Fictional Fans

I've written quite a few AUs, and they come from various inspirations.

Personal experience: I worked in an advertising-adjacent industry many years ago, and it was enough (I think!) to allow me to fit my boys into an ad agency AU. Also wrote a very late pinch-hit drawing extensively from my own experience at geek conventions.

Canon-adjacent-icity(?): Translating the actual-world existences into something similar, possibly parallel. I was very pleased with my AU in which NSYNC became the cast of 'Synchronicity', a teens TV show, and Adam Lambert became an aspirant actor who could sing, rather than an aspirant singer with acting experience

Dragons! I've done quite a few stories involving dragons. Dragons are never wrong. I ran a dragon challenge for several years. When you start with a dragon, the rest of the world will come along.

Stole a plot:

- The Full Monty - though in this case it was more the stage musical than the film.

- Shakespeare: I've always loved Much Ado About Nothing the most, and it was in essence the plot of one of my more recent stories. I also threw in a location that I'd seen in a different context. And chefs, possibly because watching so much of The Great British Bake-Off made me think Food.

- fairy stories (Cinderella has a great basic plot)

Also, canon. A Backstreet Boys video, in which the Boys are a 1980s hair metal band *and* fans of same, was just begging to have an AU written about it.