fictional_fans | Rec me a work from the library of dreams

melannen posting in

What fanwork do you most wish you had finished and posted that you haven't (and let's face it, probably won't anytime soon?)

I have a Les Miserables Enjolras/Grantaire modern AU where they are roommates (yes, they were roommates!) and two different kinds of a-spec that happen to mesh perfectly, and different kinds of damage that mesh perfectly. And also they are two different kinds of troll that happen to mesh perfectly to let them enjoy confusing literally everybody about what their relationship status is (that's the fic, it's "nobody can figure out what Enjolras and Grantaire's relationship actually is and they plan to keep them confused as long as they can.") It's my happy place. They have a beach house in Jersey! (Well, they have a beach house because they got married because Enjolras's mom promised it to Grantaire as a wedding present if he'd win her the betting pool about whether they ever would.) I have full floorplans of the apartment and the beach house and outlines for three long fics! I have written less than a thousand words of it, but listen, if I had actually written it, you would love it, it's fluffy and tender but also silly and deep and it's my comfort place, I'm sure it would be that for other people too.

Give me a rec like that. :D Or you can even mock up AO3 headers for it if you want!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

seekingferret

I have written pieces of an Infinite Jest fic written as an InterLace article (in-universe ersatz wikipedia) about the MIT Language Riots of 1996. It's full of weird intertextual jokes, with callbacks to the Don DeLillo novel that Foster Wallace stole the MIT Language Riots from, jokes about the blog Language Log, references to real MIT politics and history, and a complicated alternate history that expands on the barest hints in the book. Unfortunately it's so intertextual that every time I go back and try to figure out more of the story, I can no longer remember what the jokes I put in the last time meant. And if I ever posted it, nobody would get all the jokes, but that just makes it more delicious for me. My favorite bit might be an imagined SNL sketch with Ana Gasteyer as Avril Incandenza.

Also I really want to learn enough CSS to make an AO3 workskin to actually format it as an InterLace article with Infoboxes and table of contents and so on, but that seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.

From:

alexseanchai

*intrigued*

From:

tei

OH MY GOD I REALLY WANT THIS. And can see why it might prove, erm, difficult.

From:

seekingferret

The longer it gets from when I last read IJ, the harder, too. I started this about two years after I read IJ, it's now about nine years since I read IJ all the way through, though I have reread passages.

From:

tei

Yeah, I have very inconsistent memories of that books. Some bits I can practically recite from memory, some I have no recall of at all.

From:

seekingferret

If you could help me decode who I was alluding to as "a Demerol-addicted former Boston College grad student in computer science", it would be a great help! It might be a character from IJ, it might entirely be a character from a different story I decided should get a cameo.

From:

tei

Hm, my first thought was that it was maybe the audio engineer who produces Madame Psychosis' show, but I think that's an MIT student...

From:

primeideal

Land of Hope and Dreams
Chapters: lol
Fandom: Battle Royale (2000)
Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death
Relationships: Kawada Shogo/Onuki Keiko, Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)
Characters: Kawada Shogo, Onuki Keiko, Original Character(s)
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon
additional additional tags: 'our class had one too,' nods to other continuities, including book-typical homophobia, spot the mary sue get a cookie, 'what am i supposed to do with a pot lid,' movie keiko is the best keiko, may contain springsteen allusions

From:

tielan

A Practical Acquaintance With Bees: MCU, Maria Hill centric, it started off post-Avengers and got blown off course by subsequent movies. I managed to pull it in line with TWS, but it was going to go way off-road after that and...I never quite got there.

...actually, I have quite a few of those that I wish I'd managed to finish. Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Justice League, Merlin...

Probably the most likely one to ever get finished is The Wisdom To Know The Difference which is a rejig of Endgame with Maria Hill. At least one more part, maybe two to go, but I got distracted about nine months ago and haven't really put any effort into it.

