Fanfic genre I don't get: Real World AU's

[jpub]

You know, those ones where everyone's just a normal person. For example, in Buffyverse the vamps are humans, there's no Slayers, or Witches, or Werewolves. Or in any DC universe, the ones where the JLA are all normal non-powered people who just happen to know each other.
Really, I don't get them. At that point, where you've completely changed the world and the characters that much, isn't it just original fiction? I mean, in a lot of them I've skimmed I could easily replace all the names with random ones pulled from my Spam filter and it'd be a decent OF.
Could someone explain this genre to me? What's the attraction?
Note: This was posted to my LJ, but I realized from the lack of response if I really want to see a discussion on this I need to put it in the right community, aka here.--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel

[Sweno]

I got no clue-Terry
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"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint Exupery
"Luge strategy? Lie flat and try not to die." - Carmen Boyle (Olympic Luge Gold Medal winner - 1996)
Mary Sue's theme music
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[Rieverre]

... fangirls like to play pretend?
*shakes head*
It offends my sensibilities, to be honest. I mean, it violates the 1st Law, for cryin' out loud.
'If you're going to have delusions, you might as well make them really satisfying ones.'
And they take a perfectly good setting and change it to *ick* high school, for instance. With _Intense_ _Angsting_ _Action_ ... and oft-spotted yaoi subplots.
Go browse a Final Fantasy archive to find multiple examples of such.
Personally, I swore to myself never to read one of these after browsing through the Legacy of Kain fanfic section and stumbling to a halt over the summary of a Kain/Raziel highschool slash fic. Whereupon I got up and introduced my head to the wall, repeatedly, to try and bludgeon the memory from my mind.
...
...
...
I'd like to show one of these atrocities to Haruhi and watch the fireworks. After all, it's almost the exact oposite of her life philosophy - they take the unusual and interesting, and turn it into the mundane and mindless.

-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[mrfix186]

heh, not run accross many of them before

Take AU to 10th lvl and be nuts about it.
I can understand.... hummm Green Lantern wakeing up in a non-super universe and trying to live with loss of his powers or something.D">
But total change... along with them still being ah heroes without powers... as said before in this thread.... just using the names as a skin to their original chars.
Or you need a really in depth plot to bring it together ;o

[Elsa Bibat]

Well, from what I can tell, most of the writers are _in_ High School and they probably want to write something like an original fic but originals are so lame, d00dz. Then they get the brilliant idea of using characters from that cartoon they liked so they could post it to ff.net - where they clog up the drains.

[deadpan29]

I think Elsa has the crux of it. They want to write a story that is something like their real lives or what they imagine their real lives could be, but instead of inventing new characters or using the people around them in a more direct fashion, they sorta-kinda use ones from another story.
If they were using characters from settings close to the real world, it could work. Unfortunatly, by trying to "normalize" half-demons, super-martial-artists, aliens, and the like, they manage to wreck the story both as fanfic or as original fic.
I've seen a number of these based on InuYasha or Ruroni Kenshin.
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No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

[Disruptor]

I've seen a number of them based on Slayers.
Lina Inverse is not a baseball player or an idol singer, she is a sorceress
Having to hunt for decent fics is bad enough. Add in that nonsense, it gets appalling.
If you want to write about high school, then use a show or story that focuses on High School. Saved By the Bell, Galaxy High, etc.--------------------
Tom Mathews aka Disruptor
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Tom Mathews aka Disruptor

[Necratoid]

