[Meme] random fandom genre or temporal AU summaries

[edenfalling]

Found via hungrytiger11 and selenak:

Take any one of the fandoms you know I write/rec/read AND give me a type of AU (space opera AU, pirate AU, superhero AU, etc) OR another time period (Ancient Rome, Regency England, etc). I will then explain the gist of the story I would write for that AU.

Comments

[branchandroot]

*grins* Okay. Naruto, space pirates.

[edenfalling]

Ack, what? *blinks* Hmmm. Okay, how about this?

When Uchiha Sasuke is very young, his brother betrays his space merchant clan to Akatsuki, a notorious group of pirates, and uses their deaths as his bargaining chip to join the association. Sasuke grows up swearing vengeance and joins the space force. While serving under the cruel captain Orochimaru, his ship is attacked by the Seven Leaves, a ship in the colonial rebel fleet which is trying to turn the moons of Saturn and Jupiter into a confederation of independent nations rather than dumping grounds for Earth, Mars, and the long-established mining colonies of the asteroid belts.

Sasuke finds himself a prisoner aboard the Seven Leaves, where he meets the enigmatic captain Kakashi, the absurd weapons officer Naruto, and the alternately demure and fiery pilot Sakura. (Sai and Yamato are the communications officer and engineer, respectively?) Anyway, Sasuke is originally from one of Saturn's moons, so the Leaf contingent think he ought to be on their side against the Inner World Federation; Sasuke, however, sees them as pirates and terrorists rather than freedom fighters.

Except somehow it turns out that the space force has become corrupt and made deals with Akatsuki and other pirates, and so Sasuke ends up becoming a crewmember of the Seven Leaves, protesting all the way. Politics and war ensue.

[branchandroot]

*sparkles* Oh, that would be /fun/.

[theodosia21]

Naruto, vampire AU~ ^_^

[edenfalling]

*blinks* Didn't somebody (Asuka, maybe) do that already? Well, anyway.

To her complete surprise, during the timeskip Sakura discovers that she is the Vampire Slayer, mystically chosen to defend the world from threats beyond the grave. Helpfully, this includes Orochimaru and Madara, who turn out to have their evil powers on account of being, you know, vampires. She reveals this to Tsunade, who writes to Jiraiya, who turns out to belong to an ancient society whose members keep track of the Slayer and aid her in her quest. He brings Naruto home early, after teaching him a special jutsu that mimics sunlight and will take care of lesser vampire minions.

And then they all go after Sasuke, but alas, too late to stop Orochimaru from turning him into a vampire... just as Madara has turned all members of Akatsuki. So now they need to bring Sasuke back to himself (since obviously Sakura and Naruto refuse to do the sensible thing and stake him) which means they have to look through the records of the Uchiha clan (who turn out to have been secret vampire hunters as well as would-be revolutionaries) and find a way to wake a vampire's conscience (which otherwise wouldn't happen until at least a century into being undead; the new instincts are too powerful).

It turns out to be the Power of Friendship (because this is Naruto, after all) and they find a way to put themselves into jeopardy with only Sasuke to save them (because he doesn't know Sakura is the Vampire Slayer and can get out of whatever the trap is) and Sasuke comes back to himself and turns on Madara. And they all take him down together. (Sakura and Naruto previously took down Orochimaru, after Sasuke rampaged through his hideout and ran off.)

Hmm. Tangentially, I think Itachi came back to himself after his turning when he'd killed the rest of his family and then was faced with killing Sasuke; he couldn't do that and remembered himself.

Anyway, they all live happily ever after, except Sasuke needs to wear a cloak and hat in the daytime now and Sakura and Naruto tease him endlessly over his bad fashion choices. *silly*

[theodosia21]

*laughs* Thank you! That was fun to read. ^_^

[nopenniesplease.livejournal.com]

So I don't know why these two popped into my head together, but now that they have they won't leave!! Please forgive my mind :)

Naruto and Regency England.

[edenfalling]

Iiiiiinteresting. *ponders* Okay, you know what? Just for fun, I am going to do Regency England WITH DRAGONS (i.e., Temeraire) instead of plain old Regency England.

So Hinata is the young captain of a Longwing named Sakura, Naruto is Sasuke's dragon, and they are in England because they were from French aristocratic families and had to flee the Revolution. Itachi betrayed the Uchiha family to the Terror, because secretly they were going to sell out several other fleeing families, and has ended up as a scout in Napoleon's advance forces, secretly gathering information to pass on to England. Madara is working for Napoleon as his evil spymaster.

