I've had a few people ask me what exactly I eat while intermittent fasting. (For the basics on fasting, read this post: .)
First of all, I usually do a 23/1 or 22/2 schedule fast (that is, I fast for 23 hours and eat for 1, or fast for 22 hours and eat for two). That means I need to get my calories in during an hour or two, and in order to do this I up the fat content of my meals. If you have a longer eating window - say three to six hours - you can have a couple of snacks or a protein shake and then a less caloric meal.
I checked over some of my food logs to find some sample days:
Day 1Drinks: Coffee (black), black tea, green tea, peppermint tea, Diet Coke, waterMeal: Pork souvlaki skewers (6) with tzatziki dipDessert: Peanut Butter Batter (1/2 egg, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 2 tbsp erythritol, 6 drops Sweetzfree, 1/2 cup unsweetened smooth peanut butter - can also be baked into crumbly cookies)Numbers: 1900 calories, 123g fat, 19g net carbs, 189g protein
Day 2Drinks: Coffee (black), black tea, green tea, peppermint tea, Diet Coke, waterMeal: Chicken strips sauteed with jalapeno peppers, dipped in mayoDessert: Atkins Bake Mix pancakes with Walden Farms pancake syrupNumbers: 1451 calories, 97g fat, 5g net carbs, 130g protein
Day 3Drinks: Coffee (black), black tea, green tea, peppermint tea, Diet Coke, waterMeal: Ground pork and veggie burger with mayo and Walden F 1 1/2 grilled chicken breasts with mayo. Just The Cheese Crunchy Baked Snack (jalapeno flavour).Dessert: Heilmann's 85% dark chocolate (40g)Numbers: 1644 calories, 117g fat, 13g net carbs, 135g protein
Day 4Drinks: Coffee (black), black tea, green tea, peppermint tea, Diet Coke, waterMeal: Rib steak with melted butter, Tofu Shirataki angel hair with cheeseDessert: Sugarless Chocolate Frosting (2 tbsp melted butter, 2 tbsp good quality unsweetened cocoa, 2 tbsp erythritol, 4 drops Sweetzfree, 2 tbsp heavy cream)Numbers: 1584 calories, 131g fat, 12g net carbs, 88g protein
As you can see, for these days I didn't have much in the way of vegetables, since I was doing a rough Meat&Egg approach also. I really don't think this is necessary if you're doing intermittent fasting, so feel free to add in low-carb friendly veggies and salads. I've also noticed that keeping protein around 100g is the magic number for me so I don't get hungry between meals.
You'll have to play around with your own numbers and find out what works for you in terms of food variety and satiation. You might also notice I have some sort of dessert every day, which gives me a lot of psychological satisfaction from a meal. I also never feel deprived doing low carb this way, but you may not need or want dessert items.
Good luck, and enjoy watching the pounds fall off!
Luscious Lemon Cheesecake
I made this recipe by combining some awesome ideas from the
section at the Active Low Carber Forums. The base is a standard
low-carb cheesecake crust, the cake is a slightly tweaked version of
the incredibly , and the topping is a higher-fat version of .
Here goes:
Preheat the oven to 350*F.
First make the base by combining:
1.5 cups almond flour (if you have other nuts you like, feel free to
throw a few crushed ones in - macadamias are great for this)
5 tbsp melted butter
5 tbsp granular Splenda
Line an 8x8 cake pan with greaseproof paper. The easiest way to get the
paper to &stick& to the pan is to smear a little butter from the butter
wrapper around the pan and press the paper into place.
Press the cheesecake crust mixture into the bottom of the pan, and pop
in the oven for 10-15 mins, until the edges start turning golden brown.
I find the pre-baking stops the base soaking up the cake batter and
becoming soggy.
While the crust is baking, combine the following in a large food processor or mixing bowl:
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract
Juice of one lemon
1 1/2 cups sour cream
1/2 cup sugar-free vanilla syrup (or 1/2 cup of Splenda or equivalent sweetener)
Blend until combined. Then add:
16 ounces (2 packages) cream cheese (it's easier if the cream cheese is
softened beforehand, and cut up into pieces before you add it)
2 tbsp melted butter
I usually let the crust cool a while before pouring the batter on top.
Then, I bake the cheesecake in my own improvised water bath. I plop the
cake tin into a wok half-filled with water and then put the whole
ensemble in the oven to cook. The water prevents the top of the cake
from cracking. Alternative methods: a pan of water placed below the
oven shelf you use for the cheesecake. This isn't absolutely necessary,
so if you feel intimidated by it or don't have the pans, don't worry
about it - it just makes for a prettier overall result.
Turn the oven down to 325* and bake for 35-40 minutes. IMPORTANT: After
the cooking time finishes, don't open the oven door. Just turn it off,
otherwise the whoosh of cool air will crack your cake. Leave the cake
in the turned-off oven for an hour (more if you can), before letting it
cool at room temperature, and then moving to the refrigerator.
While the cheesecake is baking, it's time to make the topping.
Grate the zest of two lemons into a bowl. (When you hit white, stop
grating and move to the next section.)
Add the juice of both lemons
Stir in 3/4 cup of Splenda (or other granular sweetener)
Now, add two whole eggs, plus two egg yolks, and stir everything up.
The next part is to slowly, slowly cook the mixture so it turns to
curd. Place your mixing bowl over a pan of simmering water, and keep
the heat low-med. If you cook it too fast, you'll get lemony scrambled
eggs. (I always found this double-pan method intimidating, but give it
a try, it's not as hard as it seems.) It should take around 10-15 mins
to cook. Keep stirring so the heat moves through the mixture evenly. It
should start thickening, and once it reaches a pudding-like
consistency, remove it from the heat.
Add 6 tbsp butter for a richer, creamier taste. It will melt and
combine if you stir pieces of butter in immediately. This is optional,
so you can skip it if you'd like to marginally lower the calories of
the final product!
