#if it saves u a click: two are sylki and the other would be an AU from them Thor films

[nostalgia-tblr]

My Next Attempt At Long Fic (by which I mean more than 10000 words and it has chapters) Should Be...

Poll and the (actually quite long) gist of each option below le cut:

The Sylki Con Artists AU

This one I have a wee bit written of already but I go back and forth on this one because it's Alternative Universe - Modern Setting and I feel like there's already a lot of those (which I also complain about a lot), and I have to justify it to myself as an experiment in whether I can do a Sylki Modern AU that doesn't just end up as "two people called Loki and Sylvie do normal stuff together". That's why they are con artists in this! Because 1) MISCHIEF (or crime, or whatever) and 2) if they have the same 'job' for similar reasons and I go on about them being similar a lot then that's maybe as close as reality can get to selfcest. (The selfcest is not just a feature of sylki, I feel it is THE feature and to admit to being Bad At Shipping (again) I'm just not that interested in it if they're different people who aren't even aliens. The same alien.) (You can tell me they are gods all you want but I've seen enough Doctor Who to know that must be A LIE so I reject it as such.)

The plot is that they meet in a bar one night and shag (obviously!) and then the reader discovers that Loki is trying to buy a painting from an old woman (planning on ripping off both her and his own buyer) and Sylvie is an artist who is selling a forged painting to some posh twat on the internet who she knows is trying to rip off her fake old lady persona on the deal but she's selling him a fake painting anyway so at least he deserves to be conned. They meet up a few times before finally realising that they are in fact conning each other under fake names on the internet, and then I have to try and fix it when they inevitably get mad at each other because of it. Also, Thor works in a shop because the brodinsons are Downwardly Mobile (dad spent all their inheritance, oh no!) Plotwise Loki is going to actually need Sylvie's painting for reasons I have not yet entirely worked out so one way or another they will have to eventually forgive each other for being con artists as they themselves are and for having attempted to con each other.

Ideally I will be able to make this one funny in some way, as I think the concept can get absurd enough to make a rom-com out of it.

2. The Jotun Heat Fic (also sylki)

I was into this one for about a day and now I have second thoughts because I am not sure I care enough about Frost Giant Biology to have to write an entire fic about it. It would continue my tradition (I did it once, that's enough for it to be a tradition) of turning a tiny ficlet into a much longer thing. This one: The Opposite of Heat, in which Loki and Sylvie go into whatever the Jotun equivalent of the fandom fave 'mating cycles/in heat' trope is, having never done so before because (see if you can guess...) they've never previously spent enough time around another Jotun for the hormones to kick in properly. They have no idea this can happen, and what starts out as Fun Porno-Fic Times soon gets a bit worrying and then I suppose they have to Investigate and that's the bit I fear might end up boring me.

This is set in an AU where S2!Loki did not instantly demand that Sylvie help him with his cop friends' problems and instead just went to live in Oklahoma with her, so the other/'real' plot is them getting used to living together and the weird-but-sexy medical issue bringing them into conflict because of course the first place Loki wants to go for help is the TVA (this not unreasonable of him, as they have a lot of info in their archives and he has no other friends anyway), which Sylvie is not keen on as she would rather just avoid them for the rest of forever. Gosh, I hope nobody goes to the TVA for help behind anyone else's back!

I need a way to make this one stay interesting once it gets to the Find Out What Is Happening part and also it needs to not just immediately end with a sensible solution like just going to Jotunheim and asking someone there for a talk about the frost-birds and the frost-bees.

Also I think they should fuck in that McDonalds. Just because.

3. Jotunheim Rejects The Guy Who Cannot Possibly Be Its Rightful King, Because I'm Annoying Like That AU (not thorki)

Speaking of going to Jotunheim, you know all those fics where Loki goes to be the Rightful King Of Frostland, as Odin apparently planned all along? That but it doesn't work, because I am not at all convinced he can have been Laufey's heir (who the fuck infanticides their only male heir?!) and even if he was well it'd just look awful, wouldn't it? Crusty Old Odin, worst friend to Jotunheim for several years running, sends back your kingdom's heir having raised him as one of his own family. (I hope at least one of you is thinking "US-Backed Puppet Ruler Who Will Do Whatever The CIA Tells Them To" because I did too! Ooh, geopolitical barely-subtext!)

The problem with this one for me is it requires a fairly large cast of Original Jotun Characters, and I still fear writing OCs because of the constant 'Mary-Sue' complaints in my fannish youth. Also I would Controversially (LOL not really) make some of them women, including Angrboda the ambitious would-be consort and Laufey's tragically spurned lover who on finding out that her long-dead son is not dead makes the most of it by insisting everyone call her 'My Lady, the King's Mother' (yes, I stole that from History but I do that sort of thing now, for the LOLs). So I have a bit of an idea what happens in this one, though I'd need to think of more political type plot stuff and also I just finished writing a multichapter fic that involved the Jotun succession so maybe I'd be overdoing it if I did this one now as well.

The other problem is Jotuns are too fucking tall. I mean really. This doesn't seem to bother anyone else but they are Too Fucking Tall to interact with the shorter characters, to the point that it just seems accidentally comedic to me. Just imagine the totally-not-a-puppet king of Jotunheim sitting on a massive throne, swinging his wee legs in the air. And I don't know how to work around that other than just saying "they are Less Fucking Tall in this fic" and I don't know if that would just annoy people. Also it does feel a bit incendiary to go against the general fandom insistence that Loki Is Totally The Rightful King Of Jotunheim. Though I suppose in this he is, it's just that he attempts to become so in the sort of circumstances that make everyone start saying things like "are we really that keen on our monarchy?" or at least "surely there's a cousin or an uncle we could give the crown to instead? yeah, even a woman would do. no, she doesn't have to be alive if there are only dead ones available."

(It was a mistake to let me read books about the Wars of the Roses, wasn't it?)

Oh and this isn't a thorki fic, but Thor is going to go to Jotunheim with his bro to help him settle in and also he will be going back to rescue him from it at the end. Bros before snows!!!!