#bookburners au

[dafodils-on-the-moon]

!!!! So many questions bc I love this with all my heart <3 First, it's freaking hilarious that he became jester because he was "difficult to handle." LOVE that. Second, I gotta know, what does everyone else think about him? Arthur? Gwen? Morgana? Is Morgana doomed to die by the hands of a COURT JESTER?????

Ok so. Crucial part of this Au: Uther knows Merlin in Balinor’s son but does NOT know abt the magic. Merlin does not know about being Balinor’s son. Uther kept him cause he thinks it would be a good idea to have a dragonlord on hand that's loyal to Camelot, given what he's keeping under the castle.

Also I'm very aroace and don't wanna write romance for a while, so no romantic Murther.

Instead, Uther raises Merlin and Arthur as brothers. He deeply encourages the loyalty to one another as keeping Merlin loyal is essetail and Merlin is a very valuable asset that bears protecting. He emphasises to Arthur that as the eldest, Merlin is his responsibility and he should take care of him. Merlin is his younger brother.

Arthur takes to this role like a wildfire. Protective as SHIT over his new baby brother (Merlin is two years younger), esp. Since he was… not doing too hot when he first got to the castle. He was greiving and seemed *terrified* and didn’t speak at all for months. He was sickly too, for reasons no-one could pinpoint. Arthur had made it his mission to cheer Merlin up, as no one should be that sad. He and Merlin communicate at first via drawings.

He only seemed to improve after he started talking quietly to an imaginary freind he named “Kiggah.” It seemed to help cause merlin slowly started talking to Arthur and then in general and his health imrpved too.

Yeah… Merlin’s imaginary freind is Killgarrah lol.

Killgarrrah, or Kiggah as a now 5 year old Merlin could pernounce, is getting a major overhaul in this AU. His is going to be far far less of a bastard. Cause dragons are too cool for him to be the absolute worst.

In this AU Kiggah actually cares more THAT HIS ENTIRE RACE WAS ERADICATED than that he was trapped under the castle. Cause, fr, that is not the part id focus on. Also I gave him a family before, sorry man. Kiggah was also really really fond of dragonlings and hatchlings and was very excited to see the hatching of his first great-grandhatchling before the purge. Ow.

Anyway, Merlin is TERRIFIED of being in Camelot. He’s terrified he’s going to say something wrong and reveal his secret and die. He blames himslef for his mother’s death (cause he’s like 4 1/2 and thats normal for kids that age) and more specifically, his magic. So he supresses the shit out of it, which is why he’s so sickly.

Kiggah senses Merlin basically killing himslef and tries coaching Merlin into using his magic again. Adopts Merlin as his own hatchling. Kiggah doesn’t know Merlin’s dad is Balinor, but he DOES know he’s emrys, magic itself. As a result, Kiggah views Merlin as a fellow magical creature and raises him accordingly. He… doesn’t really get how human hatchlings are supposed to work.

Merlin starts acting weirdly dragonlike. His growling, he’s biting people, hee’s climbing everything, hoarding things and has a major fixation with fire. He is gettign “difficult to handle” as UTHER, assumes this is just how dragonlordlings are, (good gracious), but needs a way to coverup the fact he’s raising one.

Fooleswurth, nuerdodivergent in ye-old times, sees Merlin and his like “haha verily. Reminds me of when I was that age, I was just the same. He must have “The Jester’s Spark, haha.”’ Uther goes “yes and” and now fooleswurth has an apprentice and Uther has a way to explain why his ward is so weird.

Anyway, Kiggah is NOT excited about Merlin’s new older sister, but Merlin loves her. He is very excited for whenever Morgana’s magic manifests. She grows on Kiggah. (Esp. With all teh trouble she gives Uther). Morgana’s going to be fine.

She and Merlin get on like a house on fire. Gossipy bitches. Morgana sics Melrin and his “jester’s privolegde” on bothersome nobles to insult them into the ground.

Gwen becomes Morgana’s maidservent, and she Morgana and Merlin are great friends.

