#stoker swap au

[fox-guardian]

Asking about the stoker swap au, are we likely to see the whole America Thing? If not, will Trevor&Julia and/or Gerry be showing up at some point? Or is it going to be more like canon only this time Danny's there?

i haven't gotten that far in my planning but it'll probably go down smth like this

[ID: Several images making up a digital comic of Jon and Danny drawn on a brown background. Jon is a short, thin Arab man with dark curly hair pulled into a loose bun, with a mustache and beard. He is wearing half-moon glasses, black stud earrings, a t-shirt, shorts, socks and sneakers, and a sweater hanging off one shoulder. His right hand and the front of his neck are bandaged. Danny is a tall, beefy Latino man with short hair and a cut in his brow and he is wearing small hoop earrings, a button-down with the sleeves rolled up, a sweater-vest, trousers and dress shoes. Both Jon and Danny are riddled with circular scars. Jon is colored purple, and Danny is yellow.

Jon is walking while looking through papers as Danny leans in behind him, grinning.

Danny: (all caps) Heeeey Jon~! Jon: Hello, Danny Danny: Heard you're going to the U.S. Jon: That is correct Danny: And I'M coming with you~ Jon: You CANNOT come with me, Danny. It could be very dangerous and I don't want you to get hurt. (smaller text) or for your brother to kill me (normal text) And besides, the plane tickets and lodging have been booked already Danny, holding up a finger: Firstly, going with a buddy is much safer, and I don't want YOU to get hurt (smaller text) you've been kidnapped twice already Jon, glaring: mmgh Danny: (normal text) And secondly.... (Danny grins) hee hee Jon, anxious: Wh- Danny what have you done? Danny, close up and drawn with more detail and a shadow over his eyes: HEE HEE Jon, offscreen, fearful: DANNY

They are now drawn in less detail and merely headshots.

Danny, holding a hand to his chin, smug: I got my own tickets. And lodging. With you. Sasha helped me find the plane you'd be on and which hotel, so we can stay together for the WHOLE TRIP Jon, one tear falling from his eye, accepting death: (small text) even if I get back in one piece Tim is still going to murder me

