Snowflake Challenge: Day 3 - Alternate Universes
Challenge #3
In your own space, put some favorite characters into an AU, fuse some favorite canons together, talk about your favorite AU/fusion tropes, or tell us why AU/fusions aren’t your cup of tea.
I have 51 fics marked 'Alternate Universe' in my AO3 works, 35 of those marked as 'Fusion AUs'.
So, yeah, I like AU fusions.
Probably my favourite universe into which I fuse characters from a fandom is Anne Bishop's Black Jewels. Writing a Queen's court, and the jewelled Blood who operate in it not only allows me to make the female characters a focal point, but also allows me to write female-centric storylines.
Black Jewel-fused series include A Queen For Marvel Territory (MCU), Black Jewels Atlantis (SGA), and The Jewels Of Albion (Merlin BBC) and the two notable stand-alones are Dark Queen Ascending for Juptier Ascending, and Oaths Broken And Remade for Rogue One.
The thing that I love most about AUs is working out how the characters from one canon fit into the roles and experiences available in the other canon. Some authors just pop the characters from one canon into another canon's storyline without rethinking the scenario, but I like to work out what experiences the character would be shaped by in this universe given who they are in their original universe. It both makes the story richer and more complex, and provides unexpected twists and turns as the outworkings of those different lives and different choices become clear in the story.
I've had thoughts on this before, mind.
Anyway, if you like Stargate SG1 and Firefly, try Cheyenne. SG1 and Bones? The Trio Beneath The Temple.
The Avengers (and S.H.I.E.L.D) become psychics and shifters when fused into Nalini Singh's Psy-Changelings in the Wolf and Arrow series.
I fused several fandoms into the city of Atlantis. Teams, Teasing, and the appropriate routines for TMI presents Steve Rogers in charge of a Gate team (with Pepper Potts as the head of Atlantis), The Gateroom Was On Fire When I Walked Into It gives Arthur a chance to lead his odd squad even when he thinks John Sheppard is out to get him, and Idiosyncratic illustrates why it's important to consider the nature of a character before putting them into an AU because the quirky oddball Jack Sparrow is most certainly not commissioned officer material but would almost certainly manage NCO - excellent at what he does, but definitely...an individual!
Want a dose of ordinary with your SGA teams? Try Shermer High (high school). Or the coffee shop AU, The Barista, or Hairdos and Tattoos (John and Ronon are a hairdresser and a tattoo artist, respectively).
To be honest, I wrote The Barista to subvert the "well the important (and incidentally white) people are businesspeople, while the coloured people are working service jobs ofc" trope that was going around the fandom at the time. There was an outcry about it, I have no idea how that situation ended. I was always on the periphery of SGA fandom thanks to being an odd duck for character and pairing.
For 'mundane AUs' in various fandoms, there's The Meeting Of Your Sparks where Raleigh Becket is a kindy teacher, Getting To Know You where Steve Rogers is an art teacher, and God Bless Chloe Felger! where Jack O'Neill is a high school English teacher. Apparently I like teachers.
SGA fused into a Western? Try My Own Kind Of Freedom, particularly if you like the idea of huntin', shootin', fightin' ladies running their own saloon out in the west.
Pacific Rim as a spy agency? Hit up The Shatterdome Collective for Raleigh Becket's re-introduction to the Pan-Pacific Spy Agency.
Teyla Emmagan as the Slayer? Every Slayer Needs Her Scoobies is short but entertaining. And no, Ronon is not the vampire with a soul. He's just another teenaged guy - I had it in mind that he'd been brought up by a Watcher, or maybe with a female relative who was a slayer, but the story never got past the snippet.
Maria Hill as a Time Traveller? The Time Traveller's Husband.
And that's just a skimming!
I've written sedoretus, and role-swaps, soulmarks/soulmates, BDSM AUs and Angry Geese universes... Can you tell I really like AUs?
The full set of my AUs are available here at AO3.
And, because I put a lot of work into it and am pretty proud of the universe, try Fire And Ice, the MCU fusion into the Pacific Rim universe in which Pepper Potts and Maria Hill become friends in the middle of the war against kaiju and a whole lot of other things happen around them.