Put your lemon curd in a container and place cling wrap over the top so
it's touching the mixture, otherwise a skin will form. Place in the
refrigerator to cool and thicken. This can be used as a topping for
more than just cheesecake - on low carb yogurts, flax muffins and more.
It tastes like an extremely intense lemon custard.
Once everything is cool, you can remove the cheesecake from the pan and
spread the lemon curd over it. The result is a deliciously creamy, rich
cheesecake with tangy lemon topping. Heaven for lemon lovers.
Makes 14 good size slices, each one:
331 calories
8.5 carbs (7.5 net)
6.6 g protein
My interview for the awesome
site is now up, including some before and after pictures I finally felt brave enough to post:
What I like about this site is that they feature REAL people, with real weight loss struggles and successes. You won't find any fake Russian bride pics here!
For those of you to whom that last sentence was, well, Russian, a brief update on the
is in order. The infamous woman-in-the-red-dress pic which Kimmer claimed to be her &after& pic turns out to be snatched from a Russian dating site profile. Here's a screenshot:
Anyway, many, many folks have blogged about the recent explosive discoveries, including most of the success stories also featuring photos from dating sites. A court date is set for November 1st, and I truly hope all the folks who were scammed by Kimmer get their both their money and health back in full.
Back when I first blogged about the issue, I was trying to be even-handed about it and see it from both sides. After all, when low carb became popular, there was a huge knee jerk reaction to declare it &dangerous& and &unhealthy&. Now that study after study is proving those naysayers wrong about low-carbing, I didn't want to jump to conclusions about a new approach.
However, I find the utter dishonesty Kimmer has displayed by using fake pictures deplorable. She's preying on vulnerable people, those struggling to lose weight and desperate for a quick fix.
As far as the diet goes, you can find some great information here, at , on why going on a very low calorie diet (defined as 800 calories or less) is incredibly damaging to your body. I still maintain that the Kimkins Experiment, or K/E, where you eat as much lean protein as you're hungry for, and enough fat to make the menus work, is a viable way to break a stall or get back into ketosis quickly after a stall. For a long term diet though, I think you need more fat, which is why I use mayo and full fat dressings to up my calories when I follow the shake plan.
All of these picture scandals had me pondering. It's so easy to throw up a picture and claim it's you - and people generally won't go searching for evidence to the contrary. As Photoshop skills become more and more sophisticated, it gets even easier to doctor pictures you already have. I heard of someone actually photoshopping a &No Parking& sign out of a photo and taking it into court to get himself out of a parking ticket - and he won!
I was looking around for information on how to detect such trickery, and I came across an interesting interview with a guy who does this for a living. He's developed software to detect image manipulation, and works with the FBI and companies who rely on real digital images. I found this info at a pretty funny , of all places. They care about the veracity of the images submitted to them because that's the way they give out prizes for who caught the biggest fish - and they don't want any fakers!
I find this whole mess pretty sad, and was glad to read about someone fighting the good fight against fakery. I don't think it's a huge deal if someone removes bags from under their eyes in a picture, or blurs out a pimple on an otherwise pretty photo or takes out the red eye. To me, none of those things alter the essential portrayal of a face or body. But when you're shaving the edges off arms and shrinking bodies digitally - that's dishonest. So check out some
(or some !) to brighten your day.
I have to admit, I thought getting back to low-carbing after a
honeymoon off-plan would be a breeze. After all, I reasoned, I LIKE
eating low carb more than eating carbs. Meat, steak especially, has
always been the &best bit& of the meal for me, so discarding the
surrounding crap never felt like much of a sacrifice. And after
discovering low-carb alternatives for my favorite sweets, like the
sugar-free chocolate cakes or deliciously creamy low carb cheesecake, I
thought I had it made.
So what's going on? I am baffled by how difficult I'm finding it to get
back on and, most importantly, stay back on plan. Judith Beck, in The
Beck Diet Solution, has some insight to deviations from diet when she
writes about the brain as a muscle. Every time you cheat, or, in her
terminology, &give in& to a craving to eat (whether it be eating more,
or eating unhealthy food) you're strengthening the &giving-in muscle&
of your brain. You're more likely to give in the next time, and the
time after that. The flip side of this, of course, is that by resisting
the temptation to eat unhealthy foods or unhealthy amounts, you
strengthen your resisting muscle. Next time, you're going to have a
much easier time resisting. It's a way of thinking about the brain as
getting into a groove.
Here's how I picture it: imagine scoring a line
in a block of wood with a blade - not too much difference, right? The
next time you run the blade down the line you've made, it's pretty easy
to skid off course. However, the more lines you score right on top of
that one, the deeper the groove you make in the wood, and the harder it
is to run off course. Eventually, you've carved a deep enough path in
the wood that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get out
of your groove.
It's helpful for me to think of dieting this way, as a choice between
carving out a healthy path, or entrenched myself in a valley of
unhealthy choices. Here is my disclaimer: I am pretty much an
all-or-nothing type of girl, flinging myself into projects
wholeheartedly or abandoning them as useless. I know there are dieters
out there who follow programs like the Carbohydrate Addicts Diet (CAD),
which allows a carbier dinner, and even sugary desserts, and people who
practice re-feeding (a day of higher carb eating) on the weekends. I
can't hack it. Tasting sugar makes me want more, and, hedonist that I
am, I forgo my long-term goals of health and happiness for the
short-term sheer pleasure of food enjoyment.
One thing I've found interesting is that when I've been eating carbs,
I've avoided the low-carb community, the forums, the blogs, the
journals, the newsletters, everything. How's this for twisted logic: I
think I know, deep down, if I'm reading the wisdom of low-carbers, I
won't cheat. If I want to cheat, I don't read it. It's as though I'm
covering my ears and shaking my head, drowning out any voices that may
pull me from my syrupy pool.
