#watsonian au

[tanis-drawings-2point0]

(id on alt)

s4 martin laying down his suspicion before striking yet another deal with yet another devil (this time, ironically, out of his own volition)

[apocalypse blues tag] (next part>) and some notes about the au/characterization under the cut

in this au the lonely doesnt latch As strongly to martin, mostly bc tim didnt die in the unknowing and keeps trying to reach him from the very beginning. However this and jon's subsequential return push martin into looking for another way out for them, whiiiich eventually leads him to the web, obviously

like its canon/word of god that martin WAS going to be a web avatar and HE had annabelle's role in the story before jonny changed his mind, im just tying lose ends here

anyway annabelle is as overly mysterious and dramatic as in canon but also her characterization here is fueled strongly by this post and another post i cant find that talks about the way she was traumatized as a kid and then again as an adult and how she tried to find meaning in the web. She's as much as a tragedy as jon is, and while its not directly acknowledged (at least, as far as i got), it still taints a lot of aspects of this au

leaning into the role of a villain orchestrating this grand plan gives her some semblance of agency, imo, but i dont think she actively wants the outcome of dooming the multiverse for the sake of dooming the multiverse if that makes sense

she still keeps some info from him, obviously, like the small detail of the reason why jon is so terrified of the web and also spiders... and the real nature of the tapes (he just assumes random spiders have smth to do w/ her knowing stuff and she doesnt correct him bc, lmfao)

martin on the other hand just wants his beloveds to be happy, bro... he just wants the stuff and monsters that made them suffer to be gone and for them to be happy... and he'll do anything to make sure of that...

#the magnus archives #martin blackwood #annabelle cane #tma au #apocalypse blues au #comic #WHY is martin dressed like that you ask? #watsonian explanation its s4 peter buys him nice stuff doylist explanation ive got new brushes baby

[idrawsometimes]

Linktober Day 3: Friend/Helper/Companion

Navi doesn't get to come on the time-travel adventure, but she is still around. Because canon can be whatever I want it to be.

#no really i fuck with canon a lot. but there's a watsonian explanation for why everything is weird i swear #linktober #linktober 2023 #chain reaction au #my art #loz #cr time #cr navi #time has long gotten used to how navi talks and now he also does it

[waterlilyvioletfog]

So I like kind of mentioned this in a previous post but like. It’s weird?? Right?? That when Harrow re-constructs the bubble over and over again at the start of HtN Act V she does 1) role-reversal AU 2) Arranged marriage AU 3) Coffee shop AU. Because those are FANFIC TROPES. (The arranged marriage AU being especially unhinged to me because she doesn’t even know John is Gideon’s dad at that point!! Her brain had to come up with “what if Gideon were royalty omg??” ON ITS OWN.) And like the fanfic-ness always was insane bc of course yeah that makes sense from a Doylist perspective, ie, Taz Muir’s an author notable for her inclusion of internet humor and culture, and she has personal experience with fanfic. But it didn’t make sense on a Watsonian level because sure, Harrow’s clearly a Romantic, but this isn’t a genre language that I think Harrow naturally speaks. Harrow doesn’t read smutty romance novels!!! She’s a repressed little nunlet obsessed with bones, her only options of sexual interest in her adolescence being 1) GIDEON 2) a corpse she views as holy and sacred— no really safe options for exploratory crushes or sexual experimentation here. So how is she thinking in fic/romance tropes? Either A) Harrow is significantly less repressed than everything I’ve ever read about her would lead me to understand, B) fic tropes are so transcendental that the agonized, wounded, thrice-haunted mind of Harrowhark Nonagesimus could, in its death throes, find itself in this specific genre of text she has no personal reference for, or C) according to the Sex Pal Theory of Permeability, Harrow has gained an understanding of romance tropes via soul osmosis, from Gideon/Alecto/Wake/Palamedes during the bubble visit???, and that explains why she dreams in fanfiction. I’m going with option C. Thank you Unwanted Guest for solving this little mystery for me 🙏🙏🙏

#the locked tomb #the unwanted guest #the unwanted guest spoilers #tlt spoilers #tlt #the locked tomb series #tlt series #the locked tomb spoilers #harrow the ninth #harrowhark nonagesimus #griddlehark #gideon the ninth

[gallusrostromegalus]

Ehehe, I see that Josuke Araki has made his way into your script :P

Are there any other JoJo's floating around in Soul Society and beyond?

So I like to populate the background characters of my fic with characters from another series as just a fun reference, but I feel like some people are reading into it a little to much. It's like- well, there's a watsonian perspective on it and a doylist one and a sort of meta-watsonian one.

From the watsonian/in-narrative perspective? You know that line from that Stucky fic everyone loves about "we deserve a soft epilogue?" I like to imagine AUs for main characters where they still live in an animeverse, but are free from the burden of being The Main Character. Usuke Urameshi lives in Karakura town, but he was never The Spirit Detective. He's just some former punk with mild psychic abilities who runs the ramen shop Ichigo goes to sometimes. Josuke is just some guy that has enough power to be a shinigami, but he's just like, rank and file. You see him in crowd shots. They're alternate universe versions of their full powered, main character selves and probably happier than those versions.

From a doylist perspective, it's a fun game of reference tag to play with the reader. A sort of where's Waldo of random characters from related series. Sort of like putting Samuel L Jackson in a bit part in your movie and giving him a purple prop to fiddle with. He's not playing Mace Windu, but for sharp-eyed nerds, he is making a star wars reference. Sometimes it's just for fun, sometimes is a way to lay on some really subtle thematic context. Like overlaying a 8% opacity layer of yellow on a digital piece to give the impression of late afternoon. Nothing explicit. Nothing relevant to the plot. Just a bit of seasoning.

From a meta-watsonian perspective, a lot of how I write fic was influenced by the old Kids WB bumps where the voice actors would play their characters *as though they were actors hanging out on the warner studios lot* Batman was still Batman, but he was also a guy playing Batman on TV. Yugi moto still had the cosmic powers of the millennium puzzle but also complained about how much time he had to spend in hair and makeup. So when you see a character from another series in my fic, they're an alternate universe version of themselves that is Not Relevant To The Plot, and on another level they're like an actor famous on another show, coming in to do a bit part on their friend's show for funsies.

