Chris Lang

Thoughts on the Nostalgia Critic’s return

Posted by Chris Lang on January 29, 2013 at 1:35 PM

It’s official. The Nostalgia Critic is officially returning to reviewing.

The announcement came during a special presentation where Doug Walker (as the writer) speaks with his creation, the Nostalgia Critic after weighing the pros and cons of bringing the Nostalgia Critic back.

As someone who defended Doug Walker’s decision to retire the Nostalgia Critic, I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, it does seem like he’s taking a step backward. He had made a good case that he couldn’t keep doing the Nostalgia Critic forever, and that just because something’s popular doesn’t mean you should keep doing it until long after it’s gone stale. And of course there were plenty of new projects he wanted to do.

On the other hand, as he notes in the special, time away from a certain project can allow one to recharge and come up with new ideas for that project. And if indeed he has new ideas that would allow the continuation of a popular series and still be fresh and funny, we really shouldn’t begrudge him that.

I am going to miss Demo Reel and its cast of characters, though. Still, the special did a good job of tying in Demo Reel to the Nostalgia Critic, and in particular Donnie Dupree’s story arc to the Nostalgia Critic’s story arc.

(SPOILERS: It turned out both of those aforementioned story arcs are really one and the same, and that Donnie Dupree’s whole persona is the Nostalgia Critic’s purgatory — being made to experience overly harsh criticism on the other end of it).

And there was the parting line said by Quinn that Donnie/Critic knows where to find them if he needs any reminders of the lessons, leaving it open for Demo Reel and/or its cast to reappear. (EDIT: Though it’s unlikely – the creators have said as much. I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if

So I’m looking forward to seeing what Doug does with the Nostalgia Critic this time around. Hopefully we’ll still see the effects of his character arc from time to time, and hopefully we’ll get some really good material out of his new review subjects (‘The Odd Life of Timothy Green’ looks promising. I’ve never seen the movie, but the premise sounds weird enough to get some good comedy out of it).

Already, there have been announced two changes. One will be a bi-weekly schedule. The stated reason for this is that being bi-weekly gives more time to work out all the jokes and everything and keep things fresh and funny). I can definitely get behind this, as I feel that a lot of things can benefit from a quality over quantity approach, and perhaps the Nostalgia Critic is one of those.

The other announced change is that the cut-off date (previously no movies more recent than ten years, with only a few exceptions) has been officially done away with, giving room to review movies that came out between 2002 and 2012 … such as ‘The Odd Life of Timothy Green’. I can easily see why Doug Walker and Rob Walker (his brother and collaborator) might feel a bit constrained by the previous cut-off date, so this would allow a wider range of movies to be featured on the new Nostalgia Critic show. Plus, as noted in the special, bad movies can be found in just about any time frame.

But in any case, I stand by the point I made before. What Doug Walker, or any Internet personality, does with their shows is their decision in the end. And if Doug really has some good ideas for the Nostalgia Critic, I’m all for seeing new episodes.

Welcome back, Nostalgia Critic.

This article received the following comments…

 richb
1:09 PM on January 29, 2013

I am very happy that he is returning Nostalgia Critic, ending it all together would be just like quitting smoking cold turkey, he should have just cut it back from every week (which is what he did) and eliminating the cut off date will be a big help. He can review what he wants. Is it a step backward? No for a couple reasons. One is that there will be changes to the show, so it is evolving. Two is that Demo Reel was a bad idea that didn’t work. Better to take a step back and figure out what went wrong so that the mistakes will not be repeated. I also think the two week thing is to give Doug a chance to do other projects here and there, which is fine. As for The Review Must Go On, it was one of the best things I have ever seen anywhere.

 richb
1:09 PM on January 29, 2013

I am very happy that he is returning Nostalgia Critic, ending it all together would be just like quitting smoking cold turkey, he should have just cut it back from every week (which is what he did) and eliminating the cut off date will be a big help. He can review what he wants. Is it a step backward? No for a couple reasons. One is that there will be changes to the show, so it is evolving. Two is that Demo Reel was a bad idea that didn’t work. Better to take a step back and figure out what went wrong so that the mistakes will not be repeated. I also think the two week thing is to give Doug a chance to do other projects here and there, which is fine. As for The Review Must Go On, it was one of the best things I have ever seen anywhere.

