I am procrasting on work and so just came back to read this post to see if anyone else had commented after I had... >_>
Anyway! I do think an AU is more accessible, because it should work on both levels. Of course if you're not familiar with canon, you'll miss the...richness that you would get if you were familiar with it, but it will still be an enjoyable story and you can understand it, where you mightn't be able to understand a canon story for the same pairing.
Using two examples from an AU I've written and one I plan to write... I have a Vampire Chronicles AU where Louis and Lestat are students at UCLA. It can be read as a simple college romance; I think I've set up everything so that it makes sense in and of itself. But if you are familiar with canon, then you can see how I've tried to drawn parallels between their canonical lives from the 18th century in the present day. As it's one of my earliest works, the writing is a lot rougher than I'd like, but I think it stands up both as both a work accessible to outsiders and as a VC AU.
I have plans for a Marauders non-magical rentboy AU set in the early 80s, which hopefully I'll have time to finaly write sometime next year... I think it will be enjoyable on its own; that will certainly be my aim. But for people familiar with Harry Potter canon, there will be all sorts of layers, drawing parallels with canon.
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Anyway! I do think an AU is more accessible, because it should work on both levels. Of course if you're not familiar with canon, you'll miss the...richness that you would get if you were familiar with it, but it will still be an enjoyable story and you can understand it, where you mightn't be able to understand a canon story for the same pairing.
Using two examples from an AU I've written and one I plan to write... I have a Vampire Chronicles AU where Louis and Lestat are students at UCLA. It can be read as a simple college romance; I think I've set up everything so that it makes sense in and of itself. But if you are familiar with canon, then you can see how I've tried to drawn parallels between their canonical lives from the 18th century in the present day. As it's one of my earliest works, the writing is a lot rougher than I'd like, but I think it stands up both as both a work accessible to outsiders and as a VC AU.
I have plans for a Marauders non-magical rentboy AU set in the early 80s, which hopefully I'll have time to finaly write sometime next year... I think it will be enjoyable on its own; that will certainly be my aim. But for people familiar with Harry Potter canon, there will be all sorts of layers, drawing parallels with canon.
I don't see these as mutually exclusive things.