end ID]

~~~~

so yeah it'll be Roughly just the same as canon only danny is also there. i want there to be Some difference but idk what it'd be. maybe danny will get jon to burn the whole book of the trapped dead to free everyone in there and then that'll be a whole thing but idk

(also i KNOW that's not how jon's lil world tour happened in canon but idc funny sillies etc)

[thebadchoicemachine]

Every apocalypse bringer and their guest

The Archivist | Eye Jon (and his plus-one: Freed Lonely Martin)

The Director | Web Martin (and his-plus one: Freed Spiral Jon)

The Coroner | End Sasha (and her-plus one: Freed Stranger Tim)

The Demolition | Desolation Tim (and his-plus one: Freed Corruption Sasha)

[birdifulhuman]

My character designs for my Tim is the Archivist AU. Yes, this is a self-indulgent AU, and yes everyone lives.

I have a whole note doc with everything that happens within the five seasons. Hopefully, I get to writing something at least.

These designs are aimed to be near season 2, as Martin hasn't fully spiraled yet, but has the taste of the spiral within him.

[noodlesewp]

Some timsasha for your sunday evening or whenever you see this

In the au i imagine post-not them sasha and martin are a bit friendlier than jon and tim were at the time

[polyhexianbirb]

Every day I wake up and cry about Tim Stoker

[edenstwiilight]

workin on a lil idea and was thinking about this:

a swap au where sasha got the promotion. she’s the new head archivist

where tim is her connection to the world. her reason to keep going

where martin was taken in s1 and replaced with a not!martin

where jon loses himself without martin, and sacrifices his life for sasha at the end of s3.

where elias was the previous archivist and gertrude is the one who killed him.

hm. maybe this is something i should look in to more.

(any and all posts in this universe are gonna be tagged ‘magnus swap au ‘!!)

[parissfrogg]

Tma swap au! A little shuffle of who’s who

[ian0key]

Day 4: Roleswap

@emerald-emerlad

In the end I couldn't decide which one to draw, and I ended up making 2 drawings for day 4.

Archivist!Sasha and Desolation!Tim, Like Jon and Martin in MAG159

and

Lonely!Jon and Archivist!Martin trading places.

[luisatherabbit]

Quick doodle of swap!stoker

(sry for my recent art being only simple sketches rn. Proper art will come when my semi-art block is over)

[msfcatlover]

@fandomwandererer

im still like mid s3 in tma but im practically spoiled all the way to somewhere else, tell me more about the archivist tim story. is the not them even relevant if tim is already marked by the stranger? if it is who end up a not!them? tim would need a spider mark right? wonder what that is

*vibrating in place* ARCHIVIST!TIM STOKER, MY BELOVED!

You have no idea how much I love this AU. You have no idea how long I could talk about it. No, really. It took so many edits to keep this response reasonable.

(This is from my notes document on this AU, and does not include the lengthy conversation that originally spawned it. My adoration of Archivist!Tim cannot be overstated.)

Okay, okay. A couple things to establish. First: I cannot take full credit for this AU. @daydreamingofdragons & I came up with it together while bouncing ideas off eachother, and it spiraled (ha) out of control. This is just as much their monster as it is mine.

Second: Tim Stoker’s trauma is not defined by being from the Stranger. His tie to the Stranger hugely shapes his character, but not the Stranger itself. Tim’s trauma is defined by the feeling that he had multiple chances to save his brother and didn’t; that Tim watched Danny die, too close not to feel like Tim should’ve done something, and even though Tim consciously tries to argue with himself that there was nothing he could’ve done, Tim can never silence the part of him which says Tim’s actions (or lack thereof) indirectly killed his little brother. You don’t need the Stranger for that.

(a few post-s3 spoilers below cut, as well as other answers.)

Third: The purpose of the Archivist is to collect “marks” (scars/traumas) from each of the Entities. The Archivist is chosen for their potential to collect those marks, and how easy they seem like they’ll make it (translation: how much work Elias has to put in himself.) To make a viable Archivist candidate, you need to ask what mark/s they already have when they first arrive at the Institute, how Elias might manipulate them, and how much manipulation it would take for them to start putting “finding answers” above “personal safety.” (So Jon Sims is an exceptionally good candidate because he’s driven by a desperate need to understand, he has trouble trusting others, his self-worth was already garbage by the time he got to the Magnus Institute, a consequence of both being a tendency to do absolutely everything himself, and he walked in already marked by arguably the hardest Entity to manipulate into doing anything.)