[fiuworks]

shhh...there's an archivist sleeping by the fire....

i haven't drawn anything from my bookburning enemies to domestic lovers to tragic yuri au since summer but trust me i think about them often

i tried to make it look like agnes's version of blushing is glowing from under her wax/skin but idk how well that turned out but im so fond of the cozy energy of the piece...i want to draw more from this au so much and now that i have time i might

[cobalt-knave]

Some of my favorite Gerry Keay fics.

we all think we’re too young to die by seasonallyappropriategoth

Gerry dyes his hair in a gas station bathroom while on the hunt with Gertrude and is doing poorly health-wise. Dark and very well-done.

I'll try to talk refined by acetheticallyy (judesstfrancis)

Jon/Gerry. Coffee shop AU & ghost AU. No one ever expects the alleged ghost haunting their place of work to be real. No one ever expects said ghost to be oddly very charming, either. Sometimes, though, things just happen.

Life Preserver by PitViperOfDoom

Jon/Gerry. AU where the pair of them meet while Jon is in university. Truly excellent. (I also did the illustration for the Rusty Quill Big Bang). Admittedly, Jon has been known to make impulsive decisions. Taking a part-time job at the campus library on his last year of university. Going in after dark to check on a book. Putting the lighter in his pocket. Asking out the cute goth who, as far as he knows, narrowly avoided a brush with a Leitner. Gerry told himself it was only going to be one date, just to see what it was like. How was he supposed to know he'd get attached?

your heart sings like a kettle by takingyournarrative

Gerry & Michael. I'd nearly forgotten about this fic, but just rereading its summary brought to mind an imagined smell of delicate blueberry tea. A story that is as aromatic as it is aromantic. The old doubt resurfaced for a moment — love was tricky to untangle, and he couldn’t deny anymore that that was what he was feeling. But then Gerry was sitting down opposite him and he felt warm and he didn’t want anything more than this, really, so he knew it was friendship and suddenly he felt so comfortable he almost forgot to tell Gerry what kind of tea he had so meticulously made. in which an aro teaseller and an aro bookburner tell stories, brew and drink ridiculously complicated teas, and get a good grade in kissing the homies (something that's normal to want, and ever so possible to achieve).

The Reminiscences of Martin Blackwood, Post Mortem by AuralQueer

Jon/Martin, Martin & Gerry. Historical AU. While not the focus, one of the absolute highlights of this fic is the Martin & Gerry friendship that left me yearning for more fic with that pair.

Martin Blackwood is a reporter for The Observer newspaper. He’s a normal enough man, and he’d like to keep it that way. He doesn’t have much reason to suspect anything too far out of the ordinary when he heads down to University College Hospital on a hunch to visit the man who may or may not be dead. The man’s name is Jonathan Sims: a failed academic by all accounts, though what he’d been doing before the explosion that threw him into a six month coma is at the mercy of baseless public speculation. Now he’s lying in an empty ward with no heartbeat, dreaming. It seems like enough to fill a slow news day. A Victorian AU. Herein lies artistic licence, ghosts, and the slowest burn you ever did see.

ludus by bluejayblueskies

Jon & Gerry Queerplatonic relationship.

Gerry generally doesn’t frequent pubs like this one, where the wooden table in front of him is sticky enough that his glass pulls slightly against his grip as he lifts it before it unsticks with a wet ripping noise. The pub is a small, dirty thing, aptly named The Rusty Bucket, and apparently, it’s the venue for trivia night every Thursday, of which Jon and his friends are regulars. Gerry’s never met Jon’s friends. But he supposes there’s a first time for everything.

Children of Dust and Shadow by IceEckos12

Jon & Gerry. Post-Season 5 in an...interesting way. This is truly one of the best Magnus fics I've ever read. It has an extremely interesting and unique platonic relationship, the sort of which I've only every seen in Kindred (Very different overall tone, but the similarity is structural, if that makes sense. A similar sort of travel with a very different story.)

