(no subject)

[camwyn]

Stolen from numerous other people, because WHY NOT:

Comment with one of your characters and one of mine. (Or more, I guess?) I will make up the worst AU I can think of.

Comments

[sdelmonte]

Sarge Welles (because I miss him and because Sean Pertwee is on Elementary and will be Alfred on that not-quite-Batman show next fall) and Cyborg.

[camwyn]

Age of Sail AU in which Wells is a ship's quartermaster who insists he's Seen Shit You Bastards Wouldn't Believe, and nobody believes him until the black cabin boy the captain took on a couple of ports back is horribly mangled by an exploding cannon; Wells insists on taking him to see 'this fellow I know' and he comes back half machine and probably heavy enough to walk around on the bottom of the ocean if he really wanted to and didn't mind the not breathing thing. But hey, he can pick up pirates and throw them back to their ships bodily if they try to board, so there's that.

[bjornwilde]

I give you a new head voice; Sam Wilson (the Falcon from CAP2) and Stacker Pentecost.

[camwyn]

World War II AU, and not the racially integrated Marvel cinematic universe version. Thanks to the general crapulosity of American racial and social attitudes of the time Sam Wilson has to serve in a racially segregated Army unit; fortunately the opportunity arises to volunteer for 'the grand Tuskeegee experiment*'. The first all-black air squadron in the US Army Air Corps is headed up by a no-nonsense Brit who has every intention of demonstrating to the world that his men are the best flyers anywhere, ever, regardless of what planes they're given or what missions they're assigned.


*That may have been the single most wince-inducing line in Red Tails. I was a public health major. 'Tuskeegee experiment' may have been what they called the Airmen at the time, but to anyone who knows public health history it's something much more horrifying.

[bjornwilde]

*wince* Oh, yeah. That is pretty horrible.

Love the fic idea though. = ]

[genarti]

Thor and Ellen?

[camwyn]

Let's cut straight to the grand prize winner of all horrible AUs: Warhammer 40k. Thor Odinson is one of the twelve Wolf Lords of the Space Wolves chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, well within range of Great Wolf rank; Ellen has the acute misfortune of having been raised on an extremely isolated planet forgotten by the Imperium bureaucracy for several hundred years, only to find herself thrust into Imperial politics in the worst possible way when her father sets off a signal that attracts both the Imperium and the nearby Ork warfleet. Their paths don't cross until she's been in the Imperial Guard for some time and is assigned to a rather hopeless mission against the greenskins- hopeless for ordinary humans, anyway, but when Thor's Great Company sweeps through the sector and finds the Guardsmen still alive against impossible odds, well....

[genarti]

...Wow. Yep, that'd do it!

(At least based on my knowledge of Warhammer 40K, which is basically these links here plus a bit of fandom osmosis.)

[dogstar]

... you know, I'd actually read that. ANd it'd probably be better than canon 40K fic, anyway.

[in_the_blue]

OK, Ellen & Sam Anders.

[camwyn]

In the universe of David Brin's novel The Practice Effect, the more you use something for a purpose, the better it becomes at that purpose- a saw becomes sharper and more efficient the more you saw with it, for example, whereas a sword left untouched and unused for any length of time degenerates from being a legendary katana to a merely ordinary katana to a not-very-impressive curved blade to something you wouldn't pay $10 for out of the scratch-and-dent bin at the RenFaire. Ellen's never really been able to get along with other people her age, and she fears the degenerative side of this effect could apply to social skills, so in a fit of inspiration she assembles a clockwork facsimile of a human and starts trying to talk to it, walk with it, play sports with it, etc. just as if it were a proper human being. And since tools become very very good at what you need them to be, well, one day the clockwork automaton comes to her entirely on its own and tells her it's invented a new kind of ball game...

[in_the_blue]

...I don't know whether to laugh or cry, that's kind of brilliant. I was afraid the worst AU would be one where Sam's one of the bots Ellen has to fight in Fallout, so I'm glad to see that didn't happen.