Chris Lang
1:22 PM on January 29, 2013

richb says…
I am very happy that he is returning Nostalgia Critic, ending it all together would be just like quitting smoking cold turkey, he should have just cut it back from every week (which is what he did) and eliminating the cut off date will be a big help. He can review what he wants. Is it a step backward? No for a couple reasons. One is that there will be changes to the show, so it is evolving. Two is that Demo Reel was a bad idea that didn’t work. Better to take a step back and figure out what went wrong so that the mistakes will not be repeated. I also think the two week thing is to give Doug a chance to do other projects here and there, which is fine. As for The Review Must Go On, it was one of the best things I have ever seen anywhere.

Well, I don’t think Demo Reel was bad per se, though it could have been better. It just seemed they were making it up as they went along. Some things worked, some things didn’t. I wouldn’t mind seeing its cast of characters again, as I’d come to like them.

I have to agree with you. The special was one of the best things Doug and company have done. I loved the meta-commentary, and the cameos (Lewis Lovhaug appearing as himself, not Linkara, and playing his part straight as an advice-giver for most of that scene made its ending twist hilarious. And of course Lindsay and Nella’s attempt to preserve the Nostalgia Chick’s ‘nostalgia monopoly’ was also fun). The final scene where Donnie is confronted with the truth about himself, and only leaves his Demo Reel friends with their approval and encouragement, was very emotional. Indeed, I’d rank this among their best.

In any case, I debated with myself over whether to post a blog about this, but felt I pretty much had to seeing as how I did that collaboration with James defending Doug’s previous decision. This can be seen as a sort of sequel/follow-up, just as the special is a sort of sequel/follow-up to ‘To Boldly Flee’.

Anyway, I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Ingonyama70
1:51 PM on January 29, 2013

First off: I LOVED “The Review Must Go On.” It was a great end to Demo Reel and a wonderful tie-in between the Critic, who attacks things he deems to be horrible with such vitriol, and Donnie, a genuinely nice guy who just happens to make horrible things. The Doug vs. the Critic dialogues were my favorite parts though, great dual-acting on Doug’s part.

THAT SAID: The Nostalgia Critic is funny, but he’s hardly the be-all and end-all of reviewers. That said, if not for him and the Chick, I’d never have found out about Internet reviews in general, let alone the awesome people here at ME.

So he’s influential, and entertaining, even if he’s not my FAVORITE favorite reviewer. (To that inspirational person: you know who you are 🙂 )

But all the same I would rather see TGWTG with the Nostalgia Critic than without. He is their flagship character, after all.

BigBlackHatMan
2:56 PM on January 29, 2013

I am reserving judgement to see what he comes back with. He has talent and if the new Nostalgia Critic is strong, it will dismiss a lot of the apprehension. Good work

James
2:57 PM on January 29, 2013

I don’t have mixed feelings about this at all. I think it’s a horrible idea to bring the NC back.

I also defended his right to retire the character, and I felt he picked a good time to do it. The whole thing was beginning to feel stale, and giving the NC a big, epic ending was something that felt right. This return smacks of desperation.

I was not a fan of Demo Reel. I watched the first episode and could barely get through it. So that show ending is not a big deal to me. However…I don’t know. I feel the way I do when they bring a super hero back from the dead after only a few months. The big problem is that now there can NEVER be a big ending for the NC. No one would buy it, all the drama has been let out of it.

I love the Critic, but I wish Doug had allowed him to go out on top. Instead I think he’ll beat the joke to death.

Chris Lang
3:05 PM on January 29, 2013

James says…
I don’t have mixed feelings about this at all. I think it’s a horrible idea to bring the NC back.

I also defended his right to retire the character, and I felt he picked a good time to do it. The whole thing was beginning to feel stale, and giving the NC a big, epic ending was something that felt right. This return smacks of desperation.

I was not a fan of Demo Reel. I watched the first episode and could barely get through it. So that show ending is not a big deal to me. However…I don’t know. I feel the way I do when they bring a super hero back from the dead after only a few months. The big problem is that now there can NEVER be a big ending for the NC. No one would buy it, all the drama has been let out of it.

I love the Critic, but I wish Doug had allowed him to go out on top. Instead I think he’ll beat the joke to death.

