memery!

[vaznetti]

As seen on yahtzee63's lj --

The Hypothetical AU Meme: Take any one of the fandoms you know I write AND give me another time period (Ancient Rome, Regency England, etc.). I will then explain what story from that fandom I would AU in that era.

It looks like fun, and I am here all afternoon -- meme me!

Comments

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Firefly in Ancient Rome.

[vaznetti]

Well, of course, they're pirates. Bandits, actually, in Spain in the 70s and 60s BCE.

Leaving aside issues of gender, as I am about to do -- Mal and Zoe followed Sertorius to Spain after Sulla won in Italy, and supported him there, but Mal grew more and more disillusioned, and deserted after Sertorius' death (and thus, just before Pompey's victory.) He and Zoe take to a life of small-scale trade and banditry, and over time build up a small force of their own -- Jayne, another deserter (probably from Pompey!), provides extra muscle, while Kaylee, a local Spanish girl, serves as a kind of guide and supply-master. Inara is also Spanish (maybe originally from a Phoenician family?), but from a wealthy background -- her family has problems of their own in coming to terms with Roman control of the region, and she and Mal still have the romance thing going.

Book remains a mystery: he's Roman, and Mal and Zoe suspect that he was once someone important -- maybe a proscribed senator who managed to escape from Sulla.

Simon and River... well, Mal and Zoe assume that they're runaway slaves, but that isn't at all the case. They're from a wealthy Roman family, but their parents sent River (who still has her strange psychic powers) to some kind of Greek cult center in Southern Italy, from which Simon had to rescue her. Now they're on the run, too!

And basically, they fight commit crime!

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Oh, awesome. I would totally read that.

[vaznetti]

It does kind of lack a plot... but Spain! and Sertorius! And Mal can be all embittered about Rome!

[rhi]

And River is trying not to end up stuck as an oracle, but there's a mysterious faction that sees her as a way to revive the power (and wealth!) of Dodona or Delphi...

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

pfft, plot! They commit crime is plot enough for me!

[aliskye.livejournal.com]

Supernatural and 1920's America. :)

[vaznetti]

Hm. The problem with SPN is that, as Yahtzee put it, it's the same wherever you go -- in this case, they drive around in a slightly different car, still fighting evil. But instead of credit-card fraud, they make occasional money bootlegging, and this is how the Law starts to get interested in them -- so in addition to their supernatural problems, they're being hunted by gangsters on the one hand, for stealing their profits, and by the government on the other, for (supposedly) running a nation-wide bootlegging operation.

At least Dean looks really good in those hats!

[aliskye.livejournal.com]

Yeah.....too easy, but you are absolutely correct.... I just want to see Dean in those hats. :)

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Mmm...Dean dressed up as a 1920s gangster would be awesome. And John. Can you imagine John? Dear god.

[anenko.livejournal.com]

Alias - Frontier America.

[vaznetti]

Hm. So the sort of politically responsible thing to do would be to make this an AU all about expansion westward and the dispossession of the Indians, and you could actually do something quite interesting to do with mixed marriages and passing and issues like that. But I am unable to be that responsible this afternoon so -- instead of spies, they're ranchers, and the conflict is all about land grabs and cattle.

Jack Bristow and Arvin Sloane started out working for the same outfit, but Arvin eventually struck out on his own, and Jack (apparently) went with him; it turns out, of course, that Arvin is doing quite a lot of cattle rustling from their old employer, and Jack is working to keep tabs on him. The plot, I think, would hinge on the return of Jack's beloved and long-lost wife, who (he thought) had been kidnapped and massacred by bandits, but who in point of fact had simply returned to Mexico -- the story would be Jack's process of learning about Irina/Laura -- who was she, really? what did she want? had she in fact been sending information on the movements of Texas rangers to the Mexican government? And what was Arvin's role in her disappearence, all those years ago.

Um... and no doubt I'd find some way to work Sydney into this, as well.

[timesink.livejournal.com]

I would totally read that, even without Sydney.

[vaznetti]

It's really just the thought of Jack Bristow as a cowboy, isn't it?

[timesink.livejournal.com]

I think it's Irina as a secret Mexican bandit.

Oh, okay, Jack in a big long duster, too. Victor Garber could rock that.

[anenko.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. I'm willing to admit to being shallow: cowboy hats are hot.

(For some plot related reason, at some point, Sydney must absolutely crossdress.)

