scrabble AUs!
As promised, now breakfast is over (shallot and zucchini omlette with feta cheese and whole wheat toast!) I bring you a post about scrabble AUs.
You see, what happens is, toft_froggy and I play scrabble every so often, and our favourite game is to make up an SGA AU based on the words that we play in scrabble. So actually her 19th-century Dutch amateur theatre AU, O Little Town, is based off of a scrabble game we did where (IIRC) I played "clogs" and she played "stage" and things went from there.
So I thought I should take to posting our scrabble boards and the AUs that go with them, because they're hilarious and I often forget the details afterwards if I don't write them down. I have sadly forgotten the details of the one where Rodney was a sheep farmer (and possible a whale farmer) on the fens, or the one that was Rodney/John femslash where Meredith was an 18th century landowner and Jane was her washerwoman or something, I forget how that happened.
But! Here is the one from a couple of days ago, where John is a catheral bellringer and Rodney is an itinerant tax auditor.
(sharp-eyed viewers will note that this is not a proper scrabble board, but rather a fake-scrabble board from lexulous.com. it is free to play there, so that is where we play.)
So, in this story, John used to be a military dude, but then he had a Traumatic Incident and left the air force and retired to some quiet town somewhere, to become the guy who rings the chimes at a mid-sized Anglican cathedral. The local bishop, a kindly friendly old dude, took him in and perhaps pays him a little more than he should for ringing the bells, because he worries about John and how John doesn't talk to anyone very much and how mostly he just rings the bells and sometimes stares at the religious images on the walls and is really quiet.
And Rodney is an itinerant taxman, just back from chasing a businessman to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he (the businessman) was evading reporting his true income by storing money in the old Zaire unit of currency, the Zaire. So Rodney is worn out from all this international travel and from being (of course) the most GENIUS tax auditor ever who has reformed the industry with his new, more scientific methods. So Rodney's bosses say, hey, you need a vacation, your ki is all out of whack (Rodney's bosses are Chinese and prefer the obscure alternate English spelling of chi) and when Rodney refuses to take a vacation, they say, fine, then you're going to be sent on a soft assignment to go audit the books for this church. Because the bishop of the church is a good man, but he's just terrible with records and money and things - everything is just jotted down on random slips of paper and shoved into cupboards at the back of the rectory, and all fall out comically onto Rodney's head when he opens the cupboards. (are there rectories in Anglican churches? I know nothing about churches).
So the bishop isn't much help to Rodney, but John is one day just pushing a broom among the naves (he also does some handyman and cleanup duties around the place) and he meets Rodney and watches over his shoulder, and Rodney finds out that John has a good head for numbers (after a discussion of how nine is the maximum number of cubes that are needed to sum any positive integer, and after he gives John a brief quiz on tax law), and gives him a calculator and gets him to pitch in.
Now the kindly old bishop is a pretty hip guy, and he knows that John's queer (the bishop: "I care not a jot that he is queer!") and he sees John finally opening up to Rodney, the moody, grumpy taxman, and thinks that under Rodney's moody grumpy care, John might thrive, and encourages them to spend more time together in various Yentaish ways. One of which is that he insists that the taxes will get done faster if Rodney and John can concentrate on their work without distractions, and so he sends them to his cabin in he woods, where they both get really high and maybe make out a little and are then both embarrassed about it (turns out the bishop is REALLY hip, since he is himself a toker and provides them with the weed as well as the cabin).
But then! Oh no! Suddenly the cabinfic turns into horror-film-in-the-woods fic! [toft_froggy was all chagrined at introducing this horrible plot twist to our otherwise sweet story with just one word.] Because yes, that's right, in the woods they run into the famous Montana Flayer! Who kidnaps John and perhaps gives him flashbacks to when he was traumatized in the air force or something. But the Flayer has a fatal flaw, about which I will not go into detail, but he does have one, and so John is eventually able to get the better of him and tie him up or whatever, and then he runs out into the woods to get back to Rodney!
But John has been injured by the Flayer (um, not flayed, but perhaps just bashed on the head) and though he tries to crawl back to Rodney through the snow (it's snowing now), he falls in a pit and loses his strength and lies there expecting to die, worried that Rodney will never know what's happened to him. But meanwhile Rodney has come out into the blizzard (it's a blizzard now) looking for John, and finds him lying in a pit, and with a gentle, douce hand, pulls him up, and gets him back to the cabin. And Rodney is like, "let's get you out of those wet things," and he warms John up and chafes John's arms with his hands and builds a fire and makes him tea and then of course they end up having sex, because what else do you do when the hot ex-military church bellringer you're a little bit in love with has just crawled to you through the snow / what else do you do when the hot grumpy taxman you're a little bit in love with has just come and rescued you from the snow?
So in the end, John says, "Phew! I'm glad that I escaped from the Montana Flayer and also that blizzard!" and they get together, and perhaps Rodney the taxman sends John the bellringer a memo that says "RE: Hot Sex and Emotional Compatibility," that proposes a long-term relationship, and John smilingly accepts even though he has a concussion (because he knows that his love is not a side-effect of being bashed on the head). And the bishop when he hears of the whole flaying/long-term relationship incident is dismayed by the strange flayer-related plot twist but happy that two such lovely young people have found each other, also the bishop has a pet boa constrictor, the end.
