Meme: Hypothetical AU

[lilyayl]

Please, people, give me prompts for this.

The Hypothetical AU Meme: Take any one of the fandoms you know I write in, and give me a type of AU (space opera AU, pirate AU, superhero AU, Ancient Rome, Regency England, circus AU, Lovecraft, etc). I will then explain what story from your chosen fandom I would write for your chosen type of AU.

Comments

DEBS - Lovecraft AU

[lilyayl]

Amy paints. Currently she paints old towns and villages in China before they are all swallowed by water. She doesn't swim. Her lover, Lucy, does not understand why Amy seems so terrified of lakes and rivers and oceans, but she does not press. This is the one thing she never presses about.

Janet teaches and few teachers could be scarier than she is. Sometimes she'll jump at the littlest noises, like a textbook falling off a desk, but if any students misbehave, she just turns and looks at them. Suddenly, she doesn't look like a mouse anymore; she feels old, like she has seen every trick they could ever pull and has done so much worse. A few moments of her gaze and students blanch and quiet. They never act up in her class again. They do gossip though, in furtive whispers, all trying to guess what their teacher had done before teaching history in high school.

Max still works at the university. She is ruthless in her search for answers and this is the only place in the world that will take her queries seriously. She teaches occasionally, but uses every class to further her own research goals. Nothing is allowed to deter her and most people have learned to keep away.

As for Dominique? She ran and is still running. She sips coffee in Paris and tempts away off-duty soldiers in the Middle East. She builds two-ball snowmen in northern Japan and hides among the migrant working populations of China. She can't stop moving, but she is allowed her terror; after all, she did get the closest of all.

Once upon a time, four girls did so very well on the SATs and had such interesting essays that they received special invitations to enroll at a prestigious university in the east, Miskatonic University in Arkham. Entering Arkham was like stepping back in time. The huge old houses were crumbling, but still genteel. Due a problem with the dorms, the four were given a small house of their own between the campus and the Miskatonic river.

Slowly they began to discover that the university studied more than the sciences and history, which were its apparent strengths. Covered up by neglect and re-issued press-packets was a reputation for the arcane and perplexing. The girls are invited by a professor to enroll in some of the shadow courses, classes that don't show up in the official registrar book.

This leads the girls to inspecting the small island in the middle of the river with an altar that apparently pre-dates the Native American populations of their region. There they face an evil none had ever thought possible before and come to face to face with some very painful truths about themselves. Their investigations take them to the bottom of the reservoir to the west and into places far beyond nightmares and comprehensibility. Dominique makes a terrible sacrifice, allowing them all to escape, run, and continue running.