Elsa Bibat had the first part... its a name dropping thing. More people will read your story if its in a section of fanfiction they are already read. However I feel this high school no powers land is a subgenera of the 'Name-drooping-is-cool' stories.
I remember one where the guy renamed Slade from Technoman as Ranma, reworking both their personalities mostly, and dropped him in a Vandread fusion. All aspects that made Ranma Ranma were removed except that he had mad MA skills. No curse, no neko-ken, no confidence/abandonment issues, constantly smooth with the ladies. Rename him 'Bob' and its an original character. Non-Ranma 'Ranma' was the only reason it was in the more frequented Ranma section was it would get more hits and reviews. I thing it was called Tekka-dread.
You have to remember that many writers write about the aspects of the story that click them personally. Some people concentrate on battles and leave the character interaction in the dust. Others write to make two or more people an item, the rest of the fic is often badly prepared icing. The high school genre with no powers is for those that like the character interactions and think the powers and environment detract from them at some level (barring name dropping and the writer being deluded about what did and didnt happen in the show). People write about the sections of the story that click with them. They may like the other bits, but aren't that good working with them.
For instance I've seen Disrupter often credited with good scenarios and settings... but having flat character interaction. That and glossing things to get to the good parts. If he co-wrote with a person just for the dialog he could get an over all better story. The thing is that most writers dont work in a cabal of writers that can fill in their personal gaps of skill. Many of the high school writers are probably new at writing... so they are concentrating on one area. (Not knocking Disrupter, just any example I know of.)
I'd also like to note that those that like to write yaoi (female, early to mid teens) are also the age that loves boy bands. The common justification that isn't a fetish I've seen is that those two looks 'sssssooooooo cccuuuuuttteee!!!' Standing next to each other. Rational thinking isn't part of the equation. These grow up to the High School genre.
On a side note I remember that in Slayers 'Next' or 'Try' there is an eye catch that features Gourry and Zelgadis in what look like high school uniforms, gazing deeply into each other's eyes... at which point the screen cracks down the middle and one half puts up and the other down. Basically proof to me that 1) the Japanese had writers doing that kind of thing first and 2) The Slayers people went ick.

[Jenova Silverstar]

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I remember one where the guy renamed Slade from Technoman as Ranma, reworking both their personalities mostly, and dropped him in a Vandread fusion. All aspects that made Ranma Ranma were removed except that he had mad MA skills. No curse, no neko-ken, no confidence/abandonment issues, constantly smooth with the ladies. Rename him 'Bob' and its an original character. Non-Ranma 'Ranma' was the only reason it was in the more frequented Ranma section was it would get more hits and reviews. I thing it was called Tekka-dread.

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I've read that. It's by Hung Nguyen aka Animeaddiction. Some of his fics are over the top crazy. (some of them are crazy in a good way.)
"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."
--Dr. Seuss

[Morganite]

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Lina Inverse is not a baseball player or an idol singer

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... But she does make a pretty good computer hacker...
-Morgan. "I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, or espers here, come sleep with me."
---From "The Ecchi of Haruhi Suzumiya"
-----(Not really)

[darwithe]

Yup, once in a big fat while, if you are really lucky, you'll have a story with the real life AU puttering along, and then it suddenly takes a left turn at Albuquerque where lo and behold, it suddenly makes sense to use the anime characters instead of originals.
Unfortunately these are not only really rare, but even harder to find.

[Acyl]

I'm just gonna play Devil's advocate for a moment.
I can see the point. Kind of.
See, it depends on what you consider the essence of a series to be.
If you look at a given series in terms of themes and character interactions...then it might be possible to write about the characters in an AU 'real world' setting - while remaining 'true' to the source.
Take Naruto, for example. The series has overarching themes about alienation, discrimination, teamwork, and so on. We've got Naruto, a kid who's incredibly optimistic despite (or perhaps because of) his circumstances, who will fight for his friends. There's Rock Lee, who tells us that you can do anything with hard work and perseverance. Then there's Sasuke, who could be seen as a tragic hero in the classical or literary definition.
Now, I think someone could write a pretty good story about those themes, about those characters, about the friendships and rivalries...without them having to be ninja. Heck, I remember reading somewhere that Kishimoto's original concept for the series was a more contemporary urban setting (with a supernatural bent). The whole ninja idea came later.
Call it fanfic in abstract. The personalities, the relationships, and the overall message...you can convey that, you can explore those concepts, with a different framework.
And it remains fanfiction, rather than an original story, because you're still drawing on the source.
Mind you, I've yet to see a well-done AU 'real world' Naruto fic. There's a massive glut of the things, mostly by fangirls. And everything I've seen is utter drek. Because I'm sure most people who write these things aren't thinking in terms of the...meta-textual analysis I've outlined above.
But I think it's possible. I've seen some decent Rurouni Kenshin fics of the type.
-- Acyl

[deadpan29]

I have trouble envisioning a good Ruroni Kenshin version of this, simply because Kenshin's blood-soaked history and stone-cold-killer instincts are such an important part of the character, even if they are submerged and hidden most of the time. Making him a modern former black-op agent in the modern day would preserve this but wouldn't be a mundane AU fic of the sort being discussed. Making him a former gangmember for a High School fic just doesn't cut it in my opinion, and word fail me on any fic that throws his violent past away entirely.
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No, I don't believe the world has gone mad.  In order for it to go mad it would need to have been sane at some point.

