#au: modern technology

[lockwood-fic-recs]

status update

by menina123 on ao3

Rating: T | Category: F/M, Gen | Relationship: Lockwood/Lucy

LinkedIn: You have 1 notification. Congratulate Lucy Carlyle for starting a new position as Consultant Psychic Investigation Agent (Aural phenomena specialty)

Everything's the same, except everyone has an iPhone—a slight canon AU where technology has advanced to the present day. The story of the Black Winter through social media posts, texts, Google searches, playlists, and (sent & unsent) emails. Starts at the end of The Hollow Boy and goes through The Creeping Shadow.

[arch-aeology]

Merry Christmas! Here’s a Jayvik au where they’re college students in 80s New York

[kazuma-nyasogi]

drew this in december but i forgotttttt

[wealmostaneckbeard]

Orc and dwarf hardware (guns, computers, power tools) are both incredibly durable. You can drop a piece of dwarven/orcish kit in the mud, leave it there several days, pick it back up, do a bit of cleaning, and it will work just fine. But dwarves value aesthetics while orcs prefer ergonomics.

[fusionfanatic]

Research for an au fic I’m working on: how would Azula act and behave in a modern setting? And I don’t mean re-imagine her character within a modern context and stories. This isn’t Azula, but she’s an overachieving American high schooler with strict and overbearing parents, or Azula, but she’s the soon-to-be CEO of her father’s multinational conglomerate based in Japan or something. No, I mean how would Azula as she is in canon, Fire nation princess and all, act and behave if you simply just took her from her world and plopped her into [insert current year you’re reading this]?

[blue-rose-soul]

What if charlie and alastor grew up togethr ?

For that to happen, Lucifer would have had to know about Alastor from the beginning*. I don't think he would have taken Alastor away from Nicaise, and she wouldn't have wanted to live in Hell, even if it did mean living in luxury. The guilt and the feelings of betrayal are still there - it certainly doesn't help his crumbling relationship with Lilith - but Lucifer wants to keep an eye on his friend and their child. So he peeks in on them on Earth, occasionally pops in to grant a couple small miracles or gifts. Never staying long just in case Heaven catches on.

Then Nicaise is murdered by her employer. And there is no way in hell that Lucifer is allowing that fucking piece of shit to keep her child! Lucifer books it over as soon as he can and finds Alastor sleeping in a shed and, oh, he is not happy. He doesn't kill Nicaise's murderer. It's enough to flash his wings, horns out, spitting flames as he informs the man that Hell is real and he's bound to it before disappearing with Alastor**.

So now, in just the span of a few days, Alastor: has witnessed his mother's violent murder, has been effectively kidnapped by her murderer, was forced to sleep in a shed that smells like dogs, found out that angels and demons are real and that his father is one, has been whisked away to live in another world that transforms him into a monster as soon as he enters it, and is now expected to get used to living with his mysterious father as well as a new step-mother and half-sister. Needless to say, it's a lot.

So naturally, he's a bit shaken when he first arrives in the Morningstar household. He doesn't speak and spends most of his time shut up in his new room which is way bigger than his old house was. Lucifer's awkwardly trying to balance giving him the space he needs and make him feel welcome. Lilith isn't terribly thrilled with the situation, but... Well, she seems to have a lot of compassion for her people. I don't think she would really turn out a traumatized child, but she's definitely going through some complicated emotions of her own.

Charlie has none of the reservations the grown ups have. In fact, she's suuuuuuuuuuper excited to meet her new little brother! Even if he doesn't look that much littler than her***. So she slips into his room, tries to drag him out of bed, pesters him, and generally just acts like an excitable, friendly child. As much as Lucifer and Lilith try to get her to give Alastor space and time to adjust, she keeps coming back. Her little brother looks so sad and she doesn't want him to be sad! She wants to help him feel happy!

She remains persistent, telling Alastor all about her home and family and insisting that he'll like it soon because her mom and dad are really nice and she loves him already and he'll love it there in Hell and...

She stops as she sees the tears start to roll down Alastor's face. Charlie begins to panic, thinking she's said something mean by accident, but then Alastor sobs out that he misses his maman and just wants to go home! Suddenly Charlie feels really bad. She doesn't know how to make things better. So she just stays. Sits next to him. Doesn't leave him alone. Sheds a few tears of her own.

Once Alastor's cried it out and tired himself out a bit, Charlie asks him what his mom was like. They spend all night talking about her. When Lucifer goes to check in on Alastor later, he finds both kids passed out on the floor in a pile of blankets.

It's still rough going from there on out, but Charlie plays a large part in helping Alastor heal after everything. Some things still stay the same. Lucifer and Lilith's marriage still struggles, she disappears, Lucifer pulls away from now both of his children in his depression. And Alastor still has a lot of anger. He doesn't really agree with Charlie's goal of redeeming sinners because he fully believes that some people just aren't worth redeeming.

