AU Brainstorming Post!
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alternate_ds_c6dWelcome! Today is the first official day of the DS-C6D Alternate Universe (multimedia!) Challenge, and we're kicking things off with our big AU brainstorming post! YAYYY!! \o/
We hope the ideas posted here will inspire your creativity and lead to some great fanworks. All the sample AUs from in the Signups & Rules post are behind the cut, and there are ZILLIONS more possibilities. Please share your AU ideas below!
We ask that you follow these guidelines to help us keep things organized:
1. Take a moment to read over what counts as an AU/AR & be sure your AUs qualify.
2. List your AUs in a top-level comment to this post (i.e. in a reply to the post itself, not as a reply to someone else's comment), and limit each idea to a sentence or less, please!
3. This is a multimedia challenge, so please DO include ideas that are flexible enough to work across different formats. We're as enthusiastic about fic as we are about art, comics, podfic, poetry, songs, vids, yarncraft, sculpture, cosplay costumes, dolls, puppet shows, fan-made movies, etc. ad infinitum.
Feel free to discuss and elaborate in replies to each other's comments, and keep in mind that further discussion posts will be forthcoming atalternate_ds_c6d. Once you find some ideas you like, make something! The first posting weekend starts 10 weeks from today! (Posting dates & other rules are here.)
Please note: We aren't doing claims. There are tons of great ideas to go around, and we think the possibility of multiple people making fanworks on the same theme is AWESOME. (There could be multiple Space AUs!!!) So! Create as many works based on as many AUs as you want. You may also create works based on AUs that are NOT on this list. And you can either talk about your AU or surprise us. Go with what works for you. There is room for everything; just make it DS-C6D & make it AU.
Okay? Okay! Onto the list! (Now numbered for your skimming convenience!)
AU IDEAS!
1. Dief is a Teen Wolf werewolf.
2. Undercover space ranger Benton Fraser and sometime galactic nemesis Miles Vorkosigan walk into Mos Eisley Spaceport!
3. Frannie was born in Wilby and works for Buddy at the local police station.
4. Fraser is the Tom Hanks character in Sleepless in Seattle.
5. Hard Core Logo is a band of psychic wolf-brothers.
6. The Twitch City cast are My Little Ponies.
7. Leoben Conoy is a time-traveling adventurer.
8. The Slings & Arrows cast are astrophysicists.
9. Cutter and Lennox are hard-boiled detectives in 1946—with werewolves!
10. Constable Frannie Vecchio of the RCMP comes to Chicago on the trail of the killers of her mother, goes to work in the Consulate for Inspector Smithbauer, and fights crime with Detective Meg Thatcher of the CPD.
11. Fraser and the Rays are a team of world-class thieves plaguing Chicago and foiling Welsh & Thatcher's attempts to nab them.
12. In his early 20s, Fraser quits the RCMP to run a coffee shop in Moose Jaw.
13. Muldoon kills Bob instead of Caroline, and she then becomes a Mountie.
14. Superheroes
15. Giant ocean mammals
16. Gladiators
17. Space pirates
18. Sea pirates
19. Robots
20. One day Ray starts to switch bodies with his car; over the course of time, the conversion sticks permanently.
21. The New Burbage Shakespearean Festival is staffed entirely by vampires.
22. A complete gender switch of Due South, where everyone's always been/is permanently changed to the opposite gender.
23. Steampunk!Mounties
24. Fraser as Captain Canada
25. old west US/fur-trade-era Canada
26. Twitch City cast as curling rink
27. Harlequin AU
28. Leoben is Starbuck instead of Kara
29. Around the World in 80 Days fusion
30. Cars movie fusion (yes, as in Pixar)
31. Hogwarts AU
32. DS-Muppets fusion in a world where muppets are real: Fraser is a Mountie muppet; Rays are police muppets.
33. Fork in the road where RayK really is abducted by aliens as a child & the fateful day at the bank never happens.
34. Hard Core Logo as chamber quartet/internet sensation a la 2Cellos
35. due South/Temeraire fusion
36. Frannie has always been the cop in the family ever since Ray decided to work with Zuko.
37. DS/Stargate crossover: RayK really was kidnapped by aliens -- the Asgard.
38. The Canadian brass decides that, since sending him to exile in America didn't help, the only way to really get rid of Fraser is to send him to another Galaxy. Let Atlantis and Pegasus deal with the insanity that follows him around.