[Acyl]

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I have trouble envisioning a good Ruroni Kenshin version of this

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No, you're quite right. Didn't say I've seen good ones, though, just merely decent ones...as in, didn't make my eyes bleed. The fact I can't remember any enough to actually provides links and such...well, eh.
But, yeah, I vaguely remember reading at least one that DID cast Kenshin as a former gang member in high school. So there you go. Can't really recall, but I don't think the one I read was that bad. Adequate prose flow and sentence structure, for example, proper grasp of narrative. Technically competent, as it were. Reasonably well-written dialogue and characterisation.
Clearly, the author was trying to stay true to the characters, and was trying to convey some of the themes and overall, well, story ideas.
Now, whether or not he or she succeeded, that's a different matter, and subject to opinion.
-- Acyl

[Florin]

You know, I've always wondered...
Guys are supposed to be the sex obessed perverts right? Every anime, movie, book, conversation tells you that guys are the ones obsessed with sex. Yet I can't think of a single fic (that's not an out and out lemon at least) where two female characters inexplicably become lesbians, in complete defiance of all evidence. Instead, it's all fangirls writing yaoi. Creepy creepy underage statutory rape makes no goddamn sense yaoi. Does this make sense to anyone else? Or is it just that all the guys are to busy writing crappy Harem Potter fics?--
"An errand is getting a tank of gas or picking up a carton of milk or something. It is not getting chased by flying purple pyromaniac gorillas hurling incendiary poo."
--
If you become a monster to put down a monster you've still got a monster running around at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. 

[Acyl]

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Yet I can't think of a single fic (that's not an out and out lemon at least) where two female characters inexplicably become lesbians, in complete defiance of all evidence.

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I dunno, really. It's not really a genre of fiction I've investigated. I can think of a couple stories which featured yuri pairings with absolutely zero basis in canon - but they were well-written and provided their own story justification. And were written by women, besides. So that's not relevant. Besides, I think we're talking badly-written heterosexual male fantasy fulfilment here, right? That in mind...
I do know www.shoujoai.com has a very extensive collection of shoujo-ai stories, and they're not all lemon, either. I'm sure you could find some utter drek completely lacking in decent logic, though, if you searched that site long enough - there's an amazing number of stories there. Deliberately looking for bad fanfic is not something I wanna do, but you could try.
But I suppose what you're really commenting on is the supreme unfairness (or irony?) of the male gender being criticised as hormonally horny and whatnot, when so many female teenagers run rampant with the yaoi thing.
And I agree.
Of course, I'm biased, since I've only ever had two relationships in my admittedly short years on this planet, and both my ex-girlfriends were fangirls. And of course, y'know, I'm friends with their friends, and...well. Suffice to say, I now have the ability to proofread graphic yaoi pr0n without batting an eyelid, and probably understand the subculture well as any heterosexual male can.
(I think they completely burnt out my squick reflex.)
Honestly, I think...teenagers - and young adults - are the same, really. When it comes to some things, gender doesn't make a huge difference.
-- Acyl

[Loki Laufeyjarson]