Some of your argument is sort of what I was feeling, which is why I said I had mixed feelings. And yes, comic books have pretty much taken all the drama out of killing off A-list superheroes and even certain longtime supporting characters by bringing them back. (But that’s a discussion for other blog entries).

Here, ‘The Review…’ was basically Doug’s trying to tell us that he’s bringing the Critic back for the RIGHT reasons. The right reasons being he has some really good ideas, and is feeling inspired again. True, the NC was popular, and true the Nostalgia Critic’s show was seen as the ‘flagship’ of TGWTG, but those aren’t really good enough reasons from an artistic standpoint.

Whether Doug succeeded in convincing us he’s doing this for the right reasons is up to each of us to decide. As for me, I’m going to give his comeback a chance. Hopefully, what we see in the next few months will make it worth it.

CHRIS, July 2014: And so those were initial thoughts at that time. Since then, the relaunched Nostalgia Critic has given what I feel is some great stuff. Particular favorite episodes of mine are the ‘Cat in the Hat’ review, the ‘Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland’ review, and the crossover with Angry Joe reviewing ‘Man of Steel’. So while I did indeed have mixed feelings about the return of the Nostalgia Critic, I do like a lot of the new material.

Throughout the years, there have been a number of Star Wars fan-made films. There was TROOPS (a Star Wars based parody of COPS) and a number of other parody films. But there have also been a number of more serious works set in various different eras of the Star Wars universe. One of them is Star Wars: Threads of Destiny, directed by Rasmus Tirzitis.

Set some 94 years after Return of the Jedi, the Jedi Order and the New Republic are thriving again, though they have new enemies. The Skenvi Empire, no longer under the control of the Galactic Empire, has rushed to fill in the void and expanded dramatically. Many former officers and soldiers from the former Galactic Empire now serve the Skenvi. The Skenvi are now at war with the New Republic for domination of the galaxy, and that’s where our story begins.

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Asexuality/Nonsexualty – Why the hate?
Posted by Chris Lang on March 1, 2012 at 2:30 PM

I’m taking a break from my usual discussions of illogical or nonsensical scenes in media to discuss a typical response geeks get from non-geeks (or even some geeks, in an Even Nerds Have Standards way).

Namely the line ‘you need to get laid’, or some variation of it.

You see it all the time. You see it in comment sections. You see it on message boards and forums. You see it in TV and movies where some character makes a geeky reference and another person rolls his/her eyes at the statement and says something like “You’ve never had even the tiniest bit of sex, have you?”

First off, why is there an assumption that if someone has a wealth of knowledge about comic books, anime/manga, or fantasy/sci-fi movies, TV shows, or literature, then that someone does not have a sex life or is a virgin? For all the person making these remarks knows, the geek might actually have a ‘signifigant other’. They might have indeed had sex. And having a sex life and having a vast (if not encyclopediac) knowledge of geek culture are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Secondly, even if the geek in question IS a virgin or at least hasn’t ‘done it’ in a long time, why is it anyone else’s business?

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Hello and welcome to another installment of WIJDW (Why It Just Doesn’t Work). Here, I take a look at scenes from movies and other media and explain why they are illogical, nonsensical, and/or just … don’t work.

This time, I’ll be taking a look at Superman III, the third installment of the 80s Superman movie franchise. While the first two installments are widely regarded as classics and among the best superhero movies ever made, the third and fourth installments are … well, not thought of as highly. The fourth film had terrible special effects, a number of ridiculous moments, and a poorly-thought out plot. And the third … attempted to be both a comedy movie and a continuation of the franchise. And that just doesn’t work.

Okay, for starters, while the first two Superman films had their moments of comic relief, they were more or less ‘straight’ superhero films. They played the danger seriously, the character relationships seriously, and the world they lived in seriously. Superman, his antagonists, and Kryptonian artifacts were the fantastic elements in what was otherwise a representation of the everyday world. Therefore, we had little trouble suspending disbelief. We could, as the tagline for the first film said, believe that a man can fly.

However, Superman III throws the internal logic of the first two films out the window in favor of slapstick and over-the-top ridiculous sight gags. The opening sequence, in which a bunch of slapstick is juxtaposed with a serious scene of Superman saving a person from drowning, sets the tone for a very uneven movie.

