WTF?

I just don’t understand people who write massively-AU fic. For the non-fanly among my handful of readers, fanfiction is what you get when fans write stories about movies/tv shows/books/whatever they are into. AU fic is “Alternate Universe” fic. For example, a story about what might have happened if Luke Skywalker had turned to the dark side of the Force instead of rejecting Vader in “The Empire Strikes Back” would be AU fic.

Anyway.

One of the lists I’m on just delivered a massively AU fic set in the Buffy universe. The author basically changed all the relationships between every major character at least a little and in some cases almost entirely. The author’s note explaining the new setup is two very long paragraphs.

Why not create an entirely new batch of characters? I mean, if you’re not going to keep the show’s characters the same, why use them? Why not start fresh? I can understand the whole “what if this pivotal event had gone this way” angle, there’s plenty of professional media based around doing that for historical events.

But drastically AU fic I just don’t get.