>>4465127
>I am certain you could enjoy the higher quality fics without reading the source material provided they aren't all AU
Not anon, but I feel like in any given situation this would only make it easier for someone who does not have the source material as a reference, rather than prove an additional hurdle. I think you(?) and I might have had this conversation a couple threads back about Sylvaina, but I think it's much easier for someone who hasn't ever touched warcraft to read some Third War AU fic that is just about "a human from the naval nation" going to "the elf kingdom" than for such a person to read a fic that's just a direct follow up of some specific expansion and referencing canon events and all sorts of secondary characters who are only touched on in brief.

An AU fic about Bellatrix being a college professor trying to fuck her student Hermione is gonna be pretty straightforward and pose no problems compared to some post-war HP fic that isn't re-explaining the whole context of the war and how various bits and pieces of the world work.

I do still think there's something lost not having the context though. Not that they can't still be enjoyed but I think in the impossible scenario where you could read a fic for the first time twice, once without the source material and once knowing it, that the second would be an at least slightly more enjoyable experience for even well written approachable fics.