"Cut the tether," Jon said, as the world fell apart beneath his fingertips. "Send them away." And so Martin did. But that was not the end of it. Mere seconds later, Jon appeared out of nowhere in front of a small boy with red hair and wide, grey eyes. That boy's name was Gerry Keay.

No God-like Powers of Love, Hope, or Indigestion by TheBrilliantLoser

Jon & Gerry. Canon Divergence AU. It is exactly what it says on the tin in the best way and part of a fun series, which does become Jon/Gerry later on. Jonathan Sims panics under pressure and ends up picking up an unexpected spectral souvenir from his trip to America. Gerry Keay gets a new lease on life he didn't expect, or want. Canon divergence. Friendly ghost possession.

Bailey School Kids by verboseDescription

Gerry & OCs. Canon divergence Gerry lives AU. If it hadn’t been for the fact they had the same oncologist, Kira would think their new roommate was a vampire. And okay, sure, maybe being a cancer survivor didn’t automatically mean you couldn’t be a vampire too, but why wait until your tumor was gone to become immortal? Personally, Kira thought Gerry seemed like the kind of person who would be more concerned with keeping his long hair than being cancer-free. Basil thinks he's just mafia. Or: you either die a cursed book, or you live long enough to become someone's weird cryptid roommate.

Ash and Gold by laughs_in_distortion

Gerry & Francis. 3 sentence fic. Bad dye jobs, intimacy, and snarking.

I'm dying, send Gerry fic recs

[pandorem]

As you have probably guessed by now, the current hyperfixation IS the Magnus Archives and my brain keeps on being bombarded with Thoughts and AU ideas. Anyways Jon and Gerry as Lietner hunters AU, where Jon starts showing up along side Gerry in statements (probably around college time?). Jon isn’t spooky or mysterious monster jon though, he’s closer to season 1 flavoured Jon. Kinder and happier, but prim and snooty and persnickety and all of those other adjectives that you would not associate with a professional book burner and rescuer of victims of the supernatural.

People coming in to the Magnus Institute and sharing their harrowing story, and talk about this mysterious goth they met, and then part way through this utterly unintimidating nerd shows up. He looks like a strong wind could have knocked him over. The mysterious goth gets this soft, fond look on his face that doesn’t match the horror of the situation. The nerd may or may not at some point do something stupidly reckless, or mention having done something stupidly reckless, or get into an argument with the goth over NOT doing something stupidly reckless. They find a book. Goth asks the posh bastard nerd if he’d like to do the honours this time around, and the nerd takes a little too much glee in burning it. The goth watches him in amusement that still manages to be a bit too sappy to be comfortable. What started as a horrific and traumatic event in the statement giver’s life has started to feel like they are awkwardly third-wheeling on a date.

Sasha is probably the archivist in this AU, and she is absolutely keeping track of people who show up in statements more than once. They start trying to put together a timeline of Gerry’s appearances and when Jon started showing up. Tim gets way too invested in how their relationship evolves over the statements.

In case it isn’t clear, this is absolutely a Gerry Lives AU and possibly a Jon Remains Human and nothing bad ever happens to him au. There may be some angst, perhaps a smidge of peril, but as the universe does it’s best to be an inevitable horror/tragedy, Jon and Gerry are out there living their best book burning rom com life.

[bighattaako]

Ok so to add onto the Avatar Gerard theory, I was telling my ex about it (who filters my thoughts in a way I'm completely incapable of) and this is a great concept we came up with:

So between 2009 and 2012, Gerard acquires his iconic tattoos. The eye tattoos on every joint + his heart, which are unburned by the Desolation. So his many supernatural freaky tattoos.

But why would he get those? I get he's goth, but those tattoos would be exceptionally painful and they're also supernatural. Is it just his association with the Eye that makes them supernatural?

We think that he didn't get them. That instead, in his running from Mary travels, he was found by a cult of the Eye.

