dear author.

[ineffabilities]

In general: I like both gen and ship fic in about equal measure, and will read pretty much any rating. I like reading about found families and their dynamics, whether they're an adventuring group that's been together for a while now or a bunch of asshole superheroes that are trying to make things work. I like hurt/comfort, I even like breaking a character (Winter Soldier AUs are my brand at this point) for lots of angst, but my one solid caveat is that there has to be a happy ending. It doesn't need to be completely happy, but I just want everyone to be alive. I love everybody lives AUs bc I'm a wimp who can't stand major character death. I love AUs in general, as you might imagine from me joining an AU exchange. pls feed them to me.

Do Not Want: gore way above canon-typical violence, bathroom kinks, parent kink (NO daddy kink), A/B/O and BDSM AUs, bestiality, noncanon incest, underage sex where one character is underage and the other is not, graphically depicted noncon, permanent major character death, tentacles, mpreg, knotting, graphic eye trauma, hurt/no comfort

ASSASSIN'S CREED
The Kenway Gang (Edward, Edward & Haytham & Connor | Ratonhnhaké:ton, Edward/Adéwalé)
I've been playing an ungodly amount of Black Flag, at this point, and Edward Kenway has rapidly become one of my very favorite characters in this entire series. he's just!! such a fun character with one of the more compelling arcs I've seen in a while and also so much goddamn trauma it's wild he reminds me of Theon Greyjoy, hahahahah. anyway. so I thought his death was a bit of a cheap shot, so my first priority is a general AU where Edward lives somehow past his canonical death point. however you get there, I don't care, but pls feel free to go wild and fuck him up anyway—I put Winter Soldier AU here for a Reason. for actual prompts:

I have a deep fondness for Edward/Adéwalé, and therefore I present—Adé as Orpheus and Edward as Eurydice, where Adé has to head on down to hell or damnation or wherever Assassins or pirates go when they die and bargain with the lord of that land to get a chance at bringing Edward back, somehow. all he has to do is to not look back. no pressure or anything.

AU where everything is the same but D&D magic exists, and you can in fact bring back the dead if you have the diamond for it. the problem is those diamonds are expensive as all hell. the next problem Haytham has is that he's not technically in touch with divine magic and he's a little on the outs with his son Connor who is, on account of the whole Templar father and Assassin son thing. how does he convince him to help out anyway?

Edward dies in the Kenway Manor and wakes up in another world entirely. which world is up to you, but he spends the next few years trying his best to get back home and along the way picking up new skills like, say, magic. or robot-hunting. or hacking. or using his blood to power weapons. whatever. when he does get home, what happens next?

Edward doesn't die in the manor when he should and desperately offers to exchange himself for Jenny and Haytham: just let them go and he'll let the mercenaries take him to their master without a fight. the last time Jenny and Haytham see their father, he's being pushed into a carriage, and they're free—traumatized by the events of the night, but free. with Edward in captivity, what happens next? do they get to rescue their father, or does this take a hard right turn into a Winter Soldier AU? what about Adé? if this is a Winter Soldier AU, does this mean Adé finds himself having to fight against his one-time captain and Shay? would he try to pull Edward out somehow, or would he grimly resign himself to what he has to do?

Connor and Haytham, during their impromptu team-up, meet a pirate who Benjamin Church apparently also screwed over—he and his men had been hired to escort the fellow and his stolen goods, only for Church to apparently, and inexplicably, turn around and get them all arrested for piracy. the pirate, who says his name's Ed Teach ("born on a beach," he jokes), is the only one who managed to get out, and now he wants Church fucking dead because the man stole something of great significance to him. Connor's fairly surprised when Haytham agrees to let Teach come along, only for Haytham to admit that something about Teach is...curiously familiar, and he wants to find out more about the man. (obviously Teach is Edward Kenway, who washed up sans memory on a beach.) what happens next when they find out their family connection?

Frye & Frye (Jacob & Evie)

the Victorian era is a fun era for the Frye twins to roll around in, but I can't help but want to see the gang shenanigans in another place and time, like, say: Prohibition-era New York! I deeply and desperately want to see the twins as bootleggers running a speakeasy, making their own moonshine, getting into scraps with other gangs and the police. plus I am an absolute sucker for New York, and I think Starrick and his Templars in Prohibition New York, perhaps with their fingers in both the Temperance Movement and the speakeasies, would be very interesting as a counterpoint to Jacob and Evie and their gang.

role reversal AU: their personalities remain the same, but Jacob's the one focused on the Piece of Eden while Evie's taking down the Templar base. tell me how that happened! maybe they switched missions at the start and when Jacob saw how the Piece of Eden detonated, he decided he did not like the idea of anything like that just chilling in London. maybe when Evie, who's got a soft spot for kids and who hates injustice with the same fervor as her brother, saw how Rupert Ferris treated his workers, she decided to systematically eliminate every single member of Starrick's inner circle in London. how does this change things? what do they argue about? how does Jacob's in-your-face gang-war approach fare in the Piece of Eden hunt, and how does Evie's systematic and methodical approach handle the Templar assassinations?