39. due South fusion with the movie In Time, with Ray as a Dayton factory working trying to earn enough minutes to keep himself and his mother alive, and Fraser as a Timekeeper who is beginning to have doubts about the justice of the system he enforces.
40. After the events of 'Victoria's Secret', Fraser resigns from the RCMP and returns to Canada. Ray V investigates. He finds that Fraser received a mysterious letter from Eric, and follows him to Eric's village to make sure that he's OK.
41. Caroline miscarried in her seventh month of pregnancy. Bob was out on patrol, and there was no point contacting the mid-wife - what's done was done. Three days later, in the grip of a fever, Caroline followed a strange, flickering light into the woods and found an infant dressed in swaddling clothes. When Bob came home a week later, she told him the boy was their child.
42. It's Dan who's trying to save Duck
43. AU where Fraser and (either) Ray are hard-boiled, Humphrey Bogart type detectives in the 1930s
44. (Related to the previous one) something with Al Capone or John Dillinger. Fraser and Ray could for example be part of Chicago PD's Dillinger Squad.
45. Historical AU - Vienna Congress (Sep 1814-Jun 1815) - Fraser, Turnbull, Vecchio, Kowalski et al are in Vienna, either as aides attending the congress or as members of the ton out for a good time. Family members may be present (Frannie as the reigning belle?).
46. Due South Down Under - how would the Due South cast be different if the series had been set in Australia?
47. Due South / M*A*S*H fusion
48. (Harlequin) Where RayK didn't drop out of college but ended up as a non-tenure track junior professor who writes erotic novels to make ends meet after the divorce from Stella. At an academic conference he encounters Prof Fraser, a mild-mannered Canadian who is a world expert on lichen but hopeless at finding his way around Chicago.
49. DS and First Nations mythology: First Nations mythology is real. Fraser and Ray or someone else finds that out unexpectedly when they have an encounter with the Raven (trickster, bringer of the sun, helps humans out against other deities.) and/or Sedna (mpreg baby of a creation myth and the equivalent of Neptune), maybe during their Hand of Franklin adventure, maybe later.
50. Victoria or Fraser or someone else is actually a bearwalker (evil shapeshifting sorcerer).
51. Frannie, Dief or werewolves (or Frannie and Dief and werewolves) are never a bad idea. ;)
52. Fraser is Jimmy Stewart and Ray K is Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life. (I always thought Clarence must have been tempted to kick him in the head...)
53. Kowalski’s undercover assignment was in prison rather than covering for Vecchio. Vecchio didn’t go to Vegas, but instead got sent to jail for the missing heroin (which he was not in fact guilty of, but the malicious IA guys and their stoolie got him convicted of it because Kowalski wasn’t there to thwart their plan). Fraser is still around in Chicago, trying to prove Vecchio innocent and visiting him in prison. Meanwhile, Vecchio and Kowalski meet up in prison, get to know each other, and thus Kowalski meets Fraser through Vecchio…
54. Past Life Gangster AU: John Dillinger, Al Capone, Baby-Face Nelson, and Pretty-Boy Floyd.
55. due South as Torchwood: Chicago. Fraser is an alien.
56. Dark Side AU (where your canon heroes are evil; either a full inverted morality AU or where only particular characters are evil).
57. Star Wars AU. (Dead!Bob: Use the Force, Benton!)
58. Animal Rescue/fostering AU
59. Sports-team AU (a la Dira's hockey fic)
60. Medical Center!
61. Firefighters/paramedics AU
62. Dief is a human Mountie and Fraser is his loyal half-wolf companion.
63. Dief is a wizard and Fraser is his familiar (bonus points if Fraser is still human).
64. Fraser is a red pick up truck, RayV is a Riv and RayK is a GTO.
65. Dief and/or Ray's turtle are shapeshifters.
66. Kindergarten AU
67. The chat-show host, the overworked assistant, and the biographer who keeps unearthing the wrong secrets. (Rex Reilly not permitted!)