...but mostly I do it so I don't have to make up names for OCs I'm only using for four seconds.

To actually answer your question: Yuzu is a HUGE fan of this educational YouTube channel run by Marine Biologist Jotaro Kujo. He's the only guy who gives echinoderms their due. She shows Ukitake and Unohana and they like him a lot too. Unohana writes to him to put him in touch with Hanataro and the two put together a major survey of venomous marine life with potential medical applications. Ukitake just likes fish :).

#AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy #bleach #bleach fanfic #metanarrative #the thing to remember is that i don't do intergated crossovers #but sometimes friends will do a bit on thier friend's show

[red-archivist]

tmagp ep 1 preview: don't open spoilers inside

neil and chester arent martin and jon -it would be a cute au idea- but i think in the context of a new show, explicitly bringing them back would be a poor writing decision/cheapen the impact of the end of tma

from a doylist perspective, having some case files (the 'real' case files?) read out loud means that the audience actually hears them bc there would be no reason for civil servants to be reading them aloud otherwise, plus its a nice easter egg to hear the boys' voices again

for a watsonian perspective, let's remember tma 197:

"...We took his voice. His, and those he walked with. We inscribed them on shining strands of word and meaning, and used them to weave a web which cast itself out through the gate and beyond our universe."

the web, or whatever mash-up of fears is stalking the OIAR staff and haunting their computers is simply using the tools it brought with it from another reality

honestly, i think that's more horrifying; the fact their voices are still being used to speak of terrors, separate from them

having typed all this however, its a brand new show and we're not even at the beginning of it really so who knows what anything means

#tmagp #tmagp spoilers #tmagp vague #tmagp preview #the magnus protocol

[ursaspecter]

More redesigns! More redesigns! This time it's the whole Fenton family! As always, my notes will be under the cut. I really appreciate everyone's support and feedback about this series. I plan to work on Vlad next. I think I'm the most excited for his since it also has to do with my unnamed au that I shared a while ago, but haven't done anything for yet. Until now that is >:).

Reblogs > Likes! Tools used: XP Pen Artist 15.6 Pro, Clip Studio Paint

A lot like Tucker, these are really just minor changes. They're less so redesigns as they are just drawing the characters in my style.

Jazz I made her hair a little wavier because I personally think it's more interesting than just plain straight hair. I gave her a tunic top with a belt that's very fitting for 2004 in my opinion. Her headband is still there, it's just mostly hidden because of the way I drew the hair at this head-on perspective. I was debating about keeping it, but then I remembered the part in The Ultimate Enemy where she ties the note to the boomerang with her headband, and that it's also an important part to my Dan design. Oh and I gave her freckles, but they're not as prominent as Danny's are.

Maddie Replaced the spandex jumpsuit with more practical coveralls and added more age to her face. I also gave her a more unhinged expression in general. She can be a little more zany. As a treat.

Jack Same story with the jumpsuit. Although he doesn't have as many pockets as Maddie or Danny do on their coveralls. The Watsonian reason is because he probably thinks he doesn't need pockets and just attaches pouches to his belt as needed. The Doylian reason is because I already spent like three hours on Jazz and Maddie's sketches that by the time I sketched Jack, I was more focused on getting the pose right and the anatomy of his arms (which are covered by the sleeves anyway) correct that I simply could not be asked to add the pockets. Also I accidentally made him a DILF so I guess you're welcome for that.

#my art #digital art #fanart #danny phantom #danny phantom redesign #danny fenton #jazz fenton #maddie fenton #jack fenton

[antianakin]

I feel like there's WAY more attention paid to armor than tattoos in clone culture within fandom and I think tattoos deserve more attention than they get (and armor less). Because yes, we do obviously see different armor designs and the like, but we also see a LOT of clones wearing pretty much the exact same armor design as a lot of other clones (the Doylist explanation for this is obviously that the animators weren't going to come up with separate armor designs for every single background clone, but I'm taking a Watsonian approach here), whereas any time a clone has a tattoo somewhere, it's never the same thing twice.

Armor designs are fun, they're nice, but armor breaks and gets lost while the tattoos are on their bodies FOREVER. We've also seen a few clones who have armor designs that match their tattoos, and I'm headcanoning that the tattoos came FIRST. So even some of the clones who we DON'T see have matching tattoos to their armor designs probably actually do somewhere. So like Waxer and Boil didn't just put Numa on their helmets, helmets get broken and destroyed, they got her face tattooed on their bodies somewhere, too. Rex has the shriek hawk eyes tattooed somewhere. Cody has the sunburst tattooed. If the design means something to them, it's been tattooed on their bodies, too.

I want more shared tattoos between clones who care about each other, too. Probably not the same as the one they have on their armor, but something else that's special to just the two of them. Fives and Echo could have a little domino tattoo somewhere to represent not just their bond, but their bonds to the rest of the squad they lost. Sometimes it's a memorial for someone they've lost, like maybe Jesse and Kix have a tattoo for Hardcase after Umbara, or Fox has one for Thorn after Scipio.

Tattoos are also a lot easier to hide and keep private from certain people if necessary, while armor designs are always able to be seen no matter what. So tattoos can be a LOT more personal than an armor design, too. They can represent terrible traumas or the deepest dream, something they don't dare even discuss with anyone else but don't want to forget. Clones with tattoos of coordinates to a planet they might one day want to call home, clones with tattoos of quotes that inspire them or maybe the last words spoken to them by a loved one or a promise made to someone else that they hope they can keep. Many clones have plant tattoos of some kind, the first flower or tree they ever saw, to remind them of the beauty that exists in the galaxy and what they're fighting to protect. Names are incredibly common tattoos once they've chosen it, either written out in letters or represented in an image somehow.

Over time, maybe in a happy fix-it AU where they have the ability to really let this develop, certain designs and patterns start meaning certain things to the clones and so they become shared across MANY clones as almost a shared unspoken language. A specific design might mean loss, or specific achievements in life.

Just... more about the tattoos in clone culture, they're SO underexplored.

#star wars #clones #clone troopers #clone trooper culture #anti mandoclone #mandoclone critical

[grandpuppyalpaca]

I Want To Actually Write Some Fics

So, I'm finally moving to a dorm away from "home" in a few months, and I want to take the opportunity to finally start writing some of the fanfics that have been calibrating in the back of my mind.

