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Terrible Fic Ideas #38: Hallowed King, but make it HotD

One of my favorite - sadly unfinished - fics is Hallowed King by SpicyReyes, in which Severus Snape and an adult Harry Potter travel back to the events of PoA to prevent the Second Wizarding War. There's a lot to be said about it, but my absolute favorite part is that Snape and Harry are mistaken early on for a couple and have to keep up the charade.

So, naturally, since I've been on an Aemond/Lucerys kick lately, I thought: what if Aemond and Lucerys were both sent to their childhoods to prevent the Dance of the Dragons?

For clarity:

I lean more towards House of the Dragon than Fire and Blood here.

In this AU, Aegon II is two years older than Helaena, who is two years older than Aemond, Jace, Baela, and Rhaena; who are two years older than Luke and Daeron; who are three years older than Joffrey.

But just imagine it:

Luke dies at Storm's End as in canon. He watches the events of the Dance from the afterlife, as does Aemond after he dies over the God's Eye. This continues until Jaehaera throws herself from Maegor's Holdfast to power a spell of undoing.

Luke and Aemond wake up - alive - as children in their beds in the Red Keep, approximately half-a-year before the events that cost Aemond his eye. (Let's call them about 11 and 13 respectively.) They don't immediately realize that they've both time traveled, but confront each other within the first week of their return.

Naturally, they disagree - vehemently - on the best way to prevent the Dance, but they eventually come to some semblance of a plan that involves 1) getting Rhaenrya on throne, 2) getting the lords of the realm to want Rhaenrya on the throne, and 3) combatting the (self-)destructive tendencies of their various kin.

Their plotting involves a lot of sneaking off and whispering in dark alcoves and/or sneaking into each other's bedrooms to plot, and bickering like an old married couple.

After about six months of this, their family confronts them regarding the sneaking around - but have naturally come to the wrong conclusion. The entire royal family believes that Luke and Aemond are trying to carry on a secret relationship, or at least as much of a relationship as two young teenage lovers can have.

Luke and Aemond are horrified by this idea, but Aemond runs with it, as there's no way they can tell their family the truth. It is such an Oscar-worthy performance - or so shocking that no one can look away - that no one notices Luke gaping like a fish throughout Aemond's confession of undying love.

Viserys is the only one actually pleased by this development and orders them betrothed. This might work better in an a/b/o 'verse, or one where Targaryen magic allows for children from same-sex marriages, but Viserys might very well force the Faith to allow a same-sex marriage with no hope for children for his beloved grandson if it unites his family.

Pretending to be madly in love is... strange at first, but they both fall into it more easily than they could ever have imagined. After all, though Luke would never have admitted it, he spent most of his first life with the most embarrassing crush on his uncle, even after things soured between their families... and Aemond's obsession was equal parts love and hate by the end. (He will, reluctantly, admit he lost the plot a little bit after Luke's death.)

They eventually actually do fall in love with each other, though it takes a while - mostly because they're both idiots who think pulling on pigtails is a love declaration, but they eventually get there. It would be painful to watch if anyone realized their relationship was fake to begin with.

...and that's all I really have. They should succeed in avoiding the Dance and, preferably, reluctantly unite both halves of their families through the power of love and communication.

Bonuses include 1) Laenor being around for the initial love confession and being so very proud of his son for choosing to come out of the closet. This should be the most awkward conversation Luke ever has with his father, and should lead to Laenor choosing to come out of the closet as well and having his marriage with Rhaenrya legally dissolved. He retires to Driftmark with his current lover, Rhaenrya remarries, and there are no suspicious murders involved; 2) Aegon, 17, giving Aemond, 13, quite detailed - and unasked for - relationship advice. This should possibly be made worse by Daemon interrupting with his own advice, worse, advice. It should rival Luke's conversation with Laenor for level of embarrassment; and 3) The usual level of Targaryen family drama, but about half as much the usual amount of murder and maiming.

And that's it. As always, feel free to adopt this bun, just link back if you ever do anything with it.

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My most favourite one.

Terrible Fic Ideas #40: BST, but make it f!Jon Snow/Viserys III

One of the things I've noticed is that even in Game of Thrones fics where Rhaegar wins, his brother Viserys is an unlikable - if not outright villainous - character. This is understandable, as the books make it clear that Viserys in exile is a desperate, angry, bitter, and cruel man willing to go to any lengths for his crown. Any good traits he might have once had have been long lost by the time we meet him.

Which got me thinking: what if Viserys was slightly less of a terrible person? Or: what would it take to have a believable female!Jon Snow/Viserys III romance?

