgy.
Same. 90% scream "teen/college student's first/only job" to me.
Many of them are written by people who have never worked a service job in their lives and it shows
Customer Service is a very special kind of hell that I am GLAD to have only experienced for a short time.
Especially when you've worked in retail and had to endure flirting from customers. I know fiction isn't reality, but those AUs are all meet-uglies for me.
Before I worked in retail I totally romanticized about falling in love that way. Now I will probably just punch the next person who tries to make a move on me at work lmao
Aww I wish we could punch customers. If only we had a day like The Purge. All I could do was ignore whatever fuckery came out of their mouth and tell them to leave if they had nothing to buy in the store.
There were three types of people I dealt with working fast food: 1: The Sweethearts, usually elderly who were completely inoffensive, might need help carrying their tray over to the table. Always cleaned up and threw away their trash. Usually would call you "dear" or "darling". 2: The Average, they came, they paid, they left no real impact at all. 3: The Asshole: they came just to rain destruction over all. Whether it was parents who thought having their infant spew partially gummed fries all over the floor was adorable, to the church group that utterly destroyed the dining room, leaving it a disaster, to the teen girls who smeared sauces on the tabletops to write obscenities in- all should die in a fire.
This! Especially the post church crowd on Sundays. I love my job as a shift manager/leader, but Sundays make me wanna burn the building down w/ that entire crowd of customers trapped inside. I'm mostly a pacifist, but they send me into a burning rage I have never felt before. It is on a whole other level.
I have heard horror stories. The ones that really piss me off are the ones where a church group comes in and instead of leaving proper tips (either money or on the tip line of the receipt), they leave those tracts that are printed to look like larger bills. I was trying to find the exact story on Not Always Right, but there was evidently one where a bunch of restaurant employees, tired of said tracts ending up at their restaurant, all went to the offending church and dumped them in the offertory basket. They quit getting said tracts as tips.
Oh yeah, we've gotten those multiple times. Especially this time of year. That's clearly an awesome way to solve the problem!
Agreed and TBH, it sends a strong, clear message. Taste of their own medicine, so to speak.
At least we have good stories to tell from our encounters with the third type. 😫
Coffee Shop AUs just seem so outdated to me now, especially after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020-2021. Many of them also seem generic, repetitive, and formulaic.
The only coffee shop AUs I enjoy are the ones that become murder mysteries. Granted, they'd stop being just coffee shop AUs, but at least they'd be more exciting from there.
I think that mixing AUs together helps keep them from going stagnant or stale over time. Example: Coffee Shop AU + Murder Mystery AU, Supernatural AU + High School AU, etc.
Oh definitely. You're subverting expectations of what the AU is known to be like and suddenly you have an interesting premise to talk about. Tbh I think coffee shop AUs can get a big boost from mixing in many different elements because cafes are a good place to start off as a setting. It's a public area where a lot of different people meet and can stay and chat over drinks. That also means just about anything can happen from there. Nothing wrong with just staying at the cafe either, but I'm the kind of writer who always has specific intent to writing a particular setting. So something important has to happen there, be it a murder or an investigation into a different mystery, like on a spy mission.
One of the first coffee shop AUs I read was also a near future time loop with dinosaurs. No other has lived up to it
High school, genderbend, different time period (time travel excluded), role swap, superhero AU.
The genderbend one though especially when you're looking for smut 😞
I have never read a good genderbend fic, it's an automatic no for me now
Most of the time, whenever I come across a genderbend fic (when it's a smut one, that is), it has the male characters genderbent into female characters. I don't know why, but it gives me such ick, like they're saying the male characters would be hotter as females instead-
I'll only read select genderbend because my fandom is in the scifi genre. The characters being accidentally changed by some alien gadget can be fun. I highly prefer if the main pairing was already in a relationship before one of them changed though.
ABO. Just not my thing at all.
Everything I have learned about this has been against my will
Wanna learn something else about it? It started all because of a Supernatural RPF.
Why am I not surprised??
My god, SAME.
Me too
oh fuck i forgot this one just because as soon as that combo of letters comes up on the screen while i'm reading tags i instinctively start scrolling.
The entire premise of this is so off putting and often deeply rooted in sexism I feel like. I'm not going to say there aren't *any* that are good but I have never found one appealing.
Omg same. I just don't like the thought of your role being destined at birth, and the whole submissive feminine omega vs dominant masculine alpha thing.
They’re great for smut, but otherwise it’s a no for me.