I agree that is all pretty weird and hard to understand from an outside perspective, but there are stranger things.
Random comming out of the closet for no reason at all can actually be made to work in some cases if the author tries really hard. Unfortunately often they don't even try to justify it and instead of going after charcters that have somecanon evidence that could be interpreted in terms of latent homosexual tension they create couples out of the most unlikely characters. And for some reason in some circles one of the few female characters that is actually a canon lesbian gets turned hetero in almost every fic that hooks her up with someone. (Look for Willow pairing on Twisting the Hellmouth.)
The worst part are fics that appear to have actively stopped caring for pretty much anything related to canon. Not onyl will they set fics in highschool with everyone being normal students, will turn everyones sexual orientation around on a whim, but will even change some charcters gender to fit their story.
I have never actually dared to read a story like that but I have some across more then one synopsis that contained all those elements. Something along the lines of: "The gang are in highschool. Sasuke is one of the rich kids and Naruto is a bad boy can they get together? (In my story Haku is a girl!)"
Why god why?
Also fun are those AU that are not set in highschool but are in fact retellings of the latest teen-flick that the author saw. They often don't even brother to bring anything into the movie retelling from their fandom besides the charcter names, description of their hair-colors and the ocasional catch phrase. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if the authors didn't always chose such awful movies to cover. Even if the source material is good they will always pick the worst possible version of it seemingly unaware that the movie they adore is a remake of an older or foreign one that used actual actors playing the parts instead of plastic supermodels woodenly reciting the roles of charcters a decade younger than they really are. You can forget the idea that anyone is familiar with novels in this day and age.
Then at last there are stories at places like ficwad that I hesitate to call fanfics that feature not fictional charcters but 'actual' people: Actors, wrestlers, boy-band members. Except that they are not really featuring those people at all but really imaginary characters that sort of look like them except for the eyes because everyone knows that they would look so much better with one green and one gray one. Also they are almost all gay again which is not really justified in more then half of the cases....

[Epsilon]

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Yet I can't think of a single fic (that's not an out and out lemon at least) where two female characters inexplicably become lesbians, in complete defiance of all evidence.

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Bolded for emphasis.
Yes, there are plenty of Unneccesary Lesbians in fanfiction. I suggest you start with Sailor Moon fics and go from there. Almost all Unneccesary Lesbians fics are lemons. That is because guys are more perverted than girls.
I realise that in the last statement I made a gross generalizations, but to paraphrase Dave Berry, as in all such cases, I don't care. ;p
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Epsilon

[robkelk]

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Yet I can't think of a single fic (that's not an out and out lemon at least) where two female characters inexplicably become lesbians, in complete defiance of all evidence.

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You haven't read very many Sailor Moon fanfics, have you? I didn't make up that incorrect-fanon example "Ami is a lesbian" in Bob's "Please read and comment" thread.

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Or is it just that all the guys are to busy writing crappy Harem Potter fics?

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There are Negima! fics?
(Sorry, that's a running joke between myself and Dave "Being Upfront" Watson - I think he first called Negima! "Harem Potter", but we both call it that now. The reason why should be obvious...)

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Necratoid]

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Honestly, I think...teenagers - and young adults - are the same, really. When it comes to some things, gender doesn't make a huge difference.

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Err... that is wrong on a few levels. The most basic is that sex is a matter of anatomy. Yes, there is apparently some 1/1000 statistic for those that end up a bit off and get labeled inter-sexed, but that is not really important here.
See gender is a purely mental construct. Yes, the anatomical part of it, sex, can influence this heavily, but is not required. These are two separate, but related, things that got thesaurused into one word with two spellings. I'm not a fan of thesauruses as they make people randomly pick related words that only vaguely match up in meaning.... and make them the same exact word.
Sexual orientation is also a different factor. Its only a matter of who or what you'll try for as a sex partner and independent of the persons sex, but part of their gender.
Ranma 1/2, faults disregarded, is all about this. Ranma has the same gender, barring head trauma, regardless of Ranma's current sex. Konatsu is a male sex-wise and straight, but has a female ninja servant mind set, submissive and proper. Ukyo female with a male mind set that is probably straight... but wants to be far more female. Even Kuno is male is sex, Alpha male if you ask him, and polygamous (all of you aren't good enough to be), and grabby, as is his Divine right.
Gender is a complicated mental construct with lots and lots of variables. It is largely related to your role in society and other things of that nature as well as personal preferences and actual anatomical sex.

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Guys are supposed to be the sex obessed perverts right?

