AU challenge prompt table!

[tweague]

I also have grabbed a bingo card from au_challenge! I'm not 100% sure I'm going to do anything very much with it - I find with AUs I tend to either have a teeny idea I'll wring the juice out of in half a page, or it's some horrendous sprawling monster that needs more attention than it's worth. But I very much enjoy thinking the thoughts. I've swapped out several I didn't want to touch, and subbed in some others that grabbed me.

Futuristic AU	Magic AU	17th Century AU	Ancient History AU	Religious AU
Musician AU	Vampire AU	Roommates AU	Mirrorverse AU	Different Powers ‎AU
Bookshop AU	Thief AU	Free Space	Office AU	Medieval AU
Restaurant AU	Zombie AU	Time Travel AU	Rom-Com AU	Ghost AU
Crime AU	Dark Academia AU	Steampunk AU	20th Century AU	Canon Fusion (Movie) AU

Initial thoughts:
- Magic AU is absolutely RoL-verse, I just don't know how yet.

- 17th century AU is English civil war, Biggles & Co are the world's most reluctant roundheads, Bertie just wants to go to parties and wear lace and Algy really hates Cromwell, but Parliament are so clearly *right* they have to support it; while von Stalhein is the world's most protestant Cavalier, he came over with Prince Rupert of the Rhine and really really hates this.

- I don't know what anyone else means by Religious AU, but I absolutely jumped to 'they're all lay clerks in a cathedral choir and they have some sort of endless simmering feud with von Stalhein the sacristan'.

- Musician AU: Biggles & co are a world-famous string quartet touring behind the Iron Curtain to improve international relations when Biggles decides they absolutely have to help vS (the pianist they have been performing quintets with) to defect. Algy (cello) is absolutely livid.

- Mirrorverse: something something WWI didn't happen and the great powers are still playing out their power struggle all over their dominions, now von Stalhein is covertly supporting the early independence movement in India with German money and Biggles is something vital in the colonial service. I would absolutely be doing this just so vS can lay a 'have you ever considered you may be on the wrong side?' on Biggles at some point.

- Time Travel AU: That One Where The Nazis Develop Time Travel And Von Stalhein (Pursued By Biggles) Travels Back To WWI To Stop Tiny!Biggles Screwing Up His Palestine Campaign, Thus Ensuring Germany Wins WWI. Featuring the revelation that von Stalhein is doing this because he believes that if Germany wins WWI there won't be a WWII, and that's got to be a net gain, don't you agree, Bigglesworth? Also featuring older!vS and older!Biggles being horrified over their tiny former selves and possibly finding out all the stuff that the other got up to in 'Flies East' for the first time. Von Stalhein finds out Biggles spent 50% of his time traumatised and sobbing in his quarters. Biggles finds out that von Stalhein literally never slept. It's a learning curve for them both.

so yeah. Not sure I'm going to actually write any or all of those. But golly it's fun imagining.

Comments

[ysande]

Also featuring older!vS and older!Biggles being horrified over their tiny former selves and possibly finding out all the stuff that the other got up to in 'Flies East' for the first time. Von Stalhein finds out Biggles spent 50% of his time traumatised and sobbing in his quarters. Biggles finds out that von Stalhein literally never slept. It's a learning curve for them both.

STOP I’M AT WORK this has made me feel things I’m not prepared to deal with right now

Also I’d read any and all of those AUs or just the download of them

[sholio]

HNNNGGGHHHHH I agree, I now want this like burning. They've probably never compared notes on it ....

[philomytha]

LOL at Algy and Bertie as incredibly reluctant Roundheads! And EvS, the world's grumpiest Cavalier!

Raymond is clearly the organist in this cathedral choir...

And omg the time travel! Biggles absolutely would pursue EvS through time, I'm amazed nobody's written that fic before, and they would both be so horrified at their tiny selves running around Palestine (and bb!Algy! EvS finding tiny Algy incredibly adorable would be a hilarious and inevitable outcome of this...)

Tbh somewhere around In Australia I feel like EvS could have asked Biggles if he was sure he was on the right side...