You see, what happens is, toft_froggy and I play scrabble every so often, and our favourite game is to make up an SGA AU based on the words that we play in scrabble. So actually her 19th-century Dutch amateur theatre AU, O Little Town, is based off of a scrabble game we did where (IIRC) I played "clogs" and she played "stage" and things went from there.
So I thought I should take to posting our scrabble boards and the AUs that go with them, because they're hilarious and I often forget the details afterwards if I don't write them down. I have sadly forgotten the details of the one where Rodney was a sheep farmer (and possible a whale farmer) on the fens, or the one that was Rodney/John femslash where Meredith was an 18th century landowner and Jane was her washerwoman or something, I forget how that happened.
But! Here is the one from a couple of days ago, where John is a catheral bellringer and Rodney is an itinerant tax auditor.
(sharp-eyed viewers will note that this is not a proper scrabble board, but rather a fake-scrabble board from lexulous.com. it is free to play there, so that is where we play.)
So, in this story, John used to be a military dude, but then he had a Traumatic Incident and left the air force and retired to some quiet town somewhere, to become the guy who rings the chimes at a mid-sized Anglican cathedral. The local bishop, a kindly friendly old dude, took him in and perhaps pays him a little more than he should for ringing the bells, because he worries about John and how John doesn't talk to anyone very much and how mostly he just rings the bells and sometimes stares at the religious images on the walls and is really quiet.
And Rodney is an itinerant taxman, just back from chasing a businessman to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he (the businessman) was evading reporting his true income by storing money in the old Zaire unit of currency, the Zaire. So Rodney is worn out from all this international travel and from being (of course) the most GENIUS tax auditor ever who has reformed the industry with his new, more scientific methods. So Rodney's bosses say, hey, you need a vacation, your ki is all out of whack (Rodney's bosses are Chinese and prefer the obscure alternate English spelling of chi) and when Rodney refuses to take a vacation, they say, fine, then you're going to be sent on a soft assignment to go audit the books for this church. Because the bishop of the church is a good man, but he's just terrible with records and money and things - everything is just jotted down on random slips of paper and shoved into cupboards at the back of the rectory, and all fall out comically onto Rodney's head when he opens the cupboards. (are there rectories in Anglican churches? I know nothing about churches).
So the bishop isn't much help to Rodney, but John is one day just pushing a broom among the naves (he also does some handyman and cleanup duties around the place) and he meets Rodney and watches over his shoulder, and Rodney finds out that John has a good head for numbers (after a discussion of how nine is the maximum number of cubes that are needed to sum any positive integer, and after he gives John a brief quiz on tax law), and gives him a calculator and gets him to pitch in.
Now the kindly old bishop is a pretty hip guy, and he knows that John's queer (the bishop: "I care not a jot that he is queer!") and he sees John finally opening up to Rodney, the moody, grumpy taxman, and thinks that under Rodney's moody grumpy care, John might thrive, and encourages them to spend more time together in various Yentaish ways. One of which is that he insists that the taxes will get done faster if Rodney and John can concentrate on their work without distractions, and so he sends them to his cabin in he woods, where they both get really high and maybe make out a little and are then both embarrassed about it (turns out the bishop is REALLY hip, since he is himself a toker and provides them with the weed as well as the cabin).
But then! Oh no! Suddenly the cabinfic turns into horror-film-in-the-woods fic! [toft_froggy was all chagrined at introducing this horrible plot twist to our otherwise sweet story with just one word.] Because yes, that's right, in the woods they run into the famous Montana Flayer! Who kidnaps John and perhaps gives him flashbacks to when he was traumatized in the air force or something. But the Flayer has a fatal flaw, about which I will not go into detail, but he does have one, and so John is eventually able to get the better of him and tie him up or whatever, and then he runs out into the woods to get back to Rodney!
But John has been injured by the Flayer (um, not flayed, but perhaps just bashed on the head) and though he tries to crawl back to Rodney through the snow (it's snowing now), he falls in a pit and loses his strength and lies there expecting to die, worried that Rodney will never know what's happened to him. But meanwhile Rodney has come out into the blizzard (it's a blizzard now) looking for John, and finds him lying in a pit, and with a gentle, douce hand, pulls him up, and gets him back to the cabin. And Rodney is like, "let's get you out of those wet things," and he warms John up and chafes John's arms with his hands and builds a fire and makes him tea and then of course they end up having sex, because what else do you do when the hot ex-military church bellringer you're a little bit in love with has just crawled to you through the snow / what else do you do when the hot grumpy taxman you're a little bit in love with has just come and rescued you from the snow?
So in the end, John says, "Phew! I'm glad that I escaped from the Montana Flayer and also that blizzard!" and they get together, and perhaps Rodney the taxman sends John the bellringer a memo that says "RE: Hot Sex and Emotional Compatibility," that proposes a long-term relationship, and John smilingly accepts even though he has a concussion (because he knows that his love is not a side-effect of being bashed on the head). And the bishop when he hears of the whole flaying/long-term relationship incident is dismayed by the strange flayer-related plot twist but happy that two such lovely young people have found each other, also the bishop has a pet boa constrictor, the end.