A Groundhog Day AU where A makes it through the loop, works out all their stuff with person B, and finally wakes up the next morning, with a brand-new day, next to person B - whereupon person B says "Oh shit, it's today again." (Bonus if you keep it going through the whole cast one day at a time.)
They were roommates. And they were really bad at being roommates. They can't share space. They nearly ruined their friendship. It's not until they give it up and each get their own place that romance has room to blossom.
There was only one bed. And Character A has only previously shared beds before on awkward trips with family/co-workers/at Grandma's house, or in a time/place where stacking six strangers to a bed at an inn was normal, and thus has trained themselves to not be awkward about it and to keep max space between bed partners even when sound sleep. Character B is not sure what to make of this.
Magical castwide sexswap. Outies become innies, innies become outies. But a significant part of the cast wasn't cis to start with.
Magical castwide genderswitch. Gender identity switches (at random, not binary), body parts don't.
Actual sex magic based on RL ritual sex magic.
Bodyswap where Our Pairing don't swap with each other, they swap with random other friends who are tired of all the UST between them and use the opportunity to Make It Weird.
Somebody gets turned into a houseplant (credit sholio).
Undercover at a straight bar. They're really bad at it.
Character swaps places with AU version of themself, who has swapped with a different AU version of themself, who has swapped with a different AU version of themself, etc down the line. They're all happily dating different people.
Accidentally psychically bonded to someone other than the person you have a massive secret crush on. If telepathically hiding it from the person you're in love with is hard, try hiding it from the person who really, really doesn't ever want to see that stuff in your head. (Bonus if it's mutual and ends up poly V). (Super bonus for "all destined metamours get soulbonds" AU.)
Trapped in a blizzard, huddling for warmth, way too sick and scared and busy surviving to think about sex or romance, get together in the nice warm ski lodge afterward.
Person hits their head and gets knocked out, repercussions actually meticulousy medically accurate.
Aliens Make Them Not Have Sex
Fake relationship, they both fall hard for other people while faking it, have to deal with everyone thinking they're being unfaithful until they can end the fake relationship.
Soulmark AU, but somebody did the worldbuilding work so history/culture has actually plausibly changed as much as it would need to.
Character has secretly been elf/vampire/demon/immortal all along. This changes nothing about canon.
Canon is the mirrorverse AU.
They get drunk and Vegas/Gretna Green married, only they get a call back the next day finding out it's not valid because the records check turned up that they're both already married. To each other. They were already accidentally married years ago and didn't realize (or secretly married to each other and now the secret's going to have to come out).
Unless you count "all non-AU Les Mis fic" as 1 and "Alternia" as 19, I have done 15 and 18. And failed repeatedly to finish several others. Especially 5.
I just read Where I End and You Begin by Preston Norton, which is published bodyswap YA very much in the #8 range. The bodyswappers are enemies-to-friends, their love interests are each other's respective best friends, and the originally male one discovers their nonbinary identity over the course of the book. Also, there's a production of Twelfth Night to make everything queerer.
I second Ever-Fixed Mark, although I always want any soulmark AU that contains homophobia to explain why that ever developed if society really feels like you're supposed to boink the person you've got a mark with. (The side question of "why, if a person has a name on them, you decide it's someone else's name and not their own name" is one I am happily willing to ignore for the sake of the trope.)
Were they hockey fic? The only time I've seen it is in hockey fic deailng with RL concussions on the field, and I only ever read hockey fic for the tropes and never kept track of it very well.
I've read a fair amount of sickfic that does various illnesses/injuries realistically, but in non-sports fandoms at least, concussion fic is so vastly outnumbered by "walked into a bar, got unrealistic amnesia". Or "needed to be knocked out for plot reasons, no side effects" (which is. Fine.)
I know what I want: sedoretu fic which accounts for changing family dynamics in multiple generations, not just the one with the main characters. Everyone needs four parents.
Yes! Although, tbf, so many fandom characters have dead/crappy parents that in a lot of cases you're just increasing the number of dead/crappy parents. (Like, with Tony Stark, the obvious options are either Jarvis and his wife (dead, extra sad) or Obie and a wife (evil, extra crappy, also dead for most of canon.)
It would be nice though.
In fact I would be so there for "Sedoretu AU where the change has nothing to do with MC's romantic life, it just has to do with them having some supportive parents around for once".
I'm working on 14? Fucker's been stalled months, but at least I know why: I don't know enough about what the minor antagonist has been up to to write the scene that, once it's written, I can post chapter 3.
…I mean it's also an unrealistic amnesia fic, that's rather the point? but I'm deliberately going hard on the medical detail as a balance?
The closest I've come to seeing it explicitly done is in politics RPF. Yeah. (It can be really cathartic to get to see the not-mirrorverse-AU, though, even in glimpses.)
Although I would also love one where the two people *are* into each other, it's just the power of unspoken love is not enough to override the power of being kicked by siblings for fifteen years. :D
I've also written a number of platonic huddling-for-warmth fics, as well as platonic bed-sharing, but I think that kind of forced proximity with someone you're attracted to while not having sex is probably a very different dynamic.
I really want to write more platonic soulmate/soulbonding fic (I've only written something which could vaguely be construed that way once), more fake relationships that aren't get-together fic, more of all of that kind of thing. This list is excellent for ideas and/or reminders of things I meant to write anyway. :D
Okay but that one *is* just depressing as hell, thanks for retraumatizing me, I'd forgotten I read that. :P
IDK, I meant Mirrorverse AU not as "people fail, things are dark", but as more.... unrepentantly awful, in a way that your non-evil counterparts are appalled by but you don't even parse? But also extra sexy. And let's face it, there is a TON of scope for that in Stargate canon. From a certain POV. ("You blew up a solar system? You're doing *what* with the Wraith? NO, those things don't 'just happen'! And does Sheppard have to lean like that on everything, and that hair is NOT regulation in my universe. Augh I want to go home.")