Aka: The Dyanna the Defiant Fic

Just imagine it:

Brandon Stark finds out about his sister's abduction two weeks later than in canon. This changes nothing about his death, but it is enough for him to marry Catelyn Tully and leave her carrying his heir. Their son Rickard is Lord of Winterfell for all of his brief life but dies six months after the Rebellion ends, leaving his uncle and regent Ned Stark the new Warden of the North.

This changes everything as far as f!Jon Snow - let's call her Dyanna - is concerned. Ned claims Dyanna as his trueborn daughter with Ashara Dayne. Ashara still dies as in canon, and afterwards Ned takes "their" daughter north with House Dayne's blessing.

Ned ends up marrying his brother's widow. It's an amiable enough marriage, but Dyanna being trueborn doesn't stop Catelyn from taking out her bitterness over Brandon's abandonment and baby Rickard's death on her. This turns into genuine loathing of her stepdaughter over the years.

Dyanna grows up passionate and kindhearted, skilled with a sword but equally skilled with the herbal remedies - and poisons - she learns from Old Nan and the "witches of the wolfswood." Her temper is legendary from a young age - and no one rouses her temper like her stepmother. It's she who coins the nickname Dyanna the Defiant.

Then the Greyjoy Rebellion happens. Dyanna, impetuously, decides she's not going to stay in Winterfell and put up with her stepmother's treatment. She runs away to White Harbor with the intent of taking ship to Starfall. Instead, by whim or misfortune, she winds up in Pentos.

In Pentos, she is taken in by a pair of elderly lesbian midwives who pass along their knowledge and treat her like the granddaughter they never had. She takes over their business after they die, and it is for this reason that when Daenerys suffers a female complaint some months before she is set to marry Khal Drogo, Dyanna is brought in to treat her.

Which brings us to Viserys.

Viserys is still very much on track to become the man we see in canon, but about six steps removed. (Perhaps Willem Darry lived longer in this 'verse, giving him a more stable childhood and time to learn how to use a sword before they end up on the streets?) He still can very much become the man who threatens to cut out his sister's unborn child, but not yet.

Dany's marriage to Drogo here is less selling his sister for an army Viserys too stupid to realize he'll never get as much as it is finding a husband who will give Dany the life she deserves in exchange for the gold for Viserys to buy an army - gold he'll only get when Dany births a son, which is why he hires Dyanna to ensure Dany won't have the same obstetric troubles many Targaryen queens do.

Dyanna and Viserys fight like cats and dogs, but Dyanna likes Dany well enough, so she agrees to accompany them for the time being.

While Dany's plot proceeds as in canon, Dyanna and Viserys have a belligerent sexual tension side plot that could easily fall into masochism tango. Dealer's choice on the details, but I envision the course of their relationship being genuine hostility to reluctant fondness to oh shit, I'm in love with them.

Viserys, stung by Dyanna's well-aimed barbs, seeks to prove her wrong about him and, in the process, becomes a better person. At least as good a person as a Targaryen can ever be - more Daemon than Aerys, at least.

Drogo dies. Dany becomes the Mother of Dragons. Rather than continuing to head east, the three of them decide to head back to the Narrow Sea and plan their conquest of Westeros.

I say the three of them because it's around this time Viserys and Dyanna get their act together. Viserys asks her to be his queen, Dyanna tells him he needs a kingdom first, and Viserys replies that he'll reunite the Seven Kingdoms for her dowery.

There's a long reconquest sequence with Dyanna very much leading the fighting and strategizing, but they eventually succeed. Viserys is crowned king, Dyanna his queen, and Dany gets Storm's End after they bring an end to House Baratheon.

Bonuses include: 1) Nobody finding out - even suspecting - Dyanna is really Rhaegar's daughter until Ned Stark comes to Dragonstone a la season 7 Jon Snow seeking aid to fight the White Walkers. Viserys should claim to have suspected it all along, as a dragon could only love a dragon, and be very blasé about it. Dyanna is less pleased, mostly because it means she'll likely have to spend much of her recently revealed pregnancy on bed rest instead of at the front; 2) Catelyn Tully as a truly evil stepmother, her hatred driven to its highest heights by Dyanna's combination of dragon and wolf blood; 3) Dany claiming her dragon as her second husband to avoid remarriage and having several children who later historians claim were truly fathered by Aurane Waters; and 4) Viserys and Dyanna continuing their tradition of cat and dog fighting at court, to the extent where many think they're about to watch one half of the royal couple murder the other, and making up just as publicly.