[azarsuerte.livejournal.com]

The X-Files. Revolutionary America. :-)

[vaznetti]

This is kind of cool -- I think I'd write it as a more-or-less straightforward political story, set in an around Mulder's search for an explanation for his sister's mysterious disappearance. So the Consortium is actually a Loyalist organization working secretly within the Revolutionary movement to undercut and betray it -- and Mulder and Scully are (of course!) revolutionaries, but Mulder is torn between his political ideals and his need to investigate the Consortium, which he is sure is responsible for Samantha's fate! Cue a great deal of soul-searching and angst.

Scully, in this universe, really is a doctor: one of those over-educated New England women, and her family has no idea what to do with her, or with her strange attachment to Mulder. Mulder, of course, is far too involved in his own problems to worry about the way she's transgressing gender roles.

In this universe, Krycek is French.

[azarsuerte.livejournal.com]

Oh man. Now I totally want you to actually write this AU!

[camille-is-here.livejournal.com]

Just back from Wisconsin.

In this universe, Krycek is French.

So totally works in character!

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

I'll take Alias in 1930s India, please.

[vaznetti]

Wow... talk about something I am totally clueless about!

Obviously, the backdrop is something to do with the Independence movement. All the main characters are Indian or Anglo-Indian -- the Bristows and Derevkos and Sloane -- and the larger plot movement is to do with loyalty/disloyalty to the Empire, and the question of who is trustworthy and who is a double agent. I think Irina is Anglo-Indian -- mostly I say this so that she, Sydney and Nadia can all wear both Indian and European clothes. Jack and Arvin are civil servants.

And I just got distracted by the thought of Irina and Sydney working a room in 1930s European clothes, and have become entirely distracted from any plot there might have been. Help!

[se-parsons.livejournal.com]

Jericho in Medieval Germany.

[vaznetti]

Yatzee has a really cool Medieval version of Jericho here!

So I would have to do something to do with Luther and that wacky period with the revolution, or whatever it was, in Munster (?) and all that. I must think more about this.

Edited because I totally know how to close tags. Really.

[se-parsons.livejournal.com]

Hee, I immediately thought Lollards, but then it was too easy, so I put it in Germany.

Yahtzee's is cool!

[bardsmaid.livejournal.com]

The X-Files (including Krycek, of course) in Stalin's Russia.

[vaznetti]

It's like... extra paranoia and danger!

You wouldn't really need to change very much, would you? The outline of the conspiracy plot and the mytharc would remain more or less in place. I think, in this version, Mulder would be a detective in Moscow, Scully a pathologist -- they are both Party members, of course, Scully more of a believer than Mulder. It's set in the 30s. Krycek is the NKVD mole in Mulder's department. I suspect that a lot of plots revolve around Mulder chasing elements of the conspiracy and finding real atrocities -- work camps, confiscations, famines.

The main difference would be one of tone -- the danger being that much closer. And of course, as one gets closer to the end of the decade, the looming threat of Hitler and war: by 1941, Mulder might know enough to do some damage to the regime, but should he?

This would be pretty cool.

[bardsmaid.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this! Any idea how Marita might fit into this scenario?

[maidenjedi]

Firefly set in Elizabethan England.

[vaznetti]

Can they be privateers? I think Mal would be a great privateer, although I guess the period is wrong for tight pants. Or, no -- they're traveling actors, always on the verge of ruin (and often on the run from the law), and River and Simon have run away and hidden with them. Mal, obviously, is the head of the company and the leading man. Wash is the playwright, and along with Jayne and Book, plays the supporting male roles. I will ignore the fact that women did not act on stage in this period and make Inara the ingenue and give Zoe the older female parts. Kaylee handles the stage machinery, and would like to act, but forgets her lines. They tried putting River in a production once, and only once, but Simon does quite well, when he can get over his sense that acting is beneath his station. I suspect you could get quite a good comedy story over the time they tried to give River a part.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Well, you did write one or two Rome ficlets, so I dare you: the Julii plus Vorenus and Pullo in WWI-torn Europe, country of your choice.

[se-parsons.livejournal.com]

Or IN SPACE!!!!

[vaznetti]

I have always thought that if Lucas had been thinking (if he were capable of thinking) he would have done something like that for the Star Wars prequels. I mean, you have the huge territory controlled by a corrupt and ineffective Senate, the gradual rise of generals to such extraordinary power that the system can no longer contain them -- then an autocratic movement which portrays itself as a return to old-fashioned, uncorrupt ways, but in fact destroys everything meaningful about the old order... It could totally have worked!