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Throughout the years, there have been a number of Star Wars fan-made films. There was TROOPS, a Star Wars based parody of COPS, and a number of other parody films. But there have also been a number of more serious works set in various different eras of the Star Wars universe. One of them is Star Wars: Threads of Destiny, directed by Rasmus Tirzitis.

Set some 94 years after Return of the Jedi, the Jedi Order and the New Republic are thriving again, though they have new enemies. The Skenvi Empire, no longer under the control of the Galactic Empire, has rushed to fill in the void and expanded dramatically. Many former officers and soldiers from the former Galactic Empire now serve the Skenvi. The Skenvi are now at war with the New Republic for domination of the galaxy, and that’s where our story begins.

We’re introduced to our main villain, Lord Siege. He is sent by Skenvi Emperor Jiles to the planet Coreign. Coreign is a planet that has yet to take sides in the current conflict. It produces a special ore than can power an entire city, but the Skenvi empire is interested in its potential for use as armor for their ships.

The New Republic, meanwhile, sends two Jedi knights, the master Soren Darr and his apprentice Raven Darkham (yes, that IS his name, I’ll get back to that a bit later), to speak with the King and Queen of Coreign and persuade them to join the New Republic instead. Once there, they meet with Princess Arianna, who is skilled with fencing and may in fact be strong with the Force. She is known to be very perceptive towards others’ feelings, and can sense others’ presence before she can hear and see them.

Soren and Raven discuss this. Raven says that she’s too old to begin training as a Jedi, which is an indication that the new Jedi order are following the same practices as the old Jedi order. They also are following the whole ‘no romantic attachments’ rule that caused problems in the prequels for Anakin and Padme. One would think that they’d have learned from the mistakes of the past.

Lord Siege meets with the Princess, and later with the King. Unfortunately, though Lord Siege is there as an ambassador, his tone and movements just scream ‘bad guy’. Say what you will about the prequels, but one thing they got right was Senator Palpatine. He was believable as a politician in the scenes where he needed to be, and an over-the-top villain in the scenes where he needed to be.

Lord Siege, on the other hand, is better at being a Sith Lord and a villain than he is at being an ambassador. He doesn’t come across as a diplomat at all, since he’s unsubtly menacing in his tone and delivery in those scenes. It’s no wonder the royal family of Coreign rejects him and his offer to join the Skenzi.

So of course come the consequences. The queen is murdered, Princess Arianna is kidnapped, and the two Jedi, assisted by the smuggler Karus Kahn, rush to rescue her. It all eventually leads back to Coreign for a showdown with Lord Siege.

Is this film any good? Well, I’ll get this out of the way first. For a fan-made production, there are a number of good visual effects. The combat and the space battle sequences are good, and the lightsaber battle between Raven and Lord Siege is, I thought, well done and on par with the lightsaber duels we’ve seen in the original movies. The scenes where Soren tells Raven not to let his emotions be too much of a distraction are decent, and in keeping with many of the Jedi Master-apprentice scenes we’ve seen in the original six movies.

But sadly, the good is overshadowed by the not-so-good. The acting is sadly wooden in many cases, and the characterization is, for many, weak.

Karus Kahn, alas, is pretty much forgettable. At least they tried to make him not seem too much like a poor man’s Han Solo, but the similairites are there. His ship’s main control center looks similiar to that of the Millenium Falcon, he runs afoul of a few shady characters not directly related to the main antagonists, and his ship has a hyperdrive that sometimes breaks down at the wrong moments. With all that in mind, we can’t help comparing him to Han Solo, and unfortunately he’s nowhere near as interesting. It might be the writing, it might be the acting, but he lacks both the wit and the charm of Han Solo, and comes across as rather dull.

Princess Arianna is, sadly, an example of the Faux Action Girl. Those who’ve been to my TV Tropes ‘Tropers’ page may have seen me list Faux Action Girl as one of my least favorite tropes, or Pet Peeve Tropes. The Faux Action Girl is pretty much a female character who at first SEEMS like she’s going to be a kick-butt Action Girl along the lines of Princess Leia, Buffy, or Xena and Gabrielle. But what separates the Faux Action Girl from the genuine Action Girls named in the previous sentence is that unlike them, she DOESN’T kick butt even though it seems like she’s set up to.