And that's... really a lot more than I was expecting. As always, feel free to adopt this bun, just link back if you do.

Other Jon Snow Headcanons: Aegon the Undying | Aegon the Unyielding | Aemon the Adventurous | Baelor the Brave | Daeron the Desired | Dyanna the Defiant | King of the Ashes | Lady Arryn | Lady Baratheon | Lady Lannister | Lady Stark | Prince Consort | Prince of Summerhall | Queen Mother

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Terrible Fic Idea #86: Percy Jackson, but make it Time Travel

I was minding my own business at work this morning when a terrible, awful, wonderful idea for a PJO time travel fix-it hit me out of the blue.

Or: What if a deified Percy was sent back to the start of canon?

Just imagine it:

Percy wakes screaming, which is immediately disconcerting as he's not slept in nearly 100 years. He summons a storm practically out of reflex, still caught up in the horrors of everything he just left behind, and promptly passes out, his 12 year old body not used to the strain.

-because he is twelve again - mortal again, - in his bed at Yancy Academy again, a week out from the field trip that will change his life.

Not that Percy realizes this straight off, what with the panic and the passing out, though he does pick it up fairly quickly once he wakes up again in the school infirmary. This nearly sends him into another tailspin of panic - (he is small, he is weak, he is alone in his head, one hundred years in the past, and can barely feel any of his domains) - before Percy manages to get himself under control enough to come up with the basics of a plan: get somewhere safe so he can start figuring out what the Hades is going on.

Percy manages to sneak out of the infirmary while everyone else is at dinner, hails the Chariot of Damnation even though he's way out of their normal service area ("We'll put it on your tab, dearie," the seeresses say, "we know you're good for it."), and arrives at Camp Half-Blood just after midnight.

His entrance is much less spectacular than it was originally, but no less startling for all Mr D is the only one awake to see it, for the moment Percy crosses the ward lines the magic begins to recognize him as the future Camp Director - which in turn startles Dionysus just enough that he doesn't immediately smite Percy when he practically throws himself at the god and starts going on about how pleased he is to see him.

The truth comes out in fits and starts, with Percy's exhaustion (and Dionysus' gifts) being the only thing keeping him from another panic attack. His story boils down to this:

Percy has always been a powerful demigod, perhaps the most powerful child of his father ever to be born to a mortal. His actions from his first quest onward only pushed him closer to the brink of immortality. Divinity did not come until several months after the events of ToA, when a camper had jokingly raised a glass to Perseus Jackson, Trainer of Heroes, which was all that was needed to push him over that final precipice.

As Lord Perseus, he was from the onset more powerful than most minor gods, his domains being the eclectic mix of Heroes, Natural Disasters, and Misery - the first earning him the permanent position of Director of Camp Half-Blood and Patron of Camp Jupiter, the second keeping him quite busy in an era of climate change, and the last having been unwittingly stolen years before from Akhlys in Tartarus. It is this power that causes Zeus to become even more paranoid.

-which is saying something, as his paranoia had already skyrocketed to new and greater heights after Apollo returned improved from the events of ToA.

It grows worse over the better part of the next century, with the Titan War, Giant War, Triumvirate, and all that follows eventually disabusing the majority of the gods that Zeus will never be an effective ruler. Apollo leads a rebellion against his father - and would have succeeded, had not Zeus not managed to somehow push Apollo directly into Chaos as Apollo was preparing for his final blow, which has the unfortunate effect of the universe trying to unwrite one of the most important gods from the history of Western Civilization and undoes the fabric of reality in the process. Percy was watching it unravel before his eyes (desperately, desperately trying to weave it back together but it won't hold) when he suddenly found himself screaming 100 years in the past.

It is a fantastical story, but Dionysus has no choice to believe it.

("But why did you come to me? Why not your father?" Percy looks down, running a finger along the grain of of the wooden table, "We became friends in the future. Misery and alcohol, you know? One of the oldest pairings in the book." There's more, Dionysus can tell, but the boy is already flagging, unused to the weaknesses of his childish mortal body. It can wait.)

The events of canon proceed apace - or at least as much as they can when Percy shows up at camp almost two months early knowing more about the Greek and Roman pantheon than anyone who hasn't lived through it, with the attitude of a hero who's been through Tartarus and the power levels of a minor god burning him up from the inside. All while sneaking off in his spare time to 1) plot to stop the end of the world with Dionysus and 2) hang out with Dionysus, because he is one hundred twelve, thank you very much, and needs adult company every now and then, for all he’s missed his long dead friends.

