I understand why you might approach some AUs like that. Syntax6's Universal Invariants is an AU that changes one element to see what happens as a result. Definitely, in it, canon is overlaid or breaking through. You said it better.
But to take a major character out, and put another major character in, who is incidentally a different sex, that's just a whole other ballgame to me, which is why I feel like Naraht has violated her contract with the reader to some extent. I truly expected her to write much, much more in this universe. It has amazing potential.
I love the idea of Scully with Skinner. Scully with Sam, not so much, but maybe my heterosexual privilege is showing here. In any case, I still contend we just don't know much about SamandScully, not from this story, not enough to do much more than speculate. I also think it would be a less interesting story were it to turn into femslash, but, hello, noromo in the house. One of the things I liked about this universe was the possibility of it being and staying gen fic. We need more gen fic in XF. Dammit.
Re: Still Not Quite a Gender Discussion, But We're Getting There.
But to take a major character out, and put another major character in, who is incidentally a different sex, that's just a whole other ballgame to me, which is why I feel like Naraht has violated her contract with the reader to some extent. I truly expected her to write much, much more in this universe. It has amazing potential.
I love the idea of Scully with Skinner. Scully with Sam, not so much, but maybe my heterosexual privilege is showing here. In any case, I still contend we just don't know much about SamandScully, not from this story, not enough to do much more than speculate. I also think it would be a less interesting story were it to turn into femslash, but, hello, noromo in the house. One of the things I liked about this universe was the possibility of it being and staying gen fic. We need more gen fic in XF. Dammit.