Warnings in advance:

I will only be writing fanfic, not original works.

I have never shared or published fics before (Unless you count reading the occasional snippet in Creating Writing Club).

As of right now, I have no beta(s).

Don't know my college schedule/workload yet, so no ideas about how often I could post/update at the moment.

I likely won't be able to post anything until I have access to a computer at the college (presumably in August, sorry about that), because the closest thing I have to an unmonitored/unrestricted device at "home" is my outdated Kindle Fire tablet (where the secondary browser I downloaded to hide reading fics sometimes likes to crash every few minutes).

If you've read past all of that and are still interested in my possible future writings, here are the possible options for what I could actually post:

Azure Fingerprints: Title of a possible series based off of this idea (batman and megamind crossover). > (Time travelers have realized that Bruce Wayne will always, without exception, base his crimefighting persona on the first thing... – @grandpuppyalpaca on Tumblr)

Featuring (so far): a delayed start to "Batman's" career, SuperBat friendship, Bruce's poor social skills, the not-yet-"Batcave" getting turned into a babyproofed nursery, and lots of fluff and crack and FEELINGS. Not sure if other parts of the series would be other longfics in that world, or just little snippets of stuff.

2. Anna Elizabeth Wayne (Actual Title TBD): My take on an Annabeth is Bruce Wayne's daughter fic.

Featuring (so far): Show!Annabeth (Leah Jeffries is phenomenal), Reverse Batkids AU (with a twist or so), an Athena characterization based on Circe by Madeline Miller, GoodDad!Bruce, multiverse stuff (only a little at the moment), Siblings Bonding Over Weird Childhoods, and So Much ANGST. This one is reallllly complicated, so it might be a series just so I can include one of those "explanation of the writer's AU" pages. Not as much of a plot as it is ANGST, small ideas for individual scenes, and general vibes right now.

3. The Adventures Of Lulu And Hatchling: probably the title of first fic (probably backstory stuff) in what would likely be a series. Crossover between ACOTAR universe and PJO/HOO (I am NOT ACTUALLY merging the two worlds). Basic background is that Annabeth's mortal family are the descendants of an illegitimate child from a kept mistress of Tamlin's father, and Annabeth is the first person to have powers from their bloodline. Baby Annabeth gets sent to grow up with Tamlin (Watsonian reasons would be explained in-story), but Lucien unofficially becomes her main caretaker. She spends seven years in the Spring court (pre-Amarantha even coming to Prythian), then is returned home in time for all PJO relevant events to occur. This would NOT be a Complete Re-Write Of PJO Canon.

Featuring (so far): Multiverse stuff, Annabeth w/fae powers, Book!Annabeth description so she can look like Tamlin (Leah Jeffries is still phenomenal, fight me), Lucien's gradually increasing blood pressure, Found Family Fluff, Lucien being a good father/uncle/older brother figure, Tamlin not being a complete alphahole in the beginning, Eventual Tamlin Bashing anyway, Ianthe Bashing (once she joins the story).

Definite intentions for later parts of the story: Powerful!Annabeth High Lady!Annabeth, Consort!Percy (he refuses to become High Lord, especially when he can just vibe and technically hold the official title of Least Politically Important Person At This Meeting), Tamlin's manor getting abandoned and Annabeth employing people to help build a new one that she designs, Inter-Court Meetings between all the courts becoming a Regular Thing (bc I want to put all the little dudes in a jar, shake them up, and study the results under a microscope), Inter-Court politics, gradually undermining the patriarchy, Inter-Court friendships, Beron taking psychic damage from the sheer audacity of---, Everyone Bonding Over Hating Beron, Positive Social Change, and Me Adding My Own Additional Lore To The World Of Prythian.

Optional fun fact! The base story could take multiple paths after TTC, so it would be the most likely fic to eventually make me write one or more AUs of itself, so here's later random details of the story that may or may not be added depending on which timeline I write: Tamlin dies, Tamlin gets locked up in his own house and told that Annabeth is willing to talk to him once he's "being more rational". Beron has a brain aneurysm in the middle of an Inter-Court Meeting and dies, Percy and Annabeth somehow creating a plan to get away with sending Beron off for the Hunters and Amazons to hunt him for sport, Amarantha kills Tamlin and is shortly killed by Annabeth before ACOTAR would have happened, Rhysand and Annabeth become Very Fast Friends and make fun of people together, and Doreen Green (Squirrel Girl) becomes Annabeth's spymaster bc that would just have so much comedic potential, fight me (she's honest about that being her job [if not explaining the details of how she does it] and she's just so open and friendly and polite that it has to be a hoax, right? there's no way she's actually in charge of collecting real intelligence. she has a network of squirrels who pass info to her across the entire continent? oh right, because of the tail, very funny. some of us are actually taking this seriously, Tarquin).

4. Lightning Rod, Grounding Wire: Approximate title for a crossover AU where Agatha Heterodyne (Girl Genius) and Hunter (The Owl House) end up swapping places right before Barry would have gotten Agatha (exact explanations undecided, maybe Belos let the Collector get too bored?) and about the same time Hunter was created (with Hunter being a couple years older than her biologically). Longfic? Series? Who knows, not me(yet).

In the Boiling Isles: Agatha is initially raised by Belos in something a bit similar to the get in loser we're assassinating the emperor - elliptical - The Owl House (Cartoon) [Archive of Our Own] AU, but it's Agatha (Spark, Heterodyne, etc.) so she gets on the wrong side of the empire way quicker. I'm thinking that she wouldn't make it more than a couple years after her breakthrough (w/o Uncle Barry to build her locket) before she starts spouting Extremely Logical Treason in meetings. Mostly, Canon occurs but minus Hunter (I'm going off the theory that Belos had to reuse the same galderstone for each grimwalker, so in this he's permanently down one(1) clone child soldier) and with way more explosions.

Meanwhile, over in Europa: Barry quickly deduces that this Very Small Child isn't Bill and Lucrezia's, is definitely some kind of construct, and is likely part of some kind of plot by Lucrezia (the man's stressed, and 2ish out of 3 ain't bad). Barry's not the kind of spark who'll try to vivisect or euthanize the kid just to stop Lucrezia, so his best bet is hiding him away from the world. Hunter grows up considering himself a construct, in time gets left with the "Clays", and lives a somewhat less stressful life than Agatha would have pre-canon. Everything goes passably well for him until the first events of "The Beetleburg Clank".