So that's my structure: an oligarchic system on its last legs, warlords contending for power, Caesar forced to start a civil war to defend his own position... I'd probably make the patronage system stronger, so that soldiers were more dependent on their generals. And maybe, since this is "Rome" and not actual history, focus not on the military stuff but on Atia and Octavia as powerbrokers in their own right -- moving it into outer space, I could get rid of the Roman gender expectations. So in this story, I think it would be Atia and Octavia who actually brought about the revolution.

[se-parsons.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I love the Atia and Octavia angle.

You know, you could totally write this for real by changing it up some. I would read that book for sure.

[vaznetti]

Well, the obvious choice would be to pull a reverse-Syme, with Octavian as a would-be Mussolini in the years just after the war.

But instead, let's say: France. Caesar as the marechal, Octavian still his grand-nephew, taken on as part of his staff at 18. Vorenus and Pullo are, as before, soldiers, and as before, Vorenus has been promoted up through the ranks due to the loss of too many officers. (Was this an issue in France as it was in England? I am too lazy to explain to my husband why I would want to know.) Octavian, I think, is assigned to Vorenus -- on the one hand he looks down on Vorenus, because the Octavians are provincial aristocracy and Vorenus comes from a fairly low bourgeois family. But also, at the academy, Octavian had become devoted to socialism -- call it adolescent rebelion! -- so he bonds much more easily with Pullo. (Pullo, of course, could care less about politics -- all he wants is to kill some more Germans and go home with all his limbs intact -- but Vorenus is vehemently anti-communist.)

The plot, I think, revolves around the plans for peace, rather than the war itself -- what kind of country will France become? Will there be a revolution there, as well? Caesar, I think, is a conservative, and it's possible that (if he survives the war) he might end up opposed to his firebrand grand-nephew.

[hossgal.livejournal.com]

Deadwood, Edo Japan.

(You do write Deadwood, yes?)

- hg

[vaznetti]

You know, I have stared at this and stared at this, and the problem isn't that I can't write Deadwood, it's that I don't know enough about Edo Japan to even get started on an answer! Do you have an alternate?

Surely! (...waity. you're not Shirley)

[hossgal.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Okay, Deadwood in Sparta (or pre-Pellopeasian (sp?) war, if Sparta alone is too tight.)

...or...*gets crafty glint in her eye*

Deadwood in the Israel of the Maccabees. *g*

- hg

Re: Surely! (...waity. you're not Shirley)

[vaznetti]

Deadwood in the Israel of the Maccabees.

Ha!!! OK, so we have the gradual loosening of Seleucid control over the region, but lets face it, it's not like the Maccabees actually control anything, so it's the perfect environment for a lawless community to grow up. Possibly, the "rush" of wealth is based around overland trade in spices, so it's off at the borders anyway. The plot, I think, centers on the attempt of the Hasmoneans to actually exercise control over the settlement as they consolidate into a real kingdom.

Our cast of characters include the Hellenized Jewish owner of the local whorehouse (which also serves as a clearinghouse for information about trade routes and caravans) -- he's involved in a feud with the Syrian-Greek owner of a second whorehouse, and in generally running the town and keeping it independent enough to ensure his profits. Newcomers to town, hoping to set up stables are a soldier recently discharged from the Maccabean army and his good friend, from Tyre -- the friend is the one who actually makes the business work, while the former soldier (let's call him Seth!) can't seem to keep from getting involved in the government of the settlement. And with the wealthy widow of a man who recently made a killing in the spice trade. There's some tension in the town between Greeks, Hellenized Jews, and non-Helenized Jews (for example, the widow comes from a Hellenized family, but Seth doesn't), although mostly they're all trying to keep their own business going -- but when Seth's former army buddies turn up to make sure the settlement becomes a proper part of the kingdom, he'll need to decide where his loyalties really lie.

There will also be choruses of dancing girls/prostitutes, camel-traders, and soldiers.

Re: Surely! (...waity. you're not Shirley)

[hossgal.livejournal.com]

HA!

I like. (Also, I need to finish my Purim story...)

My apologies for the Edo Japan curve-ball. I'm re-reading a stack of Lone Wolf and Cub, and it's been on my brain.

- hg

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

Rome in the modern day!

[vaznetti]

It would all be very Kennedy-esque, wouldn't it? Well, if you set it in America. But it might be rather better in an unnamed South American country... except that that would be a little old-fashioned, I guess. You'd have to set it 40 or 50 years ago to really make it work. So instead -- the Julio-Kennedy dynasty, where the charismatic elder of the family is assassinated soon after gaining the presidency; his much younger great-nephew uses the connection to get his own political career going, but is gradually revealed, over the course of the series, to be heartless, ambitious and corrupt.

Much like "Rome," there would be a lot of sex in this story, some of it almost certainly incestuous.