Such is the power of addiction. Having observed it countless times in
others, it's still harder to turn that critical gaze upon oneself. I
woke up this morning feeling like crap, again, and not wanting to step
on the scales, again. I think, and still purely in line with my
hedonist leanings, that critical mass has been reached in more ways
than one. The pleasure of enjoying foods I've restricted for two years
has turned into something not so pleasurable at all, with the costs far
outweighing any crunchy benefits.
I know part of the extension of this carby phase is deeply connected to
that very restriction. I know once I get back on plan these foods will no longer be available to me. It seems pretty
logical on the part of the body to say &Hey, we're not going to eat
this stuff again in ages - what's the harm in one more day?&
Clearly, the harm in one more day is that it's not just one more day.
It's filling your body with sugar that leaves it craving more sugar,
scoring a deeper and deeper tendency to give in to tempting off-plan
foods, and ultimately setting yourself up for another day and another
Today, I get into a new groove.
Apologies for not posting ahead of time about my long absence. I was off getting married and then honeymooning in London, Ireland and Amsterdam.
The wedding was absolutely perfect. I was prepared for things to go
wrong or to have some mishaps, but we kept everything so simple that
the whole day went smoothly. The ceremony was beautiful - our friend
Sameer did an incredible job, explaining to everyone why there was no
priest or rabbi standing before them, and making everyone cry as he
spoke about how honoured he was to perform the service and talked about
Simon and me.
The reception was, above all, fun! The food and bar were great, and
everyone enjoyed eating, drinking and dancing. I was overwhelmed by the
sheer force of happiness throughout the day: every single person at the
wedding seemed genuinely happy for us and genuinely happy to be there.
We were surrounded by warmth and love.
Then, Simon gave the speech to end all speeches. He was charming and
funny and loving. He managed to quote a Middle English text about love
from the Chaucer tale I'm using for my Master's thesis (this was pure
coincidence, since he didn't know I was studying that tale!), and then
read an astonishing Shakespearean sonnet he'd written himself. It was
so good everyone thought he was quoting Shakespeare and just reading
something to me. He had tables of people in tears by the end of it.
We danced the night away under the stars, and then were surprised by a
room at the Ritz by two of our good friends. The honeymoon was
fantastic too: London, Dublin, southwest Ireland, and Amsterdam. Above
all, I feel so, so lucky to have married such a brilliant partner.
As for the breaded part of all this bliss, I did indulge in carbs on my honeymoon. Lots of carbs: Guinness throughout our Ireland trip (starting off at the brewery), and traditional Irish meals that included three kinds of potato - roast, boiled and mashed - and then onto the glory of fries covered in mayonnaise in Amsterdam.
More thoughts on &cheating& or off-plan eating to come, but for now I have some serious poundage to remove! Returning home to the scales was a bit of crashing return to earth, but I'm sure I can shed the extra by getting right back to low-carbing.
The Steaks Are High is a blogfor anyone interested in the low carb way of eating or weight loss in general.
Menus, yummy recipes, restaurant tips, diet research and results posted regularly.Troperville
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High School A.U.
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"The basic overarching plot is, 'What is the contrived nonsense that drives
to take a human form and go to high school?'"
— pitches
, , the Scarecrow, , , , Poison Ivy, Bane, and Mr. Freeze.note&
The High School AU is an
that may or may not resemble the original universe, but the main premise is that most or all of the characters from whatever universe the story draws from are in an academic setting. Usually, this happens to be high school.
This type of story may also occasionally , though this is not necessarily a requirement.
This is the most common form of , for good or ill, mostly because it is an easy setting to write for, probably because . Some stories may take a series that never took place in a high school and transplant the characters there. A variant on this is to take a series where a high school was part of the setting, and makes it the primary setting. Another variant is taking a show with characters that were elementary or lower grammar school age and transplanting them to a high school setting.
A rarer variation is to also attempt to transplant the storyline. This works better with storylines that are effectively independent of the setting.
This is especially likely to happen when the cast of a series functions as a .
A subtrope of . Compare . Contrast .
&&&&open/close all folders&
&&&&Anime and Manga&
This also happened in an episode of the
TV series. Not content to leave it at that, however, the writers also threw in . Unsurprisingly, given the amoeba-like manner in which
split off , this world became a series all on its own.
Two different series, in fact.
Some manga have
chapters in this style, often finding humor from the contortions needed to shoehorn the tropes of the series into the cliche High School tropes. Examples:
, which also had animated omake sequences and even a novelisation of their "Ginpachi-sensei" AU.
Gets an extended
with a few
Strangely,
should qualify as a HSU the teenage leads are high school students and we sometimes see them at school, albeit not in classes. It's just not the main focus.
Pandora Hearts.
manga has a series of audio drama CD set in the alternate 'Samurai High School' setting, stemming from a piece of art drawn by the creator for one of the manga volumes. Strangely enough it is highly propable that said creator is actually female (pseudonyms are funny that way).
A fairly popular (if unimaginatively named) fic for SDK . The story seems to ignore the high school setting in favor of whatever bizarre plot seems funny. Shipping is kept to a minimum, since the story has two authors who don't agree on pairings and therefore wildly sabotage each others plots, once using an explicit
also had an audio drama CD set in a
where Kamina is basically a misfit failing school, Simon is the sole handyman/janitor, and Nia is the Student Council President...until they kick all that to the ground like everything else and turn the whole thing upside down.
Gurren Lagann also has a second official
in the form of the manga . All the good guys attend Dai Gurren Academy, which is located right next to the menacing and intimidating Teppelin Academy, headed by malicious principal Lord Genome. Note that all of the Beastmen are still Beastmen, and . Highlights include Kamina getting very confused over the meaning of "", Yoko in a
to Simon for three whole pages (while continuing to talk), and Viral dressed in a business suit (coinciding with the "" ). Oh, and Nia wears
transfer student uniform (see below) and calls Simon her husband... and takes the . Plus, this manga sheds some insight into how Kamina and Nia
had Kamina not died before Nia arrived into the plot. Leeron is also in a dress and Lord Genome is the overprotective dad of Nia. Nia and Simon pull off a sequence very similar to
Parodied in
as one of the alternate worlds (created from fragments of Sasshi's mind) to which Sasshi and Arumi travel - this one is patterned after dating sims, having Sasshi as a borderline
and Arumi as... a cupid of sorts.