68. Due South/Eastwick fusion - Victoria as the devil, and Fraser, Kowalski and Vecchio as the three men she seduces.
69. Shattered/Due South AU crossover - runaway Ben Sullivan is sent by Carol to her family up in Inuvik where he meets Ben Fraser, just a year or two older. How different will their lives be?
70. A Fawlty Towers-style hotel.
71. Are You Being Served? fusion - department store staff
72. Merfolk!
73. My name is Caroline Fraser. I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my husband and son.
74. Due to whatever reason (maybe he is disgusted by the rampant prejudice there, maybe he isn't willing to let go of the fact that his superiors and peers resent him), a young Fraser decides early on to turn his back on the RCMP, and starts his own not-quite-legal organisation of crime fighters. First local, then national, then global. He gains himself many enemies in the process, but with a brain like Fraser's and some of his...followers? partners in crime? no one has ever a hope of arresting them or killing them. For whatever reason, the Rays decide to join him.
75. RayK & Fraser are cops in the Shattered 'verse (and have never even been to Chicago), where there is no Detective Ben Sullivan...until they meet him working as a private detective and infringing on the case they're investigating.
76. Formula 1 / MotoGP AU
77. Shipwreck AU
78. Rock band AU
79. Non-DS cast ensemble as crew of the Robert McKenzie (by which I mean non-DS characters; it could include the same actors)
80. Multiverse racing fic (dog-sled, car rally, solar challenge, yachting, orienteering etc etc) - team due South vs Slings & Arrows, vs Twitch City vs Flashpoint ...
81. Due South/Blade Runner fusion. For example: RayK (or Ray V) is a Blade Runner, Fraser is his new partner. One (or both?) of them is a Replicant but doesn't realize it.
82. Alien AU variation. Kowalski isn't abducted by aliens as much as takes part in an alien-human exchange program, with an alien taking his place to learn about Earth while he goes with the ship. 25 years later, they still haven't come back for Alien!Ray, but for the most part he's managed to convince everyone he's just odd. Until he gets transferred to the 2-7.
83. Hard Core Logo in space! Joe Dick and company were once-promising (at least some of them) officers who are now a crew and ship for hire: pirates, smugglers, or maybe they blow up unstable planets. Could be standalone or a crossover with another space fandom.
84. Professor Fraser and Professor Kowalski go to work in pasdeina university to work with Sheldon Cooper and Leannord
85. How about a Slings and Arrows AU where they're an actual Elizabethan acting company trying to survive - maybe competing with the Globe who have Shakespeare, or maybe set a little later, after his death, so they're putting on his plays and finding it hard to change anything from how the Globe used to do it. Maybe Ellen could be Allen, the youth who plays the female leads. I like the thought of all their legs in tights!
86. Slings & Arrows: Ellen, rather than Oliver is hit by the truck (and appears to Geoffrey as a ghost)
p.s. This post will remain open for the duration of the challenge, so feel free to keep commenting with more AU ideas and I'll continue to add your suggestions to the list behind the cut. Let us know if you have any questions! Also, these are less "prompts" than a wild array of things to inspire your own creativity. Everyone is welcome to use, adapt, or cheerfully ignore anything you see here for your own C6D AU fanworks.
Thanks, everybody! We can't wait to see what you come up with! \o/
We hope the ideas posted here will inspire your creativity and lead to some great fanworks. All the sample AUs from in the Signups & Rules post are behind the cut, and there are ZILLIONS more possibilities. Please share your AU ideas below!
We ask that you follow these guidelines to help us keep things organized:
1. Take a moment to read over what counts as an AU/AR & be sure your AUs qualify.
2. List your AUs in a top-level comment to this post (i.e. in a reply to the post itself, not as a reply to someone else's comment), and limit each idea to a sentence or less, please!