While the Web would be needed eventually, it's not needed as a foundation. Any mark will do, though if anyone at the Institute is still marked by the Web, you need to give your chosen Archivist a mark just as (if not more) rare & dangerous to make them the more tempting prospect.

.

So, Tim is not marked by the Stranger; we actually had him marked by the End (full statement outlined,) and to compensate for how not Eye-aligned Tim is (canon!Tim wants answers about what happened to Danny, but beyond that curiosity is very much not one of Tim's defining character traits; he's not driven for want of knowledge the way Jon & Sasha are, he's driven by love for those closest to him & a need to find a guilty party who can be blamed & punished for any suffering they endure) we had each one of his assistants be marked by a different Entity. After all, if Tim doesn't care about answers or mysteries that don't affect people he cares about, the answer is to tie those mysteries to the personal struggles of those people he cares about.

Jon kept his Web mark (still Mr. Spider, and Jon was definitely the backup in case anything happened to Tim, but the End was always going to be the biggest risk to get a mark from, which makes it just too tempting even with Tim's temper & disposition taken into account.)

Sasha was marked by the Dark (the first time Tim uses his powers is to protect her from it, eventually leading Tim to directly help Basira & co with the lowercase-r ritual the People's Church performed in s2.)

Martin was marked by the Stranger (and also is the only assistant Tim didn't choose; Martin was Gertrude's last assistant, while Jon & Sasha were on a list of "pre-approved" potential assistants Elias gave Tim.)

(and yes, we fully figured out how Sasha & Martin were both impacted, and how it would tie into the plot & their respective arcs. Especially Martin & Jon's tragic enemies-to-friends-to-lovers story in this version.)

That gives Tim 4 different rabbits to chase down. By the time he's started to clear up even one of them, chances are other avatars would start to poke their noses into the archives' business. And then Tim's temper, need to protect those he deems to be his own, and need for retribution on any who would harm them would keep Tim locked solidly into the Archivist's role. He's not going to try to leave as long as they're still at risk, and he's always going to jump in front of that bus rather than throw any of his people under it. And once Tim figures out what's happening, he's far more likely to try to get ahead of things by taking the fight to the other avatars rather than try to slide beneath their notice the way Jon mostly did.

.

The NotThem isn't actually that relevant, though we did play a bit with the idea of NotBasira. Instead, @daydreamingofdragons came up with a new creature who does the opposite: it steals identities by rendering people unrecognizable. Not like it replaces them or completely changes their appearance, but it's the cross-section of the fear of mistaking a stranger for someone you care about & the fear of being rejected by loved ones. This person claiming to be your brother is obviously not your brother---sure, at a distance you might mistake them for your brother, maybe they could even fool someone who doesn't know your brother that well, but you can very clearly see all the little differences that show this cannot possibly be your brother. Especially if you have a picture to compare. It's not your brother, you know it's not your brother, why is this complete stranger insisting that they're your brother? Why do they know so many things about your brother, why are they wearing his clothes, how did they get the lucky charm he never takes off? What did they DO to him?!?

(It is, in fact, your brother. He knows why you're acting like this, he can't recognize himself in the mirror, but it doesn't make your complete rejection of his identity hurt any less.)

I can't remember if we actually discussed this, but I've been calling it the "Innominate." Which is an adjective meaning "something anonymous or unnamed," but sounds like a word that could easily be a verb meaning "to un-name something, to render anonymous," and also works as a proper noun just fine.

