#Very very odd AU Idea

[greendragonqueen]

Mergana Week Day 2: "Heartache"

"I don't care for the fates of the others. All I care for is yours, my love."

~

A WIP of an AU crossover idea I had, crossing Dungeons And Dragons lore with Merlin. Inspired off of dicecreamsandwich's campaign idea on Tiktok, which he explains in this video here (the video is called "The Pursuit of A Raven's Feather" if the link doesn't work).

In a world very much unlike the one we know, a branch grown long before ours was but a twinkle in the stars, a Lady Morgana finds the love of her life in the court sorcerer, Merlin. A man she knew was destined to do great things, and who she knew her own destiny was eternally tied to. Together they learned magic, delving deep into the very threads of the world more than any sorcerer or warlock has or ever will. Together, they would work to bring peace to their world, and she would do it while looking into her love's smile.

Alas, fate had plans of her own, and magic cannot stop her seemingly cruel indifference. Despite Morgana's best efforts, her Merlin was taken from her far too soon, unable to achieve his destiny. Leaving her all alone, the weight of their shared destiny in her palms. A useless endeavor in her eyes, without her Merlin by her side. Her true fate had been revealed, to spend the rest of her life without her other half, failing right at the cusp of greatness.

But no.

Driven by despair and an unwillingness to accept such a fate for herself, Morgana dived into magic further. More, more, more. She creates spells no other magic user could think. She unbalances the natural order. She does what no one has done before her: she tears a hole in reality, and steps through. There, on an indescribable plane, like the surface of water packed with soap bubbles, she finds other worlds, other realities, just like her own, and with them other Merlin's. Her Merlin's.

But fates finger is cruel and vengeful, and every single Merlin she settles down with passes far too soon. No matter what she does, when she finds him, whether he is a king or a manservant, young or old, with magic or no. Whether it is in the unrecorded past, the familiar present, or the ever fluid future. Merlin passes far too soon, unable to achieve his Destiny. Like her touch is a curse, her fate, set in stone. He will be ripped from her arms no matter how many times she tries.

But Morgana cannot accept that. She will not accept that. She has given up far too much, torn apart too many worlds, to accept such a fate. She would not accept such a mundane, cruel fate for herself or for Merlin.

Time passes, her power continues to grow. Finally, the Gods notice her. The Old Gods, the ones whose power stretches beyond every dimension. Her anger towards them is incalculable, but one catches her wrath most of all.

The Raven Queen. The Goddess of Death, Winter, and Fate. The real decider of who lives and who dies, when, how, and why. A horrid truth comes to light. Destiny is merely a mortal forged promise, The Raven Queen supplies the Gods given truth.

And Morgana will not accept that truth. There is no line she will not cross, no law she will not break, no person she will not kill, to change that truth. To take The Raven's Queen's mantle and to change every Merlin's fate.

It is a brutal battle, world's fall, but this Morgana's wrath eclipses the Raven Queen's indifference. The old Raven Queen is gone, and a new one is crowned.

But such a crown weighs heavy on the brow that bears it. Choosing the fate of every person who has ever lived and ever going to live in every universe is a truly heavy burden. To know that she chooses how every version of the loved ones she knew would die, is a great burden on the soul. It tarnishes the one who carries the weight, it tarnishes everything that person touches, it breaks everything Morgana is bound to. She suddenly understands why the previous Raven Queen had been so indifferent to Morgana's painful fate; because that was the only way even a goddess can cope with such a burden.

But despite the weight, this Morgana keeps the ship running, her singular promise, while changed and faded, still burns resolute in her heart. Burning like the last flame that holds her to her old Mortal life, glowing like the crystal that now held her first loved one's body. Eternally at peace, his fate unable to be changed. The only thing she can touch in her now incorporeal form.

Her Merlins will not die, because she wishes it so. Even if it means he will continue to make mistakes, even if it means he won't achieve his destiny, even if it means his friends and loved ones die, even if it means he will never love a version of her again, even if every single version of herself will inevitably be tainted or turned evil because of her influence and actions… not a single Merlin will die without The Raven Queen's permission.

And so it shall be, until some rends from her hands the very same crown she had worked so hard to take before.