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No... the focus is on the male being the 'pervert'. 'Pervert' in these cases is often defined as male who thinks about sex, where females can see him do it. Not that their aren't blatently perverted charicters of both sex, disreguarding them, however, the female is also thinking about sex in these cases or she wouldn't think about bashing him for being a 'pervert' in the first place. Note the male is often thinking things along the lines of 'this floor... is very hard... Do I have broken bones? Ow, that is bruised. What is the moving blur over there. *Wham* He gets injured and wonders what happened.
Female charicters go off into a blushing trance while the guy is thinking she is ill or something. Look at the episode of Ranma 1/2 where the urn is under the girl's locker room. Ranma and Ryouga are thinking, 'Must find magic urn/spring'. The girls are thinking 'Defend underwear, prevent peeping Tomss. Those perverts'. They weren't thinking things through on either side. The guys should have searched after school. But look at how the 'one track minds of each side are focused... Now ask yourself which is the more sex oriented sex involved.
Then look at movies oriented towards people of different sexes from Hollywood. The chick flick and the Guy movie. Two extremes of movie types. Disreguard porn.
In a chick flick its all about making couples or ranting about the evils of men ('Waiting to Exhale'). There are entire channels oriented towards women... like lifetime, a channel all about 'love stories'. Ones that end up borderline pron and always featurer a romance as the main point of the movie. One person often dies slowly... Romance is the main focus.
Then take a Guy movie. Its all about action and a body count. Many people die quickly. The romance is a side plot. The cast can be all male and spend the movie slaughtering each other and never mention sex once.
Remember, I'm talking extremes here. If a chick flick is an all male cast there will be people in sex oriented relationships with each other.
If anything women tend to be more sex oriented of the two sexes. Though if you point this out you'll get injured or yelled at and called a 'deluded pervert'. This is a upbringing/social comentary and not a judgement call.
I still remember hearing people talk about the the prom in high school. Guys complained about the overly expensive clothes they had to rent and girls had converstations about clothing like this one:
'So, what kind of underwear are you wearing to the prom?'
'Why bother? Its just coming off anyway....'
A shared 'WWOOOO!!!!' With throwing up of hands.
Yeah, double standards. Yes, they were popular girls.

[Morganite]

I think there's some reason for argument about the sailor senshi sexual orientation. (Though Ami can't be a lesbian, because she's obviously bisexual. *innocent innocent*) Still, there's a difference between having some lead-in for things and having an oh, suddenly we're lesbians now! (It's kind of nice to have that for heterosexual pairings too, really...)
I'm not sure I'd even consider it a quality issue. I've read enjoyable (in a non-sexual way) fics with relationships that come out of nowhere, and I'm read stuff with well developed relationships that was completely unreadable.
Changing a character's gender can make for some pretty interesting story if handled well. There's of course a variety of Ranma 1/2 fics that ask "What if Ranma had been born a girl?" (And also the "What if Ranma had a twin sister?" ones, which I am generally quite fond of.) I've also seen it done with Tenchi a few times, sometimes with mixed results. (Shanejayell's story with a female Tenchi I think is basically decent, but it seems like it'd read just about the same with a male Tenchi, which makes me doubt the value of doing the gender change in the first place.) Now, I'm admittedly partial to genderchange stuff in the first place, but it's still something that I think has been done well.
(Oh, and just for reference purposes: *I* am the pervert. ^_~ )
-Morgan, thinking, "Well, I guess my sig lines make that obvious..."
"Mikuru-chan molested me! I'm... so happy!"
-Haruhi, "The Ecchi of Haruhi Suzumiya"
---(Not really)

[Necratoid]

As I just said... sex is a physical construct and gender a mental construct.
If your changing the charicter's gender your changing the charicter... changing their sex only doesn't change much.

[DKnight54]

Ah, but you assume that changes to the sex do not affect the gender...
True, if I was changed into a girl, I'd freak out, be affected by female hormones to a certain extend, but aside from extenuating circumstances, I do believe that I would still be attracted to females.
So Ranma getting stuck as a girl doesn't affect his way of thinking. And in his own mind, he would still see himself as male.
But in an AU where Tenchi was born a girl? the social requirements alone would ensure that she would then be alot more feminine, and possibly not take up kendo.

Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

[Morganite]

(Well, the first time I tried to reply to this, I accidentally hit something and lost my reply. >

[Valles]

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-Morgan, hugging a Battleship Haruna plushie. *innocent innocent*
(Haruna being one of very few examples where a spaceship turns into a girl *in canon*...)

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*pikupiku* Tell me more...
Ja, -n
(often in favor of battleships, and always in favor of cute girls)

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"