I love the characters as I first met them, in the TV shows, and tend to avoid reading anything that diverges too far from them. I can take a lot of non-canon pairings as long as I feel the canon characters might have reacted in something like teh ame way in the given circumstances. Otherwise, why bother. All-human AUs with OOC characters - what's teh point? Just giving the characters the same names and mentioning the odd forehead, bleached hair or eyes isn't the same thing, and I don't really see the point of it. I want to see the "real" characters cope with new situations, not strangers with familiar names.