Opinions on High School AUs?

[ermingarden]

I bought paid time for the first time ever, so it's time to ask some burning questions by way of Dreamwidth polls!

Poll #26405

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 15

How do you feel about high school AUs?

I usually like them
0 (0.0%)

I never like them
3 (20.0%)

I usually don't like them, but I've read some I liked
9 (60.0%)

I like them in some fandoms, but dislike them in others
2 (13.3%)

I've never read a high school AU
4 (26.7%)

Feel free to elaborate in the comments!

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

Polls *_*

[atamascolily]

Ironically, quite a few of my favorite fandoms (especially anime/manga) are set in high school, which means that I read a lot of canon-compliant high school fics (and therefore not AUs).

I vaguely remember a Star Wars high school AU where Leia is an overachieving student council president intent on taking down an abusive teacher with the aid of her misfit friends, but I cannot for the life of me track it down on A03 right now. Pretty sure I didn't hallucinate it, though!

Now that I think about it, though, most of the fics I'm remembering are college AUs, which have a somewhat different dynamic, but I think the same general principle still applies?

Riposte by Humanfish451 (Star Wars Legends)
giving it the old college try by pvwork (Dune)
Cells at Gaming, Love & College by Juliette24 (Cells at Work)
this ocean is yours, and mine by inmyriadbits, rosepetalfall (Star Wars Sequel Trilogy) - though Rey is in high school in this one!

On a related note, the creators of xxxHolic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles manga have a semi-canonical High School AU featuring the characters of these two series (called "Horitsuba Academy, naturally), which amuses me to no end. (You can tell they got their start as doujinshika - once a fan, always a fan... )

[pauraque]

In Harry Potter fandom, since the main characters are teenagers already, "high school AU" is effectively equivalent to "American AU", which typically doesn't go well. I don't think high school AUs are very common in any of the other fandoms I've been active in, so I can't really make any informed judgements about them. In general, setting-change AUs of any kind are a hard sell for me, though I have read some that won me over.

[elwendell]

I am not a fan of AU's in general, although I have read a few. I have never read a high school one, possibly because I am well past that age myself. I can understand them appealing to a younger audience, however.

[ermingarden]

It's funny, but when I was in high school I couldn't stand high school AUs; now, I've enjoyed reading some of them, but they're definitely ones written by people who are also well out of high school. It's the distance that makes it enjoyable for me, I think, and the recognition that some things that feel World-Shakingly Serious as a teenager aren't actually that big a deal; fics that also recognize that and are a little tongue-in-cheek about the whole premise are the ones that I think pull it off most successfully.

(That said, there are only some fandoms I enjoy mundane AUs in at all.)