AU Challenge Bingo Card

[chacusha]

I promised myself I would allow myself to request an au_challenge bingo card once I cleared some exchange fic off my plate. I have FINALLY done this, so here we go! I am not actually going to make any fanworks for this, but I just want to use it as a meme/activity to allow people to give me AU prompts and I can share my thoughts on how I think an X AU for Y canon would look like.

So, help me fill out this bingo: Pick a square + a fandom you'd like me to apply that AU to (+ optionally, a set of character(s) or ship(s) you'd like me to focus on for that AU), and I will write up some thoughts on how I think it would work. Here's a list of my fandoms if that helps. (If you happen to know I'm familiar with some fandom not listed there, feel free to request that.)

Porn Star AU	Single Parent AU	Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies ‎AU	Bar/Pub ‎AU	Medical ‎AU
Superhero AU: Star Trek: DS9, Quodo	Sci-Fi AU	Vacation AU	Renaissance AU	Canon Fusion (Movie) AU
Ghost AU	Non-Famous ‎AU	Free Space	Circus AU	Firefighter AU
Fae AU	Spies & Secret Agents ‎AU	20th Century AU: Final Fantasy IX	Royalty AU: Star Trek: DS9	Monster Hunter AU: Final Fantasy Tactics
Online Dating AU	Idols ‎AU	Crime AU	Racing AU	What If...? AU

Please help me fill up this bingo card with some fun AU ideas? 🥺 Feel free to specify an AU of your choice (not appearing elsewhere on the card) for the free space. Or just leave it to me to pick.

Comments

[breyzyyin]

Monster Hunter AU + Final Fantasy Tactics (because Tactics could always use more love ♥)

[chacusha]

Oh, thank you for the prompt!

I wasn't sure whether to interpret "Monster Hunter AU" as a generic monster hunter AU or one for the Monster Hunter game series in particular, but I'm not super knowledgable about the latter, so I'll interpret it as the former. I'm sorry if this wasn't what you were looking for!

I actually think you wouldn't need to change FFT all that much to turn it into a monster hunter genre, because demons are already such a big part of FFT, and Ramza and his party are kind of unaffiliated wanderers who go around helping people wherever they end up, which translates pretty naturally into monster-hunting specialists.

I think Ramza would be the main monster hunter in this AU, but everyone has trouble believing that he's the monster hunter because he's so small/quiet/meek/unassuming. But I think a combination of experience, instinct/intuition, and encyclopedic knowledge of monsters would make him actually good at this job.

I think the various people on his team would also have their own specialties and reasons for monster-hunting. For example, I think the high-faith characters would be sensitive to monsters/the supernatural, so good at detecting them and drawing them out, but it also makes them favored targets for monsters too. Mustadio would be like the resident sharpshooter who is like the "Q" of the team -- responsible for coming up with fancy new monster-hunting tools. He doesn't have anything against monsters, just likes the intellectual challenge involved in this work. Meliadoul, on the other hand, HATES monsters, won't rest until they're all dead, views it as her personal duty to protect the innocent from them, etc. Reis *is* a creature that a lot of people view to be a monster and who is regularly hunted, but she is not malevolent. Orran isn't a member of the team, but Ramza sometimes consults him on certain jobs because he has the gift of precognition.

Ramza doesn't talk about his past much, but there's a rumor that he comes from an old family that was wiped out by monsters. There's a dark prophecy that involves his family, and some people think it already came true in the event that killed most of his family members, but Ramza is not sure it has.

I'm not really sure what to do about Delita and Ovelia in this AU. The Church/Lucavi plotline fits pretty naturally into monster hunter AU, but the non-supernatural political plotline not so much. Maybe Delita turned Ovelia into a monster or cursed her so that she could escape from something, and Agrias is traveling with Ramza in the hopes that he can find a way to turn Ovelia back or something like that.

Those are some ideas I had. Hope they're entertaining!

[breyzyyin]

They are very entertaining! I love these ideas. Thank you. ♥

[tribble_of_tarth]

Superhero AU + Quodo and/or Royalty AU + DS9. This has my wheels turning on both now lol!

[chacusha]

I'm going to do the Royalty AU + DS9 one first because I'm not sure yet about the Quodo Superhero AU.