From:

minoanmiss

This is from a long time ago but I had meant to write a Minoan AU of the show NUMB3RS, called "The Queen's Architect", where Charlie was the titular architect (architecture and math were the same field back then) and Amita was his student (daughter of an Ambassador), Larry was the previous Royal Architect and the Queen's consort (who kept talking about "spirals in the sky" and other modern-knowledge-disguised-as-nonsense), Megan was the Queen, Don was her Head of the Palace Guard, David was his second in command, Liz was a former bull-leaper and his third in command, and Colby was David's slaveboy (because). ... and that elaborate mapping of characters was about as far as I got.

From even LONGER ago I wanted to write To See A Mallorn about a human boy who ran away with the help of some hobbit friends to see the Party Tree, about 20-25 years after LOTR. I wasn't certain how to end it, though -- he broke King Elessar's law, but he's a child.

From:

alexseanchai

Minoan AU of NUMB3RS

😻

From:

alexseanchai

the rest of Daughter of the Sun, in particular With Flame and Fury, a queer genderbendy reboot of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters

the Beauty and the Beast (1991)/Miraculous Ladybug one in which, mid-"Timetagger", Ladybug and Chat Noir land outside Belle's "poor provincial town", a few days before the bulk of the movie plot begins

the rest of the Pound (It) series—I mean it might still happen,

dick_or_treat is currently running, writing more trans Miraculous Ladybug smut is an option I have, but

in stuff I've already posted part of (excluding where the firelight fades on the grounds that I literally just posted the first two chapters last night and the next six are 100% ready and everything after that is at least 1/3 drafted):

swallow my doubt, turn it inside out (beautiful oblivion) (7064 words) by AlexSeanchai
Chapters: 3/?
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth & Lila Rossi, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Plagg
Characters: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Original Characters, Alya Césaire, Nino Lahiffe, Lila Rossi, Plagg (Miraculous Ladybug)
Additional Tags: Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Episode: s03 Oblivio, Memory Loss, Hospitalization, Drama & Romance, Present Tense, Past Tense, Identity Reveal, Podfic Welcome
Summary:

Adrien wakes up in a hospital bed at 3h34 Thursday morning.

"What happened?" he asks the nurse. "Last I remember, my friend Marinette tripped on the stairs at school and took me down too. But that was Monday morning."

Was there an akuma involved? he doesn't ask. He is used to—he hates, but he is familiar with—coming to with a new hole in his memory. But three days is an awfully big hole. Did I fight Ladybug again? Did I hurt anyone? If it was an akuma, and I'm still in the hospital after—what happened to my Lady?

"Is she okay? How hard did I hit my head?"

The nurse starts to quiz him, and then she pages a doctor and she starts to quiz him, and it's well past five before anyone thinks to actually tell Adrien that he did not in fact hit his head and black out for three days straight.

-

Adrien had maybe thirty minutes of experiential memory—five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear: those orders of magnitude meant that half hour must be insignificant, not worth mentioning—and Marinette wasn't there beside him. He did not know if she remembered anything between the elevator and the kiss. He did not know if she remembered anything else.

it's dangerous to go alone (take me, I'll be your player two) (7275 words) by AlexSeanchai
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng & Tom Dupain
Characters: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Tom Dupain
Additional Tags: Episode: s03 Gamer 2.0, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Has Anxiety, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Has PTSD, Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting, Adrien Agreste Needs a Hug, Identity Reveal, Actual Cat Adrien Agreste, Actual Ladybug Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Reveal Pre-Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Podfic Welcome, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Summary:

"Are you sure?" Chat Noir scoots a little closer. Ladybug can feel his body heat. "You look pretty upset. Seemed pretty upset yesterday afternoon, too," he adds. "Might have won that tournament faster if you weren't so upset going in."

"Stop bringing logic into this."

Chat shrugs, a gesture Ladybug feels more than sees. "All right then. I'd still rather know what it is than not. Or at least know what I can do to help you."

I'm giving you some extra time.

I trust you to bring me back.

"You should trust me less."

Chat stiffens beside her. "What?"

—She didn't mean to say that.

It's true, though. It's not like I'll take a coleslaw home or I'm organizing a school-wide macaron tasting or I'm in love with you, where she regrets saying it as soon as she knows she's said it, but she has to stand by it or be proved a liar. It's true. The only thing wrong with it is that Chat Noir doesn't want to believe it.