[otaku553]

More reluctant king sabo au! I realized recently that this au is an excellent excuse for drawing sabo in pretty outfits that he would be absolutely miserable in :)

[camellcat]

in the the bandillow au that I live in I think spuffy would quietly bond over the fact that they still belong to the ones who brought them back from the dead. gave them new existence. spike is dru's, a little bit forever in some sense, just as buffy is shaped by willow and xander. spuffy are bound, and they can pull on their leashes, but they don't even really want to be freed. if they realize that's an option at all in the first place

[vypridae]

Man I know we’re all on Brokerdoll brainrot rn, but like hear me out

Velvette Carmine AU :)

When Velvette first falls to Hell (around 2004-2014 I’d say) she lands in Carmilla’s territory

Carmilla takes one look at this teenager sinner, says “is anyone gonna take her?” and walks away with her up before anyone else can say anything

You already know Carmilla will walk into her house and tell Clara and Odette they have a new little sister before showing a very confused Velvette

(I just want to clarify that I do headcanon Velvette to be 19-23 in canon, but for the sake of this AU let’s say she’s 15-17 when she died)

love the au idea, i really do ... but u send this to a brokerdoll shipper ... the brokerdoll ceo ...

[sysig]

Go play pretend on your own (Patreon)

[blindmagdalena]

really obsessed with soulmate au’s recently and it got me thinking… what if john’s soulmate was part of the boys? a girl trying to kill him with an entire group of people also trying to kill him… and he’s fated to her? could picture him finding out and just putting his hands on his hips while turning his back to her and doing that click chuckle thing. just in utter disbelief but it is definitely on track for fate’s little play with him and his life lolol

Oohhh, you know, I've never played much with the soulmate au concept, but this struck me just right because I can so clearly see the slow, building meltdown that strikes him when that reveal drops.

The mirthless laugh, shaking his head, the hapless gesture to the ceiling before his hands drop. "Of course. Of course it's you. Why wouldn't it be? I mean—Christ, it makes sense, doesn't it? Every single person who was supposed to love me has-has fucked it, so why—" he keeps cutting into this escalating, unsettling laughter. There's nothing funny about it: you're sure that you're watching someone lose the last shred of their sanity in real time. "Why would my 'soulmate'-", he says, miming big, dramatic quotation marks. "-be any different?" That manic grin has shifted into tight baring of his teeth, a vicious sneer. He closes in on you, stands so near you can feel the heat of his breath when he hisses, "I should put you in the fucking dirt with the rest of them."

It should be terrifying, but it's hard to focus on anything other than the glassiness of his eyes. The sheer devastating heartbreak of it all, telegraphed clear as day in the way he carries himself. His eyes flare red, sizzling up the tears before they can fall. "And then you really will be all alone," you say. Maybe it's the hopelessness of the moment, maybe it's the shock of learning for yourself that he's supposed to be your one and only, but you feel numb. Frayed in a way you didn't know you could be. The crimson light of his eyes disappears in an instant, revealing surprise, followed by a wounded kind of look, before that familiar seething rage returns. "We'll see about that."

[youssefguedira]

wrote something a little sad and a little angry here you go

Rating: Teen

Summary:

Joe is lying on the bed when Nicky comes in, and his heart stops because he is so horribly still, but then he turns his head to look at Nicky with a small smile, and he’s still breathing. Will Nicky ever be able to look at him the same way again, or will the terror of walking into a room and finding Joe already gone follow him until the end?

[ninjigma]

More ‘Of Honor and Force’. Quinlan is still quite young here, but he’s doing great in his crash course of ‘learn to survive on alone on the run with people hunting you every second day and night’. If he can just stick to the shadows he will find his way, he will make it wherever he is going.

Enjoy.

[creativesplat]

Stargazing

[scover-va]

Coughs loudly. Hey guys

[plusultraetc]

I can't believe I finished this before the deadline

[autisticrosewilson]

First of all, you have given me so much to work with, thank you so much. Second of all, I’m really glad you could see where I was going with Grant’s real test not actually being about killing Slade. Third of all, I absolutely love what you’ve suggested with the powers and I am currently designing met gala esque outfits for the trio and Tara’s specifically is really fun to play around with. I’ve been thinking to show they’re becoming more divine I’ll change their hair and eye colours but not their faces for the most part. I was drawing robin Jason with Natalia and decided he should have brown eyes and a crooked nose from breaking it as a kid but once he returns his eyes get weird (eg go blue and occasionally other colours), a patch of his hair went white and he lost all of his scars. Also, I think the closer they get to divinity I’m gonna draw cracks on their body that glow with their specific colours just to hammer home how they’re shedding their mortal forms.

