AU writing meme

[thisbluespirit]

I have a lot of things I should be writing (and also being careful about not writing too much, self) but, what the hell, I have finished my epic Runaway Tales/Unconventional Courtship rough draft (the wretched thing is 20,000 words long) and I did manage to type up the ending of that TARDIS/Sapphire/Silver/Steel WIP, so, totally ignoring my ficathon and leftover fandom_stocking things, here goes:

Give me a character/pairing and I will write snippets of ten different alternate universes for it. One line, ten lines, a ficlet if you're lucky.

Wild West
Coffee Shop
Shapeshifters
Pirates
. . . In SPACE!!
Born Another Gender
Schoolfic
Police/Firefighters
Urban Fantasy
Regency

We'll see what happens. (If my brain collapses and what happens is no words at all, I apologise in advance.) Also, I altered the meme. I thought if I came up with one AU for 'harem' it'd be a miracle, let alone doing it several times over. And I'm never totally sure what Cyberpunk means.)

Comments

[elen_nare]

I've no objection to Mary-Lou, but if you're offering Nell and Hilda... :D

[thisbluespirit]

Finally - 10 AUs for the two heads! ;-)

Wild West
“You see?” said Hilda Annersley. “A stern word or two seems to have been enough to deter those ruffians after all.”

Nell Wilson nodded wisely and neglected to mention the pistol in her drawer with which she had forcibly underlined those words. Always humour the sheriff was a good rule for the sheriff’s deputy.

Coffee Shop
“I don’t know how it is,” said Hilda, “but someone seems to have muddled up the sugar and the salt again this morning. I can’t think what we’re going to give the customers. These cakes are all quite inedible!”

“Hmm,” Nell said, “maybe if we have a whip round from the staff to buy some in they’ll be more careful in future?”

Shapeshifters
Hilda always wondered how it had happened – this ability to shift-shape into something four-legged and swift. The only thing she could imagine was that it was somehow due to her deep unhappiness at home since the death of her mother. That was reason enough for any young girl with such a restricted life to want to flee. Nell was the only other one of her kind she’d met, and when she asked her, Nell became unusually thoughtful and said something about the death of her sister.

“But at least,” she added, taking her friend’s hand, “it brought us together.”

Pirates
As pirate ships went, it wasn’t a bad one, Nell thought, and she’d rather have the dread Captain Annersley alongside her in a fight rather than anyone else she knew, but she wished the Captain would stop making people walk the plank for saying ‘Can I?’ rather than ‘May I?’ Good crew members were hard to find.

. . . In SPACE!!
“I don’t know what made Lady Russell think of running a school on this space station,” said Nell Wilson, collapsing into the nearest chair in Hilda Annersley’s office, “but there are times when I have to question the wisdom of it, to say the least.”

Hilda shook her head. “Poor Nell! What is it this time? I hope Elizabeth Arnett and Betty Wynne-Davies haven’t been meddling with the air supply settings again?”

Born Another Gender
“It’s always the same,” said the head, Mr Annersley, to his deputy Mr Wilson. “Middles!”

Schoolfic
“Oh, Nell,” said Hilda, catching sight of her friend in the corridor outside the headmistress’s office, looking slightly singed. “Oh, dear. What did you do this time?”

Police/Firefighters
Det. Inspector Wilson rechecked her report closely before handing it into Superintendent Annersley – not only was Supt. Annersley one of the best detectives on the force and a devil for the details, but she was also a demon on spelling, grammar and good plain English in written reports.

Urban Fantasy
“Oh, and there’s a message from Lady Russell,” said Nell. “She thinks that it really is about time we started to teach the Seniors protective magics again – counter spells and wards, that type of thing.”

Hilda nodded. Naturally, they didn’t want Chalet girls growing up to be weak, spineless creatures who didn’t know what to do when confronted with malevolent Folk from the Other Realms. “Well, that’s more your area, Nell – I’ll leave it up to you to decide.”

Regency
It had long been the dream of Miss Hilda Annersley not to marry, but to found her own school, but it was not an easy venture for a single lady to embark on alone. Her meeting with Miss Helena Wilson who had long harboured similar ambitions, was indeed, a happy one.

[elen_nare]

:D :D :D I love them! Thank you.

Trust Nell to have a secret gun in the wild west, and interesting that we both see Nell as the more likely magic user (I sent her to Hogwarts once). LOL (as in, I literally burst out laughing) at Dread Captain Annersley making people walk the plank for poor grammar! She would, she so would. I want to hug them both in the shapeshifter. And schoolgirl Nell being slightly singed - did she share Evvy's "talent" for lab accidents? I always thought she had a soft spot for her ;)

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, I'm glad! The thing about Nell being in charge of the magic in that AU was simply because she's the science teacher, so in a fantasy AU chemistry = learning magic instead/as well. I hadn't ever really thought about it in the abstract, but she probably is slightly more likely. And in the shapeshifter one, if I'm remembering rightly, that actually is their backstory, at least partially, isn't it?

How does a science teacher learn but through accidents?? ;-)

[elen_nare]

Yeah... It's not that Hilda couldn't be a witch, but there is something quite experimental about a lot of fictional approaches to magic that I think Nell would enjoy more.

That is their canon backstory, yes, and it makes me want to hug them when it comes up in the books too!

How indeed? ;)