#thank you yesties and meow for your perspectives <3

[bizarrelittlemew]

I have a burning curiosity that can only be relieved by an OFMD author. Why is there so much AU fanfiction in this fandom?? 😆 My AO3 search results with every alternate universe tag I can think of blocked are coming up with almost every result on the page filtered out! 🤣 I have nothing against them existing and I'm all for everyone writing what makes them happy, I just wonder how this fandom ended up being so full of them. I used to think SPN was oversaturated with AU's, but it can't hold a candle to OFMD! 😅

okay i wanted to give this a proper answer and also asked a few other authors, so here are some of the reasons we came up with - i think it's a combination of all of these:

while the show takes place in a historical setting, it's not historically accurate or even trying to be. it uses anachronistic dialogue and gives piracy a vibe more like a modern workplace. the characters become timeless in the sense that they are already "modern" characters put into a historical setting, and therefore fit just as well into any kind of AU setting. the characters are what make up the show more than the historical setting

the themes that the show deals with - relationships, sexuality, gender, trauma, family, self-image, mental illness - can be explored in so many different ways given different settings. it's very interesting to examine how the characters would deal with them when thrown into different circumstances and time periods

canon is really good, so while there are gaps in the narrative that can be explored, a lot of people are drawn to putting the characters in entirely different situations and/or feel like canon ground was covered pretty quickly

the story itself translates to other universes very easily. people want to enjoy that story and/or their favorite plot points again and again, but just writing down the plot of the show in the canon setting wouldn't make much sense. by throwing the characters into a different universe, you can pull scenes and plot from canon without just repeating it, putting a different spin on it

very few shows have (canonically) older queer people, and people like the idea of how that translates to other universes

we have (relatively) little canon and had a lot of time between seasons. considering the size of the fandom, amount of canon, and time since canon, the proportion of AUs is not surprising

if we assume proper tagging, AUs make up around 27% of all ofmd fanfics by number of works, but probably much more by word count, since a lot of canon fics tend to be shorter. in comparison, that number is around 20% for SPN and 34% for Merlin 🤷

also i've seen a lot of people starting out by only wanting to read canonverse fics until they gave an AU a try and BAM they were hooked 😌

and last but not least:

Ed and Stede fall in love in every universe 💗

#asks #Anonymous #ofmd #ofmd meta #ofmd fic #thank you yesties and meow for your perspectives <3