With Tara being able to see the strings of fate, I though it’d be fun to give her a harp and then with Jason having the see no evil trait I thought it’d be fun to give him weighing scales since lady justice wears a blindfold. Idk what to give Grant though. I mean probably a weapon of some sort or maybe a Shepard’s crook that he can turn into a scythe to play into the sheep, wolf, Hunter thing.

With Jason and Tara’s splintering, I love the idea of them making fun of Grant for being the baby god. He hasn’t even had a cult yet, gosh he’s so young. Also them being besties just holds a special place in my heart.

And I just came up with this, of course they have parallels to the trinity but in universe rumours of their existence have been around much longer than Bruce, Clark and Diana. They’re the big three of the justice league but these guys are justice gods. So they start calling themselves the justice trinity but then people get confused about which trinity is which because the justice leagues’ trinity sounds awfully close to the justice gods’ trinity. The new all caste is certainly more distinctive branding but the point isn’t to be distinctive, it’s to be petty.

I'm so glad my unmedicated rambling helped!!! And I'm so excited for the outfits!!! I love when characters start becoming less and less human, when they're stuck in that uncanny valley spot of not quite human but not entirely Other, when they lose control and the cracks start to show...um I should probably give a warning for slight body horror elements. Not in the gore sense, in the "this body is not made of flesh and there is something divine clawing it's way out". Uh also there are teeth. Just. Teeth. I dipped into a little bit of cosmic horror at the end there because I wanted to cover my bases with mixed mythologies

Jason, with his defined splinters, is usually depicted with three faces in ancient texts. The Child, gaunt and dark colored, is said to appear before the downtrodden and impoverished. The few stories remaining tell of kindly people who give him an offering, and in exchange he reveals his true form, with his crown of golden ivy and beautiful strong wings to gift them bounties of food and water and riches. Other stories tell of not so kind encounters, where The Child witnesses an injustice - typically against women or children - and again reveals his true form, one with clawed hands and a mouth dripping with blood. Scholars argue what the wings looked like, but whichever All-Caste member annotated it before has compared their likeness to either a Robin or a Shrike.

There's also The Ghost, He appears young at first glance, but his hair is wirey and gray, his eyes milky and unseeing, in bloodied armor he greets the souls of the damned as they're delivered to him, and with scarred hands he wipes the tears of children taken too soon. Accounts of this face are few and far between, but all of them are entrenched in sorrow.

Finally there is The Soldier, scarred and still smoking from the ruins of battle he emerges, giving voice to the weak and resources to the needy. He champions revolutionaries and philosophers first, a strategist who delights in the liberation of the people from corrupt systems. Accounts of him usually come from times of famine and war, and he was particularly popular with poor villages, who would mark the graves of their dead with the symbol of his sword as offerings. For some reason or other, he got particularly popular with the youth, girls and boys both seemed to pray for him and leave him offerings.

The way these manifest on Jason is subtle at first. I could go the body horror route, but I won't. Yet. Instead I think his splinters show up as reflections, shadows, imprints. The faint echo of bell-like laughter when Jason does a move he learned as Robin, the image of a younger him with longer hair and unblinking eyes staring at him in the mirror. It gets worse when he gets the blades, the white streaks his hair, the swirling mark covers more of his skin every time he uses them, he trails the scent of smoke and blood behind him like a signature. His scars...they should disappear. They have for everyone else who used the pit, but instead his skin starts cracking. Any place he's ever been scarred glowing cracks break up his skin. He can't feel them, but he's always aware of them, the meaning behind them, the divinity literally leaking through his body. His eyes aren't brown anymore. They aren't even green. He looks in the mirror and they are copper, molten and burning. He tries his best to keep his mask on.

What do you think of when you imagine the word divinity? Probably something like Tara. Something with skin carved from stone, with moss and fungus crawling up her legs and snow laden shoulders. They say her hair is made of swirling clouds and the sun and moon are her eyes.