Still, he goes with her whenever she searches for injured sinners after the exterminations. He and Vaggie actually get along a bit better here. They still snipe at each other quite a bit, but there's an almost friendly undercurrent to it. And although he doesn't really believe in the goal of redeeming sinners, he does go along with the Happy Hotel project just to help Charlie out. Doesn't stop him from mocking the idea every step of the way.

This version of Alastor hasn't really developed the Radio Demon persona. He doesn't exactly need to, given he's the Prince of Hell. But he's still Alastor and still cultivates a terrifying reputation for himself. Charlie's grown up with this Alastor though and knows the man behind the curtain. She's not always happy with how quick he is to suggest violence as a solution, but she also knows that when he sees a weaker demon being preyed upon by stronger ones, he'll step in.

He's also protective of Charlie, and usually takes it upon himself to step in and do things that he sees as necessary but he knows she wouldn't like. For example, after finding out how Valentino treated her when she went to the studio, Alastor pays his own visit in private and makes sure Valentino knows if he tries to pull any shit like that again, Alastor will pick apart his soul piece by wretched piece and scatter it across all the rings of hell. Charlie knows he did something when the next time she sees Valentino, the pimp screams bloody murder and throws himself out the nearest window.

(*Just imagine Lucifer, wings out, attempting to drunkenly climb out of Nicaise's window, only to get stuck, give up, and slump over on the floor.)

(**The old bastard spends the rest of his life donating his wealth to build orphanages and hospitals, helping the poor, and basically trying to buy his way into Heaven. It doesn't work and he's slaughtered during his first extermination in hell.)

(***Charlie at this point should be roughly a century old, but to be honest, I'm not entirely sure what that means for a half-angel half-demon like her. Did she age at a typical human rate until she reached young adulthood and then just stopped? Or did she just age very very slowly? I'm going with the second for the sake of this AU. I also have this theory that Lilith never actually died, and was transformed into a unique sort of demon simply by entering primordial Hell. And something similar happens to young Alastor when Lucifer brings him home.)

[happypeachsludgeflower]

Okay. But if Shen Yuan took over as Shen Qingqiu, did Shen Qingqiu take over as Shen Yuan??

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

imogen to bells hells now that she's taken off the circlet:

[tootalltech]

one thing about five hargreeves is that it’s a good thing he’s too old to know what an energy drink is

[backpackingspace]

Listen diomedes deserves to have a vlog. Every video is just him staring at the camera while drama in the odysseus household unfolds in the background.

[icwasher]

I've recently decided to take my Star Wars modern AU and give it a plot and as I've been thinking about it I wrote a short scene that takes place somewhat close to the beginning middle-ish. Unfortunately, I do not want to spoil the story so this scene is without context, but I'll post it here anyways for anyone who wants to read it.

There were no lectures in the Fett car that night. Only silence, though it was sometimes interrupted by the crunching of rocks on the asphalt road against the car’s tires. Omega huddled in the back seat, trying to ignore the glare Crosshair was giving her from the rearview mirror. Out of all her brothers, he was the angriest, which was not really very surprising. Crosshair tended to be like that. His anger was like ice—cold, hard, and long-lasting. Omega knew it could be months before he stopped being mad. She could even be done with her sentence—three months of grounding plus an extra month of chores—before Crosshair even began to stop being angry. Sometimes she wished he wasn’t like that. But it was just a testament to his loyalty—loyalty that kept him with Omega and her brothers instead of letting him roam off around the world like Omega knew he wanted to.  She hoped someday he would get to travel. He had told her once, in the strictest confidence, that he wanted to visit every country. So far, he had only been to three. Omega had been curious after he shared that with her, and she had snuck out his passport while he had been sleeping. Two stamps. One to Afghanistan, and the other to Costa Rica. The former had been to visit a recovering Echo. The latter had been for his never-spoken-of time working for the Empire. Omega usually liked Crosshair’s loyalty. But not now. Now it would mean holding onto his anger. There wouldn’t be any late-night movies or conversations between them for a while. Omega curled her legs up to her chest and hugged her knees. It would be fine. She’d get through this.

[just-a-repa]

Some modern au shenanigans

Character description part 1 here

This is the moment Rael knew he is dead meat, little shit won't keep his mouth closed in front of their parents for sure

Rael definitely buys himself makeup with his pocket money (or uses Jo's) and when he and Qui-Gon are alone in the house he just experiements with it

I also totally forgot to do something for halloween night, but happy (late) halloween guys :D

[kn-1013]

i know i've been on my anti-modern AU propaganda lately and it's just because i've been delving deeper into the sally face ao3 tags and i just keep finding them over and over. it's frustrating because there are a lot of really interesting concepts out there that would fit really well and make for a genuinely really interesting story in the 90s, but they get thrown off because the author doesn't know enough about the 90s to write for that time period, so they make it into a modern au instead. there's nothing inherently wrong with that, and i think there's room for modern aus to be done well here, i even have my own half-serious modern au, but i do think you often lose part of what makes sally face special when you turn the story into any other kind of contemporary love story/horror story/etc where all the characters just have ~iphones~ and use ~snapchat~ and all these things.