The first Watcher's Crown was in 1867 and unsuccessful. But it had a name. I think some Eye worshippers heard about the ritual and were like "bet we could do that". The Institute can't be the only one that worships/works with the Eye.

They find a watcher and crown him, in many many eyes. This ritual would of course be unsuccessful, as it was poorly conceived anyway, but it would still leave Gerard with this armor of bizarre tattoos. While they only spotlight his heart, elbows, and knees, there are a lot of joints in the human body. Jaw, shoulders, fingers, hips, toes, spine.

The nurse that points them out cut his clothes off and she said 'every' joint so I'm going to assume she meant EVERY joint. Joint tattoos hurt, a lot, especially if you get them all at once. That would be difficult to bear.

I believe he's a failed Watcher's Crown, failed as in he's an avatar of the Eye and they basically just tortured him for kicks.

[raksha-the-demon]

[Redacted] you are not Sal Brooks. Please stop trying to be Sal Brooks. 

No, no I said stop being Sal, not be more like Sal.

[drstrangewillseeyounow]

Creative Year in Review 2020

I almost didn’t do this because 2020 was such a tough year in many ways, but I think it can be interesting and helpful to look back regardless.

Total number of creations? (Or a rough guess!)

I posted 10 stories on AO3 this year (strangeallure) for a total word count of 34,726 and finished 3 more short stories for a writing challenge with @teagrl.

I also made some art (edits, graphics) this year: 3 for @purimgifts and 2 for @startreksecretsanta and cover art for Mating Games.

Word-count-wise this is down significantly from 2019 (14 stories, 116k) and also lower than 2018 (12 stories, 50k).

Seeing that there’s a seven month gap between March and October, where I didn’t post anything, I can still say that the year ended on an intermittently productive note.

What characters or ships have you created the most content for this year?

This is probably the last year the answer is Michael Burnham/Ash Tyler.

It was only one story (Mating Games, 24k), but it accounted for 70% of my posted fic.

I wrote two more gen stories with a Michael POV (The Good Time and Bad Signal) and one with an Ash POV (Endure).

Was there a project that you didn’t get around to?

Of course! I had many more Ashburn ideas and wrote 3k of a Harry Potter fic that I never finished.

What was the creation you had the most fun making?

This is such a difficult question, even more so for a year where everything felt kind of hard.

I liked writing my first original short fic in ages (Immersion Report) for @purimgifts, and after a bit of a rough start, the rest of “Mistle Me This, Mistle Me That” (my first Rey/Ben Solo fic, a modern AU) came together fairly quickly. Looking back, it’s also the only truly happy story I wrote this year.

Any surprises? (E.g. a character or ship you never thought you’d create for or a project that came out of nowhere?)

Other than Mating Games (the first draft of which was actually written in 2019), I didn’t write any porn. In fact, only my first Reylo fic (posted on December 25) was shippy at all. So it was an accidental year of gen.

Also, the fact that I got into Reylo was very unexpected. I had tried reading in the fandom in 2019, but the stories I tried back then weren’t my cup of tea, but this time around, I found such a treasure trove of all kinds of fic that I went on a reading binge that then inspired me to write for the pairing myself.

What was the hardest creation to make?

Mating Games was the hardest to finish,I know that much. I stepped away from it for half a year and only finished it so I wouldn’t drag it into the new year. I was glad I went back to it and even managed to write an epilogue.

 What inspired you the most this year?

Until my Reylo reading binge (which only started in December), there was very little actual inspiration, but @teagrl kept pushing me to edit and to write and generally kept me feeling like I was still connected to fandom and writing. Thank you!

 What are you most proud of? (A creation, something you learned, etc)

I’m proud I managed to finish Mating Games and that I managed to get back in the game towards the end of the year. Other than that, I’m just glad that the year is over.

 Any goals/plans/ideas for next year?

Challenges often work for me, so I want to try and sign-up for a few (I already did for a Poetry Challenge and will sign up for @purimgifts tomorrow). I also want to establish a writing habit, although I’m still figuring out if I want to go as far as making it a daily thing. Anyway, structured output over fevered outburst sounds like a good thing.

