i kind of want to add something but I can’t word it

sclez:

Like, I don’t get the fundamental issue of fans, particularly LGBTQ+ fans, women and fans of colour, putting Les Amis into modern situations. I fail to see why this is sacrilege, especially since people are often so unwilling to accept diverse canon era headcanons because ‘accuracy’ so the only real place for fans to actually talk about these things is in the context of the Modern AU.

The common complaint against the highly popular modern AU is ‘lol research’ and a proliferation of fandom tropes in fic, but this is a highly simplistic view of peoples’ motivations.

For some of us it’s because we love the characters and identify with them (because their humanity isn’t period exclusive), but find that the social norms of canon era and how certain behaviours go unchecked make us uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean we want Les Amis to be flawless, just that we want to explore the characters in a space that’s more relevant to us. People are allowed to feel comfortable. We don’t all have to put our identities to the side just to enjoy a book if we don’t feel that that choice is right for us. This isn’t the hallowed halls of academia.

As for the complaint about fandom tropes, it’s a bit of a red herring considering there’s plenty of rubbish canon fic that’s loaded with popular fanon clichés that nobody seems to mind. The issue here isn’t fandom cliché, but simply a case of ‘I don’t like this new shit everyone else likes.’

As for the film bringing on a whole load of new tropes, some of the tropes I’ve seen being slammed aren’t even derived from the film! Ye olde spectacles Combeferre or ginger/wears a cap Feuilly have been around for aaaaages. The Combeferre loving moths joke is universally accepted, as is the idea that Joly loves cats. Flowery gender variant Jehan I’ll grant you, but Alistair Brammer is hardly effeminate and I’m not going to open the rest of that can of worms.

Ultimately with the modern AU though, people call it an AU for a reason. They’re not trying to be Hugo or totally Brick accurate and even if they were, Les Amis weren’t the most developed characters. Even people writing canon era and strictly keeping to the surface text are going to end up fleshing them out and developing them to the point where they don’t resemble what Hugo introduced them as. That’s not ooc, it’s character development.

If you want Les Amis to stay relatively underdeveloped then stick to the book. Fanart and fan fiction is FOR exploring characters, making different interpretations and pissing purists off.

Nobody is saying you have to like modern AU or even tolerate it if it bothers you that much, but at least base this dislike in Modern AU specific fanon issues instead of scapegoating it for characterisation foibles the fandom has had for years. Ask yourself whether you actually dislike modern AU or fanon tropes or whether you’re just annoyed at people who aren’t you having opinions you consider worthy of scorn.

Blah blah blah whatever.