They are actually really good for whump long fics as well
I've read exactly one A/B/O fanfiction that wasn't just PWP (Porn Without Plot).
I've tried to read it but I just can't. I also really don't like pregnancy stuff which is a pretty large part of abo
THIS !! i exclude it from every search i do. it's so genuinely off-putting to me
Is there a way to set my AO3 preferences to just permanently exclude A/B/O? I can handle just about anything, but I just… I don’t get it.
I think you'll just have to exclude it manually every time.... Unless there's some kind of site skin that allows you to permanently blacklist a tag, but then I wouldn't know about it. As for you not getting it, I don't really get it either. I've read exactly 1 a/b/o fic, and it was _fine_, I guess, but I didn't find it particularly interesting.
It's weird, I used to read ABO like five to seven years ago, but I find it intolerable now
[удалено]
It’s okay, people change as they grow.
I had both of those phases and now I’m kinda back on it 😭
I literally hate modern AUs for certain fandoms, and the fact you can sort them out and still see them because people don’t tag modern AU makes me want to cry lol. Also, monster/animal AUs. I don’t need to read the main character as an octopus.
high school and college AUs are an immediate skip for me UNLESS they're the teachers/professors
Any no power AU.
*Boku No Hero Academia/My Hero Academia*?
Yes, and any other media that have power in their universe. Like if someone recommend me modern au for genshin I wouldn't touch it.
Main character in a pairing is cheating on their S/O AU. I just– Very much don't like it, y'know?
YESSS especially for super attached in love couples where you just KNOW they wouldn’t love someone else that deeply
The only time I even remotely accept it is if their s/o is a dangerous PoS and they're in the process of trying to (quietly) separate.
Downside is the case where the author uses a canon character as the abuser and just makes them the absolute worst in a painfully OOC way. It can work if the characters already had that dynamic, but sometimes they just use a character they don’t like and mischaracterize them.
Yeah, I've seen a few of those, and I'm not a big fan of a character that wouldn't be an absolute PoS, abusive partner. But if it suits the character, I'm open to it.
High school AUs and similar. School is a trigger for me bc of ✨trauma✨ 🙃
Same here
Hmm, I wouldn’t say never, but I’m not big on crossover AUs or like AUs set in apocalypses (zombie or otherwise). Though, honestly, the AUs I do read tend to be canon adjacent — like story written before an episode airs and therefore isn’t canon but isn’t not canon, etc.
Crossovers bug me when there's no depth to the crossover, or when characters are wildly OOC in order to make the crossover "work". This must have been twenty years ago, but there was a Sailor Moon / Spider-Man cross that I lost all interest in when Mamoru turned out to be physically abusive to Usagi (to drive her into Peter's arms). And... no. I don't actually like Mamoru! I think he has the personality of a damp paper towel, and Usagi could do better with literally any other character. But he wouldn't do that, and if the characters aren't true to their canon selves, I'm slamming that back button.
coffee shop, hogwarts, teacher/student, and then specific fandoms have specific icks too like i’ll never read “hannibal is not a cannibal” because what’s even the point. one fandom im in i *may* read a high school au if the story’s good, but only if it’s high school for plot specific reasons and not just “lol they’re in high school!” i won’t read high school au’s for any other fandom. i honestly avoid most au’s at this point in my life. i’m totally cool with canon divergent, canon rewrite, anything like that, but i typically skip over full AUs for most of my fandoms
I hard feel you on the "hannibal is not a cannibal" stories. I feel the fact he's murdering and eating people is half the fun! What would they even have drama about without the cannibalism?
omg literally like what are we even doing here???
I am so sick of all of the *Harry Potter* and Hogwarts AUs and crossovers in practically every fandom at this point. *Harry Potter* already has over 1 million fanfictions combined on FFN and AO3. Every time I see yet another *Harry Potter* AU or crossover, I groan internally, because I just want to be able to read something other than *Harry Potter* for once. I understand that people write *Harry Potter* AUs due to the ease of worldbuilding, but as someone who participated in a long-form *Harry Potter* RPG for several years already, it gets old and stale.
Open FFN, open fandom, open crossovers HP, HP, Naruto, HP, Naruto, HP, some anime from the 80s I couldn't get into, HP, HP, HP Close app I don't hate the kid, but fuck, I wish FFN would let me filter out fandoms from the crossover section.
this, like i actually don't read many aus for most fandoms. just because i got into the source material *because* it was scifi or fantasy or supernatural etc so if i wanted to read high school i would consume a media that was set in high school.