I have started docs for several Reylo fics, so I hope to finish and post some of those.

I also have a few pages of a conduit story (Ashburn by way of Bookburn), which would be nice to finish.

And I still have hopes of finishing that Harry Potter story I started in summer.

Pick your favourite creations! (Post links and tell us why you love them!)

Mating Games (E, 24k) - I love porn as character study, and this turned out very hot (if I do say so myself) with a lot of beats specific to how I see these two characters.

Immersion Report (G, 1k) – My first original fic in a long time. I think there’s a lot of world building that feels very organic in such a short fic.

 Everyone who created/posted art, fic, gif-sets, vids, cosplay, etc., consider yourself tagged if you’d like to be. I’m curious! <3

[chuckling-chemist]

Fancestor Week Day 4

I was going to throw this under a read more, but my repeated attempts to do so on my phone are hardcore failing, so apologies for that. (Though it is shorter since some of them, such as Ektome/Nafasi, I haven’t put much thought in.) So aaaaway we go.

Valeba, upon eventually finding out she even has an ancestor - and let’s be fair, the way she ends up finding about her ancestor makes it difficult to deny - is actually massively intrigued by her. After all, not only does she end up having an ancestor (something that’s not taught lowbloods have), but it’s someone who managed to overcome everything that was thrown at her and still come out on top. She takes a while to learn everything she can about Aluala, connecting her life through disjointed puzzle pieces she left behind. (Seriously Valeba connects her life together through disconnected stories, a deck of tarot cards,  and Inaeis’ journal).

Aluala, similarly, I always imagined would very much the proud, supportive mom towards Valeba. Not necessarily in the way Aracae functions, but very much the “oh honey you survived near death I’m so proud of you! I know you have problems, and that’s to be expected, but you’ve come so far in your life.” Aluala’s very....let’s say carpe diem.

Pallia likely is very perturbed by Fospha. Fospha appears cold, callous and unfeeling - things Pallia is distinctly not.  At the same time, Pallia did start out using much of Fospha’s research, but I think Pallia would very much treat Fospha as a “Kill your heroes” type of thing: respect her for the work she did,  not necessarily for who she is.

Fospha would be worried for Pallia. Pallia keeps in the company of pirates, a purpleblood and the descendant of the violetblood who killed her. Hell, she’s on quite friendly terms with the violetblood who killed her. And her eccentric qualities could give the impression Pallia’s easy to manipulate (and is getting manipulated by Dontoc, even though Dontoc would probably walk off a cliff if Pallia asked him to). If her and Pallia ever got to a point of getting along, she’d probably see Pallia more as just a work partner than anything else. 

Glacin hates Dumaas. Glacin hates literally everything about Dumaas. At no point in time does Glacin ever like Dumaas. If he met Dumaas in person, he would only hate Dumaas more for his violent, hyper-sadistic, overly-aggressive, religiously zealotry that doesn’t require semi-regular bathing. There is no other way to put that. 

Along the same lines, Dumaas would have 0 respect for Glacin. Why would he? Glacin doesn’t believe in the Carnival, needs empirical or observational evidence to believe anything and is close friends with trolls not in the Carnival. Full stop. Their relationship is probably the most straightforward of all of my trolls.

(which is funny considering...)

Dontoc’s opinions about Inaeis are complicated. He started out hating his ancestor - Dontoc is a scholar at heart, even when he lived with seadwellers, and Inaeis was a bookburner who murdered trolls to silence them. And his old culture talked that stuff up. Then upon meeting Pallia, he finds out part of the reason she’s so skittish about what she does is due to the numerous silencing of scientists who spoke out against that status quo and the Empress - and Inaeis led the one specifically against Fospha. This only continues to drop when he realizes one of the trolls on her team was Inaeis. (This actually makes him paranoid for a period of time that Glacin’s right about Dontoc being a threat, but that’s another story.) He only starts to reconcile that Inaeis might not be the worst person in the world when Valeba finds her ancestor’s tomb, and with it, Inaeis’ journal. Granted, Dontoc doesn’t read it initially and Valeba has to tell him that maaaaybe Inaeis had some good qualities (outside of some late-life regret that turned his hive into a library), and at least some of what he did was due to manipulation and depression. That being said, he still struggles with this idea that Inaeis is a good person, and as such what this means about his own character in the future. I think if he met Inaeis, that would fix none of that. There is a very good reason that for a human AU Inaeis is an absent father who doesn’t know how to connect to his son, even when he’s not depressed or drunk.