Some say she's a nymph although no one knows what kind. You're just as likely to see her name among the naiads as the dryads. Whether flowers bloom where she dances or waves crash when she sings, she's known to be more vicious towards suitors than her sisters.

Others have said she's a faerie, who takes the faces of lost daughters and lovers, slipping into their places seamlessly, forcing unruly men to pay their dues. Others say she's a shifter of a different sort, with a shawl of feathers and a crown of twine and gems. Stories range from men trying to steal her coat (and paying dearly) to lost children returned safely home on the back of a swan.

Tara doesn't think about it at first, the way gravity tends to cede to her, she doesn't notice how sunflowers turn their faces towards her instead of the sun. She doesn't notice the way her face...shifts. it's imperceptible really, and it's not like she looks in the mirror all that often. But everyone around her notices it, on some level, the way her expressions are off. A little too exaggerated. The way her limbs bend just a little too oddly. The way she never looks quite the same as she did the day before, the way she picks up features from the people around her the way she picks up rocks from ground to add to her collection. Clay molded subtly into the image of those she loves, a museum of everyone she's ever met. She does notice when her hair starts going white at the ends, the strange way her hair starts to curl unnaturally, almost floating. She's not so upset about her eyes, the deep blue of her father that has glared down at her day after day, she has changed her hair, her face, her language but she could not change her eyes. It seems she didn't have to, when she wakes up with one a little too silver to be gray and one a little too gold to be brown. And then her skin starts splitting, a cavern made from a broken rib and ravines made by the slashing of knives. She doesn't even bleed anymore, they never scab over. They crystallize, amber like ambrosia, like ichor. Her body a geode waiting to be cracked open to let the thing within finally break free.

They know the least about Grant, whatever he used to be. Half written scrolls, torn or burnt or simply stopped abruptly, illegible journal entries with symbols never recorded in any known language, half finished sketches where the details are never quite clear. A few things are usually consistent though, signs that he's been there, usually from hunters down on their luck or the particularly old and sickly. First, the howling. Like a wolf or a storm, although later accounts would add that it occasionally sounds like a mechanical whirring. Then the rabbits, dead and gutted, but not a trace of blood. Piles of them left in heaps on doorsteps or windowsills. Some have reported knocking at strange hours or finding teeth in their homes, a mix of human and animal. There is one photo on record, the most recent thing in the archive most likely, of claw marks on the side of a barn, too big and oddly serrated, certainly not from anything native to the area. Elderly that report these phenomena typically pass from heart problems within the week, according to some of the old medical files.

Grant came back wrong. Physically, at least. He knows that he's still himself for the most part, dying didn't make him a selfish asshole he did that all on his own, but...but something is wrong with him. It's the way lightbulbs flicker when he's mad and how cameras, no matter the quality, never quite get a clear shot of him. The way Joey can't ever grasp his features, not fully, the details slipping from his mind like water. The way eyes on his face slide right past, unable to look directly at him. It's in the gray spreading from his roots and his eyes too wide and dark to belong to something human. It's the way death clings to him like a second skin, sickly and pallid turning the tips of his fingers gray. His teeth are starting to feel too sharp for his mouth, and he hears things no one else does, whispers of voices that Are Not and Can't Be. The worst part is the orange, liquid candlelight under his skin, lighting up all of his veins and scars, webbing together like the world's worst game of connect the dots. No, there is no mistaking him for something human, so there is no reason to try. If this is his fate then he will take it, because he is not a sheep and he will not be a wolf, he is a hunter, and he is hungry.

[skitskatdacat63]

i'm late but Carriage fic illustrations?! 💗

Hehe ty for asking!!! Funnily enough, I started working on these right after the stocking fic, yet practically started and finished the chair fic since then???? Anyways, there exists the first ever fic I wrote for Boy King AU here, and I would really like to refurbish it by both editing it AND adding illustrations to it(which I apparently can do now.) And of course the sequel fic I already started writing, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'll probably start working on it next, but it's one of those wips I kinda psyched myself out of working on because my brain was randomly like, this is going to be too complicated, even though it was going perfectly fine??? It's just one of those things where in concept its very fun, but then you reach the point where you suddenly remember, wait but I don't even know the logistics of the inside of a carriage????