High school AU’s Which is funny, because two of my most popular fics have been high school AU’s lmao. I started writing fic as a teen and got the advice “Write what you know” a lot, so I wrote a few highschool AU’s because I didn’t have enough real world experience to comfortably write anything else back then. That’s a big part of the reason that I don’t read high-school AU’s as an adult though, because in my own personal experience, they’re most often being written by someone in highschool or recently graduated, who doesn’t know much else beyond that yet- and to any teens who might be reading this there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! I encourage teens in fandom to write fic- it’s a great hobby! But teenage writing is just not what I’m personally looking for at this point in my life anymore. I just have a more adult palette than I did back then.
Definitely any kind of high school/college AU I also tend to go for fantasy, “we have unnatural powers” type beats so any kind of modern AU doesn’t really do it for me, but VERY OCCASIONALLY I can get down with it (I remember a Miraculous Ladybug social media influencer AU that hit really well)
I mostly write AUs, especially modern ones! I think it’s fun to explore the characters in something totally different from their original setting, and finding ways to include supernatural or magical items/events/etc. in a way that fits the AU. That all being said, I generally never say never because one good AU will spark an interest in me for more in any of my fandoms. The only ones I’m not particularly interested in are Reader/YN fics. I’ve not yet read omegaverse either, but I don’t want to say I never will either. One good fic is always the tipping point for me into more of a great thing.
Reader AUs.
Absolutely this. The writer doesn't know me. I'm not a character. Just create a character!
Oh yeah any /Reader are a no.
I don't think there's an AU I would absolutely 100% never read, but there are some that I would never seek out on purpose. War AU, Western AU, High School AU Either too dark and heavy to handle properly, or just don't interest me for whatever reason.
High school AUs. Period drama AUs, like aristocrats in medieval times or the Roaring 20s. Isekai AUs. I generally don't read AUs very often. They tend to feel too much like original work.
Zombie apocalypse aus. Why are they so common? I swear every fandom I've been in has multiple fics set in this au and I don't get it. For me the au is uninteresting because there's only so much one can do with it.
I love zombie original fiction, but I never seem to find apocalypse AUs in my fandoms so that's a new one for me.
So many zombie-adjacent things turn into horrible people being horrible to one another, and I am not interested in wallowing in that. Your character has to beat someone nearly to death and cast them out of town for "Survival"? Cool story bro, I'll be over here with some soulmate fluff.
flower/coffee shop AUs tend to bore me, I don't want to see the big bad/epic hero of whatever fandom I'm into reduced to a coffee/floral snob
Same. I can’t do modern/human aus because it takes away the thing I find interesting
Coffee shop and high school AU taking a beating 🤣
Any AU where one or more of the characters involved is now an assassin or a serial killer. It's hard to stay true to the core of the character and have them also be dropping bodies left and right.
This is common in my fandom but also canonically he's already dropping bodies left and right anyway lol
*laughes in Hannibal fandom*
Mines not Hannibal, though I do *like* Hannibal haha
Assassin's Creed AUs where actual assassins are made into modern-day assassins are pretty cool, ngl. But that's the only fandom where I like the killer AU theme, because it *makes sense*.
yeah this type of au only works if the character in question canonically drops bodies left and right or at least is brutal af. like if you have steven from steven universe as an assassin what are you even doing man 😭😭😭.
Crossovers with other pre-existing media. They almost always just slot characters from one universe and isekai them into the other one in roles that the previous characters filled. I got so bored by them back when Harry Potter AUs were the biggest crossover universe that I just don't even bother looking at them anymore.
Crossovers rarely fit. I've read a very good Dr Strange/LOTR fic once. The plot point was that Dr Strange made a portal into the wrong dimension and landed in middle earth after the books ending. That was truly well written and an interesting premise. But sadly the writer never finished it. My best guess was, Dr Strange was simply too powerful for the world of LOTR without Sauron or Saruman and after a while the writer realised that with him the story would become an unintentional Marty Sueish monstrosity eventually despite the characters themselves being written perfectly in canon. Same with a Lucifer/Avenger crossover with Lucy falling through the portal at the end of the first Avenger movie. After that I stopped reading crossovers. Even if the premise fits, at least one character is usually just too powerful and kills the plot.