Inaeis, similar to Fospha, would very worried for Dontoc. Dontoc is, in his eyes, making the same mistakes he did and probably struggle between telling Dontoc this or not, as it’s not like Inaeis believed Fospha about Carica, but so desperately doesn’t want to see Dontoc fall into a 100 sweep depressive hellhole who’s starting point is murdering your friends.

Mayola, kind of like Dontoc, struggles with her ancestor. However, this is for very different reasons. Mayola is considered a “bastard child” among fuchsias. Effectively, she is the first fuchsia in history with her symbol - or so she was told. She’s illegitimate. She has claim to becoming Empress by virtue of being fuchsia, and that’s it. She took this ancestor-less past and decided it means she can do whatever she wants with her life, lineage be damned. There’s no one she has to atone for, or avenge, or finish anything at all. She can be her own troll, unburdened by tradition or history. ....Except, it turns out, not quite. As Mayola does have an ancestor. A whole line who was nearly scrubbed clean from the books when Kisoku got so close to taking down Carica. It was Carica’s desperate attempt to make sure it never happens again. And when Mayola finds this out - that not only does she have an ancestor, but she’s accidentally been following her very closely - she’s angry. First angry at the concept of having an ancestor, then at herself for still being bound to the system, then at Kisoku for getting washed away. Then at Carica for doing it, and finally those close to Carica who knew and actively treated her as lesser despite knowing better. (I actually have the discovery part of this planned as a fic, but that's kind of down the road).

Kisoku I'm pretty sure, had she met Mayola, would encourage her to just keep doing her, all while simultaneously pushing her to truly finish what she started and build a better world without Carica. Not really like Kisoku is much for being part of political games either, after all.

Careen already tries to live up to everything Carica is. She adores her (still living) ancestor and everything about her. It's like inverse-Glacin, in that regard. And meeting her wouldn't change that. Careen's really good at blinding herself like that

Carica, however, if she met Careen would view her at best as a threat (par for the tyrian course) and at worst as an ineffective blight on her symbol, unworthy of her time or attention.

[roggepan]

Tma college au jongerry enemies to lovers 100k, #slowburn #coffeeshop #public leitner disposal #bookburning

[fiuworks]

Okay so I swear not EVERYTHING i've been drawing is Magsev...if its not MS its THIS................

Me and @ceaselesswatchersspecialboy (upon the world ending event in which I terrorised his dms with all my inner musings) cooked up this au in which Agnes leaves the cult to follow Gertrude and several things happen. and its insane. and theres a spinoff au to the au of like what if bookburning (them) were jmart . this art in particular is bookburning breaking into the morgue in america (agnes has no idea gerty is about to skin gerry the poor fella) its insane. here take doodles

(theyve nicknamed themselves Monty and Robin....Gertrude would use Monty as a snippy degradation of 'Agnes Montague' but it quickly became affectionate....and Agnes calls Gertrude 'Robin' in response)

case in point

traced over a sims screenshot for this (i made them and gerry in the sims)

we have a kind of plot where like. the old archives staff were freinds with agnes in a way esp michael and gerry bc michael was one of the first not gertrude people to treat her like a human and gerry kind of becomes her and gertrude's honorary son ..and after they all die agnes goes into a sort of hiding but then delivers a statement to the institute and then erm . krills her shelf bc she has no purpose anymore but then the fearpocalypse is triggered shortly after and she has her own domain but as opposed to Jude's violent destruction domain, hers is the part of the desolation that encapsulates Loss because that is all she is by the time of her death and her and jon have a conversation about destiny and avatarship and loss before she asks him to smite her and he puts her out of her misery........yeah . we cook here!