3. This is a multimedia challenge, so please DO include ideas that are flexible enough to work across different formats. We're as enthusiastic about fic as we are about art, comics, podfic, poetry, songs, vids, yarncraft, sculpture, cosplay costumes, dolls, puppet shows, fan-made movies, etc. ad infinitum.
Feel free to discuss and elaborate in replies to each other's comments, and keep in mind that further discussion posts will be forthcoming at
alternate_ds_c6d. Once you find some ideas you like, make something! The first posting weekend starts 10 weeks from today! (Posting dates & other rules are here.)Please note: We aren't doing claims. There are tons of great ideas to go around, and we think the possibility of multiple people making fanworks on the same theme is AWESOME. (There could be multiple Space AUs!!!) So! Create as many works based on as many AUs as you want. You may also create works based on AUs that are NOT on this list. And you can either talk about your AU or surprise us. Go with what works for you. There is room for everything; just make it DS-C6D & make it AU.
Okay? Okay! Onto the list! (Now numbered for your skimming convenience!)
AU IDEAS!
1. Dief is a Teen Wolf werewolf.
2. Undercover space ranger Benton Fraser and sometime galactic nemesis Miles Vorkosigan walk into Mos Eisley Spaceport!
3. Frannie was born in Wilby and works for Buddy at the local police station.
4. Fraser is the Tom Hanks character in Sleepless in Seattle.
5. Hard Core Logo is a band of psychic wolf-brothers.
6. The Twitch City cast are My Little Ponies.
7. Leoben Conoy is a time-traveling adventurer.
8. The Slings & Arrows cast are astrophysicists.
9. Cutter and Lennox are hard-boiled detectives in 1946—with werewolves!
10. Constable Frannie Vecchio of the RCMP comes to Chicago on the trail of the killers of her mother, goes to work in the Consulate for Inspector Smithbauer, and fights crime with Detective Meg Thatcher of the CPD.
11. Fraser and the Rays are a team of world-class thieves plaguing Chicago and foiling Welsh & Thatcher's attempts to nab them.
12. In his early 20s, Fraser quits the RCMP to run a coffee shop in Moose Jaw.
13. Muldoon kills Bob instead of Caroline, and she then becomes a Mountie.
14. Superheroes
15. Giant ocean mammals
16. Gladiators
17. Space pirates
18. Sea pirates
19. Robots
20. One day Ray starts to switch bodies with his car; over the course of time, the conversion sticks permanently.
21. The New Burbage Shakespearean Festival is staffed entirely by vampires.
22. A complete gender switch of Due South, where everyone's always been/is permanently changed to the opposite gender.
23. Steampunk!Mounties
24. Fraser as Captain Canada
25. old west US/fur-trade-era Canada
26. Twitch City cast as curling rink
27. Harlequin AU
28. Leoben is Starbuck instead of Kara
29. Around the World in 80 Days fusion
30. Cars movie fusion (yes, as in Pixar)
31. Hogwarts AU
32. DS-Muppets fusion in a world where muppets are real: Fraser is a Mountie muppet; Rays are police muppets.
33. Fork in the road where RayK really is abducted by aliens as a child & the fateful day at the bank never happens.
34. Hard Core Logo as chamber quartet/internet sensation a la 2Cellos
35. due South/Temeraire fusion
36. Frannie has always been the cop in the family ever since Ray decided to work with Zuko.
37. DS/Stargate crossover: RayK really was kidnapped by aliens -- the Asgard.
38. The Canadian brass decides that, since sending him to exile in America didn't help, the only way to really get rid of Fraser is to send him to another Galaxy. Let Atlantis and Pegasus deal with the insanity that follows him around.
39. due South fusion with the movie In Time, with Ray as a Dayton factory working trying to earn enough minutes to keep himself and his mother alive, and Fraser as a Timekeeper who is beginning to have doubts about the justice of the system he enforces.
40. After the events of 'Victoria's Secret', Fraser resigns from the RCMP and returns to Canada. Ray V investigates. He finds that Fraser received a mysterious letter from Eric, and follows him to Eric's village to make sure that he's OK.