Shippuden is set in a , joining and legitimizing the thousands of
fanfics that have already used this trope.
Ironically, it also went against lots of clichés that were (and still are) extremely common in Naruto highschool AU fics. It portrayed Naruto as a
gang member instead of a waifish outcast. OTOH Hinata remained a shy , Sakura remained a Type B
ready to slap Naruto if needed, Rock Lee was the sports star, Neji was both the
AND the , and Sasuke was the local Bad Boy and Naruto's rival who still aided him during fights.
This was expanded upon in a bonus feature, created by the animators, for the seventh Shippuden DVD called
which consists of narrated still-frames, in which Naruto
and we see him beating the other fighters in the school, and also features
while several others (Sakura, Ino, Shikamaru, etc.) .
X has one for one episode, complete with the requisite
this type of show would have. The end of said theme song is interrupted by ringing cell phones.
During Shinji's
from the last episodes, he imagines putting all the characters into an idealized version of his school — with twice the High School cliché tropes, and none of the . There are now three official tie-in manga series based on that setting, not to mention the
on both sides of the Pacific.
spinoff is actually a subverted , as it is quickly revealed that all the
stuff is going on in this universe too, the main difference being that everyone's a whole lot less
The other two
Evangelion manga are Neon Genesis Evangelion:
And then there's the
CGI shorts and
manga of , which is 100% gag-based. Unit 01 is now a
robot in the same class as Shinji, Asuka and the three Rei Ayanami sisters.
had a kindergarten AU in the manga, entitled Petite Mew Mew. Interestingly, the characters' natures as magical
were emphasized r for example, Retasu is a Japanea finless porpoise all the time, and has to be carried around in a fishbowl.
Later episodes of the
anime have a High School AU
at the end.
Horitsuba Gakuen is a series of
crossover drama CDs starring the characters from
Gakuen Kino is a High School
AU set of spin-off novels for . Thankfully, the writers know and revel in how silly this is.
Back during its heyday,
spawned hundreds of these. The (inner) sailors were almost always in a band, camp counselors, or even just regular high school girls. Mamoru/Darien and the four generals would invariably be a rival band, the male counselors, or in their class—once in a great while, the "civilian" boys such as Urawa/Greg and Motoki/Andrew would be Mamoru/Darien's team. About the only things that would tie the stories to Sailor Moon would be the names and basic personaliti otherwise, there would be no real way to tell a story was supposed to be about Sailor Moon at all. Of course, since the stories were just vehicles for shipping, having the senshi actually be senshi would probably have just distracted from the romance.
Spoofed by Hiromu Arakawa more than once with
omakes. They usually involve Edward and Alphonse in a gang (not a very good one at that) or Mustang and the Fuhrer in a girls' school spoofing '70s
Don't forget Olivier as a sukeban (member of a Japanese girl gang).
There is also an inordinately large number of
fics out there. Some are gracious enough to leave the Pokémon in (some are even set in a school for Pokémon trainers), but just as many dispense with them altogether, rendering the title of the franchise meaningless.
The same thing happens in
Similar in the same vein as Gurren Lagann and especially the second ending credit sequence of Naruto, the third credit ending sequence of
skirts this, showing the female cast living out lives normal for (real) women of their ages (given that most of them are High School aged). It's interesting to note that this ending credit sequence was storyboarded by Shinichirō Watanabe. Yeah,
as one of its audio dramas. Unlike most examples though, the expected
protagonist Lelouch is a teacher, his
sister Cornelia is a sukeban, and
Emperor Charles is the leader of the school's gangs.
Arguably, the manga adaptation with the same name as the anime also qualifies, since it focuses more on Ashford Academy thanks to the removal of the . The racist military faction is replaced by a racist group of students, and the Japanese rebels commit acts of petty vandalism rather than actual terrorism.
gag manga. You only have to look at the art work to realize this is intensely
and completely hilarious. Notable for still having killer cyborgs with portable WMDs & taking place in an unimaginably massive
city, which is basically the whole joke. Also unusual as it actually ages one character up, with murderous cyborg loli Sana-Kan becoming a grown woman as one of the teachers.
The three-page manga "Red-Hair of Class 3-Sea TIME" takes
characters and sticks them into the clichéd story of an inspirational teacher who turns around a class of delinquents Specifically, they're all inspired to become pirates. With Luffy as the all-out study freak jukensei.
on one of the
DVDs has all the main characters attend high school, with highly explosive results.
Meanwhile,
is itself a
(as well as a
of most of the characters).
there's official art of the Ikki Tousen characters in Three Kingdoms-era China (or something similar enough to excuse breaking out the ).
Loads and loads of
fic has the cast as normal High S despite how canonly, they did go to High School together, and on Earth even. It's those pesky magic powers and the personalities that come along with them that get in the way.
The officially licensed
is a manga series used to advertise a
...and it is unabashedly a Grade School AU. The magic powers have been replaced with virtual card games, and all of the non-human characters are now humans (except the familiars, which are just normal animals). note&
's OST covers feature Dheianeila and Yuti La as highschool students in another shoutout to Sukeban Deka.
has a drama CD with a highschool setting.
is normally a
world. The DVD bonus specials take all the characters and set them at Gainos Academy, with school uniforms and no decrease in fanservice.
also has a series of High School AU bonus specials, this time set at St. Lily Academy, with Cruz playing a role he would later go on to play in the post-apocalyptic action series, only in a more traditional setting. That role? Crossdresser.
spoofs this with an "Early 21st Century High School" entertainment program in the titular space battleship's virtual reality recreation room, which is essentially a
Both of the opening credits to
are set in such a setting.
: The High School Years!