Featuring (so far): The rapidly increasing blood pressure of Every Adult in this situation, young Agatha being a feral gremlin, Hunter actually having a childhood, if Eda had a a nickel for every time a semi-feral teenage girl built an interdimensional portal in her back yard she'd have two nickels, SO MANY mistaken identity shenanigans after Agatha and Hunter actually meet, eventual Huntlow and Agatha/Gil/Tarvek OT3, and Eda menacing All The Sparks.

Now that I'm thinking about it, the only one of these that wouldn't need an explanation page is number one.

I do have more ideas on all four of these (as well as other vague ideas still calibrating), but this post is pretty long so I'd need a request from someone before I give more info.

Please comment/reblog/@ me with your thoughts!

For future reference, my Ao3 account is:

#percy jackson #pjo tv show #pjo #percy jackon and the olympians #batman #pjo series #batfam #annabeth chase #bruce wayne #percy jackson and the olympians #girl genius #batman crossover #girl genius crossover #pjo/hoo crossover #the owl house crossover #acotar crossover #the owl house #acotar #lucien vanserra #agatha heterodyne #hunter toh #baby megamind #megamind crossover #megamind fanfiction #megamind au #please give me feedback

[phoenixyfriend]

So I've been reading your Anakin and the Jedi Babies AU all day, and I'm really curious! Why has Anakin's aging arrested?

Reference: Anakin and the Jedi Babies

The Watsonian Answer: This boy is born of the Force. He has channeled a god. The power gave immediate youth to his master and his apprentice ran into the wall of his demideityhood and gave him extended youth instead. He will age at a fraction of the rate he should for the next twenty years and nobody quite knows why.

The Doylist Answer: I thought it would be funny. Like, Anakin keeps getting treated like a Young Immature Man even when he's like. Forty. With two adult children. He barely looks any older than they do, but he is MIDDLE-AGED and wishes for people to remember that.

#absolutely-flabbergasted #Anakin and the Jedi Babies #aatjb #phoenix answers asks #star wars #anakin skywalker

[sskk-squared]

Speaking of the fanfics that are the origins of this AU, is "stop time, your hand in mine" taking place in another universe than the rest of the series, do you know? Because, not to spoil anything for the people who haven't read them yet, but Dazai especially is different in that one compared to, say, "southern air" which appears to take place at around the same time (when the kids are 6 ish).

I wondered if/when there would be questions about that Dazai, heh.

Sticking this one behind a cut to avoid those spoilers and other fic spoilers besides!

The Watsonian explanation is that there were timeline shenanigans by dint of Atsushi pingponging around, and that Changed Fates. (But wait, I hear you say - in one of the shorts it's indicated that Atsushi just temporarily lost his memories! Yes it does.)

The Doylist explanation is that, like the very first fic where the heart is, I hadn't fully decided on what the timeline looked like and since stop time, your hand in mine was the second fic I was all gung-ho to write something deeply angsty and then decided no this is the domestic fluff AU our heroes deserve.

Fun fact: that other Akutagawa in the places we'll go was actually supposed to stick around in their universe until Dazai finally caught up with him, turning up randomly just because. Ultimately decided against it, but thought it would be hilariously chaotic.

Maybe the Dazai at the end of stop time will be revisited, maybe he'll be lost in the shuffle of alternate timelines. It all depends on how I'm feeling any day of the week!

#askbox saturday

[deusvervewrites]

Potential Watsonian explanation for why Kashiko is not in Isamu in the Seiai AU: Kashiko is smart enough to realise that since UA is not an option for any Hero hopeful in the country, competition for the remaining schools will increase. With this in mind, she swapped Seiai to be her first choice, reasoning that if nothing else, she doesn't have to worry about competition from the male half of hero hopefuls at Seiai.

That's fairly plausible. She might also have simply applied to more schools in the wake of the UA scandal since it's clear that having backups is a good idea.

#asks #seiai academy au

[avelera]

The more I write of an AU where Hob and Dream got together in 1689, the more I'm convinced that they couldn't show the end of that meeting because it would represent a major turning point in their relationship.

Either Hob, at his lowest point, inspires some sort of reaction to help in Dream, or it doesn't.

Hob is so low at that point that even the smallest kindness would lift him from despair. Even a longer meeting with his stranger would be something, after all the brief ones they've had before. There is the impression that regardless of what happened next, the 1689 meeting went on much longer than the previous one, if with no other evidence than that Hob orders food expecting Dream to pay (understandable, I mean, Hob did provide a feast in 1589, even if Dream ignored it).

If Dream helps, I genuinely don't know how he stops at only a few gestures. I mean, like I said, I'm literally writing a fic where Hob's plight means for the first time, Dream truly struggles with how to justify only seeing Hob briefly before departing and finds that he can't.

If Dream sees Hob in that state and does absolutely nothing that deviates from their previous meeting... well, that's a statement in itself too, isn't it?

Regardless, I think know why that meeting is only shown briefly from a Doylist perspective. It's because the point of the Men of Good Fortune story is that they only see one another briefly once per century.

But from a deeper Doylist perspective that borders on Watsonian, I feel the reason you can't show the end of the 1689 meeting is because there is simply no way that someone as deeply depressed as Dream could see Hob in a similar state of misery and not be confronted with the choice to either reach out a hand in friendship or truly, irrevocably, choose not to in a way that could not help but draw a dividing line across the relationship forever. Better to simply not show the outcome at all if you want to maintain any kind of status quo in the structure of the story.

#the sandman #dreamling #1689 fic

[azure-wolf-227]

Luz is a Titan AU

I've seen several 'Luz is a Titan/Half Titan/Luz turns into a Titan/Half Titan' AU concepts, and I wanted to do my own take on the idea.

Luz is biologically a Titan and King's older sister. When the Archivists attacked, the Titan couldn't place Luz in the tower with King's egg, so they used their power to send her through time and space to somewhere safe. That somewhere ended up being the Human Realm. Shortly after, Camila and Manny Noceda found the little Titan.