Here is one of the 3 sketches!!(tho it probably only makes sense if you've read the fic) I'd share all of them, but the other two are much more barebones and they're not even wearing clothing yet LOL(not intentional, I'm lazy) Though if any mutual is curious, I can dm the other two :) It felt so nice to sketch these, because that fic actually was originally illustrations that popped into my mind, but ended up becoming just text instead. So to actually draw a mental image I had over a year ago, that I thought was too complicated back then, is extremely satisfying!

[theheadlessgroom]

@beatingheart-bride

"I felt like I had sworn in front of a princess!" Randall admitted with a shy laugh, the rest of his family laughing along as he rubbed the back of his neck: Though he would freely admit he could cuss a blue streak with the best of 'em, he tried to keep his mouth clean in public, and certainly keep it extra-clean in the presence of an upper-class young woman like Emily. Needless to say, his failing to do so absolutely mortified him in the moment, though he could certainly laugh about it now.

"I, uh...I didn't want to sound like I had no manners," he continued sheepishly, adding, "It, uh...it did take a while for her to convince me that she wasn't offended by my cursing-I felt awful, I really did, in the moment, though, I felt like it made it seem like I was born in a barn..."

"Awww, reminds me of when August and I first started getting to know each other," Josephine giggled amusedly, seeing a lot of similarities between her husband and grandson in the moment as she went on to explain just how nervous her future spouse was in the early days, very flustered being around such a confident, forward, and scantily clad woman (which quite flattered her, honestly).

"I used to have him over for coffee after performances, and bless his heart, he was so nervous-the only thing louder than his racing heartbeat was the way his cup used to clatter against his saucer! Well, one day, he got so wound up that he dropped his cup and spilled coffee all over the rug (which didn't bother me much; if anything, the coffee stain made that cheap ol' thing look better), and between his very rapid-fire apologies, I could hear him cursing under his breath, and that only made him apologize even more!"

"I'm not usually one for vulgarity," August admitted bashfully. "But I was just so frustrated and embarrassed by my inability to sit still that it just...slipped out, and I felt awful, just awful, swearing in the presence of a lady!"

Most people wouldn't bat an eye at swearing around someone in her profession, but he was a consummate gentleman to everyone he met, and so he didn't think twice about apologizing to her (even though, as she told him, she'd heard worse).

[valiant-portabella-pirkko]

One of the little bits I don't think I've ever talked about with the Tideturners is that, like, a big theme with how it handles Commanders is not that 'they're the Main Character' and rather that 'before the Commander was the Commander, they were just someone who wanted to make a difference in the world.' And thus, by extension, 'ANYONE could have been the Commander, they're really just an ordinary person whose greatest strength is in the bonds they forge with others.' Even at their strongest, the Commander is still working together with a full team to accomplish their goals. The only difference between them and any other OC is that they were in the right place at the right time to make a specific difference, and the end result is that they became someone people could look up to and rely on. Ruju is, in many ways, the perfect illustration of that.

He's not the ideal hero. He's not some grand legend. He's kind of a dork, he was BARELY passable in asuran society, he has a hot temper and says stupid things that he'll have to make amends for. He has a whole history of mistakes to live up to and improve from. In a timeline where he zigged when he should've zagged, he just became some guy in the Pact helping with tech support instead. In another, he became a scourge that would burn his own world to the ground. The odds that he would become the Commander were 1 out of 3. And if you broaden that scope even more to include the multiverse as a whole, those odds drop to an absolutely microscopic percentage.

Within their own world, the Commander is someone important. But when you take them out of that world, and place them into a much broader perspective, they're just one of many-- another face in the Mists War, no different from any other. In another timeline, nobody is going to know who they are-- because there, they're not the Commander. Someone else took that role, not because they were better or more important or more qualified in any way, but because they were there when this other Commander wasn't and that's all there is to it. They weren't there, so someone else was instead.

The Commander could've been just about anyone. And because of that, anyone could've been the Commander. One of the big goals I want to explore is the idea that even characters who didn't share the same experiences can still stand side-by-side with those who did, because it's not about what you've done but about what you want to do in the future. None of them can succeed on their own.

But, together, they all just might stand a chance.

[tradingjack]

Tessla concept for @idonutlose 's "all the independents live" au

She calls it the swap au but like. The twins are both still alive and active in her version. My label's a little wordy but it's accurate :P