[black_bentley]

I would absolutely be doing this just so vS can lay a 'have you ever considered you may be on the wrong side?' on Biggles at some point.

I don't normally do major AU/setting change AU at all, but please know that I desperately want this to exist *_____*

Also, this might be the single best sentence I've ever read: Algy (cello) is absolutely livid.

[tweague]

I mean, I strongly doubt that I'm going to actually write anything that lives up to the potential of the idea, so please do feel free to run with it in any direction you fancy :D :D I think I am going to try brainstorming possible plots for a couple of days, see if anything promising emerges.

But yeah. Maybe they'll chat it through post-Hatchet some time, since they seem to lead heavy on the nostalgia when they go out for their little romantic dinners. But I'd be setting this considerably earlier, when all they've got to go on is supposition and vS's obsessive collating of intelligence reports to try to work out Where It All Went Wrong. I don't think they would cover eg Biggles' absolute breakdown when he thinks Algy is dead. That's going to come as a surprise.

[tweague]

Raymond is clearly the organist in this cathedral choir

YES EXACTLY. I did wonder if Raymond was the director of music and Biggles was the organist (honestly I cannot imagine Biggles as anything but tone deaf when he tries to sing, so I cannot in all conscience put him in the choir), but I think Biggles would be an absolutely dynamite conductor, so I think probably Raymond as organist.

Bertie is clearly an amazing countertenor. Every single countertenor I have ever sung with is basically Bertie. They have all been six foot tall, extremely posh and faintly apologetic.

Haven't decided yet about Algy and Ginger (except Ginger came up as a chorister and has somehow managed never to leave even though he's a second bass now). Von Stalhein has an amazing voice but absolutely refuses to dep with them. Biggles is determined to win him over.

no I refuse to get invested in this.

EvS finding tiny Algy incredibly adorable would be a hilarious and inevitable outcome of this.

YES. Older!von Stalhein is going to spend approx 60% of his time being horrified that there are these BASICALLY CHILDREN apparently being the best agents in British Military Intelligence and wondering what on earth Raymond thought he was doing. Hanging out in the mess in Kantara watching Algy with horrified fascination thinking 'YOUR VOICE HAS BARELY BROKEN HOW DID ANYONE EVEN LET YOU JOIN UP'.

Tbh somewhere around In Australia I feel like EvS could have asked Biggles if he was sure he was on the right side...

You Know, You Are Not Wrong There.

[tweague]

I don't normally do major AU/setting change AU at all, but please know that I desperately want this to exist *_____*

Ahahaha, okay, I'll make a note of that :D I'm pretty sure I'm not qualified to write it but I do very much enjoy the idea...

I tend to have unhelpfully particular preferences when it comes to AUs. I don't often go for major setting changes unless they've got a helpful hook that I can relate really closely to the canon set up (so for Biggles characters I'd really want to give them a war-time background, ties to empire, etc etc); but I am an absolute sucker for canon-divergent AUs (so more parallel universe than AU, I guess.) I'm idly batting around another idea triggered by that line in 'Flies Again' where Algy says that if Biggles lived in South America he'd have half a dozen different revolutions running at the same time, which just - but what if. What if Biggles' father got posted to the embassy in some small fictional South American state instead of to India. What if Biggles grew up there. What if he got really angry about halfway through the 1920s because he kept seeing one corrupt incompetent dictatorship being toppled by another corrupt incompetent dictatorship. What if he decided to Do Something About It. What if von Stalhein got a job there to reform the security service for the new President. What if he had to track down this political dissident. What if there was lots of pushing each other against walls and Biggles having to get vS out of trouble when the revolution breaks. WHAT IF.

etc etc etc.

[philomytha]

Biggles would be an extraordinary conductor and afterwards nobody would quite understand just how he got them to do what they did. Ginger was undoubtedly a chorister (every chorister I know is an absolute terror, he'd fit right in) and Bertie is a perfect countertenor!

EvS has Views about all of Biggles's conducting choices, and Raymond's playing...