I actually have no idea how the events of the books themselves would play out - Percy has neither the patience or the ability to let everything play out exactly as before, but the major beats of PJO still take place, with Percy doing his best to undermine the arguments that drew so many to Kronos as he can while still mortal. (Advocating for cabins for minor gods and/or undetermined, or combined housing with temples. Gods being forced to claim their children when they arrive at camp, etc.)

Perhaps Kronos tries harder to sway Percy to his side once he sees how strong a demigod he is, showing his hand too soon and causing the Titan War to be an all out war from the start of TTC until the Battle of Manhattan? Percy is more than just a child solider - he is a seasoned teenage general, directing battles, saving many with is experience but still loosing too many; a one-man army who eventually ascends on his sixteenth birthday, Luke's misery as he kills himself being the last push Percy needs to reclaim his divinity and his domains.

Gaining his godhood early allows Percy to temper the events of HOO and TOA (the Giant War still happens, but a generation later with a different set of demigods, and allows Zeus to redeem himself somewhat by being an effective war leader; Apollo never becomes mortal but the Triumvirate is destroyed a generation after that), if not prevent them. Though a part of him will always long for his mortality, it was never in the cards. It was either godhood or an early death, and Percy would rather spend an eternity protecting demigods and giving them the training they need to protect themselves than the alternative.

And so that's what Percy Jackson does, because that's what he's always done: accept as much misery for himself to make the lives of those he loves as misery-free as possible.

Bonuses include:

No hint of Percy/Annabeth in the new timeline, with the pair in the original having broken up shortly before Percy's ascension, having realize their codependency was not healthy, nor was it actually romantic love. From 100 years on, Percy is critical of his first relationship, but still counts Annabeth as one of his best friends, even if they're not as close in this timeline.

Although never widely disseminated, several individuals come to learn of Percy's trip through time and the circumstances that lead to it. (Poseidon, Sally, Thalia). A few others suspect Percy has some level of prophetic gift to go along with his other powers. But for the most part no one has any idea Percy is anything other than a powerful demigod with some really bad luck; and

It eventually coming out that Percy and Dionysus had a thing in the future, with Percy over the course of 100 years coming to like, respect, and eventually love the God of Wine. Percy is absolutely convinced it was entirely one-sided, their thing only adding up to a few drunken fucks between friends (because that's what Dionysus does with his friends), but Dionysus after he learns of it not being so sure (because it's really not what he does with friends and hasn't been for millennia). Whatever the case, it is exceptionally awkward when it comes out, especially as Percy's only physically 14 at the time, and attempting to resolve this awkwardness is how Thalia ends up learning about the time travel.

Extra bonus points if Percy and Ariadne were decent friends in the original timeline, become decent friends again in the new one, and settle into a polyamorous relationship with Dionysus (after Percy is deified and comes of age) that has Hera spitting teeth for decades.

And that is far, far more than I'd ever thought I'd have, but I think this plot bun somehow merged with a thread of an idea for a Dionysus-positive fic that's been tickling at me for years now. As always, feel free to adopt, just link back if you do anything with it.

More PJO Ideas | More Terrible Fic Ideas

#interesting

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[ayowotsdis]

jokes on you I love Sansa I love Daenerys I love Catelyn I love Arya I love Cersei I love Brienne honestly I love every single female character in asoiaf I’m literally never losing you wish you were me

[ayowotsdis]

Can you imagine the incandescent rage Cersei would feel if she knew Stannis Baratheon WAS seduceable all along she just had to magically kill one of his brothers? My girl would be steaming she'd be like I DID THAT WITH MY WITS AND JUGS (of wine) AND SOMEHOW IM IN THE WRONG???

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some loser: humans are innately selfish creatures

my psych book:

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one day you’re casually interested in cars going vroom and the next you discover brocedes and life is simply never the same afterwards

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I saw this meme format and I had to do it.

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something something sanjay kapoor saying "om and i? we're just friends." changed the entire trajectory of my life.

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a lot of problems would’ve been avoided if cps existed in the got verse

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grrm unimaginably funny and real for hating harry potter and writing power scaling fan fiction about it. i think my awesome 35 year old morally grey knight oc would beat the shit out of hermione cringer

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cringe ass family ❤

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Another year, another group of my delightful ninth graders trying to spell the word "tragedy" for their Romeo and Juliet assignment.

Last year's collection

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Reality of Mothers in Palestine.

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Help Hamza get his family out of gaza.