#au fun

[trishacollins]

Art again by the wonderful @hartwign and text by myself and the wonderful @ninadove! Marinette has a few more secrets than Felix has been able to suss out. There is no such thing as a fully honest person.

[amplexadversary]

It's indulgent self-insert o'clock (which is all the time but shh) and I think I've figured out what kind of song would hypothetically play if i was an original unit in Super Robot Wars lol

mech would be a used and heavily stripped Tyranado because it's objectively kind of a bad investment (1 unit, 2 pilots, and anywhere from one to 1/nth of a carriax to fly all its stuff around?) and I think someone would cut their losses on it

2 pilot problem would be solved by the fact by having a huge post-G Gundam plague of DG cells going around, and the ''protagonist'' unit starting the game infected (they get a little help from that)

and certain mutuals of mine might be able to guess at parts of where I'd want that plot to go based on my top picks for included series (Including one with a VERY dead [unit type is a spoiler] that would not enjoy a rude, accidental, rez, Turn A, the beautiful potential meeting of the Brave series and the Transformers, and *two* musicals shoehorning their way in on similar qualifications to Reyearth.)

And other overarching plot elements might be predictable from knowing that my TTRPG group plays a lot of Eclipse Phase (meaningful name) ;P

[amplexadversary]

I'm intrigued, do tell :D

enough coffee shop aus. time for ‘the thing’ aus. they are trapped together at a research station in antarctica. everyone stands around tensely while getting a blood test. somebody’s head turns into a spider.

[blabberoo]

;]

[skipppppy]

This has to be an AU already right? I’ve never seen it. I’m doing it. My city now

The angst potential alone haunts me. How long do you think he waited for Ford?? When did it start to sink in that nobody was coming to save him, that nobody would miss him? Would anybody even want him back? How long did it take for his anger, his heartbreak, his grief to turn into acceptance and a belief that this was divine retribution? How long did he work, how many jobs did he take, how much wealth did he accrue, how many brushes with death did he have until he believed he’d “earned” the right to go home and see his brother?? Many such questions. I need to go deeper

[amplexadversary]

I'll state from the beginning that I'm going way off-prompt here, but this feels like it would be good for an AU Laudna of Critical Role 3 fame. That idea kind of doesn't fit the "not a dark story" part though because the demon in this analogy would be Delilah Briarwood.

OP's prompt could be Laudna's backstory to a whole Mahou Shoujo AU for CR3 though. She wants to be a magical girl and all that entails, and Ghost!Delilah Briarwood sees her as an opportunity to crawl back to the world of the living.

Imogen and Fearne would be magical girls whose intended mascot/mentor actually is evil; something like a twisted version of Sailor Moon where Liliana-as-Queen-Serenity actually allies with Ludinus-as-Queen-Beryl (and the CR characters you would expect mapping on to Queen Beryl's other lieutenants.

Imogen's mom sends her nightmares telling her to run away from the cutesy mascot they've sent her; the mascot eventually drops her transformation trinket on her bed.

Fearne still lives with her grandmother, and while she also gets a transformation trinket, she kind of dismisses it, because her abilities as a sage that she picked up from her Nana are more useful to her by the time she gets it. (Almost analogous to if Rei/Sailor Mars ditched the trinket and instead drew power from her spiritualism and shrine maiden training)

Orym has a Badass Normal/Tuxedo Kamen thing going, but for every magical fighter in the city; his husband and father got got by one of Otohan's monsters of the week.

Dorian picks up a knockoff mahou-idol situation that more often than not favors girls but isn't exclusive*.

Ashton doesn't have a mascot; they just have a stray transformation crystal embedded in them (the glass in their head isn't a dome in this one - it's the Silver Crystal from Sailor Moon, but Chaos powered.) He's also more than a little angry that the whole "transforming magic warrior" thing make people assume they're a girl*.

FCG and Chetney are both victims of the "ordinary person gets turned into the monster of the week" trope that several Mahou works have (including one arc of Sailor Moon).

FCG is still a robot in this one, and in this version of events Ashton actually defeats them before adopting them. Whatever the villains are doing to turn people into monsters has a weird interaction with FCG being a robot and can't be completely removed, which gives another reason for Ashton to look after them.

Chet got turned the same way, but his transformation ran out of magic before anyone got around to defeating him. He's able to control it a little after that, both when he wolfs out and what he does during. His choice to keep the curse as well as his introduction to the rest of the party remain very similar to canon.

Eshteross and Bertrand's presence go against the standard for magical girl works by giving the magical warriors, for a brief period of time, someone outside the whole magic system to support and inform them. I'm imagining a situation similar to the magic shop in later seasons of Buffy, where Eshteross is a business owner that lets the newly-acquainted mahou team operate out of his store, while Bertrand Bell becomes an employee who is kind of

*I think it would be interesting for the different magic systems in an AU like this to have different relationships re. sex and gender to the concept of the Magical Girl. I think Ashton's trinket being kind of regressive in the gender department would give them one more very worthy thing to be angry at.

Magical girl who had wanted to be one so badly but never had that magical mascot/mentor encounter so she summoned a demon to contract with instead.

It's not a dark story or anything, the magical girl is just as cute and cheery and friendly as factory standard and never loses that faith and optimism, she's just Pact-bound to a frightening demon from the underworld instead of a cute teddy bear mouse.

[jollymalt]

more pirates!

[bitter-hibiscus]

Red Hood joins twitter. Chaos arises

pt2

[amplexadversary]

A heist based on the principles of good sportsmanship???

where's the tweet thats like high value art heists should be legal and should be like a national pass time between countries like capture the flag. thats my platform

[paintedcrows]

Nooo little Stanley watch out! Your striped shirt, bandage, and sad backstory are too Fallen Human Coded!! The Undertale narrative is going to get you!!!

[amplexadversary]

@fighting-these-demons Here you go!

[doctorsiren]

Gravity Falls AU where everything is exactly the same except Bill’s parents are alive and well, and they’re just so proud of their chaotic dream demon son

[artkaninchenbau]

Crocodile finds a strange stray cat an 11-year old Nico Robin (AU where they met 13 years earlier. Robin's been on the run from the World Government for 3 years. Crocodile's 27 and has not set up base in Alabasta yet)

It seems like I have become possessed. By some sort of demon.

Bonus:

[fernsnailz]

she looked like me

(another continuation of my good future metal au)