like, the 90s was not some kind of alien planet, and a vast number of the problems that you're solving with smartphones can be worked around very easily with just a bit of research or thought. long distance walkie-talkies, pagers, and PDAs were all (though sometimes expensive) perfectly capable contemporary technologies for talking to people when you are not physically with them. in fact, a lot of the abbreviations and slang we use over text right now was developed by young people in the 90s using pagers to talk to their friends. PDAs were a bit more out there in the 90s than they were in the aughts, but it's still completely plausible for henry in particular to have one, considering he already owns a home computer, which was not at all ubiquitous in the 90s. considering the apparent financial limitations that he and sal live under (it's never stated explicitly, but i mean, they live at addison's, they can't be in a great financial situation) and how insanely expensive computers were back then, it's more than likely that henry's job requires a home computer of some sort, meaning that a PDA would probably be incredibly useful to him if he were away from it, because there's no way in hell he's getting himself a luggable or another kind of early laptop to bring with him, that would've been too expensive.

and that's ignoring the fact that so many situations where two characters are apart form each other but need to communicate could just be fixed by rewriting the plot so that they can meet in person. i know that's not what people wanna hear because rewriting sucks, but you can find a lot of reasons for characters to meet each other randomly or to have reasons to meet up later if you give it a bit of problem-solving. part of what makes the pre-smartphone era interesting to write for and so optimized for horror, and probably a big reason that gabry chose this time period for the story in the first place, is the level of disconnection between each character in the story BECAUSE they don't have things like smartphones. having to work around this technological limitation is part of the fun, because you get a very enjoyable push and pull of closeness vs. disconnection between each character.

this is great for alienating ash, the only one who doesn't live in the apartments (except for neil), and causing her internal conflict about her relationships with the rest of her friends, especially as the story progresses and they start discovering more shit about the cult, and her instincts are to call the cops because she's a lot more normal than her friends are. or, it's good for alienating travis, who also doesn't live there and is far more isolated than everyone else (more on that next), or for creating an unhealthy and codependent relationship between sal and larry, who, with the walkies, are the only two in the friend group who DO have semi-instant access to each other all the time--all of which are plot points i put into my writing.

and if that's not enough, think about the implications for travis's character in particular. his father is a preacher, and a huge talking point of christian extremists in the 90s was that things like television were evil and demonic in some way. they campaigned against these things heavily. with the kind of person that we know kenneth phelps to be and the way many technologies we take for granted today, including TVs, were still being adopted by older generations, it's not out of the question at all that travis doesn't own something like a TV or a VCR, putting him even more out of the loop with what other people his age are doing than he already would be, having approximately 0 friends. he doesn't know what DND is, and he doesn't know how to look it up because he's not familiar with computers or the internet, he just knows his dad thinks it's demonic, so he steers clear of it.

the intention of cult leaders like kenneth is to keep their victims as isolated as possible, and not owning a TV, VCR, home computer, etc, is a great way to keep travis and his sisters isolated and disconnected from their peers, and therefore more connected to the cult, and it's a lot easier to justify not owning these things in the 90s, where the story already takes place, than it is if you're writing a modern au. a modern au for this situation would require all kinds of technological workarounds to make sure that travis owned a phone but couldn't do anything his father didn't want him doing on it. he's the kind of father who would go through and monitor his kid's texts, he wouldn't just let travis have snapchat or whatever, but i digress.

i know i'm just doing my petty bitching and people can do whatever they want however they want to, but i really do feel like there's a huge piece of the story that is lost in turning the sally face story as it is into some kind of modern au, and it's pretty unfortunate to me that people seem to think that the 90s was such a primitive alien world of incomprehensible technology that they don't want to write for that time period at all. it's really not as terrifying as it seems, genuinely. a surface level understanding of the era's technologies would be straightforward enough for anyone who wasn't there to write something perfectly coherent, if lacking in specific cultural/technological details that nobody but me cares about because i have autism.

if you're a sally face fan reading this and you struggle with writing for the american 90s because you weren't there, go look up pagers (also called beepers) and PDAs (which are basically early pocket computers) and how they work. ask older family members if or how they used them. go look at the different kinds of home computers of the era from companies like packard-bell and IBM. learn what a pentium III is/was, or what it means to be X86 compatible. look at the history of the CD-ROM, and how when it was invented, it could contain so much data that consumers had absolutely no idea what to do with them until people started putting video games on them. go watch cathode ray dude, LGR or techmoan on youtube.

go learn things about this era, it's good for you and you will have a lot of fun, even if you're not like me, i promise, and your fanfiction will be better for it. please learn about this era. take my hand. we can go to beautiful places together.

[harpydrawsstuff]

Pulls out another crossover friendship au out of my ass

[au-yuukiemcee]

Nevi Kingorn: Fire Bad

~Nevi explains to the others why she doesn't trust modern technology.

[cazzythefrogking]

marauders incorrect quotes pt 122

James, looking at a dead phone: How do we bring this thing back to life? Magic? Live sacrifice? I know a guy in town-