"You said you trust me to bring you back," she reminds him. "You should trust me less."

Chat stares at her, stricken.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles. "I can't be good enough."

Swap and Smell the Rose Garden (5505 words) by AlexSeanchai
Chapters: 2/4
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Characters: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Lila Rossi, Chloé Bourgeois, Alya Césaire, Alix Kubdel
Additional Tags: Bodyswap, Identity Reveal, Mistaken Identity, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Badass Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Protective Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Jealous Lila Rossi, More Than Canon-Typical Violence, Podfic Welcome, One-Sided Chloé Bourgeois/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Summary:

"They're right to say you're jealous!" protests Lila, with a sideways glance at Adrien. "You—Marinette, you shouldn't be ashamed of your art! You just need to work harder and stop wanting to be me." That isn't a sweet smile: something about the eyes. "And I'm sure the right person for you is out there somewhere."

Okay, fuck this noise. "Adrien got me to autograph the CD insert of his copy of Jagged Stone's Rock Giant," Marinette says flatly. "Because I am Adrien's very good friend, and he only ever talks to you when you give him no other choice. And I don't know what art medium you actually work in, but if it's figure drawing I bet you're still on stick people. And you have never met Jagged Stone in your life."

Go on. Tell me I'm jealous of you over your art talent. Or over Adrien. Go on, I dare you.

Lila's mouth works soundlessly. For a long silent moment, no one moves. Then Lila bursts into sobs and flees.

From:

cofax7

I never finished the Supernatural/Finisterre crossover, where the Winchesters ride nighthorses and the demon that killed Mary is actually a native sentient species. Woulda been nice, but the fandom is so far beyond that sort of thing now...

Edited Date: 2020-04-28 04:59 am (UTC)

From:

alexseanchai

I'd still read it were you to write it, as it still sounds intriguing

(I also haven't watched an episode since early S9 and hadn't exactly been enthused for approximately anything post-S5 except the ladies, and I have no idea when I last read those books)

From:

china_shop

The White Collar AU where Neal and Moz and Kate are still con artists, but Neal and Kate were "discovered" in Vegas and have also become movie stars, famous for their remakes of classic romcoms. They're halfway into a movie remake of Remington Steele (which is partly a cover for a heist they're planning) when Kate goes missing, so the director, Peter, brings in little-known actress El, who never made it big and is delaying the what-do-I-do-with-my-life-now-acting-hasn't-worked-out? decision. (Partly she gets the part because she looks similar enough to Kate that it will minimise the necessary reshoots.) So Neal and Moz are looking for Kate, and Neal and Peter and El are all falling for each other, and the heist has to go ahead, as does the movie, and... it got a bit complicated.

But Neal and El playing Remington and Laura is still a Really Great Idea, and I just wish I were better at AUs. (ETA: Part of the reason I got stuck was because it was rotating POV, and every time I switched I by necessity changed genres (because Peter and El didn't know about the heist side of things), and that wasn't actually very helpful. :-P)

Edited Date: 2020-04-28 05:24 am (UTC)

From:

isis

Hee, that sounds delightful!

From:

china_shop

I have 20k words of it! *facepalm*

From:

fullupwithfire

There are so many I don't think I can go down to one, so top five! I considered mocking up AO3 headers, but throwing five of those into one comment seemed a little unwieldy. As did trying to come up with all of them. XD

- The White Collar fic that really just boils down to "let me tell you all my feelings about Peter Burke at length". There's not an actual summary for it because it's more a long, long character study that goes from teen years to... sometime before the start of the show; the highlights reel that's still in the back of my head is young teen Peter dealing with religious issues and discovering but not really accepting his bisexuality, college-age Peter discovering his competency kink, and lots of emphasis on the sheer amount of trust and love between Peter and El.

- The trans Rory Doctor Who fic that jumped into my head sometime mid-season 6 when I realized I wanted a lot more consequences than canon was giving me, and also, queer stuff. Another one of those long, rambling, character study fics, actually; I like coming up with those and am so bad at actually writing them. Heavily focused on Rory and Amy both having a really hard time dealing with the way their personal timelines have been fucked up after all that happened in S5.