It goes after Jon in mid-to-late s2. This leads to everyone needing to figure out whether or not they still trust Jon ("trust & love as an active choice," you're such a good theme and I love you so, so much,) Georgie joining the Institute to investigate Jon's "disappearance" (they reconnected after Jon did the follow-up on Melanie's statement in s1,) and Tim needing to save Jon from Daisy after they find Gertrude's body (s2 finale, rather than s1; but once the police are there, there is one person in this verse who is obviously skittish, out of place, and doesn't want to show identification to the cops, and it's not the Archivist. Tim's being nothing but coolly polite & helpful, because he's worried about his people and wants to get these cops out of his archives as soon as humanly possible.)

The antagonist for s1 is the Spiral rather than the Corruption, and after Michael (& co) invades the Archives, Tim ends up going to Hill Top Road for a guiding thread so he can rescue his friends. He hates it, but Tim recognizes the pattern, has no pre-existing hangups about the Web, and there's an original statement in there about a woman getting lost in the tunnels and following a thread of spider silk all the way to the trap door in the archives. With the help of the thread anchored in Tim's chest, he's able to trick a different Spiral ally into the heart of the Distortion and safely recover Sasha, Martin, & Jon from the chaotic, twisting halls. With the changed heart (and the loss of Michael's obsession) the Distortion retreats for a while.

[recorded-anew]

Soooo,,,, any holiday events happening at the institute ? (And if not, how will the archives crew be spending the holiday ?)

There's a holiday potluck sort of thing!

Elias has banned from bringing food since he accidentally brought "magic" brownies to the shared break room a few years back.

Tim wore an ugly holiday sweater, realized he was the only one, and got embarrassed. Martin when home and put on a matching ugly sweater so Tim wasn't alone.

Sasha stood by a wall like this the entire time. She had an amazing time.

Gertrude showed up with a bottle of wine. She wasn't invited. No one had the guts to ask her to leave.

[fox-guardian]

I am asking about the stoker swap au

In short, it's an AU in which Danny survives his encounter with The Stranger and goes to work at the institute instead of Tim! Tim is still alive, Danny has NO formal qualifications to be working at the institute, and Tim is So Stressed because he lied on his applications. Danny takes on Tim's role in the institute, while Tim gets increasingly worried for his safety <3 That part does not get easier when he actually moves down to the archives <3

and now because i was thinkin real hard about it and got bored of just typing roughly the same synopsis over and over again, HAVE SOME DOODLES TOO <3 three things i've already written and one i Really Want To Write So Badly But It's So Far Away <3

[ID: Four drawings on a soft lavender background featuring Magnus Archives characters. The first is a drawing of Danny Stoker after falling down a ladder leading up to an attic. He is dressed in academic clothing and is on his back, with his lower body still partially on the ladder. One foot is on a rung and the other is sticking out in the air. He looks to be in pain and he has swirls for eyes and little bees are flying around his head. Next to him are Jon, also dressed academically and holding Danny's coat, and an old woman wearing a black dress and a shawl. She looks at Danny with concern and Jon is startled by Danny's fall, visibly jolted.

The second drawing shows Danny and Sasha, both dressed academically, sitting at her desk looking at a computer screen. Danny is slouching with a horrified expression, while Sasha smiles, looking chipper. The computer is labelled "the horrors".

The third drawing shows Danny and Elias sitting across from each other at Elias' desk. They are both wearing black suits with ties and both have slicked back hair. Elias is smiling politely at Danny with his hands folded on the table, and Danny is smiling confidently back at him with his hands folded in his lap. Over the drawing is multiple faded drawings of Danny in different forms of panic. One has him sweating and screaming "I'm Doomed" with his hands in his hair, another has him looking oddly calm and posed like a corpse with a bouquet of flowers over his chest saying "This is the day I die", and the last one has him bent in half, laying face down in a puddle of tears, clawing at the floor, with his feet out in front on either side of him. "Crying noises" is written above him.

The last drawing is of Tim and Elias. Tim is gripping Elias by the lapels, yelling in his face with a furious and challenging expression, while Elias is sweating nervously and holding his hands up defensively, looking confused and afraid. His glasses are broken and bent and one of his eyes is swollen half-shut. end ID]

