This week's fannish five....

1. AUs: yes please or what's the point?

Both. Depending on the skill of the writer involved and their ability to mess with the setting without messing with the characters. AU is *not* just an excuse to write original fic where the protagonists just happen to have the same names as the characters they're 'based' on.

And by 'AU' do we mean Jack and Daniel as pirates or Jack and Daniel in a universe that resembles our own but is slightly/more than slightly altered? I'm going with both possibilities here... ;)

2. What's the best AU you've read?

BTW, these are all slash:

I'm very fond of This Is It by Quinn, which has Daniel-whumping taken to the extreme. He gets whumped, doesn't get better, Jack has to cope...

Then there's Prison by Jack Reuben Darcy, which is an excellent Sentinel AU.

I'd also highly recommend Lilith Sedai's excellent series of Phantom Menace AU stories that start with Water, when Obi Wan ends up as Yoda's apprentice instead.

Then, despite it being Skinner/Krycek (kind of), there's Beyond the Barrier of Snow by Josan.

3. What's the worst AU you've read?

Most of the Mag7 AUs are pretty poor, or just badly thought out and disobey Grac's First Law of AU (that'd be 'Who the hell are these guys and why should we care? If you can't make me bother, you've lost me...'). The seven as dog show judges? The seven as a rock band? Pffft.

4. How would you like to see your fandom altered that you haven't seen yet?

Don't really mind as long as the characters stay true to themselves. Is this a good time to say that I've written an AU Stargate novella that pretty much breaks new ground this way? ;)

5. What AU worked that you never would have expected?

Another slash fic:

Shalott's Master & Commander story, Five Things That Never Happened 5: The World Turned Upside Down. Read it and discover why! ;)