a big miscellaneous AU dump?

[Milieva]

My Fair Lady AU!    Umi is an untrained mage who does street magic for an extra income.  Clef is a bitter old mage who says he can train her to be a royal magician in six months as a bet with Ferio?

Lots of arguing and exploding shit.  Would be glorious.

[Somariel]

I had a... modern-ish? urban fantasy? Not quite sure how to categorize it... AU appear pretty close to fully formed in my head the other day. It has some definite influences from Del's Anarchistic AU, but is very much its own beast.

[Somariel]

Other AUs that I either never got around to mentioning or that have developed since my last post:

• A historical AU, where Hikaru has spent the last 8 or 10 years pretending to be a boy. This one spun out of a couple of full-front, head-and-shoulders shots of Hikaru in Episode 29 that made her look like a boy and caused me to want to write a fic where she disguised herself as a boy.
• The Zagato-tells-the-girls-the-truth AU, where the truth about the Magic Knights' duty comes out during the fight with Zagato, the girls say "Hell no!" to the idea and talk Emeraude into changing things. MKR 2 still happens because the massive realignment Emeraude made in a single burst gave the external appearance of her having died. The girls were sent home during that massive burst and their return was caused by the combination of them wanting to make sure that things were working out okay and Emeraude wishing that she could talk to them again.
  Also, Zagato's massive sense of guilt and Emeraude's initial refusal to even consider letting him face any sort of punishment for his actions accidentally leads to BDSM.
• The Better Plan AU, where instead of setting himself up as the villain, Zagato tells the public that Emeraude has secluded herself to pray and meditate on the current disturbances and gets Clef on board with the idea of telling the Magic Knights the truth about their duty as soon as they arrive. The girls end up stuck in Cephiro for several years while helping to work out the problems of reforming the Pillar system. This one was the result of Down pointing out how much of a better plan (hence the name) that would have been on the chat.
• Innouva-as-the-S2-villain. The idea originated with MokonaLord, but I have my own ideas for it. It would also end up incorporating a long-standing anime "What If" idea of mine: What would have happened if Nova hadn't stolen Hikaru from the NSX at the end of Episode 29?
• The S2 Shadow Trio AU. During the anime rewatch last year, VKiera mentioned the idea of Umi and Fuu also having shadows like Nova. The idea latched onto me and refused to let go. It would also probably incorporate the idea Down mentioned during the rewatch of Sierra actually being Presea and pretending to be her own twin is her method of dealing with the trauma of having been buried alive.

Also, the AU I mentioned in the post above this has since been dubbed the magictech-and-political-intrigue AU.

[VKiera]

Other AUs that I either never got around to mentioning or that have developed since my last post:

• The Zagato-tells-the-girls-the-truth AU, where the truth about the Magic Knights' duty comes out during the fight with Zagato, the girls say "Hell no!" to the idea and talk Emeraude into changing things. MKR 2 still happens because the massive realignment Emeraude made in a single burst gave the external appearance of her having died. The girls were sent home during that massive burst and their return was caused by the combination of them wanting to make sure that things were working out okay and Emeraude wishing that she could talk to them again.
  
  
• The Better Plan AU, where instead of setting himself up as the villain, Zagato tells the public that Emeraude has secluded herself to pray and meditate on the current disturbances and gets Clef on board with the idea of telling the Magic Knights the truth about their duty as soon as they arrive. The girls end up stuck in Cephiro for several years while helping to work out the problems of reforming the Pillar system. This one was the result of Down pointing out how much of a better plan (hence the name) that would have been on the chat.
• The S2 Shadow Trio AU. During the anime rewatch last year, VKiera mentioned the idea of Umi and Fuu also having shadows like Nova. The idea latched onto me and refused to let go. It would also probably incorporate the idea Down mentioned during the rewatch of Sierra actually being Presea and pretending to be her own twin is her method of dealing with the trauma of having been buried alive.

I want to read all the things, yes please.

I've always liked the idea of the season 2 big bads being Nova plus a shadow of Umi and Fuu as well, and no Debonair. And if they had dropped the psycho lesbian trope they smothered Nova with. I'm not sure what they'd be up to without Deboniar around, so she might be necessary. It solves the issue for me of season two being a bit too Hikaru-centric for my tastes as well.

