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

[faramir-boromir.livejournal.com]

What's interesting, beyond this, is the kinds of AUs that you see in each fandom. In QAF, you're more likely to see age-inversion fics (Justin older than Brian, Brian back in high school) or disability fics (Justin the artist, now blind). Perhaps I never found it, but you don't see a lot of outer space, or circuses, or the Middle East with that fandom. Which sort of begs the question, why are some AU settings more likely to turn up in one fandom than another?

[shooting2kill.livejournal.com]

That's a v-e-r-y interesting question which I can't answer! At first I thought, well, perhaps some AUs touch on *something* in canon, but even if that was true - and I don't think it is - it wouldn't explain *why* we find Bodie and Doyle in certain situations e.g. a circus context, in outer space, birdwatchers in Cornwall, i.e. contexts which have nothing to do with the world of Ci5 and yet we don't find the QAF characters in similar circumstances. An off-the-cuff suggestion, but maybe it's to do with their personalities and characteristics in canon? Tough, physical men like B & D might inspire tough, challenging situations, unlike the world inhabited by the QAF characters.