Yeah some of these happen ... not never, at least, in ace/platonic fic? But shipfic always plays them straight. And the more I read the platonic ones, the more I want those versions mixed up with standard shipfic. *evil grin*
These are great! ETA: I think #3 is my favourite. There are not enough together-but-not-cohabiting stories!!
I've written a few #8-ish ones in different fandoms: Due South - Fraser bodyswaps with his (dead) father; White Collar - Elizabeth and Mozzie bodyswap (just the opening: I never finished it, and it's much more gen than OT3 at this point); Guardian - Zhao Yunlan bodyswaps with Da Qing. But the non-part-of-the-pairing character didn't deliberately interfere in the relationship in any of those cases, really, so maybe they don't count? I just really like weird and unromantic bodyswaps. :-)
Edited (finishing the thought) 2019-07-15 22:12 (UTC)
I am visualizing, like, they move out because they can't take it, and then they very cautiously set up days out together to try to repair things, and then they slowly realize that they want the friend dates to be date-dates.. but the minute they try to visaulize being a couple they flash back to roommate trauma and pull away. So much potential for ridiculous pining!
Also those are all great, although it is indeed tragic that the White Collar one isn't as long as the Due South one. :D
That sounds too murdery for me. :P (Legit the only point in the wikipedia part where I perked up was where the first looper offered to help the second looper out.)
WRT 1, my absolute favourite coffee shop AU fic idea I've seen was exactly that with the Hamilton cast. Which in the 1770s means less 'cute macchiatos' and more 'shouting matches about politics' :P
I also absolutely love 8, 10, 12, 15, and 20!!
I did once write something sorta similar to 16, but instead one of the characters is aroace and totally thought it'd be obvious they would never actually get together and the whole thing would end in a big laugh but instead everyone goes with it, but it does let them actually get to spend a lot of time with their best friend in a way they haven't for a long time, which makes them not want it to end because they're sure they'll be abandoned once the game ends and they start dating someone, and then they get terrified that their friend IS actually legit falling for them and it's all a big 'AHHHHHHHHH' from beginning to end...
Also omg I'm so with you on 17, I actually don't really like soulmate AUs for the romantic factor (the whole 'but can we be together/do they like me/do I like them??' part is most of the fun for me!!) but they can be fascinating for worldbuilding! One time I wrote a soulmate AU where the whole point was that the main character's soulmate is the son of a super important political figure, but he hasn't received any contact from them at all, even though his grandfather is actually a Lord, with the implication being that his grandfather either doesn't know where he is or doesn't give a shit about him (this is also in the 1770s haha), and the ensuing family angst of it all...
I have always wondered why there aren't dozens and dozens of Hamilton coffeeshop fic that blend 18th century history with modern coffeeshop AU tropes, it could be so great.
Yeah, a lot of these turn up sometimes as aroace but I think doing them with allo characters, just not the expected direction, can be just as fun!
I actually have a story I'm working on with an aroace character who ends up in a situation like that with a friend who is in fact falling for them, but then it turns out said friend is the version of litho who greatly prefers their great passions to be unrequited, so falling for an aroace person is perfect for them, and then they kind of alternate between fake dating, being loudly queerplatonic, and just fucking with people. :D Someday I should finish that story. Or the other version with the same characters but set in the 19th century.
I've wanted more like 14 ever since I had a head injury. Comedy amnesia from a knock out blow is sometimes fun, though, so I can occasionally forgive it (like in the episode of Prince of Tennis where a tennis ball to the head makes Kaidou think he's a cat).
I don't mind the silly tropey ones at all, I just wish we got more of the other kind sometimes, yeah. (Especially because RL amnesia stories are often super interesting and full of weird plot/ship hooks.)
About #19: Our reality is the weird, low-probability timeline. That's been proven by the last two years.
About #1: Ooh, I would like to see an 18th century European coffee shop, where powerful merchants and political operators and spies are intriguing over coffee and making deals that will shape the future of the world.
Also the dark timeline. Although a lot of fandom canons are from even darker timelines, if looked at from the right POV.
And 18th century coffee shops have so much potential! So do 17th and 19th century coffeeshops. And the mid-20th century ones where the original hipsters read their beat poetry. And Ottoman Imperial coffeeshops. Seriously. So much potential.
I don't know if I'm more in favor of modern fandoms getting historic coffee shop AUs, or historic fandoms getting coffeeshop AUs set in their canon periods. Or fandoms which span long time periods getting "five things that happened in coffeeshops in five different centuries" stories! :D
These are all brilliant, but I really want especially coffee shop AUs set specifically in the extremely slow-moving revolutionary riverboat coffeeshops of Frances Hardinge's Fly By Night, occasionally pursued by equally slow-moving cops.
I don't know that canon, but this make me think of the slow-motion starship chase in The Last Jedi -- would 100% read a version of that with riverboat coffeeshops instead, I'm sure it would make more sense! XD
I don't know about any of these, but I was thinking about take-your-fandom-to-work AUs as I was out in the tree fields of North Saanich this morning (my soon-to-be long-term workplace!). I didn't come up with anything inspiring based on my forestry nursery work, but somehow I did hit up on the idea that an Aziraphale/Crowley western Canadian tree planter AU would be QUITE amusing.
Eee, I remembered my all-time favorite soulmate AU, and I think it might count as 17! "Fate, at Your Fingertips" by radialarch, BBC Sherlock fandom, John/Sherlock
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sholio).
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