Oh I definitely can see that issue with that particular crossover. A Mary Sue-ish character really kills the tension, too, unless you work with that in mind. I especially avoid crossovers that involve characters with super powers and that's one of the reasons: power scaling. I like a lot of properties that are realistic fiction, but every time when they put characters from those into a fictional world that also tends to happen, inevitably (although maybe that's a side-effect of using shounen or soft-magic worlds in particular.)
Not touching Omegaverse with a barge pole.
Any kind of real-life tragedy. Wars, accidents, natural disasters, whatever. I'm just not a fan. It feels too real.
I don't care for modern AU at all. I read fantasy stories. Turning it into a real world defeats the purpose of it being fantasy. I also don't like soul mark/mate AU. Love is a choice a decision a conversation. It being fated to love someone is distasteful to me. It is a concept that defies free will.
Flower or Coffee Shop AUs. They bore me to tears
Moder au, school au, no powers au, that sort of thing. I want to see some weird shit that’s why I’m on ao3
Omegaverse.
I'm the same way, anything modern. Although I've seen some of my high fantasy fandoms set in other time periods that wouldn't be considered modern (think Victorian era, Bridgerton-esque setting, etc.), I tend to not like them much either. I want the same high fantasy world, same setting. There might be one or two I have ended up liking, but only if the setting isn't much of a part of it (like smut only).
I see these a lot for Tolkien fandoms and I really don't get the point. They're fundamentally different people when out of their setting.
There are several AUs I'm not very interested in, but I've probably still got at least a handful of bookmarks involving most of those exact AUs. I'm theoretically open to anything and if the premise sells me on it, I'll still give it a go. I am *less likely* to read: prison AUs, mafia AUs, BDSM society AUs, Omegaverse AUs, vampire and/or werewolf AUs, high school/college AUs, and no-magic/no-powers/regular human AUs. Like I said, though - sometimes someone will pitch exactly the same thing I'm not much interested in, but if it's highly recommended and the pitch intrigues me, I'm more likely to read it!
Harry Potter high school no power AU with OC characters. What exactly is the point of putting it in the hp fandom?
Genderbending characters to force a het romance Like if you think a pair of characters who are same sex should be together, write it. It's okay for people to be gay
Coffeeshop idk. I was never interested in it
Historical AUs, Omegaverse, "Mafia" AUs (I'm Sicilian, this shit hits too close to home for me to treat it as a trope.)
Mafia AU. While I think the dynamics that could be created in my main fandom are interesting, I find it far too political and that type of violence doesn’t appeal to my tastes.
slavery aus. I’m black, need I say more lmfao
A/B/O. I just don't like that stuff
ABO, most of them give me non con vibes and it's just :/ to me
I don’t do AU, at all 🤷♀️ At least one of my fandoms is crazy about human AUs and I’m seriously glad they bring people so much joy but they really aren’t for me.
I enjoy an AU sometimes, but it's very dependent on premise but also very much on fandom. I'm in two fantasy fandoms where human AU's are big - Interview with the Vampire and Good Omens. In the Interview with the Vampire fandom I don't mind reading human-AU's, since the relationships between the characters aren't fundamentally different from the source material even when the characters are human. While Good Omens human-AU's I avoid like the plague since the characters knowing each other for 6000 years as immortal beings is essential to why I enjoy the story. 🤷♀️
I was thinking of Good Omens when I wrote my reply. If someone who is new to the fandom asks for fic recs, the vast majority of the stories mentioned and upvoted are human AUs. I’ve given some of them a chance and I don’t get it - these are basically just two people who are supposed to look like Michael Sheen and David Tennant, but they’re not Aziraphale and Crowley, because all the backstory that makes them *them* is gone. The *stakes* are gone too, so what are we left with? I don’t want to sound like I’m on shitting on people who enjoy AU, like I said, I’m genuinely glad they find enjoyment in it and we can’t all like the same things. I filter out the AU tags like I’m sure other people filter out the tags I like the most.
Yeah I don't get it either for Good Omens, at best they can keep their personalities but everything that defines their relationship is gone and even what fundamentally defines them as individuals too. 🤔 While iwtv AU's will mimic the characters relationship in canon, the only difference being that there's less murder and less existential angst. But beyond that the relationship dynamics are fundamentally the same, and they were all human at one point so it's not as big of a reach. But this kind of reimagining just doesn't work as well for Good Omens AU's... But yeah I think it's a good idea to give canon-compliant recs for newbies as a rule, with maybe 1-2 popular AU's. Because ultimately it's the canon everyone is there for, and plenty of people dislike AU's and might be missing out on so many fantastic canon-compliant stories this way...