Not exactly an AU, but
feature fun little illustrations that bookend the commercial breaks, like a lot of anime do. Sometimes they actually pertain to the episode, but usually they're just fun illustrations showing what the characters would look like in a more modern setting. Favorites include
the sailor-style school girl, Zelgadis the rock star, and Gourry as a daycare attendent.
has an anime-based
set in an . The Sinners are in a gang which Chrono is slowly becoming disillusioned with, Rosette is a girl from a Catholic school that Chrono has a romantic interest in, Sister Kate is the principle of Rosette's school while Daffau is the principle of the other school, etc. The cast gets to be
and seem to be having a blast.
This is the premise of .
was adapted into a High School AU , Hard Metal Guardians, in 2012. Sylia is an , Linna is a rich girl working in a
cafe to understand how ordinary people live, Nene has
with Leon as her older brother who still works in the A.D. Police, and Priss is still in a rock band.
has a manga adaptation where the main characters are in school instead of the fast food industry.
&&&&Comic Books&
in one issue. It was not well-received.
does this for the
and other characters in the DCU in a grade school sense like Titan villains being teachers of the school the main cast goes to.
is either this or a college AU. Same difference.
, which cast a few characters like
and Beast as young teachers, but made the rest of the cast into teenagers.
started out as this, but it gradually turned out that the whole thing was an illusion brought on by some weird mixture of demons and pixie dust.
Featured in
Corps, with Kid Deadpool living in one such world.
&&&&Fan Works&
. As the name implies, he's running for Prom King.
High School fics are also very popular for . The better ones focus on the fact that their memories are wiped when they turn 13, and often getting them back.
Due to the complete and utter impossibility of the EdxEnvy pairing () most of the stand-out fanfics for them are High School . These include ,
Dear God this
fanfic series called Hero High by a guy going by the name . Three entire books first taking place in an , then in a , and finally a .
He is also currently writing one in a
High School fic that—wait for it.... (S it's in zip format.) However, it's kind of a subversion in that it's not mundane—using , several Transformers go undercover in Riverdale, including several who end up going to Riverdale High.
There are countless
fics that place the characters in high school. They are sixteen, but they have never been to school on-screen, and usually just focus on making sure the canon couple Duncan and Courtney have extroardiarily large amounts of "Aww" inducing moments and/or angst, anhiliating both of their personalities at the same time, usually aided by OC Sues.
About two out of every three
fanfics take place when the boys are in high school, and many of the rest take place during middle school or adulthood. This probably has something to do with the fact that 99% of
fanfics focus on the characters' love lives.
There are a ridiculous amount of
high school AU stories. All of them usually will have their civilian names from the comics (Robin may be Dick Grayson or Tim Drake or just Robin).
Usually parody fics end up making fun of the extreme amount of High School AUs, and their lack of logic (culminating in a dance)
Wildly popular author Atomicskull did it brilliantly with , following Kirk and McCoy from elementary all the way through grad school.
Although most high school AU stories centre around the students, focus on the teachers isn't unheard of. Memorably,
focuses on the various adult ninja from the Naruto canon, sticking them in a high school setting. Although it's a
slashfic, it's refreshing to see the teachers doing, y'know, their job.
. There's a bunch of High School AU fics out there, with some being better than others.
tends to appear as the typical rival High School.
Name any fandom, and there is most likely a High School AU - from , to Watchmen, to
Even fandoms where the main character(s) are already in high school are not immune. You're bound to find fanfic where the adult characters have been de-aged, or prequels focusing on their own school days.
, takes this to the next level. Instead of being a cheesy romance , it takes a huge turn and speeds into a whole new direction. Not wanting another overused school fic,
sets things to a different pace with the oh-so-loved , but not without the romance, of course. A
AU, now giving the comedy a the main role other than the romance. Along with dashes of
and mystery along the way.
has a ton of High School and College AU fics, moreso than fics taking place during the show.
novel, any one from
to Persuasion. In the fanfiction archives at least 75% of the stories will take place in a modern day, often American high school.
already takes place at a high school, fanfic writers have found ways of twisting this trope to make it interesting. College AUs are quite common, were characters who according to canon know each other in high school don't meet until college, as are the type of high school AUs were the characters are still at McKinley High but the social structure is different (eg. Dave Karofsky is a geek, Kurt the cheerleader rules the school,
was subjected to this. The first was
(although its true status as a High School AU is debatable), and
. That's probably not even all of them.
There's a , and High School is the second challenge on the list. .
starts out as one, and rapidly falls into insanity.
cast and puts them in a high school setting....
A mild example in
fanfic : though Anna and several other characters do attend high school, only a small part of the story is actually set there. Far more of the plot is centered around the Arendelle Institute for the Emotionally Disturbed, where both "Ice Queen" Elsa and Anna's brother Hans are being treated.
An arc in the fanfic
involves this, with the main character Shade and a bunch of people he'd met on his journey transplanted into an AU highschool setting. A lot of the girls he's met seem to be in love with him, as well...much to his annoyance.
More than one
high school AU has graced the internet, but a noteworthy example is the collaborative roleplay high school AU starting here at . It features the crew of the Enterprise (based on their 2009 actors) attending Enterprise Academy, a prep school for Starfleet Academy, with
characters as teachers, other adults, and side characters, and occasional mention of
characters at the local kindergarten. Text is sometimes , full of horny teenagers with issues, and contains everything from pants-stealing aliens to , sex pollen, and . Expect many actor crossover references.
&&&&Films — Animation&
has one of these in . It involves Twilight Sparkle travelling to another dimension in pursuit of
and , , and meeting . She ends up having to use
to dissolve the bitterness between them all, which is a key factor in stopping Sunset's scheme to invade Equestria with the power of the crown.
is an official version of this, it features multiple of the original film's major characters actually attending college and studying for their future profession as Scarers.
