Unrealistic Expectations of the Unrealistically Inclined

[unspeakablehorror]

I'm baffled when people get offended at the idea of someone who truly enjoys SFF as a genre not necessarily wishing to engage with coffeeshop AUs or high school AU's or the like that strip a piece of speculative fiction of all its, well, speculative aspects. Like, yeah, I enjoyed the original story in large part because I enjoy that genre and the things that come with it. If someone wants to accuse me of not being *highbrow* enough to like their litfic romantic tragedy AU of the story or my tastes not *diverse* enough to enjoy their coffeeshop fluff AU, then yes, guilty as charged! But what else is to be expected here? I read SFF because I like SFF? Why is this considered strange and unreasonable?

Comments

[unspeakablehorror]

I mean, I also have entirely other reasons to overall dislike high school and coffeeshop AUs specifically, but even if that wasn't the case, all of the above would still apply.

[osteophage]

People are making an issue of that?

[unspeakablehorror]

I don't know that it's a full-fledged Issue, but I have seen a few complaints about people not wanting to read things like coffeeshop AUs. Like I don't have a problem if people want to write that! But if people are going to complain about others not wanting to read that kind of work when a very, very large number of the active fandoms today are speculative fiction, I'm going to note a major reason why that's a problem.

I mean, that's also not necessarily only a problem with speculative fiction. Those kinds of AUs tend to strip a lot of other kinds of fiction of their notable aspects, too. But I was just focusing on the genres I'm most familiar with in my comment.

I think the issue is this:
People who make these AUs maybe are fixated on the characters (in some cases, only some relatively insignificant or noncanon details about the characters), which is understandable, since characters are a large aspect of storytelling. But they're not all there is to it. For me, and for many other people I imagine, stories are not only about what characters happen to be in them, and especially not what superficial characteristics those characters happen to have, but what happens to those characters in the course of the story, what the world of the story is like, and what ideas are presented within. And in speculative fiction, 'what the world of the story is like' is a huge part of the draw! Completely changing that completely changes the story! And people are allowed to do that if they want, but I feel they should not be mystified or outraged by the fact that dramatic changes to a story may remove what people found appealing about it in the first place.

[chamerion]

Luckily I haven't run into many people who are offended about it, but I'm with you in honestly kinda loathing coffeeshop and high school AUs and most of their AU kindred. I live for great characterization and supposedly that's part of the appeal - who would these people be in a different setting, etc etc - but tbh I more often find that they strip most of the original themes and stakes (and yeah, worldbuilding!) out of the story without giving me much in the way of characterization to make up for it. Then again I'm also an intensely setting-focused writer myself, and as a reader I love stories where the setting is almost a character in its own right, so I'm about as far from the target audience as you can get LOL. More power to people if that's what they enjoy, but they are definitely not my thing.

[unspeakablehorror]

"Then again I'm also an intensely setting-focused writer myself, and as a reader I love stories where the setting is almost a character in its own right, so I'm about as far from the target audience as you can get LOL."

Yeah, I really feel the setting itself has its own personality and is something that can really be examined in its own right. Plus it's really important to how the characters develop.