Instead, she exists to be as good as the boys in practice scenes, but when things get REAL, she’s either nowhere to be found or she’s completely helpless and needs the male heroes to rescue her. In this case, it’s the latter. Arianna is good at old-fashioned fencing in the fencing scene with Raven, but when Lord Siege kidnaps her, she’s all screaming like an old-fashioned Damsel in Distress out of an old movie. This plot device was annoying in A Kid In King Arthur’s Court (where it’s even worse — the princess is shown to be absurdly good at swordplay, but is easily kidnapped by a couple of guards), and it’s annoying here, too.

Come on, this is an independent production. You don’t need to adhere to tired Hollywood stereotypes and prejudices that were avoided in the original Star Wars films for the most part. I suppose they were trying to make Arianna a contrast with the feisty Princess Leia, but having the successor of a feisty, tough heroine be a weak and helpless type didn’t work in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and it doesn’t work here, either. The only time Princess Arianna shows any backbone outside the fencing scenes is towards the very end where she uses the Force to shove back an attacker, and even then it’s not entirely intentional.

While there are a number of visual effects impressive for a fan-made production, there are also shots that seem out of place as if they were filmed with a different filming style. A few shots seem like they come from a reality TV show with cosplayers as opposed to a movie, and are jarring when they occur.

The musical score by Justin R. Durban is decent, but it’s not in the same league as John Williams’ classic score. This, alas, shows in the closing credits medley which begins with the classic John Williams closer and then has a very jarring transition with the new music. It’s not quite as bad as, say, going from the opening portion of a Beethoven symphony directly into a techno dance club music track, but still there’s a large contrast in musical styles that doesn’t quite mesh together.

Also, I have to roll my eyes at the name they give our main protagonist (the Luke/Anakin figure). X-Men fans will recognize Raven Darkholme as the other name of frequent antagonist Mystique, and calling the protagonist of this film Raven Darkham will make them less inclined to take this film seriously. Once you get past the name, though, Raven isn’t that bad a protagonist. But still the makers of this film probably should have given him a name that wasn’t a variant of a well-known character from a well-known other franchise.

All in all, while technically this film does have some good moments, and the premise is interesting, it is sadly dragged down by its execution. There’s a lot that could have been done better. All in all, I’d say it’s worth seeing if you’re curious, but there are plenty of better films out there.

That’s it for now. Feel free to leave your comments.

This is my thirteenth blog entry. Perhaps this will be unlucky for me, because I am about to write about a very controversial subject.

I’m talking about gay characters in fiction, and who should be allowed to ‘out’ them as gay.

With homosexuality gaining mainstream acceptance in the past twenty years, there has been an increase in the number of gay characters in fiction. Some may be established as gay from the start, and some may come out of the closet later on.

Among the more visible gay characters in recent fictional works are Marvel’s Northstar, Willow of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dumbledore of Harry Potter, and the new Batwoman and Question of DC.

And at the start of June 2012, DC Comics has announced that in the continuity of their New 52 line, Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott (the one who came before Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, and the Green Lantern Corps) will be revealed to be gay. This despite his being clearly straight in the previous continuity, being married to a woman, and having a daughter and a son (the latter of whom was outed as gay, incidentally).

To be honest, I don’t know what to make of this. On the one hand, it’s good that DC is giving us another gay hero. It shows that we’ve come a LONG way from the days when Marvel Editor in Chief Jim Shooter allegedly would not let John Byrne out Northstar as gay, or let Chris Claremont establish that Mystique and Destiny were bisexuals.

On the other hand, this whole thing reeks of ‘publicity stunt’, makes fans of Alan Scott’s super-powered offspring Jade and Obsidian (who apparently don’t exist in the new continuity as we know them) unsure of how to feel, and also is NOT done by the people who originally created the character in the first place.

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WIJDW: Harold Crick meets Karen Eiffel
Posted by Chris Lang on November 14, 2012 at 11:30 AM

Hello and welcome to another installment of Why It Just Doesn’t Work (WIJDW). Here, I analyze scenes and elements of movies, comic books, and other entertainments and explain why they are illogical, nonsensical, and/or otherwise just … don’t work.

This time, I’ll be discussing the 2006 movie Stranger Than Fiction. In particular, I’ll be discussing a certain part of it that threw me out of the story, so to speak.

The film concerns Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), an IRS agent who lives a lonely life, with very little going for him outside of his job. Every morning, he brushes his teeth and counts brushstrokes, he then counts his steps on the way to the bus, and so forth. In short, his life’s pretty dull. And then one day, he hears a woman’s voice narrating his daily routine.