~~~~

the first two drawings are from danny's first field work outings with jon and sasha respectively, the third is from his first interview with elias, and the last is a scene i haven't written yet that takes place directly after the prentiss incident, in which tim confronts elias for putting his employees (read: danny) in danger and then punching him in the face <3

i really wanted to draw tim super mad because i never draw those kinds of expressions and i think he deserves to punch elias in the face <3 i don't think he'd be Quite like that in the written scene itself but it was v fun to draw

[thebadchoicemachine]

I love Archavist Sasha but every story I read always follows the same path of Jon -> Sasha and Martin -> Tim

Consider:

Tim dies first, Jon sacrifices himself stopping a ritual, and Martin joins Sasha for the eyepocalypse

Martin dies first, Tim sacrifices himself stopping a ritual, and Jon joins Sasha for the eyepocalypse

Jon dies first, Tim sacrifices himself stopping a ritual, and Martin joins Sasha for the eyepocalypse

Or any other mix and match!

[dreamsicle262]

sigma should join the ada this, sigma should join the ada that.

why not just flip everything around and make it worse? im talking the ada and doa swap, the pm and guild swap, while standalones (like shibusawa (although he could be an honorary detective for the doa replacing the ada because there might need to be more detectives instead of four...) or maybe even ayatsuji) keep their roles. no more ada/pm swap aus where everything else is the same. the way i see it, if you're gonna swap a few things around, then every organization should be affected, not just those two. plus, imagine how certain characters would think. their personalities and goals will be relatively the same but there will be changes too, as their organizations also head towards different goals.

i mostly started thinking about this because the idea of the doa replacing the ada is just rlly funny to me and i already have things to say about it. firstly, the name change: Ace Detective Agency. keeps the ada acronym intact, and also assures ppl that these few detectives can ace a case. it also alludes to casino motifs, which is actually how they get money in the times they don't have very many available cases; instead of a cafe, there's a casino run by sigma part-time whenever he's not doing detective work. not to mention that casinos might draw certain criminals to them, especially if they're the gambling type. enough of that though.

the agency office itself will also have somewhat of a casino aesthetic to it, as well as personal areas being decorated in such as way that it reveals the personalities of the four main members (i have erased fukuchi from this universe entirely as he has no use being in it). and yes, you read that right. four. im keeping bram. he deserves to at least have his lower body in this au so he can do things. speaking of which, everyone would still be pretty eccentric, especially nikolai, even if he isn't a murder-happy clown (he is still a clown tho)

nikolai is the type to have a pretty messy desk (full on clown desk with lots of props to prank people with; the whoopee cushion is the bane of sigma's existence), and i could see him also being the first to greet clients (and potentially spook them with his general attitude). he'd still have his core values of freedom intact, but minus the act of being a deranged murderer. essentially, a slightly more stable version of himself, but that really isn't saying much since he still has a weird obsession with murder cases. bro's probably been consuming too much true crime media despite literally being a detective. he also has a pet bird that he hides in his overcoat and brings to work, much to sigma's dismay. i'll let him keep the overcoat due to it being an integral part of his character design due to the nature of his ability, but let it be known that he will be getting a redesign.

sigma is pretty much the same, honestly. he's also the founder of the agency and has shown to be capable of running his casino as well as the agency, but he has thought of letting someone else run his casino full-time. it gets stressful having two roles to fulfill, after all. anyways, he handles himself well and is able to pay off the two rented out floors he has control over due to the amount of money he gets from both jobs. he also pays his employees fairly. overall, he's like an overworked millennial (not to mention a mom friend to nikolai still being a bit of a dumbass even in this au) but at least he's managing. his desk is neat and clean, decorated with casino related things. he tries to get to the door before nikolai can in order to not get his new clients scared away by how over-the-top his clown of a friend can be. sigma takes on less violent cases, although he is perfectly capable of taking them on as well, if need be.

fyodor. yeah, him. his desk is pretty bland, except for the necessities. he makes no move to actually talk to the clients and would prefer that they get to the point. a bit hard to read for the others, even nikolai, which is wild given that they're kinda close. doesn't take up cases often, but when he does, they get FINISHED. he's a very efficient person. as for the times he's not on a case, he's somewhere else. is he gathering intel? is he simply slacking off? is he secretly a traitor somehow? no one will ever know. he's the top detective, at least.

bram refuses to work during daylight hours. his vampiric nature prevents him from being able to do that effectively. this is still good for business though, because he can take up night cases when everyone else goes home for the day! not to mention that being met with a vampire if you tried to break into the agency when you thought everyone had left would NOT be a fun day (or night) for you. his desk is in the darkest part of the room, away from any windows. he's present during the day, it's just that he does mostly office work instead of actual cases. the fridge in the lunch room is always stocked up on blood bags for him, even though he'd probably much rather prefer drinking from someone directly. at least there's a microwave for him to heat them up with. he's also very polite with clients, surprisingly. however, he has yet to stop sprinkling in old english in his conversations with others, but he's learning.

i wasn't planning on turning this entirely into a doa detective agency au post, but i'll elaborate on the other organizations and their members later.

[rindragon-from-twewy]

Forte swap au character intros part 2!!!

I love these so much genuinely I'm just so happy with where my art style's been at recently!

Ok I have a lot to say so it's under the cut. Remember; Spoilers for the og story!