[camwyn]

No, he's too humanoid. If he were actually going to show up anywhere in the Falloutverse, it would be as one of the escaped androids from the Commonwealth who're apparently numerous enough that the scientists of the Institute have an entire reclamation bureau dedicated to rounding them up and bringing them back into slavery (there's also a group called 'the Railroad' dedicated to helping these androids escape into obscurity). Ellen's interacted with one of them before, mostly in the form of finding out what he was (he'd successfully passed as human for at least three years) and then convincing his pursuers that he was dead in the Wasteland somewhere and they should all go back home and never look for him again.

[in_the_blue]

One of these days, I'll get back to that game. (I'm a terrible sniper.)

[derien]

You referenced The Practice Effect. *is in awe* I thought I was the only person who'd read that.

[camwyn]

I read it once, years ago. I was fascinated by it; I should get a used copy. (I almost referenced a felthesh trance for building the clockwork human.)

[derien]

I'll send you my copy. I thought it was interesting, but I probably won't use it for reference material, which you may. :)

[leeshajoy]

Twilight Sparkle and Mordin Solus. (One or both may have their species changed at your discretion.)

[camwyn]

I was gonna do something involving the work of Peter S. Beagle and swapping gadgeteer science for Schmendrick's spells, but I think a very loose adaptation of The Last Unicorn (or at least its plot elements) could actually be made into some kind of Equestria-based plot, because face it, the opportunity for Fluttershy to stare down the Red Bull is a little too good to pass up.

That being said, we turn instead to an AU set in one of the worlds of Meredith Ann Pierce. Not, as one might think, the Firebringer Trilogy- which does in fact feature unicorns, some of whom are magickers- but the Darkangel Trilogy, which is set on the Moon in the far future, after humans have learned enough scientific sorcery to partially terraform the Moon into livability but then things got weird. Each of the great kingdoms of the world was given a guardian beast of great power and intelligence by the Ancient Ones, but with the coming of the White Witch and her darkangel sons the lons have either been driven into exile or captured and transformed into sick parodies of their former selves. Twilight was created as the lon of the kingdom of Avaric, a creature referred to as an equustel- a kind of winged unicorn of immense power- but was betrayed when the son of the queen of Avaric was taken by the White Witch and transformed into a darkangel himself; using his 'mother' the witch's power, he drove her out into desert exile, where, unfortunately... well, lons can't live for more than a year outside their own lands, but being creatures of magic they can manifest as solid ghosts at high noon. (This being the moon, noon is a much longer time frame than it is on Earth or in Equestria.) Mordin was a duarough, one of the underdwelling folk created by the ancients to maintain the machinery that kept the world alive, and one of the very few people left after the Witch's coming who knew enough of the old magic to understand how one went about breaking the witch's spell over the queen's son. He also knew that one part of Twilight was immortal and that a new body could be made for her from that part to allow her, and the no-longer-spellbound queen's son, to do aerial battle against the Witch's forces and claim vengeance.

(It's worth noting that the protagonist of the trilogy is a largely meek and shy girl who befriends hideous creatures and does quite a lot through the power of kindness, and although she's neither as shy nor as nice as Fluttershy she's actually got similar coloration- mauve skin, gold hair, green eyes- because the ancients designed most of the peoples of the new world with really weird skin and hair colors.)

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo & Ellen.

Alternatively, Voodoo & Shephard.

[camwyn]

Political thriller AU in which Park Ji-hu was trapped in the DPRK twenty years ago after an attempted family reunion; he spent nineteen years toeing the party line and keeping his head down while secretly working on a counterespionage technology project, and was right on the verge of being able to flee the country with it when he was shot for unrelated reasons. His daughter Eunkyung destroyed all copies of his data except one and started running. Guess who's been asked to get her out. Go on, guess.

[themightyspazz]

...hell, I'd read fic of it.

[camwyn]

Oh, and as long as I'm at it, for Voodoo and Shep: beach movie AU, where they're highly competitive surfer dudes.

dammit, brain.