AUs in the Pros community--discussion

[faramir-boromir.livejournal.com]

Hi, all. You may have been reading the panel reports that I've been posting about CQ in my LJ and over on the CQ yahoo group as well. If not, go read 'em, and enjoy!

It occurred to me that I didn't have notes on a panel that I very much enjoyed---why do you think the Professionals has so many good AU stories---I think I was blasted on Sunday morning and had lost the will to write, hence no notes. Then I realized, there's no reason that discussion couldn't go on here, at ci5hq. gblvr got the ball rolling in the panel discussion, and I'll borrow the three things that I do remember from the panel to get things started.

1) If you look at the total number of stories archived at the Circuit and click the "only AU" stories option, you get about 7% of all the stories. So on the whole, there don't seem to be many AUs in the fandom.

2) Yet, if you ask somebody to rec in the Pros fandom, within the first few recs, they'll be saying, 'oh, but you need to read this AU.'

3) One comment that was offered by flamingoslim at the con was that, back in the day, Pros picked up AUs that were scorned by the Starsky/Hutch fandom early on. As one of the oldest fandoms, she suggested, authors who felt closed out of one fandom moved over to another and went wild.

So, why the contradiction? Compared to other fandoms, Pros has very few AUs, but some are notably (and worthily) famous. And which AUs would you automatically rec to others? And what elements make for a successful AU, using Pros characters?

Comments

[callistosh65.livejournal.com]

since the setting has been changed (sort of like altering the background on a stage), the characterization has to be that much stronger. I **need** Bodie and Doyle, since they've now been shot into outer space or dumped in Arabia. More than that, I find that I need the setting to reach out and grab me. In 'Harlequin Airs', Ellis Ward's Bodie and Doyle are as Bodie and Doyle as they are in 'And Memories Die'. Yet I skim read all the circus bits in one, and savour every single word of the other. Likewise, in 'Legacy of Temptation', where neither has so much as a toe print in CI5, the setting/plot enthrall me, as much as say, a distinctly recognisable Bodie and Doyle.

Outer Space, Ancient Rome and Arabia haven't really done it for me yet..*g*