Misthios & Deimos (Alexios & Kassandra)

Once More with Feeling AU: Kassandra picks up an Isu artifact that is purported to reveal the darkest secrets of all those in its vicinity. she laughs it off after a brief test doesn't really do anything, but then the next day, the sea shanties the crew of the Adrestia sing start to take on a more...personal? note? she didn't know the crew had that much drama going on, it's honestly quite funny. Alexios, meanwhile, is desperately trying to keep all his secrets locked up behind his walls, an increasingly difficult task as the days wear on and the songs start to get more and more intensely personal.

AU where Alexios and Kassandra are in the Syndicate era instead of Jacob and Evie, but everything else still remains. maybe Kassandra's an Assassin trying to find her missing little brother and root out a cult in London, while Alexios is the figurehead of the cult and also is running a lovely little theater + a gang a la Maxwell Roth. what happens next?

Rook & Eagle (Jacob/Ezio)

hitchhiker ghost AU: there's multiple ways of traveling around Europe in the Victorian era, carriages among them. Jacob gets sent on an assignment that takes him into Italy to retrieve an artifact, and somewhere along the way picks up an exceedingly friendly hitchhiker who says his name's Ezio. friendly ol' Ezio manages to save Jacob from some Templars, but disappears right afterward. Jacob thinks that's the last of it—and then he sees Ezio again. and again. and again. each time he keeps giving the poor guy his coat, and he's honestly beginning to wonder here if Ezio's got any other clothes besides a white shirt and some trousers. meanwhile Ezio is frantically trying to keep Jacob alive because the Templars after the artifact he's retrieving aren't just the living ones...

The Old Guard AU: Ezio did not die in Florence. well. he died the first time in Florence, but he got back up again. he's been immortal ever since—each time he dies, he opens his eyes again after a minute or so and simply gets to his feet again. he's not quite sure how that happened, but he's managed to run into a few other Assassins over the years—maybe Edward's not dead either! or Shao Jun went to see him in Florence bc she also awakened that same immortality! either way, at some point, Ezio and his group hit London some time in 1888, because they're dreaming now of a man in a cell, dying and coming back over and over, and they're coming to save him. then they run into Evie, looking for her brother Jacob who's gone missing just as a certain serial killer has started terrorizing London...

RESIDENT EVIL
GENERAL PROMPTS: ALL: alternate universe version of character ends up in canon verse, ALL: Winter Soldier AU, ALL: finds out they're the heir to a small country when the old ruler dies, ALL: Fake Marriage AU, ALL: Everyone wakes up amnesiac, ALL: Dimension travel to a universe where the characters are in a relationship
Ada/Leon

role reversal AU - Leon as the mercenary, Ada as the rookie cop turned government agent. how do things change? what stays the same? what drew Leon into this life and how has it changed him, and what draws him to Ada now? what drew Ada into working for the government? I will not lie, I would totally love to see what happens to their dynamic if you flip their roles like this—Leon in canon seems to just kind of shrug and accept that Ada's just gonna do what Ada wants to do by the time RE6 happens, but I can't see Ada in his role doing the same thing even by the time of RE6.

Ada/Claire

a roleswap AU for Claire and Leon where Claire meets Ada instead! what's the cover story Ada gives her? does Claire get taken in or does she suspect what Ada's up to? what does their falling in love look like? I always like to think Ada would be slightly more forthright with Claire, because Claire isn't one to immediately buy what Ada would be selling her, so she has to throw her a couple more bones than she does with Leon. does Ada even go with the FBI agent backstory when she saves Claire or does she come up with something closer to the original's "looking for my boyfriend" cover story? and how would this affect their relationship post-Raccoon City? is Claire the government agent instead of Leon?

Leon/Chris

Winter Soldier AU - Leon successfully gets Ashley off the island, but he doesn't manage to get away himself before the cult captures him. years later, perhaps by the time of RE6 or so, there's a mysterious assassin with a reputation for brutal and efficient killings in play working for either the Family or Neo-Umbrella. Chris meets him in Edonia seemingly working for Wal-Mart Ada, and is struck by how familiar he seems. six months later, he runs into the guy again in an underground facility in Lanshiang, and in a brutal fight, unmasks him and is shocked to see: it's Leon, who doesn't remember him or Claire or anything else. what happens next?

fake married AU, where Leon and Chris have been good friends who've been kind of pining at each other for years now but have decided not to act on those feelings for a variety of reasons. however, they get a tip on a suspected bioterrorist who's going to resurface from hiding at a fancy gala. the problem? the gala is for married couples only. so Chris and Leon have to go undercover as Mr. and Mr. Smith (or whatever last name you prefer) to find this bioterrorist and put a stop to their scheme before everyone at the gala is put at risk. if you can include a slow-dancing scene set to "So Close" from Enchanted I will love you forever.