The Titan gives Luz a protective amulet that hides her from the Archivists (it has the same sigil King found in the tower and carved into his tag), allowing Luz to change her form between Titan and Human. Since Manny and Camila were the first beings to find Luz, the magic amulet used their appearance as a template for Luz's disguise.

Luz’s Titan powers start developing at the age of 8-9; around the same age King started developing his powers in canon. Her first power is, of course, the Sonic Shout (WEH!).

When the Nocedas moved to Gravesfield, Luz began having weird dreams - actually the Titan trying to communicate with her - because the portals to the Demon Realm (Eda’s, and the one used in ‘Thanks to Them’) are linked to the town. These dreams help Luz develop her Glyph language, so by the time she is 14, she already has the basic Glyphs and has begun developing the combos.

Luz’s Glyphs are not the same as in canon cause these are her own rather than the Titan’s. And while she can draw them, Luz mainly makes the Glyphs/Glyph Combos appear on her hands or the air.

Titan Luz is mostly similar to Canon Luz in personality, but she also has some self-esteem issues about not being human. Add to how, after Manny’s death, Camila began to insist that Luz act more normal/be more human in fear that her oddities would lead to people discovering her secret.

This AUs version of ‘A Lying Witch and a Warden’ starts out the same with Luz being sent to camp, her chasing Owlbert through Eda’s portal, and meeting Eda; things begin diverging once they arrive to The Owl House and King appears. Luz is shocked to see a being that looks exactly like her (true form); she doesn’t reveal her true form, though, because she is so used to hiding it. Eda and King learn that Luz is not human when she can’t pass through the barrier at the Comformatorium, though it isn’t until after the fight with Warden Wrath, the prison break, and the return to the Owl House that Luz reveals her true form. Safe to say that Eda is stunned at meeting another of whatever King’s species is while King is excited; after hearing Luz’s story, he convinces himself that Luz must have been “shrunk” as well, then banished to Earth.

Anyway, Luz’s decides to stay in the Demon Realm to learn how to be a witch and maybe find some answers about herself. Besides her Titan powers/Glyphs, this Luz can also create spell circles like witches, though she’d still default to Glyphs. Luz would also teach King about his own powers, though he likely won’t awaken them before he did in canon, except maybe he starts to develop his own Glyphs.

Luz wouldn’t go walking around the Boiling Isles in her true form even if it wouldn’t be strange there. The Doylist reason is that I  want the reveal that Luz is the same species as King to happen much later, maybe during Luz’s first confrontation with Belos in the Season 1 finale, or sometime in Season 2. As for the Watsonian/in-universe reason, maybe Luz is used to disguising her true form, or Eda tells her to keep it hidden for some reason.

Set up from the previous idea, Luz figures out how to alter her disguise to look like a witch, instead of a human. Because Eda was her template, Luz’s witch disguise has fluffy auburn hair, and golden eyes. Basically, she looks like a Raeda kid and results in people coming up with secret love child theories.

Edit: @princess-of-the-corner suggested a different idea for why Luz’s disguise changes. The illusionary disguise works by taking traits from the people Luz sees as parental figures. She original looked like Manny and Camila’s biological daughter because they were the ones who raised her; her disguise began to take some traits from Eda, and later Raine, as she began to subconsciously see them as second parents. The change was gradual, so Luz didn’t notice the difference until she first saw Vee disguised as her and found her appearance unfamiliar.

Does Luz has memories of before she was sent to Earth since King could remember things before he was hatched?

Yes, but Luz thinks those memories are just dreams and stuff her mind made up rather than memories, so she never told anyone about them. Or she did as a young child, but her parents just thought they were children dreams.

Let’s end this with what Luz looks like as a Titan. She is mostly a taller version of King, maybe a few inches taller than Canon Luz; her horns are the same as Canon Titan Luz’s; her fur has a more purplish tint than King’s but they have the same eyes; unlike King, Luz wears clothes, the same clothes canon Luz wears; her protective/disguise amulet looks like the medal King wears in the series’ epilogue with a purple ribbon and it has the anti-Collector/Archivist sigil engraved into it. Sometime in Season 2, Luz goes through a growth spurt and grows wings.

#luz is a titan au #the owl house #toh fanfic idea

[aquila1nz]

Where oh where is the Shortland Street femslash?

I'm still sad that there's essentially no Shortland Street femslash fic. There were a smattering of Nicole/Harper stories back in the day, mostly on the pit of voles (fanfiction.net).

There's a tiny set of Nicole/Maeve stories on AO3 now, and an even tinier bit of Leanne/Rosalyn. There's no Samira/Francesca, even though I know there are other people like me that loved them and were so sad when that storyline went south so fast. There was so much scope for writing fic for them. This is the heartbreak of tiny fandoms.

I want to read Samira and Francesca's conversation at the wedding reception. I want extensions of all the episodes to give them more time together. I want Francesca taking Samira on a jetboat ride while they're at the conference because Samira has never been to Queenstown before. And oh boy do I want fixit fic: Francesca doesn't leave, Samira goes after her, they meet again in several years time. Francesca has taken that job at Central and they're quietly continuing their relationship during Samira's later episodes but Samira has had enough of the gossip wheel so she's not telling anyone. Any fixit will do.

Samira and Francesca both start working at Seattle Grace at around the same time but their paths don't cross straight away. To confuse things people keep referring to "the new surgeon from New Zealand" without realising there are two of them.

And then this year, where was the Rebekah/Maeve fic? That was so sweetly done for such a fucked up relationship.

Give me Rebekah and Maeve on the run together fic. Unhealthy Maeve trying to be everything for Rebekah fic. Future fic where they live somewhere very quiet far from everything.

Give me your headcanons where Rebekah didn't have Scott kill Wilder, she really has been trying to do her best and it's just all gone wrong along the way.

Give me redemption fic - Rebekah admits it, does her time and finds Maeve in the end.

Give me a crazy prison AU - Rebekah goes to prison for Scott's murder, but the nature of hearsay, proof and what can and can't be included in evidence means Maeve still gets convicted for Wilder's. And they end up in prison together. Maximum angst.

And where is the longform Nicole/Maeve fic trying to make Watsonian sense of their crazy Doylist on again off again relationship and sudden character changes? Where is the fluff fic that ignores it all? Where is my everyone is gay fic that pulls in every possible Shortie character? Where is my future fic that ignores Wilder's death and has all three of Nicole's stepsons working at the hospital, while Pele is a trouble making teenager? Where are the AUS?

