#well-thats-specific

So to fill everyone else in, I was chatting with Bethany the other day (I realise we’ve been chatting a lot!) and at one point, I said something along the lines of ‘I don’t like AUs’.

Or rather, it’s not that I don’t like AUs, it’s just that I like stories to be written for a reason. I like stories to have something to say. I tend to take that to the extreme, and I’m definitely not saying that everyone should write social justice rants thinly disguised as fic (for one thing, I don’t want the competition!), but I am saying that a story should convey something. Even if that’s just “I want to show how happy these two people could be together.” That’s still a thing you want to say.

And the thing with some AUs is that… they don’t really have anything to do with Dan and Phil or the world they inhabit. That doesn’t necessarily mean the story doesn’t have anything to say, but it does beg the question: why are you writing about Dan and Phil?

Look, if you’re writing perfectly in character Dan and Phil in a completely different world, that’s great. That’s exploring their characters and seeing how they’d react to a different situation. Totally down with that. But when you start to stretch their characters, and you’ve already changed the universe, I become entirely disinterested. I am a fan of Dan and Phil, YouTubers and radio presenters. That’s what I want to read about. Your AU with characters who are essentially OCs may be wonderful, it may be beautifully written and poignant and hard-hitting and whatever else… but when the only remnants of Dan and Phil are their names and appearances (and a bit of sarcasm/the odd mentions of lions and llamas) then you’re not really writing phanfiction any more. You’re writing an original story. And that’s wonderful! That’s brilliant, but then why are you still using Dan and Phil?

There are a couple of answers to that. Firstly, it’s easier to start with the basis of a character and then build from that. It takes less work, and this is not our full time job, this is a hobby. Less work is always good. And secondly, and probably more importantly, if you use Dan and Phil, you know your audience will read it.

Which makes more OOC AU-writers sound like desperate attention-seekers - I’m not trying to say that, honestly I’m not. It’s just… Everyone wants their work to be read. Sartre said that a work doesn’t even exist til it’s been read, and I kind of believe that. It’s really just a matter of personal preference: if I see Dan and Phil in a story, I want them to be the Dan and Phil I know and love. That’s all it comes down to, really.

I definitely don’t want anyone to stop writing OOC-ish AUs off the back of reading this post, because the overriding principle of all fanfiction is that writing is good. Writing practice is brilliant. And that brings me on to Bethany’s actual question…

I suspect that part of the reason the Big Bang has such a high ratio of AUs is that the whole point of the BB is to get people to undertake a bigger project than they might normally. An AU is often more time-consuming - it involves world-building and timeline-writing that a canon-ish fic doesn’t. And because of that, AUs are often on a bigger scale than canon fics. Canon fics can dive right in - no descriptions of settings needed. AU fics demand backgrounds, physical descriptions, and sometimes explanations of political systems, school hierarchies, how dozens of different familiar characters fit into this unfamiliar world.

I mean, my own Big Bang fic conforms to most of those rules. It’s not very AU in comparison to most (I even kept the same flat, if you noticed!), but I still had to set out a different timeline, explain certain changes (Charlie lives up north; Phil and Dan started talking later) and reinforce the things which were the same (Phil still got a masters in film; Dan’s YouTube channel still started in October 2009). It was a bigger project than most of my normal fics, and that’s the reason I used it as my Big Bang fic, so I could take advantage of whatever poor soul became my beta!!!

But when all is said and done, there wouldn’t be so many AUs if there weren’t an audience for them. People like reading them, and that’s why my opinion is completely and utterly irrelevant. I may not like reading the more OOC AUs, but if you do, then that’s cool. I may not like writing more OOC AUs (though off the top of my head I know I’ve done at least one), but if you do, then that’s brilliant. More writing practice! More world-building practice! More character-building practice!