41. Caroline miscarried in her seventh month of pregnancy. Bob was out on patrol, and there was no point contacting the mid-wife - what's done was done. Three days later, in the grip of a fever, Caroline followed a strange, flickering light into the woods and found an infant dressed in swaddling clothes. When Bob came home a week later, she told him the boy was their child.
42. It's Dan who's trying to save Duck
43. AU where Fraser and (either) Ray are hard-boiled, Humphrey Bogart type detectives in the 1930s
44. (Related to the previous one) something with Al Capone or John Dillinger. Fraser and Ray could for example be part of Chicago PD's Dillinger Squad.
45. Historical AU - Vienna Congress (Sep 1814-Jun 1815) - Fraser, Turnbull, Vecchio, Kowalski et al are in Vienna, either as aides attending the congress or as members of the ton out for a good time. Family members may be present (Frannie as the reigning belle?).
46. Due South Down Under - how would the Due South cast be different if the series had been set in Australia?
47. Due South / M*A*S*H fusion
48. (Harlequin) Where RayK didn't drop out of college but ended up as a non-tenure track junior professor who writes erotic novels to make ends meet after the divorce from Stella. At an academic conference he encounters Prof Fraser, a mild-mannered Canadian who is a world expert on lichen but hopeless at finding his way around Chicago.
49. DS and First Nations mythology: First Nations mythology is real. Fraser and Ray or someone else finds that out unexpectedly when they have an encounter with the Raven (trickster, bringer of the sun, helps humans out against other deities.) and/or Sedna (mpreg baby of a creation myth and the equivalent of Neptune), maybe during their Hand of Franklin adventure, maybe later.
50. Victoria or Fraser or someone else is actually a bearwalker (evil shapeshifting sorcerer).
51. Frannie, Dief or werewolves (or Frannie and Dief and werewolves) are never a bad idea. ;)
52. Fraser is Jimmy Stewart and Ray K is Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life. (I always thought Clarence must have been tempted to kick him in the head...)
53. Kowalski’s undercover assignment was in prison rather than covering for Vecchio. Vecchio didn’t go to Vegas, but instead got sent to jail for the missing heroin (which he was not in fact guilty of, but the malicious IA guys and their stoolie got him convicted of it because Kowalski wasn’t there to thwart their plan). Fraser is still around in Chicago, trying to prove Vecchio innocent and visiting him in prison. Meanwhile, Vecchio and Kowalski meet up in prison, get to know each other, and thus Kowalski meets Fraser through Vecchio…
54. Past Life Gangster AU: John Dillinger, Al Capone, Baby-Face Nelson, and Pretty-Boy Floyd.
55. due South as Torchwood: Chicago. Fraser is an alien.
56. Dark Side AU (where your canon heroes are evil; either a full inverted morality AU or where only particular characters are evil).
57. Star Wars AU. (Dead!Bob: Use the Force, Benton!)
58. Animal Rescue/fostering AU
59. Sports-team AU (a la Dira's hockey fic)
60. Medical Center!
61. Firefighters/paramedics AU
62. Dief is a human Mountie and Fraser is his loyal half-wolf companion.
63. Dief is a wizard and Fraser is his familiar (bonus points if Fraser is still human).
64. Fraser is a red pick up truck, RayV is a Riv and RayK is a GTO.
65. Dief and/or Ray's turtle are shapeshifters.
66. Kindergarten AU
67. The chat-show host, the overworked assistant, and the biographer who keeps unearthing the wrong secrets. (Rex Reilly not permitted!)
68. Due South/Eastwick fusion - Victoria as the devil, and Fraser, Kowalski and Vecchio as the three men she seduces.
69. Shattered/Due South AU crossover - runaway Ben Sullivan is sent by Carol to her family up in Inuvik where he meets Ben Fraser, just a year or two older. How different will their lives be?