For the royalty one, I'm still trying to figure out how the whole situation would work, and what kind of setting to use here (like a traditional monarchy vs. a constitutional monarchy type system instead), but I feel like Ben + Jake work pretty well as a king and prince of Bajor, but ones who were only recently brought in, for some reason. Maybe there was a series of regime changes and upheaval on Bajor, but then they found some foreign nobles who are distant, distant relatives of a past monarch or something who could function as a successor and wouldn't have any of the problems associated with the other options / is a compromise monarch between rival factions, and invited them to come rule.

The officers of DS9 would then be prominent members of Sisko's court. Kira is Sisko's majordomo or whatever -- the head of his household. She doesn't think this arrangement will last and is annoyed that someone who didn't grow up on Bajor is currently the king, but grudgingly admits Sisko is probably the least worst option here. Dax is Sisko's... general? Some sort of strategic adviser who he worked with before and brought from whatever country he was living in previously. Worf joins later, another general/military adviser who initially doesn't get along with Dax, but then they become bros. Bashir is the royal physician. Odo is the sheriff of the nearby castle town. Nog is Jake's commoner BFF who has an uncanny talent for sneaking the prince out of the palace and away from his studies, lol.

Winn is still the leader of the local Church and wary of Sisko's policies, especially where they curtail the Church's power/influence. Dukat is the former, recently-deposed tyrant of Bajor who is in exile and who everyone hates, but he's always going around trying to raise an army to take Bajor back and is ready to invade at the first sign of weakness.

I'm not really sure what to do with the Changelings/Dominion and whether to keep them in at all. They could certainly be a neighboring country and you could have some geopolitics that way, but I also wonder if they could be a powerful family within Bajor or something like that.

I'm curious if this is similar to what you were thinking, or if it's completely different!

[tribble_of_tarth]

Overall, it's pretty similar to what I had in mind! I went back and forth between whether this would be a sci-fi space royalty situation or an all one planet/more standard royalty AU. I ended up somewhere between the two, with everyone except the Founders/Dominion being on one planet and the Founders being a looming interstellar villain set on taking over the planet.

I imagine Cardassia is a neighboring country of Bajor, who invaded and occupied Bajor for 50 years. The Bajorans eventually dispel the Cardassians, but the original Bajoran royal family was killed early in the occupation and there is no clear-cut heir to inherit the throne. Sisko is a noble (Maybe a duke or earl? I don't want him to be as high up as a prince.) from the neighboring country Terra, whose mother was a lesser member of the Bajoran royal family who married into the Terran royal family prior to the occupation of Bajor. Despite his reluctance, it's decided he will act as regent for Bajor while the country gets back on its feet and figures out who will ultimately become king/how governance will be handled going forward.

Jake, Dax, Miles, Keiko, and Julian are part of Sisko's court that join him in Bajor. (Dr. Bashir wasn't Sisko's choice to bring, but someone owed Julian's father a favor, and the young doctor has been keen to practice medicine in another country.) Worf is the head of the castle guard. Kira is his head Bajoran advisor who is very not keen to have a regent who has never even set foot in Bajor before. She warms up to him after he shows he has good judgement and has the best interests of the Bajoran people at heart. The two of them also get closer as Kira shows him Bajoran culture and Sisko starts to feel more connected to his mother, who died in childbirth and he never met. Odo is his national security advisor. Quark owns a local tavern, and they let him get away with petty crime in exchange for him relaying information about possible threats to the country.

General politicking and such happens, but then the Founders show up and decide they're going to run the whole planet now, so everyone has to band together to defeat them.

I really like your bit about Nog being Jake's commoner BFF with a knack for sneaking him out of the palace! And if Worf was head of the castle guard, it would drive him absolutely crazy lol! Thanks for sharing this!

[chacusha]

Oh, fascinating! This is indeed quite similar. I agree, Sisko should be a more minor noble before he's brought into Bajor so that he doesn't have multiple kingdom-ruling responsibilities, which would be confusing. Having the connection be through Sarah and it be a temporary regency situation makes a lot of sense! These are some really fun thoughts -- thanks for sharing! :D

[chacusha]

Superhero AU Quodo is tough for me because Odo is basically a superhero already, so it's hard trying to change Quark to match him. I'm also torn between having Odo and Quark both be superheroes on the same team (who butt heads) or to have Odo be a hero and Quark be a villain (but of the variety who spend more time flirting with each other than fighting each other).

