AU madness.

Guys I fscking hate alternate-universe fanfiction.
I really, really do.

In theory, this shouldn’t be as awful a genre as it is. In theory, this should be a way for fanfiction writers to really stretch their creative muscles by putting the characters in completely new and different situations while still practicing their characterization skills by trying to keep the characters in-character.
In practice, though, this isn’t really the case.
The fact of the matter is that most fanfiction writers aren’t very good at keeping characters in-character. They might be able to keep a character’s fan-characterization consistent within their fic-universe, and in many cases this is good enough. But then when you take these consistently-out-of-character characters and plop them in another universe entirely, well… let’s face it, at this point you’re just writing original fiction.
Just change the names and put it on Fictionpress instead of Fanfiction.net, kthx, because this is not Avatar anymore.

“Oh, but Selan! Nobody reads original fiction on the internet! I need to keep this as an AU fanfic, otherwise no one will ever read it!”
Shut up, yes they do, you just need to put a little more effort into getting people to look. Have you thought of commenting on other people’s stories? Telling your friends to spread the word? Oh, and having your story actually be good helps; it really makes people want to spread the story around even without you asking.
Using this excuse really shows how much of an attention whore you really are. Artistic integrity? No thanks! I’d rather people just read my story and leave retarded comments about how they think my story is “OMGZZZ SO AWESUM!!!!”.
Fuck you.

So please, don’t write AU fanfiction. Either keep to the story universe or write an original story. The grey area that lies between those two areas is just too frustrating to the rest of us.