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]

Thanks for your points about why you like the story so much. Bodie did seem more Bodie-like in the story than Doyle, and I think Doyle/Zax is what threw me out of the narrative: I have a hard time with people who write Doyle as anything like damaged or somehow less competent than he is in the series. But it's good to know why others love it so. I'll have to go read back in Pros-lit to find the thread you're talking about, and see what others have to say about it.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

*jumps in again* - sorry, not meaning to be hit-and-run-ish about this, serves me right for coming to the conversation too late!

I've only just read MotR, and it's still in my mind a little... I think I was trying to see Doyle in Zax as well at first, because Galen was Bodie - and certainly they're both the same physically. But I found that I was able to get into it much better when I remembered that Zax wasn't Doyle - Zax in the film is quite a horrible bloke, who deserves all that he gets, and he never quite loses that in the story, which is why it's hard to see him as Doyle to quite the same extent as in other Bodie/Doyle AUs... Zax and Galen are not completely supposed to be the lads that we love best! Zax is damaged to redeem him as a character, I rather think, not necessarily to turn him into Doyle - although because we do like him a bit better afterwards, it's a similar effect... Well, that's what I reckon! *g*