&&&&Films — Live-Action&
There is High School A.U. of, believe it or not, . It boggles the mind that anyone, especially a shipper, would take a high-school setting filled to the brim with ho-yay, les-yay, foe-yay and every other kind of yay you can imagine, not to mention all the other shipping tropes HSM is prone to and think to themselves "Let's change the school, the characters' personalities, and their love-interests".
Hollywood seems to enjoy giving
the High School AU treatment, with notable examples including O (),
(). The thriller The Glass House is vaguely
(with the obligatory shout-outs), and vaguely High School (everyone stays the same relative ages, so most characters are adults.)
One of the better results was , which recast 's
in a Beverly Hills high school.
is essentially a High School A.U. fanfic with CGI.
Some people have claimed that the 2009
film is an attempt to do something similar to this with the established characters from . The
is that all the main characters are cadets, when in fact only Kirk, Uhura, and McCoy are students (and McCoy is already a fully qualified doctor). The captain's chair is traded around quite a bit as well, although it's made very clear that Kirk's promotion is for the duration of the current crisis only. Of course, then he goes and saves the Federation and makes the jump from Cadet to Captain in one fell swoop...
in a high school at Ojai,California.
isn't an AU of any specific noir story, but it still fits here. The movie takes every noir trope imaginable and transplants them into a high school setting. The results are surprisingly good.
translates conspiracy and thriller-feely tropes to a high school setting. It also features the journalist protagonist, in this case writing for the high school newspaper.
&&&&Literature&
The number of these for
is disturbing. Possibly a variation with
in these, the canon characters are the teachers, and are teaching normal human students how their universe canonically works.
High School AU. Everyone is horribly out of character. A few manage to pull it off and bring on laughs, but others are just... blah.
There's a very bad recast of
in high school out there.
is pretty much a published version of this. It's ... in a !
You would think that , being set in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and populated almost entirely by teenagers, would be exempt from this. Nope. For some reason, there are a number of fics where Harry and company end up at a (usually) American high school.
And you can make Snape, Sirius and co into high school students by writing a prequel fanfic.
The number for
is disturbingly high. But that's kind of the point of book 2.
There is also a significant amount of
High School AU both as professional novels and as traditional fanfiction.
is one of the better examples.
The children's book series
is basically this trope for .
&&&&Live Action TV&
For , we have
that takes place in a high school in an alternate universe, with Ben Linus, John Locke, and Arzt as teachers, and Alex as a student.
is a metafictional
fanfic setting, with all the Doctors in different years, and the appropriate supporting cast at the appropriate age. Newman Primary is the same thing, but as a primary school (elementary school in the US). (There's also a retirement home, with elderly versions of the characters, but it's a bit *too* much for people, so it doesn't get used much. The most popular alternate-age versions of the characters remain the
of the Look Who's Talking day care centre. All of them co-exist in the wider setting of .)
There is now a fan-parody High School AU for
titled, appropriately, , complete with a cool opening that mimics the already awesome credits of the TV series (the parody seems more in debt to the show than the books.) Feature Starks as hipsters, Lannisters as the "cool" gang that runs the school, the Greyjoys as the swim team, Daenerys as the dragon-obsessed foreign exchange student, and Renly as the quarterback and potential prom king candidate (with Loras as his prom queen) Incredibly silly and a bit cringeworthy but still some good fun, can be found at .
. Given that these series don't provide much in the way of personality for their characters, except as relates to their investigation and prosecution of crime, the fic was essentially a regular, boring high school experience
characters.
A case of canonical high school having its slate wiped clean is one high school AU for . The teens never had any powers, and the Red and Silver Rangers, () aliens in the show, were normal school-attending Earthlings here. Though the high school stopped appearing in the show for good around episode 8, which is probably the only reason the fic author could get away with it.
is an official version of this trope applied to Superman.
As were the pre-Crisis Superboy comics, and 1980s Superboy TV series.
has been described as "The
legend". Certain changes, including making Merlin and Arthur the same age (late teens, early twenties) and a
definitely fit the trope.
, in its distortion of past series, changes
into a high school AU. Former
Lucky Clover is reimagined as a clique of the cool kids and Tsukasa becomes a student for his duration in this world.
The Taiwanese series
does this for . Among other anachronisms, the love triangle involving Lu Bu, Diao Chan and Guan Yu seems to be a primary plotline.
fics that attempt to transplant the premise of "ordinary people with extraordinary abilities" into high school. Mostly this is done to make
closer in age and not related
They took this and made it canon by introducing a teenage clone version of Jack O'Neill, who promptly returns to high school. Although he's
or mentioned again, countless fanfictions try to explain what happened next. Some inexplicably decide to give the rest of the team mini-clones as well.
In the 200th episode, there was a scene featuring teenage versions of the team, in direct reference to this trope.
There's a popular trend of high school fics which ignore the canon continuity entirely. Generally they place Jack and Daniel as foster brothers, Sam as the girl next door, and Teal'c as the weird new kid from Africa. Never mind that they weren't all in high school at the same time, and Teal'c's an alien.
Some fanfics have O'Neill's clone end up at the same high school as Sam's adopted () daughter Cassandra.
said in his blog that O'Neill's clone, after graduating High School, rejoined the Air Force and was promptly enlisted in the Stargate Program (now Homeworld Security) because he has all of Jack's experiences.
can be seen as the High School AU of .
aired a miniseries based on Clue that essentially took the characters from the game and made then teens.
&&&&Professional Wrestling&
One of the magazines not directly affiliated with any fed ran a feature that was short comic strips of the wrestlers of the day in high school. One was Steve Austin standing up on a chair flipping the bird into the air saying "If you hate algebra, give me a Hell Yeah!" while the teacher said "Steven, sit down.", and one with Kane shooting flames out of the stove in Home Ec. It happened for a few issues and then had a fan contest on who could write the best one, then published the contest winners in the magazine.
&&&&Religion and Mythology&
There is one
of . Even the summary says, "Anything can be a High School AU fic. ANYTHING." It also has Ebony from
in it. She even has the bad spelling from her original fan fic to go with her.
