Crash and burrrrn.

[laeria]

I've had such an awesome happy productive week, o flist - I wrote minific for But I'm a Cat Person and Rivers of London! and  fluffy OOC Avengers - but today it all burned out and I'm feeling melancholy and morose.

So! Come distract me?

Comments

[laeria]

(Glad you enjoyed, love. Apparently Rivers of London is really easy to worldbuild for, you just have to find that balance between honest/respectful and nonetheless modern.)

16 - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

Avengers of Amber!

Prince Steve of Amber wakes up in an island near Rebma, where he was asleep for centuries. (Thereby creating a hundred thousand Arthurian myths in the shadows.) He hurries the fuck back to ~reclaim his birthright~, and discovers that his father, Howard King of Amber, had sired another heir, a Prince Tony, who is irresponsible and unsuitable and spends most of his time building machines that can cross shadows, which is against all that Steve deems good and holy.

Except! Apparently, Prince Tony had never ruled, electing a regent instead, Obadiah. (Who is the only one whose name actually sounds Amberite. I mean, Prince Steve though. :\ ) But then Obadiah had tried to assassinate him and also bleed him dry over the central Pattern, because Obadiah wants war with the Courts of Chaos!

And then Tony was left to exsanguinate but a nice guard, Yinsen, saved him, so then Tony made a new Pattern, mostly by evoking, like, Black Sabbath songs and Pepper's legs; except Tony's always been pretty self-absorbed so he accidentally wrote it on the inside of his own body.

So! Now Tony is carrying a Pattern inside him and everyone is somewhat freaked out, because this makes Tony a literal Force of Order.

so, Steve returns to that and also meets Prince Thor of Rebma (... I want mermaid!Thor's beard to billow underwater) who came to warn that his brother had joined the Courts of Chaos and is planning a destruction of all Patterns / the world.

And then Nick Fury rises from the dungeons of Amber, along with his two shadow assassins, Natasha and Hawkeye, and then he explains about how to stop Loki and also tells them all about The Renegade Bruce.

The Renegade Bruce! He was exiled from the Courts of Chaos for being too unstable. Steve is like, nuh huh, and Tony is like hey, some of my best friends are Chaosites. (JARVIS, actually, is a being a of Chaos - Tony rescued him from the shadows and installed him in the Castle of Amber, thereby nearly ending the world that one time).

And then, huge fight, yadda yadda Loki flees back to Chaosland, the Amberites rise triumphant and Steve kind of gets this epiphany while watching Natasha that he has no idea what people from the shadows are capable of, and also probably monarchy is overrated and he's not sure he even wants to rule, thank you. Tony doesn't either, Thor doesn't any more, Natasha and Clint had never considered it and know nothing about ruling anyway; there's a squabble and then the Unicorn appears.

The Unicorn kneels for Pepper, who is like, um the Jewel clashes with my shoes and also I am not even royalty, and the Unicorn is like, whatever, nepotism is an overrated mode of election anyway, you're the one who actually ruled while Tony was playing with his toys and Obadiah was mongering war.

So! Pepper becomes Queen of Amber and Tony becomes her concubine and eventually Bruce crosses the world and takes over the Courts of Chaos and Tony becomes his concubine too but happily they have easy access to their magic tarot thing via Thor's girlfriend. Steve settles down in a nice rural shadow somewhere, and Natasha goes on to have cross-shadow sex with Eliot.

In conclusion, Gwyneth Paltrow + unicorn.

[egelantier]

STRAIGHT IN THE CHILDHOOD!

(man, i had such a hopeless crush on corwin. black and silver, my eternal downfall).

also. fucking amazing. also, TONY CARRYING A PATTERN IN HIS BODY. also, PEPPER TO RULE THEM ALL. ILU.

[laeria]

Mmm, I was a pre-teen when I read Amber and Corwin basically personally orchestrated my sexual awakening. Random was and always will be my favourite (tiny apologetic cynical sex fiend who falls in deep irrevocable love with his arranged-married wife and who kind of accidentally picked up morality and empathy on the roadside), but it was Corwin's arrogance/humility/art/hedonism/honor that catalysed things for me.

[egelantier]

yeeeeeeeees. i mean, random, yes, and it's such a pity we'll never get his and vialle story, in full, because it's, like, a whole separate book i'd love to read forever. but corwin and his sarcasm, and corwin and his anger, and corvin and his pride, and corwin and his crazy family, and the whole idea of pattern and shadows (i love zilazny for his worldbuilding that's basically I DO WHAT I WANT HAHAHA and a habit of pulling new game rules out of his sleeve every time he writes himself in the corner) - oh, yeah. oh sorry, merlin, you never lived up to that.

[laeria]

Right, his anger and the way he builds himself up over and over again. A bit like Miles, but in a bad family. (Miles raised by Gregor's parents instead of the other way around.)

Merlin never had a chance. Too macho and too passive. I rather liked Luke, but the whole thing spiralled into nothingness without Corwin's cohesive force.

(and yes, the worldbuilding is awesome like thousands of pages of random emotionporn - their emotions/morality/wishes LITERALLY shape their world. My favourite thing was the way that even in the peak of righteous dickishness, when he and Bleyz stormed Amber, Corwin found himself a shadow where everyone wanted to follow him into battle and they were happy to die for him. It was... wonderfully horrible and manipulative and strangely kind.)