The Konoha adults run the covert at... some random place in England or Wales... and away we go from there. :-)

...

On a less cracked out note, perhaps Sakura is a rebellious young lady in a minor village, Hinata is her more demure friend, and Naruto and Sasuke are soldiers in a regiment briefly stationed nearby. This ends with Sakura disguising herself as a boy and running off to join the army, plus hijinks in... hmmm... the Peninsular War in Spain. Which I would need to read the Sharpe novels to do anything more detailed about.

And I have no idea why people with Japanese names are in England at that time, but whatever.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

I have no idea why people with Japanese names would be in England either but adore the idea of this dragon business and Itachi acting as a n English spy.

[edenfalling]

Have you read Naomi Novik's Temeraire series? It's basically the Napoleonic Wars WITH DRAGONS, and it's incredibly fun, especially because Novik doesn't forget that there is a world outside Europe and that other countries would also be made different by the presence of intelligent dragons.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

Harry Potter as a Space Opera

[edenfalling]

Okay, so when Harry is eleven years old he discovers that his parents belonged to the hereditary military elite of the Fourfold Empire and so he gets shanghaied off to the cadet training school. He never knew about this because Petunia and Vernon are die-hard anti-elitist democrats and Petunia resented her sister having been coopted as part of the military's propaganda efforts to pretend that really they are open to non-legacy cadets, really we are, swear to god.

Early on it turns out that Harry is amazing at starship pilot simulations, so he gets shunted into that track; Ron and Hermione are assigned as part of his prospective crew. I think maybe there is some AI involved in the ships, so all the crew have to synchronize with it and it's very hard to move people around from ship to ship so a crew basically stays together forever. Anyway, Ron is a strategist and Hermione is a communications officer. Ginny, Neville, and Luna also end up in the prospective crew.

And it turns out that they have to steal their ship, the Firebolt, several years early because of ~plot stuff~ and they charge off on a suicide mission against the terrorist fleet led by Lord Voldemort, hoping to destroy the new secret Horcrux shipkiller technology before he can turn it against the main Phoenix Fleet of the Empire. But how can one lone ship of half-trained cadets take on an entire fleet...?

*evil grin*

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

LOVE it

[edenfalling]

I have no idea whatsoever how the plot would resolve, or what exactly is going on with Voldemort and the Death Eaters, but the beauty of summaries is that I don't have to figure all that out. :-)

[lesserstorm.livejournal.com]

Chrestomanci in Space?

[edenfalling]

Hmmm. Okay, supposing that Christopher's magic, instead of allowing him to travel to different realities, lets him instantaneously teleport to the various planets of a loose interstellar trade network, which is overseen (to the extent that it is overseen at all) by Chrestomanci and his agents, who are the only people with the ability to jump from one planet to another without the bother and expense of months-long starship voyages.

Then you can play out The Lives of Christopher Chant more or less as-is, though without the nine lives business and also maybe with his father having known about his talent and tried to keep it secret because... oh, I don't know, maybe it's considered vulgar on his world to work for Chrestomanci?

When you get to Charmed Life, again Cat is gifted with the world-jumping talent, which Gwendolyn is madly jealous of, and at some point while Christopher was growing up somebody found a way to siphon off the "energy" into a device that lets ordinary people travel the same way; this has disrupted trade patterns, among other things, since now some world-jumpers, rather than working as Chrestomanci's agents, sell their power to governments and spies, or to pirates and traders who hook the jump-machines up to ships and thus can instantaneously jump actual cargo from world to world.

Gwendolyn has been draining Cat's power for years without him ever being aware of this, and makes a habit of trying out new worlds in hopes that she'll find one she likes better. She ends up swapping more directly with... oh, what's her name, Janet?... which means I'd somehow have to combine Janet and the lookalike queen, but I'm sure that could be dealt with somehow. :-)

[lesserstorm.livejournal.com]

Brilliant - you get entirely new world building giving rise to the same characters

[edenfalling]

It has been forever and a day since I read Charmed Life or The Lives of Christopher Chant, which is why the summaries are, alas, so fuzzy. I confess I always liked Christopher best, though, which is why I took his book as the basis for the world and wound up in a muddle over Cat's plot. If I started with Cat and Gwendolyn and worked backward instead, I suspect I'd end up with a story about biotechnology wars and the ethics of cloning and genetic engineering rather than a story about interstellar transport and trade.