And my younger self would love fic about Meredith and Annie, or Caroline and Laura.

Tell me what fic you wish for in the comments. Share your headcanons! Or please write some!!!

#Shortland Street #plotbunnies #head canons #fic prompts #nicole/maeve #samira/francesca #maeve/rebekah #femslash #maecole #framira #shortland st

[witchloversupreme]

So, I was thinking about Garlemald lore again, because I'm mentally ill and obsessed, and I had a kinda fucked up thought. Explaining it is gonna take some doing, so stay with me.

If the garlean historians are to be believed (and the Sharlayans agree (As seen in Encyclopaedea Eorzea 1), so they're likely correct), roughly 1500 years ago, the garlean people lived in Corvos alongside the G tribe, in a situation probably not dissimilar to the M and Ala Mhigo, with a sedentary tribe fairly peacefully sharing their territory with a nomadic one.

Okay, so, here's where shit gets a little bit tricky.

There is only the ONE race of Garleans (Unless you count Jullus and Cid as a different race for being Short Kings), unlike all the other species of humans, who have at least two (Midlanders/Highlanders, Xaela/Raen, Dunesfolk/Plainsfolk), and sometimes even three (Duskwights/Wildwood/Ishgardians, Hellsguard/Sea Wolves/Far Eastern). This implies a very, very small, and very specialized population. A population that could, very easily, be displaced by a larger, more powerful group, like (as the historians posit) a large tribe of Elezen from what would later become Bozja, who, very likely, were themselves, forced from their homelands by invading Roegadyn and Hrothgar. If this tribe was sufficiently large (and magically skilled) enough, they could have very easily expunged the proto-Garleans from Corvos and forced them northward.

The Garlean historians claim that this forced exodus pushed them all the way into north central Ilsabard, but this is incredibly unlikely, as no matter how devoted to a people's total annihilation a tribe may be, hounding them the entire distance from Fantasy Greece to Fantasy Siberia is more than a bit ridiculous. But I digress.

What is more likely is that the Garleans were forced more westward, nearer to proto-Werlyt, where they likely settled for a time, before expanding north into the mountains which cut the continent in half (it is still violently upsetting to me we don't have a full map of Ilsabard). A few centuries of relative peace followed, where the proto-Garleans expanded ever so slightly further north, before, once again, they lost a war, most likely one against Hyurs and Raen from either Proto-Werlyt or Proto-Thavnair, and lost their southerly territories.

With no other option but continue colonizing northward, the Garleans did exactly that, eventually founding "Garlemald", the city, a few decades later, and the rest is, quite literally, history.

Now, with that lore dump out of the way, we can get to the real meat of my thought.

Almost all evidence points towards the Garleans simply being another species of human, just like Hyurs, Elezen, and Au ra, and not a "created species", like the Ixal, and, therefore, they definitely had a mirror race on the other shards.

But where the fuck are they?

I have seen neither hide nor hair of a single Garlean, be it in the flesh, as a statue, or in a tomb in Amh Areng, Kholusia, Lakeland, or Rak'tika. There's absolutely nothing to show that the Garlean people existed on the First, which is very, very fucking strange, as even the Amalj'aa and Ixal (sort of) have mirrors on the First in the form of the Zun and the Amaro.

I can think of two answers to my question:

The Doylist answer, (which is much less interesting), is just that Square either forgot to make any Garlean NPCs for the first, or decided against depicting First!Garleans, possibly because the race both didn't have an equivalent from a previous FF game, like the Hrothgar/Ronso, or Elezen/Elves, nor were playable, like like the Au ra/Drahn, or, because the Garleans are the go-to "Bad Guy Race" and they didn't want to confuse players.

The Watsonian answer, (and the one I subscribe to), is that the First!Garleans are extinct, having been driven to the brink by The Flood and over the edge in the ensuing century of strife, alongside many, many other species and peoples.

#This is probably almost incomprehensible #It is five in the fucking morning for me #and I woke up from a dead sleep to goz this autism onto your timelines as if by Divine Mandate. #Anyway #I really hope we get more Garlemald lore in general #For being THE main (non-magical) bad guys of the setting #we really do know jack shit fuck all about their history and culture #And the crumbs Endwalker gave us really doesn't fucking cut it #ffxiv #ff14 #final fantasy xiv #final fantasy 14 #garlemald #Shadowbringers Spoilers (kind of) #Shadowbringers #Endwalker

[frodo-with-glasses]

Been thinking about a particular LOTR what-if scenario (because my D&D campaign took a turn into collaborative LOTR fanfiction), and I'm interested in your perspective on it if you have time . . .

Supposing Boromir somehow survived protecting Merry and Pippin, what effect would that have on Denethor?

Denethor's being fed despair by Sauron either way. But I have always read him as the news of Boromir's death being the thing that breaks him and makes him start to believe it. His grief is certainly a large part of what's informing his treatment of Faramir (though certainly not the only thing, as I think there's textual evidence that Denethor favored Boromir all along).

If Boromir didn't die . . . would Denethor still give into despair? Would he still send Faramir on a suicide mission — and if he did, and Faramir still suffered the same wounds, would Denethor still end up in his whole "all is lost; better to die on our own terms" spiral? Or would he have the presence of mind to see to the defense of the city?

How would he react to Aragorn, a man who has all the qualities Denethor disdains in Faramir but even more so, and who people are now saying is the rightful king (who even his own sons, even favored Boromir, are saying is Gondor's king returned)?

(He almost certainly wouldn't be a fan of Aragorn's plan to draw Sauron's eye away from Frodo. He probably would be greatly displeased that the Ring had been allowed to go across the River to Mordor at all, and even Boromir would have trouble convincing him otherwise.)

Thank you for letting me ramble in your askbox, haha. Don't feel pressured to answer if you don't want to or don't find the question as much as I do. (But if you do answer, I will be delighted.)

As much as the Gondor Dudes aren’t my personal hyperfixation in LotR, I am nonetheless a big fan of overthinking hypothetical situations, so this is right up my alley. :-D (Also, it’s really cool that you’re running an LotR-themed D&D campaign!! Sounds like a blast.)

