tbh my biggest beef with high school aus and college aus is that a lot of them tend to give the characters same-y personalities and attitudes towards things based on what whoever writing it seems to think is 'in', i think some modern / school aus can be enjoyable but the frustration is a lot of writers tend to use it as a shorthand excuse for not taking into account the canon setting or the culture the characters originally come from rather than because it's a setting they can make interesting or a story they can make engaging beyond 80s high school flick stereotypes and it ads a layer of separation in their mind that it's okay to not depict a culture outside their own with any accuracy because it's an au so you can't get mad at them
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Yeah, I think "original setting hard" is part of it. And I agree with you about the sameiness. I've enjoyed plenty of fairly bland modern AUs, school and otherwise, but they've tended to be ones that at least found 80s teen movie stock characters that matched up well (or hilariously incongruously) with canon/common fanon/etc.
Like... BTS Hogwarts AUs clearly put some thought into their house sorting. Even if like half of them are "Jimin with snake tattoos and/or shapeshifting powers is hot", the rest of the fic will be like "Oh, you thought so-and-so would be a Hufflepuff, but actually..." Or it's kind of canned, but in a way I totally get (i.e. big dumb jock who wants to hold hands/tiny mean dom who's pretending this isn't about feelings gryffindor/slytherin porn).
The mundane equivalent would be... like... picking which of The Breakfast Club stereotypes is most relevant to enforcing or disrupting BTS fanon for your ship. Or something. But pretty often, I find fic where all of the main characters are generic stoners who share the same opinions on stoner things. It's boring.
(And, okay, out of all the generic school AU things, this one probably throws me the most in a way that a junkie AU wouldn't. There's something about taking famous people from a place where it's a career-ending ~it's a gateway drug~ scandal to get caught with weed and making them that type of modern stoner who is high 24/7 in public and thinks nothing of it that just sparks this massive cognitive dissonance in me. IDK if it's entirely reasonable, but it's the thing where my brain balks.)
So this is apparently legit and from a 2017 fan sign. I honestly would never peg Tae as a Hufflepuff because his creativity and quirkiness make him a perfect fit for Ravenclaw. I’d also move JK to Gryffindor (to keep Jikook spicy because JM is clearly a Slytherin). But I’m sure Namjoon knows better about where the members would be sorted, both in terms of the actual person and the public persona.
Yes, you have correctly identified who usually stars in cliched Gryffindor/Slytherin porn. LOL.
I guess one’s reaction to the list depends on how you read it. Like, for one thing, what does Namjoon think these houses mean? JK’s placement is super obviously “good at everything he studies”, which is not how fanfic usually picks people for Ravenclaw. I suspect Tae’s placement... well, aside from “divide the members about evenly”... has to do with him being younger and coming in feeling like he had to learn a lot of skills to catch up to the others and that kind of thing.
But in a fanfic and fanon context, oh man do I see this, and not for that reason. Hufflepuff is the perfect house if you’re an epic troll. Quirky weirdo in Slytherin? People think you’re up to something. Quirky weirdo in Ravenclaw? Ah, an intellectual crazy. But in Hufflepuff? The perfect opportunity to do wacky shit on purpose and then blink innocently at people as they go nuts trying to figure out if you’re messing with them.
I vividly remember back when I was super into BTS making a Hogwarts Au, Where I put Yoongi in Hufflepuff, Jungkook was the Gryffindor quidditch team and Jimin on the Slytherin team.
House distribution went like this Hufflepuff: Yoongi,, Hoseok and Taehyung
Slytherin Jimin
Gryffindor: Jungkook and Jin
Ravenclaw: Namjoon
I find Hoseok to pretty vesicle he could fit in to Slytherin or Gryffindor
Jimin in Ravenclaw could be fun since Slytherin and Ravenclaw traits have pretty heavy overlap
Jin was tossed into Gryffindor because i didn’t know what to do with him and I still don’t
I’m too stubborn about Namjoon being the perfect fucking attribute list for Ravenclaw to let him placing himself in Gryffindor slide.
fun fact about my interpretations though
Namjoon owned pygmy puffs, rather than a practical owl because he likes cute things. Jimin had a hawk rather than an owl for speed’s sake, Jungkook had a cat,
Jungkook, Jimin and Taehyung were on their houses respective quidditch teams, Jungkook as a chaser, Jimin the Seeker and Taehyung a Beater.
Where they were from
Jungkook, Dunfanaghy
Namjoon, Bath
Jin, Inverness
Hoseok, Bristol
Taehyung, Swansea
Yoongi, from Glasgow
Jimin, London
This is off the top of my head I twhat i can remember from I think around the time DNA came out
Okay, we all know how to actually design one of these AUs:
Step 1: Who’s your ship? What house rivalry makes this most entertaining?
Step 2: Who are their bffs or wingmen? They go in the same house.
Step 3: Whom do you want to conveniently get rid of? They go in one of the other houses so you don’t need to write them into any scenes in the common rooms.
If you ask me, the only overlap between Slytherin and Ravenclaw is that stereotypical fanfic nerds all think they’re both Intellectual Goths and “slitherclaw” being the biggest cliche of a mid-00s Livejournal profile page there is.
I took the potter more test twice and first time I was a Slytherin and Second time I was a Ravenclaw Ahhhh...I’m Lit a Slytherclaw