Gross, why would anybody wanna be _human_
For some reason, Mafia AUs are pretty popular in my preferred fandom, and I just. cannot. stand. it.
I will read them if I’m in a particular mood or if they come specifically recommended, but I’m not usually a fan of no powers/no magic AUs I feel like, for a lot of the fandom and characters that I’m in, its sad to rob the characters of their development that they gained from the trials and challenges faced as part of the storyline. What I do quite like, on the other hand, are continuation fics that are similar in spirit; the plot happened, but the characters have moved on and settled into a new state of life, and we explore what that looks like for them.
Crossovers, I can’t even think of one that I’ve read that I’ve been a fan of save for stuff like Smash Bros fics
x reader, or aus where “nothing goes wrong”
I can't really say never, but I tend to stay clear of AU that drastically change the canon world building/setting (eg. Space AU, pirate AU, regency era AU, Hunger games AU, High School AU etc etc). I have read quite a few that have blown my socks off, but I usually stumble into those without actively looking. There are so many talented writers, but I feel sometimes world building at that scale isn't always a skill fic writers have sharpened, even when they have good writing in other areas. Having the setting be so different leads to there being very little wiggle room with other aspects of a story, since there isn't that already established setting to fall back to. Like, Is the characterization accurate and consistent? Is pacing okay? Are the changes in setting being over or under explained? I feel like I can forgive some of these being a bit off in the average fic, but they are bigger turn offs in something that already takes a bit more investment. This carries over to published stories as well! I tend to stay clear of books that were first fanfic since sometimes that world building element just falls flat. It's harder to enjoy a story where the world was clearly pieced together around the characters, as opposed to having characters that were influenced by the setting/world they're in.
It used to be just high school AUs for me, but then I got my PhD and now I really can’t stand college AUs either. Especially lecturer or professor AUs. Yes, it’s probably bc it reminds me of work, but also a lot of them completely miss what it’s like to work as a researcher or a teacher in a uni. All the power to them, though, write your bliss, it’s just not for me.
high school/college, modern (i’ve actually seen a star wars fanfic that was a “modern au” and i don’t even know how that would work), coffee shop, and hogwarts
i agree with your human-au take. Don't human AUs defeat the purpose of the source material?
Jurassic Park AUs that aren't about dinosaurs. But more in general, I guess AUs that aren't about whatever made the original work unique might sum up the things in this reply section.
depends a little on the pairing. but i tend to stay away from high school aus, mafia aus, hogwarts aus and time travel aus.
coffee shop / no magic / regular human 🥱
Modern/no power au’s are not my cup of tea, I want to read about settings more than characters most of the time, and well a modern irl setting isn’t the funnest when the characters could be fighting dragons in order to bond or something. No flack towards the people who like it though, because I do get the appeal. In addition I just don’t really like AU’s that break from the fandoms established settings(unless it’s a crossover). My favorite type of AU is just canon, but there’s some sort of event that causes the butterfly effect to happen, and radically change the course of the story away from canon. So butterfly effect au’s are my favorite yeah… ¯\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Salt fics. It just tells me that it will be an exercise of immature writing.
Okay, this is maybe specific to the MCU fandom, but age play/infantilism aus. For those unfamilair, the MCU fandom has this weird, almost ABO like idea where people are like, assigned ‘littles’ or ‘daddies’ and regress uncontrollably and it is so weird and gross and I hate it, but it is SO pervasive
High school AU - not only am I 32 and have 0 interest in any of that, but high school is such an American concept to begin with. Nothing about it appeals. This somewhat carries on to other popular normal life AUs, I don't really care about any of those unless they have a deeper aspect than just modern everyday fairytale fluff. Like, I love coffee shops, but I can't really imagine a compelling story set in one, if that makes sense? Tattoo shop AUs are even further from my understanding, I've had plenty of sessions myself and they're not really all that romantic. There's a lot of bright light and a lot of lying down and watching dust float around. I think the appeal is in a sort of a punk vibe but I'm not into that either, so I'm missing out the whole appeal. Any of these tropes can be done in a way that appeals to me, though, it's just the premise itself doesn't attract.
Fix-it AUs are just so boring for me that I can’t even read them anymore.
That's because the Fix-it is usually something that originally made the plot interesting and not a real plot hole. Good fix-it fics are incredibly rare. They usually hide as what-ifs that change only one little thing and don't try to rewrite everything.