To be honest, you hit pretty much every point I was going to touch on; Denethor’s despair and consequent insanity were certainly motivated, at least in part, by grief, so if you take the grief out of the equation then naturally the results are going to be at least slightly different. But we still have lots of other factors at play here: fighting a hopeless war, the looming specter of deposition, knowing that your allies just sent a nuke into the territory of the Enemy in the hands of a garden gnome so small you could punt him, and Prolonged Exposure to Cursed Artifact are still going to take their toll on Denethor’s mind. He will doubtless be more motivated to hold on to life while his favorite son is still alive, but even if he doesn't turn paranoid and filicidal, he’s still going to be Deeply Messed Up regardless.

So since I'm not getting any new ideas by looking at things from a Watsonian (in-universe) perspective, I'm gonna steer this in a Doylist (meta) direction and talk about implementation instead. The question I always ask myself with these sorts of "canon but a bit to the left" fanfictions is this:

What do you want out of the story? Do you want to:

A) Return to canon as quickly as possible? B) Change just one thing and see how far it butterfly-effects out? C) Find something somewhere in the middle?

Because the thing with "canon but a bit to the left" AUs that you can make pretty much anything work. It's a hypothetical situation. The question is how far away from canon you're willing to deviate. If I'm writing a "Boromir Lives" AU, I might go a couple of different directions, and the one I ultimately choose depends on personal preference and what I want out of the story.

Putting this under a read-more 'cause it's about to get long.

Option A: Canon, but like .5 degrees to the left

Ever since the battle at the Falls, Boromir has been following Aragorn and doing everything the Three Hunters (well, Four Hunters) do. When Pippin looks into the Palantir, Gandalf decides to take him to Minas Tirith right away, and Boromir, who's eager to get home and feels some responsibility for Pippin, volunteers to go with them.

(Yes I know that Shadowfax travels at ungodly fast speeds to get from Rohan to Gondor, but it's implied that lesser horses can keep up with their lord when they need to, so even if Boromir took a different horse they might still have been able to make it to Minas Tirith in a similar time.)

Denethor gives an enthusiastic welcome to Boromir and a far less enthusiastic welcome to Gandalf and Pippin. That welcome becomes less enthusiastic still in the ensuing conversation/interrogation, when he learns that they totally had the Ring but they sent it into Mordor instead of bringing it here. Boromir tries to reason with his father. Denethor is very disappointed with him. He blames Gandalf for corrupting his other son with all this foolishness, and treats Pippin with suspicion because of the whole prophecy with the Halfling, and the convo ends with hurt feelings all around.

I might need the War Nerds on this blog to correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, the attempt to take back Osgiliath wasn't a completely useless suicide mission, at least in concept. It is a major river crossing, and controlling transportation routes is like War 101. If you make it hard for your enemy to cross the River, you make it hard for your enemy to get to your stronghold, and that's good. Not a bad idea on paper. The only problem was that Minas Tirith didn't have the manpower to pull it off.

(And also there were Nazgul.)

Anyway, the point is, it's almost logical enough that you might be able to get away with Denethor ordering the Osgiliath offensive even without the grief-induced paranoia. Besides, there's still other paranoia in play: so far as Denethor is concerned, the Ring is walking into enemy hands, his son and most trusted captain has turned against him, and Gandalf is already planning a coup.

So here's what I'm thinking. Keep the Osgiliath battle, but send Boromir out there as well. Boromir and brother bravely bear the baleful battle, before their butts are badly beat and they get bit by the Black Breath. Dad feels bad, his boasts bashed as his boys' bodies burn with fever. Battle bears down on the beleaguered bourgeoisie, but their bereaved bigwig is barely bothered, too busy building bier bonfires.

…Sorry, I don't know where that came from.

Anyway, the point is, this puts us squarely back where we'd be at this point in canon: Denethor thinks he’s about to lose his family, his city, and his kingdom, and consumed by despair he decides that it's better to die on his own terms than in the hands of the Enemy. You can pretty much just follow canon from here and copy-paste Boromir with whatever is happening to Faramir.

(Except, of course, for the whole "falling in love with Eowyn" thing. But hey! Boromir was in Rohan! He and Eowyn probably know each other already! So they might have some fun conversations in the Houses of Healing.)

This is the route I would take if you want to stick as close to canon as possible and still keep Boromir alive. If adherence to the narrative is not your biggest concern, however:

Option B: Go stupid, go crazy

Boromir doesn't die. What does that change?

Well, everything, if you let it.

Let's say Boromir does return to Minas Tirith with Gandalf and Pippin like I suggested above. Let's say he's able to talk his father into begrudgingly going along with their unorthodox plan to save the world. Let's say Denethor doesn't call for the almost-but-not-quite-entirely-completely-a-suicide-mission to Osgiliath and instead puts Boromir and Faramir to work strengthening the defenses of the Minas Tirith. By time the Battle of Pelennor Fields rolls around, Denethor—now no longer occupied by the family barbecue—is available to direct defense of the city, with both sons acting as his captains.

Awesome! All this is great stuff, right?

Well, yes. So far.

The problem is that we lose so many great moments with other characters in the process. Pippin's pell mell run to find Gandalf. Beregond abandoning his post to protect Faramir. Eowyn and Merry, who slayed the Witch King together because Gandalf was too busy putting out fires (literally!) to get down there and do it himself. Aragorn, proving that "the hands of a king are the hands of a healer"! And if Faramir and Eowyn hadn't both suffered the Black Breath, they wouldn't both have been forced to stay behind as everyone else went to fight at the Black Gate, and they wouldn't have fallen in love in the same way.

This is not a statement meant to push your decision one way or another, but it's just a fact of the decision: If you dispense with Denethor's paranoia, and the insanity, and the murder arson, then you dispense with a lot of the other cool moments in this book. The question you've got to ask yourself is if that's a price you're willing to pay, and if not, how you can work around it.

Anyway, back to Pelennor Fields. I want you to imagine that Denethor is standing at the wall, watching the battle raging below him. It's not going well. The reinforcements from Rohan arrived, but they're barely hanging on. And to his dismay, he sees a fleet of black dots which could only be Corsair ships sailing up the river.

The foremost ship unfurls a banner, with the Tree of Gondor glittering on it.

And the army that pours out of them absolutely wrecks shop with Sauron's forces.