Chris and Leon waking up amnesiac instead of just Chris in RE6. maybe Leon also had a job that went horribly wrong, and he ends up bopping around Europe for a while and runs into Chris while he's there. and the two of them kind of just start sharing their lives together and slowly, over time, begin to fall in love. and then RE6 happens.

Leon S. Kennedy

ok this is just crack but what if Leon's mysterious past is that his mom was the princess to a small country who up and ran away with his dad? and he didn't know this until suddenly the king of said country dies and they find him working in anti-bioterrorism shit and are like, why is our prospective ruler in this incredibly dangerous job what the hell. how would Leon feel about this? suddenly he has all the leverage in the world and the US government can't do shit about it, what does he do next?

DEVIL MAY CRY
Dante & Vergil

“that day, if our positions were switched, would I have your life, and you mine?” roleswap AU from Eva’s death onward, where Vergil stayed in the house and Dante went to go play. what do they turn into, afterward? would Vergil start a devil-hunting business in Dante’s place? would Dante want to raise the tower for power, or just to get his mom back?

Dante and Vergil aren't twins—they're the same person, Dante's just that person with amnesia, like Mollymauk Tealeaf from Critical Role. and like Molly, he's not interested in finding out more about his past and possibly bringing that person back. except Vergil's ally Arkham wants to get the Temen-ni-gru up and going and is willing to do whatever it takes to "kill" Dante and get Vergil back. does he manage it? what does Vergil do when he realizes that Dante is still around—maybe as the voice of his conscience, or maybe even as a fully-formed personality in himself? does he kickstart the plot of DMC5 early by trying to split himself and Dante in half?

Kyrie/Nero

Nero lives outside Fortuna, bc Vergil didn't fall at the end of DMC3. Kyrie still lives in Fortuna, but has managed to procure a laptop with an Internet connection in some way, and at a time when she's generally questioning the people around her and her own identity, finds fandom. they meet on the Internet when Nero draws some art for Kyrie's fanfic and hit it off basically right away. give me their love story, as seen through the lens of fandom.

The Sparda Boys (Dante & Vergil & Nero)

Nero's mom is a crossover character of your choice! except the Sparda family only finds that out after DMC5, when said mother shows up at Devil May Cry looking for him for some reason. what happens next? the crossover character doesn't really matter here, but my own personal preference is someone who is in a canon that is just as strange in some way as Devil May Cry, like another video game canon—the point is, I want to see Nero wrestling not only with the heritage of Sparda, but also with this new one that he hadn't even realized he was a part of until now, and to see Dante and Vergil come to terms that there are other threats to the world besides demons. a quick note that the character doesn't even need to be a mom—transgender headcanons are accepted and very much welcome! just no cis mpreg.

Vergil meets Nero much earlier than in canon, and immediately shows up at Devil May Cry with a small child in hand like, I did not want to have to ask for your help but I'm desperate. please help. I have a son. and Dante immediately takes them in. what's next?

Dante and Vergil meet the versions of themselves that swapped fates. Nero has to deal with that mess.

CRITICAL ROLE
GENERAL: ALL: Winter Soldier AU, ALL: Role reversal, All: Star Trek AU, ALL: Assassin's Creed Fusion, ALL: Different character dies in canon dead character's place, ALL: Gideon the Ninth Necromancer/Cavalier Dynamics, ALL: Different First Meeting - one night stand before their first canon meeting, ALL: Origin Swap

SPECIFIC PROMPTS
Molly/Caleb

class swap AU where Molly is the wizard and Caleb is the blood hunter! how does that change things for them? what are their backstories like in this 'verse? how do they connect with each other? I would love to see how Molly would fare with magic, and meanwhile magic is such an ingrained part of Caleb in canon that I'm curious to see what he's like without any. is he still the cause of his parents' deaths? was Lucien some kind of blood mage, and Molly's stuck with that and making the most of it?

Caleb is a failed necromancer who's trying to hide his identity by becoming a cavalier. Molly is a necromancer, technically, who's pretending to be a cavalier until push comes to shove and he reveals a talent at necromancy that he has no idea how he managed to pull together. in a desperate move, they decide to team up anyway. what could go wrong? well, for starters: there's kind of a war on, and their little ragtag group the Mighty Nein can't stay out of it forever.

Molly meets Caleb once before: in a little town, while Caleb was going by a very different name and presenting a different and rather alluring persona to scrape together enough money to summon his cat Frumpkin. he's very surprised, to say the least, to meet Caleb again, and Caleb's just as shocked to see that the very colorful circus tiefling apparently has a few secrets he didn't quite deign to tell him when they first met. what happens next?

what if Caleb was the one who died on Glory Run Road and not Molly? (and then: what if Lucien possesses Caleb's body?)

Percy/Vex

Percy as an Assassin out for vengeance against the Templars who destroyed his family the de Rolos, and Vex as the mercenary who cut ties with her Templar father to live her life on her own terms. they meet in Paris. that's right: give me the Perc'ahlia version of Unity.