question about popslash

[psocoptera]

Can anyone think of a popslash AU in which NSync existed but one person of the slashed couple was not in it (but the other one still was)? (As distinct from total AUs where they were all college students or whatever.) Or, say, XMFC stories where one of Charles and Erik still has their canonical powers, but the other is not/has never been a mutant?

(Backstory: I've been reading a lot of hockey RPF and I've realized that I don't care for stories in which one dude is still a world-class NHL celebrity and the other is, like, a sales clerk. No offense to any particular story! I get that the idea is supposed to be that even though one of their lives took a totally different turn they were still meant to find each other, just, something about the inequality of it, where one of them still gets to have their superpowers (effectively) but the other one doesn't, bothers me. Mundane AUs where the powers don't exist to be had, where we see what the interactions of everyone in a given character-set would be like ported into a different context, feel very different to me than these half-AUs. But now I'm trying to think if there's ever been a half-AU I did like. I know SGA produced some stories where one of John and Rodney wasn't involved in the Stargate program but the other still was, and I didn't much like those either...)

Comments

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

Confession: I recently stumbled across a Hockey RPF 101 link (Fandoms I Have Loved) and an now trying to figure out who's the sales clerk. (Kaner?)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I've seen Kaner as a barista, Kaner as a librarian, Kaner as a trainer, Sidney Crosby as a trainer, Geno Malkin as a trainer, Geno as a vet... nobody actually a sales clerk, exactly, I just didn't want to point to something specific.

It occurred to me thinking more about this, though, that the very first hockey RPF story I read, that I can recall, was a half AU where Jeff Skinner is Eric Staal's nanny. (Er, for Staal's son.) And I liked that just fine, and still do. The thing is, Skinner and Staal might as well be any two guys, to me, I have basically no canon or fanon knowledge of them except for that story. (In fact when I was trying to remember it, I was misremembering Jeff Skinner as Jeff Carter, who also shows up in hockey RPF and about whom I also know next to nothing.) Or there's this awesome actor RPF story "The Giraffe Notes" about a relationship between Andrew Garfield, who I think played Spiderman in a movie I didn't see but saw a commercial for, and Jesse Eisenberg, who I think I thought was Michael Cera - anyways, my point is I could barely pick either of these guys out of a lineup, and so imagining a world in which Garfield is still an actor and wins an Oscar while Eisenberg is a copyeditor does not hurt, because the only reason I even have any idea that real Eisenberg has a film career in the first place is that I looked it up at some point. It's once I become familiar with a character in canon or fanon that it's weird to see them diminished while their opposite number isn't.

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

I can't think of any equivalents off the top of my head in K-pop RPF (to actually try and answer your question).

Eisenberg's actually a writer as well -- I think he just staged a play off-Broadway -- so that's not too much of a stretch. (Not as much of a stretch as Librarian!Kaner, she snarked snottily.)