Is Denethor feeling relief? Yes. But is he feeling dread and apprehension and anger too? Also yes. He knows what this is. It's a challenge to his power waiting to happen. All his suspicions about Gandalf's ulterior motives are coming true: he has found someone to supplant him, and whether or not this kid is the true Heir of Isildur, the darn upstart's already gone all dramatic and made a war hero out of himself. Whoop-de-frickin'-do.

And then, he sees Aragorn's face.

And he's livid.

Fun fact: Appendix A tells us that Aragorn actually worked for Denethor’s dad, Ecthelion, for a long time. Aragorn went by a different name, of course, but he was so competent and so well-liked that he became Ecthelion's most trusted and honored captain, to the point that the Steward liked Aragorn more than he liked Denethor. We don't just have history here. We have beef. It's a little bit of a Tony Stark, Howard Stark, Steve Rogers situation where it’s like “Dad liked you more than he liked me and I’m his own son”.

You’d better bet your bottom dollar that when Denethor’s childhood rival rocks up to Minas Tirith, flying a banner made by an elven princess and carrying the Sword that Was Broken on his belt like he's somebody important, it doesn’t matter if Boromir and Faramir and Imrahil and everybody else in Minas Tirith likes him and happily falls in line behind him; Denethor is still gonna take one look at his face and go, “oh. it’s YOU. I freakin' HATE you.”

Whether this colors their ongoing relationship "coolly polite" or "passive-aggressive" or "outright hostile" depends on how vindictive you want to write Denethor. Because let's be honest, bro could totally order Aragorn to leave Minas Tirith and he would; Aragorn knows he's not the king yet, and he's humble enough to accept orders while the Steward is still in charge (as bass-ackwards as that is). But the thing is that Aragorn has the support of the people, and banishing him isn't gonna change that; if anything, it will probably garner sympathy for him, cause the people of Minas Tirith to distrust their leader, and maybe result in fracturing the loyalties of the populous.

So here's what you've got, okay.

You now have a David and Saul situation.

Think about it. Charismatic, upright war hero, beloved by everyone he meets, serving under the suspicious and deeply disturbed incumbent ruler who knows the newcomer is gonna boot him off the throne. You can't live with him: 'cause he's gonna boot you off the throne. But you can't live without him: 'cause you're in desperate need of his particular set of skills, and you'd be incredibly unwise to do away with him and earn the ire of the public. So you put up with him. And put on a show of liking him. And maybe chuck a spear at his head while he's playing the harp to calm down your possibly demonic fits.

But that's just Saul, so let's get back to Denethor.

The next step, in the book, is obviously the Battle of the Black Gate. And, obviously, Denethor is gonna think this military equivalent of knocking on the door of an axe murderer and threatening him with a pea shooter is a terrible idea, because it is. But the whole point—Aragorn and Gandalf and Boromir and Faramir and Imrahil and everyone else insists—is to distract Sauron long enough that the Ring-bearer can succeed in his mission. The plan isn't to win, it's to be bait.

Now you have a few options.

Denethor can, once again, begrudgingly go along with it, showing that he's slowly changing in heart. Perhaps Aragorn's humility is winning him over. Perhaps Boromir's impassioned pleas are getting through. In any case, you have a pretty good set-up for a redemption arc here, which could be interesting if you want to go down that road.

Alternatively, this could be the moment that Denethor entirely gives in to despair and basically says "fine, if you guys wanna go kill yourselves, I'll just be over here doing the exact same thing", and he tries to make Steward a la flambé. (Whether or not he succeeds is up to you, but I will say that this would be a pretty easy way to settle the succession crisis.)

Alternatively still, Denethor could publicly denounce the whole idea as stupid and order the people of Minas Tirith to stay put and defend the city, at the same time that Aragorn and the rest are urging those same people to come with them for one last stand. Now every eligible fighter in the city has to make a choice. Who will they follow? Lord Denethor, or Lord Elfstone? The people are divided. Factions are made. (This might be the moment that a certain member of the Guard sees Faramir standing with Lord Elfstone and decides, for the first time in his life, to break the rules.) In any case, the force that travels to the Black Gate is far smaller than it would have been if not for Denethor's interference.

If you go with the first option, it's a quicker road to a happy ending. Aragorn returns victorious, he and Denethor reconcile, and Aragorn honors the Steward and puts him in a place of high esteem. Everyone in Minas Tirith likes this, including Boromir and Faramir, and everyone lives happily ever after.

If you go with the second option, Denethor has either successfully or unsuccessfully attempted sudoku, which should probably disqualify him from public leadership either way. If he succeeded in barbecuing himself, it's the tragedy of a man who never got to see the upcoming victory; if he failed, it's the tragedy of a man whose mind was so utterly broken by the Enemy that he couldn't enjoy it.

If you go with the third option, congratulations; after Aragorn gets back, you still have to deal with the succession crisis. But I've waffled on for long enough and have basically no ideas how you'd handle this post-story, so I'm not gonna go down that road any further.

Option C: Pitch straight down the middle

Now what I've just presented are the two most extreme possibilities of a "Boromir Lives" AU that exist in my brain, but they're far from the only options. This thing is a spectrum. There are a potentially infinite number of possible storylines, some closer to canon, some further away.

If you like parts of one but not the other, you can mix and match. Take an exit ramp from the AU and get back on canon wherever you want, or just don't and see where it takes you. All I've done is present the furthest extremes I could think of to help shake up the ol' creative juices.

(I would have explored the possibility of Boromir arriving on the corsair ships with Aragorn instead of a few days earlier with Gandalf and Pippin, but that didn't change much except for Boromir having less opportunities to talk his dad down from bad decisions. So do with that what you will.)

Conclusion

I have no idea if this was the kind of answer you were looking for, but I guess I'm just returning rambling for rambling, LOL! In any case, I hope this helped, and if not, I hope it was a fun read.

But there is one more thing I can do for you, before I wish you good luck in your D&D endeavors, and that's turn it over to everyone else who reads this blog and see what they think!

HEY YOU GUYS! If Boromir lived, how would that effect Denethor's psyche?? Reblog with your thoughts!

#asked and answered #faramir #denethor #boromir lives au #lord of the rings #lotr #my writing #in which i ramble about probable story trajectories for WAY too long