70. A Fawlty Towers-style hotel.
71. Are You Being Served? fusion - department store staff
72. Merfolk!
73. My name is Caroline Fraser. I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my husband and son.
74. Due to whatever reason (maybe he is disgusted by the rampant prejudice there, maybe he isn't willing to let go of the fact that his superiors and peers resent him), a young Fraser decides early on to turn his back on the RCMP, and starts his own not-quite-legal organisation of crime fighters. First local, then national, then global. He gains himself many enemies in the process, but with a brain like Fraser's and some of his...followers? partners in crime? no one has ever a hope of arresting them or killing them. For whatever reason, the Rays decide to join him.
75. RayK & Fraser are cops in the Shattered 'verse (and have never even been to Chicago), where there is no Detective Ben Sullivan...until they meet him working as a private detective and infringing on the case they're investigating.
76. Formula 1 / MotoGP AU
77. Shipwreck AU
78. Rock band AU
79. Non-DS cast ensemble as crew of the Robert McKenzie (by which I mean non-DS characters; it could include the same actors)
80. Multiverse racing fic (dog-sled, car rally, solar challenge, yachting, orienteering etc etc) - team due South vs Slings & Arrows, vs Twitch City vs Flashpoint ...
81. Due South/Blade Runner fusion. For example: RayK (or Ray V) is a Blade Runner, Fraser is his new partner. One (or both?) of them is a Replicant but doesn't realize it.
82. Alien AU variation. Kowalski isn't abducted by aliens as much as takes part in an alien-human exchange program, with an alien taking his place to learn about Earth while he goes with the ship. 25 years later, they still haven't come back for Alien!Ray, but for the most part he's managed to convince everyone he's just odd. Until he gets transferred to the 2-7.
83. Hard Core Logo in space! Joe Dick and company were once-promising (at least some of them) officers who are now a crew and ship for hire: pirates, smugglers, or maybe they blow up unstable planets. Could be standalone or a crossover with another space fandom.
84. Professor Fraser and Professor Kowalski go to work in pasdeina university to work with Sheldon Cooper and Leannord
85. How about a Slings and Arrows AU where they're an actual Elizabethan acting company trying to survive - maybe competing with the Globe who have Shakespeare, or maybe set a little later, after his death, so they're putting on his plays and finding it hard to change anything from how the Globe used to do it. Maybe Ellen could be Allen, the youth who plays the female leads. I like the thought of all their legs in tights!
86. Slings & Arrows: Ellen, rather than Oliver is hit by the truck (and appears to Geoffrey as a ghost)
p.s. This post will remain open for the duration of the challenge, so feel free to keep commenting with more AU ideas and I'll continue to add your suggestions to the list behind the cut. Let us know if you have any questions! Also, these are less "prompts" than a wild array of things to inspire your own creativity. Everyone is welcome to use, adapt, or cheerfully ignore anything you see here for your own C6D AU fanworks.
Thanks, everybody! We can't wait to see what you come up with! \o/
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-05 04:14 am (UTC)The chat-show host, the overworked assistant, and the biographer who keeps unearthing the wrong secrets. (Rex Reilly not permitted!)
Due South/Eastwick fusion - Victoria as the devil, and Fraser, Kowalski and Vecchio as the three men she seduces.
Shattered/Due South AU crossover - runaway Ben Sullivan is sent by Carol to her family up in Inuvik where he meets Ben Fraser, just a year or two older. How different will their lives be?
A Fawlty Towers-style hotel.
Are You Being Served? fusion - department store staff
... I suspect I'm really showing my age with those last two. *g*
Oh, one more thing - would it be possible to number the prompts when they are added to the main post? It will make it easier for us to link stories to the correct prompts when they are (eventually) posted. Thanks.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-05 04:56 am (UTC)*adds*
I can totally number them if that would help make them easier to skim, but also, we're thinking of them less as formal challenge prompts and more as, er, freeform inspirational...dolphin noises? (It's been a long day, sorry. *g*)
In other words, prompt linking is certainly allowed but not actually required. Whatever works for you is fine with us.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-05 05:36 am (UTC)No problem, I shall make a point of inserting a reference to the particular freeform dolphin noise in the author notes.
... and now I'm picturing Fraser et al as dolphins ...
... or merfolk ...
*headdesk*
(no subject)
Date: 2013-02-05 05:44 am (UTC)