In your own space, put some favorite characters into an AU, fuse some favorite canons together, talk about your favorite AU/fusion tropes, or tell us why AU/fusions aren’t your cup of tea.
I have 51 fics marked 'Alternate Universe' in my AO3 works, 35 of those marked as 'Fusion AUs'.
So, yeah, I like AU fusions.
Probably my favourite universe into which I fuse characters from a fandom is Anne Bishop's Black Jewels. Writing a Queen's court, and the jewelled Blood who operate in it not only allows me to make the female characters a focal point, but also allows me to write female-centric storylines.
Black Jewel-fused series include A Queen For Marvel Territory (MCU), Black Jewels Atlantis (SGA), and The Jewels Of Albion (Merlin BBC) and the two notable stand-alones are Dark Queen Ascending for Juptier Ascending, and Oaths Broken And Remade for Rogue One.
The thing that I love most about AUs is working out how the characters from one canon fit into the roles and experiences available in the other canon. Some authors just pop the characters from one canon into another canon's storyline without rethinking the scenario, but I like to work out what experiences the character would be shaped by in this universe given who they are in their original universe. It both makes the story richer and more complex, and provides unexpected twists and turns as the outworkings of those different lives and different choices become clear in the story.
I've had thoughts on this before, mind.
Anyway, if you like Stargate SG1 and Firefly, try Cheyenne. SG1 and Bones? The Trio Beneath The Temple.
The Avengers (and S.H.I.E.L.D) become psychics and shifters when fused into Nalini Singh's Psy-Changelings in the Wolf and Arrow series.
I fused several fandoms into the city of Atlantis. Teams, Teasing, and the appropriate routines for TMI presents Steve Rogers in charge of a Gate team (with Pepper Potts as the head of Atlantis), The Gateroom Was On Fire When I Walked Into It gives Arthur a chance to lead his odd squad even when he thinks John Sheppard is out to get him, and Idiosyncratic illustrates why it's important to consider the nature of a character before putting them into an AU because the quirky oddball Jack Sparrow is most certainly not commissioned officer material but would almost certainly manage NCO - excellent at what he does, but definitely...an individual!
Want a dose of ordinary with your SGA teams? Try Shermer High (high school). Or the coffee shop AU, The Barista, or Hairdos and Tattoos (John and Ronon are a hairdresser and a tattoo artist, respectively).
To be honest, I wrote The Barista to subvert the "well the important (and incidentally white) people are businesspeople, while the coloured people are working service jobs ofc" trope that was going around the fandom at the time. There was an outcry about it, I have no idea how that situation ended. I was always on the periphery of SGA fandom thanks to being an odd duck for character and pairing.
For 'mundane AUs' in various fandoms, there's The Meeting Of Your Sparks where Raleigh Becket is a kindy teacher, Getting To Know You where Steve Rogers is an art teacher, and God Bless Chloe Felger! where Jack O'Neill is a high school English teacher. Apparently I like teachers.
SGA fused into a Western? Try My Own Kind Of Freedom, particularly if you like the idea of huntin', shootin', fightin' ladies running their own saloon out in the west.
Pacific Rim as a spy agency? Hit up The Shatterdome Collective for Raleigh Becket's re-introduction to the Pan-Pacific Spy Agency.
Teyla Emmagan as the Slayer? Every Slayer Needs Her Scoobies is short but entertaining. And no, Ronon is not the vampire with a soul. He's just another teenaged guy - I had it in mind that he'd been brought up by a Watcher, or maybe with a female relative who was a slayer, but the story never got past the snippet.
Maria Hill as a Time Traveller? The Time Traveller's Husband.
And that's just a skimming!
I've written sedoretus, and role-swaps, soulmarks/soulmates, BDSM AUs and Angry Geese universes... Can you tell I really like AUs?
The full set of my AUs are available here at AO3.
And, because I put a lot of work into it and am pretty proud of the universe, try Fire And Ice, the MCU fusion into the Pacific Rim universe in which Pepper Potts and Maria Hill become friends in the middle of the war against kaiju and a whole lot of other things happen around them.