- October Daye: the Hunger Games AU. Where Toby is a messed up Victor and mentor, May is a very-slightly-less messed up Victor, Dianda and Patrick are the Capitol's favorite Victor love story, and Quentin is this year's tribute. I could technically still write this, but I'm three books behind and also would need to figure out the plot, because it probably shouldn't just be several thousand words of tension, complicated relationships, and PTSD.
(Special mention goes to the October Daye BDSM-verse AU which suffers from similar problems, with less PTSD and more fae politics.)

And I could probably make a top ten list just for MCU, but the top two have to be both the roleswap AUs:

- Jane Foster is Captain America, recently unfrozen and trying to come to terms with modern life. Steve Rogers is an astrophysicist nobody believes in, who's recently met an alien. Avengers happens, people hit it off, eventually there is Bucky/Jane/Steve/Thor foursomes.

- Peggy/Steve/Bucky, in which Bucky becomes Captain America, Peggy becomes the Winter Soldier, Steve becomes the founder of SHIELD. Erksine isn't at the fair to overhear Steve; instead, Bucky finds himself having a talk with Peggy at a bar later that night, who's intrigued enough by what he's saying to offer him a spot in Erksine's. Eventually, she meets Steve, and recognizes enough potential in him to give him a different offer working for the SSR and training with her. They find out about each other when Peggy goes missing with the 107. It mostly hews along the plot of the Cap movies with a few small deviations on the hows, except Steve and Howard work out a version of the serum for him so I can have my happy threesome ending after all the pain.
(Of all of these, this is the one I'm still the most tempted to write, but I've fallen out of the MCU so hard I'm not sure I want to do the necessary rewatching and focusing on it to be able to write it.)

Edited Date: 2020-04-28 06:11 am (UTC)

From:

mekare

Ooooh that Steve/Bucky/Peggy AU sounds marvellous.

From:

malurette

There are so many AUs/what-ifs I've started for LastMan in the last two years, all stemming from "I want to keep the Sacrificial Lion character alive and punish the bad guy in creative ways that appeal to my hurt/comfort kink", and that are still in progress.

From:

rhodanum

I've already got the first chapter up (and a pretty hefty one at that), but I don't know when I'll be able to edit and write more content for this fic (a fusion AU between Oban Star-Racers and ATLA/LoK). I've been veering from one problem into the other for the past eight months or so (with the latest one having been two weeks in the hospital with COVID-19 and still dealing with the leftovers of that):

songs of surrender (8096 words)
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Oban Star Racers, Avatar the Last Airbender, Legend of Korra
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence
Relationships: Eva Wei/Jordan Wilde/Prince Aikka, Don Wei/Rick Thunderbolt, Don Wei/Maya Wei, Don Wei & Avatar Korra
Characters: Eva Wei, Don Wei, Jordan Wilde, Prince Aikka, Rick Thunderbolt, Stan, Koji, Satis, Canaletto, Avatar Korra (Posthumous), Original Beifong Characters
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Bending (Avatar), Pro-Bending, Families of Choice, Team as Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Worldbuilding, Illustrations, Post-Avatar: The Legend of Korra

Summary: A wild-eyed Firebender girl, on the run and desperate to be reunited with her father. A young Avatar-in-training, keen to meet his Waterbending teacher. A Prince of the Northern Water Tribes, traveling the world to learn from Masters with unique bending styles.

The three are headed for Republic City, in search of the same man: Don Wei, Waterbending Master, top pro-bending manager and the city's most ruthless businessman. None of them know the darkness that Don Wei must contend with, haunted by the loss of all he loved and caught in a morass of intrigue and vengeance.

All while a horrible shadow looms, pleased with the unfolding of its grand design and ready to swallow the world whole.

From:

hannah

I had plans for Team Fortress 2 where I'd write nine fics in three sets of three, each one covering a different phase of life for the team - pre-war, war itself, and post-war - plus a small epilogue with someone who lived adjacent to the war. I wrote six of those fics, and I've since walked away from the fandom. Not because I don't like it anymore. Simply because life shifted around, and hasn't shifted back.