My own alternate season 2 has been nudging at me recently, where Emeraude dies and the spell to send the Knights home fails. Hikaru is left in Cephrio to watch it crumble and spends a rather large part of it  having a BSOD moment. Umi somehow ended up in Autozam with a bunch of Autozam's equivalent of child ravengers/scavengers. And I've decided Fuu is going to have to find her way back to Cephrio by country hopping and infiltrating into the royal court of either Farhen or Chizeta.

Oh and Autozam, while also prepping to invade Cephiro is also close to going to war with it's primary trade partner that is attempting to start a coup and reinstate the royal family there again. I'm terrible at writing politics though...

Hahah, oh man, I really will have to plan this one better than I did Ice and Snow or I'll never finish it. But it's on back burner for now anyways.

[Somariel]

Other AUs that I either never got around to mentioning or that have developed since my last post:

• The Zagato-tells-the-girls-the-truth AU, where the truth about the Magic Knights' duty comes out during the fight with Zagato, the girls say "Hell no!" to the idea and talk Emeraude into changing things. MKR 2 still happens because the massive realignment Emeraude made in a single burst gave the external appearance of her having died. The girls were sent home during that massive burst and their return was caused by the combination of them wanting to make sure that things were working out okay and Emeraude wishing that she could talk to them again.
  
  
• The Better Plan AU, where instead of setting himself up as the villain, Zagato tells the public that Emeraude has secluded herself to pray and meditate on the current disturbances and gets Clef on board with the idea of telling the Magic Knights the truth about their duty as soon as they arrive. The girls end up stuck in Cephiro for several years while helping to work out the problems of reforming the Pillar system. This one was the result of Down pointing out how much of a better plan (hence the name) that would have been on the chat.
• The S2 Shadow Trio AU. During the anime rewatch last year, VKiera mentioned the idea of Umi and Fuu also having shadows like Nova. The idea latched onto me and refused to let go. It would also probably incorporate the idea Down mentioned during the rewatch of Sierra actually being Presea and pretending to be her own twin is her method of dealing with the trauma of having been buried alive.

I want to read all the things, yes please.

I've always liked the idea of the season 2 big bads being Nova plus a shadow of Umi and Fuu as well, and no Debonair. And if they had dropped the psycho lesbian trope they smothered Nova with. I'm not sure what they'd be up to without Deboniar around, so she might be necessary. It solves the issue for me of season two being a bit too Hikaru-centric for my tastes as well.

My own alternate season 2 has been nudging at me recently, where Emeraude dies and the spell to send the Knights home fails. Hikaru is left in Cephrio to watch it crumble and spends a rather large part of it  having a BSOD moment. Umi somehow ended up in Autozam with a bunch of Autozam's equivalent of child ravengers/scavengers. And I've decided Fuu is going to have to find her way back to Cephrio by country hopping and infiltrating into the royal court of either Farhen or Chizeta.

Oh and Autozam, while also prepping to invade Cephiro is also close to going to war with it's primary trade partner that is attempting to start a coup and reinstate the royal family there again. I'm terrible at writing politics though...

Hahah, oh man, I really will have to plan this one better than I did Ice and Snow or I'll never finish it. But it's on back burner for now anyways.

Yeah, the S2 Shadow Trio AU, as I envision it, very explicitly does not include Debonair. I'm not entirely sure what they'd be up to without her, either, but I'm sort of leaning towards them not really being solid enough to do much of anything before the girls return to Cephiro.

Regarding your alternate Season 2, I really love the idea of Fuu infiltrating the Chizetan royal court. Fuu and Tatra are just so similarly scary smart, ruthless, and manipulative, I think it would be really interesting to see the two of them working both with and against each other, maybe even at the same time.

And Hikaru is stuck in Cephiro? Oh, man, that's going to suck, not just for her, but for Clef, Presea, Ferio, Lafarga, and even Lantis, once they find out about her still being there. I mean, I'm sure that a large part of the reason that both the girls and the Cephirans handled the girls' return so well was that they'd had time to work through their feelings about things on their own.

Also, it's worth mentioning that the Innouva-as-the-S2-villain fic is going to be using the manga's concept of Pillar selection.