&&&& Tabletop Games&
SJ Games' Pyramid Magazine once had a / crossover set at Heavenly Heights High School. Laurence ( leader of Heaven's armies) was the captain of the football team, Kobal (Demon Prince of ) was the class clown, and so on.
There are a few
fan fiction pieces floating around with this setting. Almost always, they keep the GRIMDARK GRIMDARK and insanity of the characters, and if done well are a hilarious read.
The most well-known variation is a body of work by various authors referred to as Warhammer High, which either recasts the Primarchs as teenage girls or centers around their teenage daughters.
&&&&Theater&
Lysistrata Jones is a musical High School AU of .
A large number of
"comedies", as they are known on , have this as the premise.
&&&&Video Games&
high school AU fics out there, taking away the characters' powers and the like.
There are actually some that have the
(Sora, Riku and Kairi) attending school after the events of the second game, and have them pretty much keep their powers. This may be based on the fact Kairi and Selphie appear in school uniforms near the beginning of the game, suggesting that the two missing will likely have to attend once they return.
of the straight-up AUs
's are hilariously (albeit scathingly) parodied in the second and third chapters of .
looks like it's not an example... until you realize that for all the WWII Germany trappings, the characters act like they're in high school.
has an absurd number of these. Virtually none of these have anything to do with Pokémon and many of these revolve around .
There's one
featuring all the Nintendo cast.... it wasn't exactly Super Smash Bros., but it was close. And then Mario and Luigi became Avatars and there was violence... That would be , a
is related to.
There's a Fanfic in Spanish titled "Nintendo School", guess what it is about.
While there aren't many fanfics about the game, the number of fanarts of
portraying the characters as high school students is really outstanding, both in the eastern and western sides of the fandom.
The number of
fanfics that have this as a basic premise is insane. And very few of them even give a simple explanation of the sudden change, and go about as if nothing was different. Those that do often give the explanation of "".
There are many
doujins (of varying quality) that put Marisa and co in highschool. For some reason, Keine and/or Eirin (and/or Eiki!) are almost always put in a position of authority (teacher or principal) while
is a delinquent. There is also an inversion of this trope: Keine (see a pattern?) set up a school for the kids of Gensokyo.
One also subverts them: It seems that highschool is the normalcy... until Reimu realizes that it's the working of the resident
Yukari Yakumo. Then she returns to being the normal ass-kicking miko, while the world is not yet un-warped.
Sanae is the only character in the series who actually was a high school student. Surprisingly little is done with this, aside from fanart of her in a school uniform.
— A High School with the entire cast of every
game ever, both Anime and
characters.
has a sequel that places all the characters in a modern high school setting.
series has seen a recent upsurge in High School AU Fanfics, , now over fifty chapters. Since then, several have cropped up, such as , , and .
has this in its Epilogue Disc.
has seen its fair share of High School AU. You have everything from a , to , to
isn't so much an AU, but it starts off in a boarding school and centers around the students (namely Link, Zelda, and Groose) before
: Note that while these examples don't usually have recurring characters in highschool (the series stars a new cast of characters with every game). They're still a high school spinoff in an / of the main series.
Atlus asks "what if we took the post-apocalyptic themes and demons in our main series, and had them overrun a highschool?". You play as an
who on his way home realizes his school isn't on Earth anymore, and that demons are taking over the school.
Shin Megami Tensei If inspired Atlus to create the very successful
Franchise to appeal to the casual gamer market. (that's right they spun off the spin off) Which deals with , going through their school life, while summoning aspects , as they fight against demonic
Re/Visioned made a
animated series named Pre-Teen Raider with the description "Lara Croft wasn't always one of the world's most successful Tomb Raiders. See how a twelve year old Lara honed her craft during her early years at the Croft Academy." Essentially, the Tomb Raider creators licensed a High School AU of their own game. It is seemingly impossible to find said series, but it is mentioned on the Croft Generation website
The Private
Academy event features
as students in a private academy, with a comically-middle-aged-looking dj TAKA acting as the principal. The event has you playing (platonic) matchmaker by getting pairs of artists to build up friend filling a pair's
by playing their "home" game causes the graphic of the pair to change from the pair being distant to becoming best friends. When the pair's gauge reaches 100%, you unlock their respective collaboration song for play in all participating BEMANI games.
where characters from , ,
(amoung others) play card games.
&&&&Web Comics&
, of all things, has the
Gakuen Hetalia, penned and illustrated by the author himself and later adaptated into a PSP game (not by Himaruya, though). Because what everybody needs is an AU where
of countries who normally make up a
have friendly and/or romantic hijinks with a newcomer country, er, girl in the . (Bad thing is that it made Seychelles, said newcomer country,
who falsely accused her of either being a , "stealing all the bishonen for herself", or standing in between their favorite yaoi couples.)
The Gakuen universe has been expanded in manga strips, and it recently debuted in the . Among other things, it has France hanging with China and Turkey in the , Estonia and Ukraine in the music club, Seychelles peeking into other people's clubs too, etc. It's specially "famous" for introducing Romania, who is a member of the Magic Club with England.
fanfic , and true to the spirit of a , it
the setting by turning the troll characters into humans with ordinary parents, coming from "Alternian High" rather than the planet Alternia.
is another Homestuck
and is fairly well regarded in the fandom. Unlike the above there is no
of the characters- all the non-humans are kept non-human.
There's also the infamous Homestuck High , which is .
Although, technically, its more of a flashback-to-grade-school than it is an unrelated alternate universe with the characters in high school.
This is canon for . The cast gets flung into an alternate dimension and needs to
to get back home. One of the dimensions puts them in an . Walter and Tiren lose their , Mary and Sue lose their , and Elly gets his . The creators take the opportunity for a
can be summarized by this trope, but for nearly every Cartoon Network original series created. (Except in the fourth grade) Aside from the titular , major characters include , , and
(as a teacher).
there are plenty more
as background or side characters.