I still think about it from time to time, and I keep trying to convince myself the "slam two espressos and write up all those notes and post those to A03 so people at least know what would've happened" strategy is a good one.

From:

isis

Uh, that would be the Eagle of the Ninth Western AU in which the Aquilas own a saloon called the Double Eagle in the Arizona Territory, but they're having trouble with the Irish, most of whom are railway workers, though Esca, a ranch hand at the Brigantes place, isn't so bad. And then Marcus hears a rumor of buried treasure somewhere in Apache territory and he and Esca go off to look for it.

From:

duskpeterson

(*Wants to read this so bad.*)

From:

adriennefae

I started a fic set during early season 1 of Discovery, mostly about Detmer and Owosekun and Airiam dealing with everything that's going on and how they became friends.

There's also a Discovery superhero AU that I haven't really started writing but have some notes and ideas for.

From:

beatrice_otter

Is this fics that we've actually started, or fics we wish we would write?

The three fics I'm noodling around on most are all Star Wars AUs. One where Bail dies with Alderaan and wakes up while Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are escorting Padme back to Naboo in TMP, and uses knowledge of the future and skills learned leading the Rebellion to stop Palpatine from becoming Chancellor. One where Han Solo becomes Emperor by accident and makes Lando his Grand Vizier. One where Jocasta Nu becomes Anakin's master instead of Obi-Wan, and sets out to research things like what the psychological effects of slavery and trauma are on children.

From:

melannen

Oh, either one! I wanted to include an option for people who don't make fanworks but still have dreams. Or people who have just never managed to start the Big One.

From:

beatrice_otter

A fic I would dearly love to have written (or have someone else write) but will probably never actually write is the Downton Abbey AU where Lady Mary got pregnant from her night with Mr. Pamuk, and Cora knows but Robert doesn't, and Cora takes her away to America "to visit Granny" (and pass the baby off as Cora's). And they take Miss O'Brien with them, of course, and there are sharp exchanges between O'Brien and Mary because O'Brien doesn't have to be respectful, they can't fire her without worrying she'll tell someone, and O'Brien has no patience with Mary's angst over the whole thing because look at all the resources and support Mary has, and if O'Brien had been as stupid as Mary was when O'Brien was that age, she'd have lost all hope of her livelihood. Don't know if it would be a boy (to be the heir) or a girl.

From:

megpie71

Have the WIPs which may never get out of "IP" on my hard drive:

* There's the MCU/Final Fantasyverse crossover university AU, where Cloud Strife (engineering) and Steve Rogers (Arts/Law) share a dorm room in Delling Dorms at Mater Concordia University, Midgar City, somewhere in the USA. The one where I have Cid Highwind teaching a subject his students have nicknamed "Uncivil Engineering"; where Squall Leonhart and Zack Fair are sharing a dorm room; where a fourteen-year-old Tony Stark is Cloud's lab partner; where Pepper Potts and Quistis Trepe are forming a fast friendship built on mutual elegance and annoyance at people underestimating them; where Tony's solution to the whole "I wanna have my friends around me all the time" problem is to buy an old frat house and make it over as a group home; where Zidane Tribal works at the garage Barret Wallace runs in Midgar City (and was responsible for showing Cloud where every single one of the good gay clubs in Midgar was located when Cloud first arrived there); and where Rufus Shinra and Charles Xavier are both major donors to the university through their family fortunes, as well as also being on staff (Rufus teaches business, Charles teaches psychology).

* There's the Final Fantasy VII/Shadowrun fusion, where Cloud Strife is a half-elven street samurai who's been hired as a Shadowrunner by his Troll client, Barret Wallace, and isn't really enjoying the experience of working alongside a bunch of amateurs. (This one may be pulled out and reworked a bit in the light of the FF7 Remake, since it appears I managed to anticipate some of their plot points and enhancements to the environment along the way).

* There's the Persona 5 Soul-Bond AU, where the first meeting between the Protagonist and Ann Takamaki sets off a soul-bond (subtype: telepathic). What changes in the story if two of the main characters are able to get inside each other's heads? (In this one, they're both bi and not attracted to each other outside the physical - much better as friends than boyfriend/girlfriend).