theres more doodles and stuff but i'll probably make a second post or something in the future so im stockpiling crumbs for a further infodump

also ive now seen agnes x gertrude refered to as smokyeyes online (which is GREAT by the way) but i thought of bookburning and havent seen that been used? which is strange? because it's such low hanging fruit....but wateva . enjoy

[pandorem]

The funniest possible TMA AU imo is where Jon is a YouTube Ghost Hunter with Melanie. Does it make ANY sense for Jon’s character? No. I genuinely think that Jon Sims who got into his fascination with and researching the supernatural from a real and traumatic inciting incident and covers for his fear of it with scepticism would not take well to like… spirit boxes. And given that it’s canon in the TMA universe that the Ghost Hunter community inoculates itself against danger by sharing the same safe stories and locations over and over again (and thus stories that are far less likely to actually have the Fears be behind them, or at least less likely for them to still be around) I think he would get too frustrated by a lack of evidence he found compelling to stick around. He would hate the pseudo science, he would hate the sensationalism, he would hate the lack of concrete evidence. It makes no sense for his character. I do not care.

Imagining him bickering with Melanie over ghosts in an environment less likely to have them actually be traumatizing each other is too funny to me. Probably this stupid AU makes more sense if he’s working with Georgie instead, and again, I’m not sure if I care.

WAIT OH SHIT NOW I’M THINKING ABOUT MY JONGERRY BOOKBURNERS AU where Ghost Hunt UK ends up bumping into the pair accidentally…. Outside pov of Them<3 is my happy place… Melanie and Jon at each other’s throats over what is a real supernatural incident where Jon has been dealing with Leightners for years, but he just can’t help but be dragged into a stupid argument…. Gerry just wants to burn this book…. Melanie and Jon please be friends who hate each other in a funny way instead of a sad way I’m begging you

[joy-isthename]

Okay but I would love this as a fic, please anybody 🥺🥺

As you have probably guessed by now, the current hyperfixation IS the Magnus Archives and my brain keeps on being bombarded with Thoughts and AU ideas. Anyways Jon and Gerry as Lietner hunters AU, where Jon starts showing up along side Gerry in statements (probably around college time?). Jon isn’t spooky or mysterious monster jon though, he’s closer to season 1 flavoured Jon. Kinder and happier, but prim and snooty and persnickety and all of those other adjectives that you would not associate with a professional book burner and rescuer of victims of the supernatural.

People coming in to the Magnus Institute and sharing their harrowing story, and talk about this mysterious goth they met, and then part way through this utterly unintimidating nerd shows up. He looks like a strong wind could have knocked him over. The mysterious goth gets this soft, fond look on his face that doesn’t match the horror of the situation. The nerd may or may not at some point do something stupidly reckless, or mention having done something stupidly reckless, or get into an argument with the goth over NOT doing something stupidly reckless. They find a book. Goth asks the posh bastard nerd if he’d like to do the honours this time around, and the nerd takes a little too much glee in burning it. The goth watches him in amusement that still manages to be a bit too sappy to be comfortable. What started as a horrific and traumatic event in the statement giver’s life has started to feel like they are awkwardly third-wheeling on a date.

Sasha is probably the archivist in this AU, and she is absolutely keeping track of people who show up in statements more than once. They start trying to put together a timeline of Gerry’s appearances and when Jon started showing up. Tim gets way too invested in how their relationship evolves over the statements.

In case it isn’t clear, this is absolutely a Gerry Lives AU and possibly a Jon Remains Human and nothing bad ever happens to him au. There may be some angst, perhaps a smidge of peril, but as the universe does it’s best to be an inevitable horror/tragedy, Jon and Gerry are out there living their best book burning rom com life.