So yeah, Odo is a shapeshifter who is also impervious to most things. Quark, if a superhero, would have a pretty minor superpower, I think, like the ability to create fireworks a la Jubilee or the ability to implant mental suggestions but it takes a while and only works on one person at a time. Or super-hearing -- just something that is situationally useful if you're doing a heist or something like that, but otherwise not a superpower you'd want to bring to a fight. For this reason, he's not particularly into the whole superhero thing except when it brings him celebrity and fame, and this kind of annoys Odo. XD

For supervillain Quark, I think he would either have no superpowers or very minor superpowers again, but he is just very dedicated to doing crimes. These crimes are pretty small-change and so Odo probably *should* focus his efforts elsewhere, but Odo is too much of an obsessive to let them slide and also Quark makes them purposely audacious to bait Odo. And sometimes when Odo comes to put a stop to Quark's activities, Quark will subtly drop some information about things happening in the criminal underworld he thinks Odo should know about and then disappears. Batman/Catwoman dynamic.

Those are some of my superhero Quodo thoughts. Hope they are entertaining!

[tribble_of_tarth]

Ooo, yes I like this! I was thinking of Quark being more of a "villain," but a very small time one who uses his powers for personal financial gain and not any major villainous activities. I really like the idea of Quark having super hearing! He would use it to trade in secrets and further his profits, but he would also tell Odo about any significantly dangerous issues he should know about, and Odo would sometimes have to recruit him (reluctantly, lol) to help him with missions. (The Batman/Catwoman dynamic is right on the nose!) I imagine Odo is more of a loner superhero, but he does manage to make friends with some other superheroes who absolutely do not understand his obsession with small-time crook Quark. Anytime anything bad happens, Odo immediately suspects Quark, even though everyone else is like, "This is way bigger than Quark. I don't think it's him." It gives Odo the chance to rough up Quark a bit before actually questioning him to find out if he has any useful information. Ngl, I'm a little in love with this idea now lol. 🥹😆

[chacusha]

Haha, yesss love this. I forgot to mention that, despite Odo and Quark having a Batman/Catwoman-esque dynamic, I guess Quark as a villain would probably be pretty similar to the Penguin? I.e., he owns a sketchy club, which is where he hears all sorts of conversations being had.

I love the idea of Odo immediately suspecting Quark and shaking him down for info as a first step. XD

[suzume]

FFIX main cast in a 20th Century AU?

[chacusha]

Ooh this is a fascinating prompt. I had a bit of trouble thinking of what to do here because FFIX feels so strongly embedded in its medieval setting, and also it's hard to pick which part of the 20th century to set this in -- so many possibilities!

I'm tempted to say World War II, or maybe WWI, setting here, though? War is a big part of FFIX's storyline, at least the beginning, and part of that involves airships and black mages/air superiority in the game, which I think translates pretty well to fighter planes and bombs. In this case, I'd probably make it a bit alt-history/historical fantasy, though, to keep the vibe a bit fantastical and not get too bogged down by real-world politics.

I feel like a war orphan or "evacuated to the countryside to avoid bombs" storyline could work for Eiko and/or Vivi, and I think Zidane would be part of a traveling entertainment group that puts on shows for soldiers, and I'd probably throw Freya and Quina in there as part of that crew. Garnet is a defector/spy who needs to be extracted from behind enemy lines, and Amarant is part of a mercenary group. Kuja is looking for a super weapon.

This is a bit half-baked, but that's all I've got so far. I was also trying to come up with a 20th century AU where Garnet is some famous actress? dignitary? who runs away and hides in a quirky little theater group, but I didn't really have many more thoughts than that, and also that could be set in basically any decade of the 20th century, so it didn't really narrow things down... But yeah, trying to imagine what the cast of FFIX would look like in different decades was an amusing exercise! I'm curious to hear if you have any thoughts about this one.

[suzume]

Yeah, I get that impression too (FFIX embedded in its medieval setting).

Honestly, I was hoping you'd have some interesting thoughts! (and it turns out you did!)