* The Persona 5 Timeloop one where everyone who can use a Persona is caught up in a New Game Plus loop (they retain their knowledge of the events of the original game, and their social skills, but their Personas are back to basic, and they're going to have to level up physically as well). They're all looping back from early 2019, and in the meantime there have been a few... developments which resulted in the gang almost falling apart in 2017, and the protagonist graduating from high school a year later than his age peers. (This one is aiming to become a "polythieves" AU, where they're turning into a polyamorous cuddle pile at the very least; there may be some higher-rated content if I can figure out how to slot it in).

From:

highlander_ii

* a House/Cameron canon divergence during s6 where Cameron works with House to deal with some of his shit. Catch is, she's married to Chase and Chase isn't super happy with the arrangement.

* a massively long Suits AU where Harvey is locked into having to pay off a debt to the firm by essentially doing what Hardman tells him to do - and it's not always work-related. ugly part? the debt is really Hardman's - he embezzled money from the firm; he just framed Harvey so he could get what he wanted.

i have no idea if these two will ever get finished/posted. neither are finished, but the 2nd one is a hot mess.

From:

pedanther

A top three of unfinished works that are probably never going to be finished now, because I feel like their respective moments have passed, in no particular order:

* Back in the day, when The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was new and everybody was coming up with League rosters from different eras, mine was a retro-futuristic team based around fictional visions of life on the cusp of the year 2000. Dan Dare was in it, and John Connor, with Susan Calvin and Umataro Tenma providing technical support. The elderly mentor character was from Nineteen Eighty-Four, because even though it fell short of the target by a decade or so I felt like it deserved a nod, and because I was going to have fun seeing how long I could make it look like the mentor character was Winston before it turned out it was actually Julia. My favorite development was when I realised that Stephen Byerley, from the Susan Calvin series, was born within a year of Tobio Tenma, which meant that if Dr. Tenma brought his family over to America when he joined forces with the League I could have Tobio and Stephen be childhood friends and amuse myself enormously by never, ever letting on whether the fic was set before or after Tobio's car accident.

* When Pacific Rim came out, I was also reading Girl Genius, which meant I had two fandoms that involved heroes fighting monsters with mad-science creations called "jaegers". As a result, I spent a bunch of time doing world-building for a Girl Genius fic with the premise of Bill & Barry Heterodyne inventing the Pacific Rim type of jaeger, an enormous combat robot that can only be powered by the combined brain waves of two people who trust each other implicitly. (In my notes, a character observes that given the world Bill & Barry live in -- where mad science runs rampant, and so do conspiracy and mistrust -- their real achievement wasn't building the jaegers but finding people to pilot them.) I had two ideas for turning this into an actual story: one was about Bill's daughter Agatha rediscovering the jaegers and running up against the pilot problem, and the other was a tale of the jaegers in their prime, as recounted by Theo DuMedd (which would have been fun, because in canon he's been known to tell Heterodyne tales that are almost completely made up, so I could have done the entire story and left it ambiguous about whether it was an AU or not).

* Years ago, I read a Doctor Who AU fic in which the Doctor gets talked out of running away from Gallifrey and instead becomes a respectable Time Lord and eventually Lord President, and it immediately gave me a plot bunny for a story set after his death, in which his granddaughter starts learning about his rebellious past that she'd never known of before, and ends up leaving Gallifrey herself to fill the Doctor-shaped hole in the universe. (I also had partial notes for a sequel showing how "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" went down in this timeline.) I never got it into a shape I was happy with -- I did complete a draft, but it was just two characters explaining the premise to each other for the benefit of the reader, so I scrubbed it and tried again -- and then the revived series kept dropping new information about the Doctor's early life that meant I had to keep rejiggering things. It actually absorbed "The Doctor's Wife" pretty well, and I think ended up richer for it, but the new revelations in the most recent season put me pretty much back at square one and I don't know if I've got the energy to try and rebuild it again.

Edited Date: 2020-04-29 05:01 am (UTC)

From:

fred_mouse

Many years ago, I started a project to reread Pride and Prejudice, and write a series of short femslash pieces on what was known at the end of each chapter. Possibly thematically related, but whatever I felt like writing at the time. I was going to do a story a week.

