healingmirth | Today in "kids these days..."

Anna Todd, who's the one who wrote the One Direction fic that became the book that is apparently becoming a movie, Fifty Shades style, was interviewed in this BBC documentary about pop music fandom, as evidence of both the global/internet nature of fandom, and the prominence of RPF fanworks. So far, so valid a choice. From what little I've read about her writing, I surmise that the stuff she writes is Not My Thing, but I assumed it was like, accidentally terrible. It may still be accidentally terrible? But some of what I would interpret as terribleness, she seems to have done on purpose.

"Everything I've written and most of the stuff that I read, it's AU - like alternate universe, so it's not really inspired by the band, like, none of my characters have the same personalities as actual members of One Direction."

Which.

I mean, that's a valid choice, I guess. One that has been used to good effect, sparingly, by other authors. (Is it safe to assume that the imaginary dudes she is writing still resemble the actual dudes?) But it's the exact opposite of what I would look for in an AU fic, and not what AU typically means without other qualifiers. Like OOC. Or Mirrorverse. Is that what AU means on Wattpad? My name is pastede on yay?