I'll go from right to left since that's the order I designed them in (buckle in, this is a long one-)

Fubuki now has Spectral Projection. I liked the idea of giving it to her as she and Vivia are basically polar opposites so giving her his forte would really shake things up. Instead of calling her "Princess" and stuff, I think people would rather call her "Sleeping Beauty" and the themes of that fairy tale would end up seeping in to chapter 4, as well as its mystery labyrinth. Her hair flower is now a rose as a further reference to that. I used nightwear as references for her clothes, imagining them mostly being made out of more silky fabrics for that "rich girl" aura. I kept her hair down and messy and really just focused on making her look comfy. After all, if she's sleeping all the time, she should be in the appropriate attire for doing so, no? But thankfully The Chief gave her some wellie boots so she's not running around the city in soggy slippers. Her tattoos are now a string of stars on her collar bones to further emphasise the idea of dreams/sleep and also the "Z" in her name stands for "Zzz" because I thought they'd be funny. The last name "Bramble" is not only another reference to roses and sleeping beauty but also to Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula because yes, the vampire themes have been ripped away from Vivia and given to Fubuki instead!

Moving on to Halara- I knew right away that by giving them Time Leap, I should make them look more like a time traveller. Initially I wanted to try to make them look like they'd fit in well with the line up for the various Doctors in Doctor Who but unfortunately I couldn't figure out a way to do that without just... putting them in one of the outfits. So I instead decided to use steampunk as a main reference. I like to think that they stare at their pocket watch just to ignore people or as a passive aggressive way of telling them that they're wasting time. Their shoulder tattoo is meant to vaguely resemble an hour glass since that seemed appropriate. I had no idea what I wanted to do for their shirt under their coat so I settled on that black turtleneck tank top that makes the fangirls go crazy and made sure to give them Fubuki's necklace so that they can use their forte! The hardest part was deciding to give Halara goggles instead of glasses. They just seemed wrong without their glasses but it was just as wrong to have glasses and goggles? And so I settled on no glasses. (Mostly cuz I forgot to add them in and by then, I was used to looking at their empty face lol-) When they first arrived in Kanai Ward, Chief gave them the frilliest umbrella at the store because it had the same colours as their coat. Lastly, for their name chance, I changed it to "Clocksmith". It's the name of the profession for a watch mender, similar to Clockford and also "Smith" is the last name The Doctor uses when he needs to use a fake human name.

I'll be deadass, I did Vivia's design at like 3am and was running purely on vibes. So there isn't much perpousful intention behind him like the others. His hair now covers his left eye to make using Post Cognition much easier (sometimes it just activates on its own thanks to his eye already being obscured) but just underneath it you can see his tattoo; a big purple tear streak. I think I was watching a fnaf video at the time so. Marionette reference. Now you may be asking: Why is his hoodie so cropped? Why are his trousers so low cut? Idk- because I think it looks cool? I probably should've (and will in future) give him more bandages around his torso cuz looking at it now, that's not really that many. His big sleeves cover his hands and yes, I know that combining those sleeves with that stances just screams "Hatsune miku", that was completely accidental but I'm kinda here for it??? Gave him like 9 belts cuz I like drawing belts and I feel like his suicial ass would've been put in a real straight jacket at least once. People probably aren't sure if he's a real human entity anymore so Shinigami would probably call him a zombie. But nevertheless, The Chief makes sure he eats something at least once a day cuz his rib cage is definitely visible. For his last name, I changed Twilight to Midnight because it's got the "night" from Halara's "Nightmare" while still being a time of day.

And that's about it. Wow that's... a lot. Honestly if I didn't aspire to be a show runner, I'd probably settle for being a character designer. I'm super excited to show off what I've got in store of this AU's storyline but I've still gotta introduce a couple other characters first! ^vO

[polyhexianbirb]

I wanna make a tma swap au where like, Jonah and Jon swap, and Martin and Peter swap, among others. I'm not sure who would be the archival assistants though, send help.