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Titanic Turkeys: The Legend of the Titanic
Posted by Chris Lang on November 27, 2013 at 2:40 PM

In honor of Turkey Day, I’m now discussing the second of two films that truly deserve to be called ‘Titanic Turkeys’.

Today, I’ll be looking at the OTHER animated Titanic movie, The Legend of the Titanic. Directed by Orlando Corradi, this Mondo TV production has to be one of the worst animated movies ever made. And not because of the animation, which is actually a lot better in quality than the animation for Titanic: The Legend Goes On. No, this film is astonishingly bad due to its story and its insensitive handling of its subject matter.

As I said in the previous Titanic Turkeys article, knockoffs of popular films were common in the 90s. James Cameron’s Titanic had two of them, and this is the other one. I think it’s worth noting that this one came first as it was released in 1999, and Titanic: The Legend Goes On was released in 2001. Both films feature talking mice and other animals, but this one goes a lot farther with its fairy tale and fantastic elements. And most people who’ve seen this film agree that it goes TOO far.

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In honor of Turkey Day, I’d like to discuss some really bad movies that truly deserve to be called ‘Titanic Turkeys’.

The first of the two movies I’d like to discuss is Titanic: The Legend Goes On. And yes, the Nostalgia Critic and Whyboy have reviewed this movie, but I’ve got some things to say about it that I don’t think either of them covered in their reviews.

First off, in the late 1990s, James Cameron’s Titanic was a huge success. It was THE big event movie of late 1997/early 1998. And I’ll admit that I saw it in the theater and despite its flaws, I still was moved emotionally by it. I felt like I was there, on board the ship with Jack and Rose and the various people both real and fictional. When the tragedy finally came, all the right notes were hit, I felt. Aside from the one dubious incident with First Officer Murdock (based on a legend that was debunked by Second Officer Lightoller – the highest ranking survivor of the crew), that part of the movie was done especially well, and really helped to give a sense of the tragedy.

With the success of James Cameron’s Titanic, however, came the knockoffs. Knockoffs of popular movies were nothing new. Just about every Disney film of that decade had some cheap knockoffs made of them (I remember seeing a few of those sitting on the shelves of my local Blockbuster, but I knew to stay away from them). I’ve heard of at least two knockoffs of Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, for example (and one of them ends with Quasimodo getting somehow turned into a handsome prince, or so I hear. It sounds facepalmingly bad). And there were a few ‘Lion King‘ knockoffs whose titles I can’t remember.

But as bad as those knockoffs might be, at least they weren’t trying to be knockoffs of a movie inspired by a real-life tragic event. At least two Italian directors gave us animated knockoffs of Titanic. One, named Orlando Corradi, gave us The Legend of The Titanic. And the other, Camillo Teti, gave us the main subject of this article, Titanic: The Legend Goes On.

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Mad Monster Party: A review
Posted by Chris Lang on October 29, 2013 at 4:55 PM

With Halloween nearly upon us, I thought I’d take a look at one of the many stop-motion animated films that we often dust off and pop into our DVD players this time of year. Specifically, I’ll be taking a look at one of the first stop-motion films of its particular genre.

Before there was Coraline, before there was Corpse Bride, and before there was even The Nightmare Before Christmas, there was Mad Monster Party. Produced by Rankin/Bass and released in 1967, this was the first feature-length stop-motion animated ‘monster’ film. As such, does it hold up?

Well, I’d say yes and no. There are portions of it that don’t hold up as well as others. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

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Hello and welcome to Fanfic Subgenres, where I discuss common subgenres of fan fiction, and then see where they apply in professionally-produced works.

Today I’ll take a look at a subgenre of a subgenre, namely the High School Alternate Universe. The Alternate Universe fic subgenre has many sub-subgenres (for lack of a better phrase) and the High School AU is one of them. (Of course technically all fan fiction is set in an alternate universe seeing as it’s not canon, but that’s something I’ll discuss in more detail some other time).

The High School Alternate Universe is pretty much what you’d expect. It’s an alternate universe where the main characters of a series are in high school. In fan fiction, it’s been done with almost every franchise. Lord of the Rings, Legend of Zelda, Star Wars … just about any series you can name.

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