The other is a crossover between Pride and Prejudice and The Scarlet Pimpernell, where Lydia is the Pimpernell. I got bogged down in research, and never got past the first page....

From:

duskpeterson

My Stalky & Co. / David Blaize / Maurice / Charioteer / Lawrenceville Stories crossover.

From:

gibbles

Sometimes it feels like all I do is make up huge over-arcing stories and then don't actually write anything down before moving onto the next one...

-- I worked on a Howl's Moving Castle/Ace Attorney AU for a little bit where Klavier is Howl and Kristoph is the evil witch and Apollo is Sophie... it was originally supposed to be a little bit of a joke but then I kept coming up with more fun things to do with the story that diverge from any Howl canon at all, such as Apollo's mother being cursed by Kristoph and that's why she had to give her kids up, and everyone piling up at important-state-guy Edgeworth's house at some point to hide and plan their next move and Wright just being like, Sorry I Somehow Ended Up With Like A Dozen Kids Following Me

-- Then there was the Prussia-centric Hetalia story I wanted to write that was loosely based on the plot of Hamilton but would be more about like, how a personified country deals with very human politics and Prussia's development as a "person" as his history went on...

-- And my Star Trek AU affectionately dubbed "cornverse" in which Jim and Spock grow up near each other because Grayson wants Spock to have some experience living on Earth while he's young. It's based on the AOS versions of the characters because against all odds that was my first exposure to them, but as the story goes on it starts encompassing some TOS events such as Jim getting shipped off to the Tarsus colony and dealing with the trauma of that, and sort of how events would be different in the AOS movies if Spock and Jim were close in the first place. Also when Vulcan gets destroyed Sarek sacrifices himself to save Grayson because the fact that they fridged her will never not make me angry.

-- And theeeen there's my Assassin's Creed more-or-less-fix-it-fic because I was really unsatisfied with where the modern storyline went post-AC3 (so spoilers for that if you care), where while undercover at Abstergo Studios or whatever that was, Shaun starts getting weird garbled messages on his phone that eventually resolve into what seems to be messages from Desmond's GhostTM because... the game straight up set up the idea that people's consciousness can be in The Gray even if they don't have a body anymore. So Rebecca and Shaun and cyber-Desmond break into Abstergo and steal the Shroud and make Desmond a new body and everything's great.

-- The only one I've actually almost finished is a Black Sails AU in sort of a similar vein, as in it's a fix-it wherein I was deeply unsatisfied with a death and decided to write my own next two seasons...(spoilers for the end of season 2, if you care) the first half of it deals with very canon issues but Miranda doesn't get shot, so she's around to help Flint out, and Vane doesn't team up with him, and they launch a rescue for Eleanor instead of her ending up with whatshisface...then that ends with Vane having found Thomas alive and bringing him to Nassau to convince Flint to stop pirating, aka messing with all of Vane's plans. Then the second half just goes off the rails with completely non-canon plotlines. It's basically my somewhat rose-colored take of what Black Sails might have been if it wasn't indebted to meeting up with the Treasure Island storyline at some point, and instead ended with Thomas and Flint (and Miranda!) completing their plan to Liberate Nassau (though not really how they'd originally planned to...) and living happily ever after because I'm a sap.

-- And lastly but not leastly is this entire "season" of Supernatural I outlined back around Season...7ish, which while doing research for I learned of the delightfully-named Gwagwakhwalanooksiwey. It's honestly been so long since I watched any Supernatural that half of this plot outline doesn't make sense to me, but in short, it turns out Crowley's been a secret archangel the whole time who's trying to take over both Heaven and Hell and basically gain infinite power, so Sam and Dean have to fight off both demons and angels down on Earth while trying to figure out how to stop Crowley, all while Castiel's angel powers are slowly being sapped away as Crowley takes over more of Heaven...

From:

krait

I always have a million projects that will never see the light. Right now I seem to be most interested in poking at the "Thranduil seems to accept Legolas/Gimli but is actually grieving" thing, born out of my wish for more L/G fic that handled the parental reactions in a less black-and-white fashion than is typical.