"" , which takes the cast of
and places them in high school in the 1980s.
&&&&Web Original&
turns the cast of
into teenagers. .
, the fan-prequel to .
. Not unlike the un produced cartoon series (and page art at the top), the video reimagines Batman (mainly ) as a Teen Comedy in the vein of other ,
(the main source of the video).
once did a sketch where desperate Hollywood producers listen to increasingly ridiculous High School
of various monsters (including, yes, Cthulu) to use as the
phase dies out. Eventually they green-light one involving a burrito.
Nothing Much to Do, a Vlog
&&&&Western Animation&
is actually a television example of the latter, taking the
cast, aging them by ten years, and putting them in a fairly standard middle-school sitcom.
Which, in the show, is still pretty much like High School in every other respect.
Many Superhero Blockbuster Summer Action movies throughout the 2000s would have an animated sereis released at or around the same time to ride the wave of renewed interest and popularity of the character. Usually taking the core cast and if not being explicitly in highschool, then at at least explicitly younger than they are usually interpreted
premiered the same year as . It justified this with the conceit that mutants (and super-powered beings in general) were thought by the general public to be nothing more than rumor, hoax, and legend for the first couple of seasons, and Xavier wanted his students to have as normal a life as possible.
In the 80's, there were plans for an X-Men cartoon that would've featured , , Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Thunderbird and
as teenagers attending a public high school. It never got off the ground, though.
, a year before . Not in highschool but featuring younger interpretations of Batman and his .
premiered a year after . about a genius teenager with a suit of armor, his buddies, and the
who kicked everything off by having his dad killed. It's about as much like the
comics or movies as the high-school
fanfics are like the actual
series, but it gets away with it by .
And after a rights dispute caused by Disney buying Marvel, the show was canceled and replaced with
just in time for .
USM has , ,
attending the same high school as Peter Parker. While White Tiger and Nova are
created for the show, Luke Cage and Iron Fist are always depicted as adults in the comic books, with Cage in particular being much older than Spider-Man and Iron Fist not finishing his training until adulthood.
- the main cast are an inexperienced
rather than war veterans, and the human sidekick is a kid rather than a high-school student.
was scheduled to have one after his first , but it was canceled before it ever aired. It would've been about his adventures in Asgard before ever coming to earth. There is a direct-to-home-video movie called
that is based on a similar idea.
comes one year before the Michael Bay film reboot. The Turtles are teenagers by default, but Splinter is noticeably younger than he is usually interpreted, and April is 16 instead of being a working woman.
Though in contrast to the Thor example, the show began well before the movie began shooting, and was already on its second season before a single trailer for the film was out.
Even the creators of
have gotten into the act, with their
video, though the bending is still all there.
The episode "The Headband" may also be a nod to this trope, as it places Aang in the middle of a Fire Nation School for little more than some
is basically the High School Alternate Universe version of all of history.
's existence is owed to
going "Let's do a show about Batman in high school." And so it was done and everyone lived , mostly due to it turning out a lot
than the execs had in mind.
There nearly was a
television series. Sure it never developed beyond concept images (see page art at top) but makes you wonder what Bruce Wayne's life was like in High School. Even several comic fans wanted this show released.
The Mork And Mindy segments in the Mork and Mindy/Laverne and Shirley with Fonz
Craig Mc Cracken mocked the concept in , where the girls are ditzy morons more interested in shopping and boys rather than saving the town from destruction.
This sort of came to pass in the form of
an anime adaptation that featured the girls as three unrelated typical 12 year olds that were given superpowers. It played like a
series. Blossom was particularly boy crazy.
gives several established DC superheroes cameos as non-powered high school students. Karen Beecher () and Mal Duncan () appear as classmates of Superboy and Miss Martian, while Barbara Gordon () and Bette Kane () attend the same school as Artemis and Dick. Most notably,
(who is almost always depicted as an adult in the comics and other adaptations) is made the same age as Dick Grayson.
Most of these characters received their powers / superhero personas sometime during the five year timeskip between seasons 1 and 2. They are now in their late teens and early twenties and affiliated with either the League or the Team.
Much like Gotham High, there was almost a . It would have been set in the 1950s, with Kermit as a -style greaser, Gonzo as a nerd, Fozzie Bear a soda jerk, and Rowlf a varsity football player. The show was never made, but plenty of merchandise was.
&&&&Real Life&
Democratic White House High School AU, with the difference being that the various politicians (and
and ) are the educators, not the students. Obama is the Principal. Rahm Emanuel is the VP. It's... it's actually not that bad,
. The major players of the George W. Bush administration as kids. It's set in the present, but George H.W. Bush is president. That doesn't stop Lil' Bush from nearly causing nuclear incidents, though.
One of the premier fics of the small Figure Skating RPS fandom is the High School AU . It actually sets things chronologically so that the skater who's the central character is depicted in his senior year of high school the year he actually was, and it does include some skating. Of course, now the author's continued the story into the college.
High school AUs are ridiculously popular in bandom RPF, possibly because the band members were all actually in high school at some point, so canon details like Pete Wentz's soccer-playing or Gerard Way's basement can be included. However, they probably weren't all in high school together.
Another reason is that some bands tend to have a music video that is set in a high school.
Sue Townsend (author of ) wrote a satirical column for the Today newspaper called The Secret Diary of
Aged 13 3/4. Margaret was the Head Girl at Grantham Grammar School, and all the main figures in 1980s UK politics were thinly disguised as Margaret's peers - for example, "Ginger" Skinnock, whose father ran the Working Men's C Edwina Slurrie, who Margaret despised for being m and Cecil Parkhurst, the equally snobby Head Boy who Margaret had a secret crush on, but who left school in mysterious circumstances after his family's au pair quit to have a baby.
has a few of these with the various casts as students and the The judges
as teachers. Sometimes they take place in a
which revolves not only around , but
Alternative Title(s):
High School Spinoff,
High School Alternate Universe,
Recycled In High School