If you don't like AU's..... Why not?

[heidi]

I've been working on things for next Saturday's panel at Prophecy on the Future of Fandom, which led to emmagrant01 and I talking about a Spring, 2003 thread on FA about "everything becoming AU after OotP" and she has started a nifty discussion about the issue over here.

And I just asked this of someone else on my flist who says that "staying canon-based" (to paraphrase) is important to her.

I've asked about this on FA and LJ in the past but not for years and the composition of my flist is different than it was and now we have a closed canon so....

How, now that we are in the presence of a complete(-ish) canon, do you feel about writing and/or reading fics where romantic pairings play any role, even if it's just background?

How does JKR's statement about basically changing her mind - or possibly it's better to phrase it as "becoming less rigid" or "becoming more open to other options" - regarding Neville/Luna impact your feelings, if they do at all?

If you don't like AU's, why is hewing to canon important to you?

If you didn't like AU's before but don't want to accept 100% of the contents of the Epilogue, or the character deaths, what are you doing about it?

For me, I've never thought that a fanfic could be canon - it can hew to it as closely as an author wishes, but it can't be canon because none of us are JKR. And reading an AU versus "canon-verse" has never mattered to me, but I've also always loved AU novels in general - things like Robert Rankin and Harry Turtledove and Julian May - so loving AUs of the Potterverse has always been natural to me, but I know a lot of people don't feel that way, and I'm curious as to the reasons why.

Do you see a stigma against AU's in the HP fandom and if so, why? Do you have a stigma against AU's in the HP fandom and if so, why?

Comments

[penhaligonblue.livejournal.com]

I think my main issue with AU fic is that, for me, it seems to defeat the concept of fanfiction. What excites me about fanfiction is that an author has already given you a world to work in -- a common ground for both the fanfiction writer and reader, since they're both already familiar with that established world. The Harry Potter universe has a huge scope, so I don't think these parameters are all that limiting. I kind of feel that, if you want to write something totally counter-canon, why not just write original fiction?

That said, I have read and enjoyed one AU fic (namely, Stealing Harry (http://sam-storyteller.livejournal.com/2005/07/07/) by sam_storyteller). I think that what made this work for me (besides its excellent writing) was the fact that the author references events as they play out in canon. The fic's story actually does take place alongside that of the Harry Potter series