I mean it's not like Trek is super known for its medical accuracy but on the other hand... on the other hand that's just stupid
Re: the AU thing, I'm sorta in the middle. I've definitely seen AUs where the characters are completely unrecognizable and are basically boring OCs with canon name tags, but dropping canonverse characters into a completely different setting is opening a BIG can of storytelling worms if all you want to do is write a story where the main characters play DnD or work in a flower shop or something (and also has high potential to set off a squick that gives me the screaming jibblies, but that's a me problem). And like Acey said, it can be fun to try to figure out how characters could end up the sort of people they are in canon personality-wise without having gone through the exact same things. But, like, if you take a character who in canon has been chewed up and spat out and then remove all the bad stuff from their backstory and don't address how this is still a recognizable version of the character, it's going to feel weird and off to me.
My earliest serious fandom was Weiss Kreuz, in which the main characters are assassins who canonically work in a flower shop. It isn't particularly believable in canon to begin with, but it did give writers who wanted to just do a nice everyday setting something solid to work with. And it... wasn't that hard to match or exceed quality. I'm personally all for both types of AUs! I'm not sure how long I'd stay super interested in any particular character from the past marveling at modern technology in story after story, but I don't think it would be a worse problem than being bored with generic coffee shops. A good story can make it interesting all over again. And a not so good story can make the coolest, most original premise in the whole fandom pretty boring. I think the same thing applies to characterization. If it's good enough, the character could probably be living in almost any world and it will still feel like them. If it's not very good, it won't feel like them even in a totally canonical setting.
Yeah, one reason I was never active in my first fictional-crush special-interest fandom is that practically nobody writes Chinese Electric Batman in a way that feels like him to me, even in the canon setting. Another is that so many people have hallucinated a second season which clearly does not exist. (I honestly have some of the same problem with RH fic, but since I am probably the loudest person in the entire English fandom and have written like 1/5 of the fics on AO3, it matters less.)
Hashtag fucking relatable. The Weiss Kreuz fandom was plagued by what was obviously a horrible collective nightmare. We call it Glühen and more or less drink to forget. Except that so many great authors pulled elements from the jaws of the abomination. So even though it doesn't exist and never happened, its fakeness attribute isn't total.
Ours has "suddenly underage fanservice" and the main character turning into a drunk abusive hobo in a purple winter coat.
While I dislike AUs where the characters bear no resemblance to their canon selves I equally dislike AUs where it is literally just the canon characters being transported. The fun for me of AUs is finding what traits I consider to be vital to those characters, and then seeing them grow up under a different set of circumstances. I instead get to make new reasons for why Tori is as fucked up mentally as he is. They may resemble the canon reasons to an extent, but by nature of it being an AU they can't be exactly the same. But this Tori and the Tori of canon are still the same Tori while also being different Toris. So basically the fun of an AU, besides the toybox element, is to explore the fundamental nature of self. I don't get this if I simply move the canon cast via means of a plot thing.
Ding ding ding! Well, I mean, he works for an organized crime syndicate and kills a lot of people. Which isn't very Batman. But otherwise, it's a stunningly accurate description, which is why I have adopted it.
Actually, no, with Star Trek I can buy it: Q is writing coffee shop slash fic by meddling with an entire universe.
...that would be tame for Q. Also, I have honestly not seen a lot of good "Dropped the canon characters into an AU so there can be a coffeeshop" fics but I think it could be nice to see more. Still, I don't know, if I tried to write it, I'd probably end up writing a story about culture shock and homesickness instead of a nice AU... Also, I'm with everyone who enjoys giving the characters different backstories for AU settings. (edit for misplaced period wow @ me)
A friend recently posted a fic in which the father of half of the main same-sex couple was a huge douchebag but not for homophobic reasons, and it hit me very suddenly I've almost never seen that. Parents can be shitty without the kid's sexuality being relevant at all. The way most fanfic makes it centre stage kind of comes across the same way as that post which said that Black people can be written without doing it like this. Not that people can't or shouldn't write homophobia, but when it seems to be the only problem they can imagine for a queer kid to have... yeah.
Why is the slash part of the tng fandom so... Not always good. The smallness I get, tos is the one where all the famous fanfic is. But like--all I want is data and Geordi kissing...
