#powdery rambles

[pluto-glow]

I got that weird green rain event in stardew valley the other night, and now i want to make an au where it doesn't just last one night

in the game it only lasts one day. everyone freaks out, most of the town holds up in the saloon, talking about the end of the world. trees pop up everywhere, vines grown out of the ground that are as wide around as trees and as tall as buildings. the plants get out of control, the tvs only show green static. the sky is green, the rain and water is green, everything in general has this green hue to it. and then everything goes back to normal the next day like nothing happened, the whole town could have had a shared nightmare if it wasn't for the weird seeds the farmer now has

and no one knows why it happened, or if it will happen again. maybe some people panic now when the first few drops of rain fall, because they don't know if it will be green again. the farmer is hesitant to plant any new seeds, they double check where they stored any vines they harvested, worried that one day they're going to start growing again

and once they start to relax again, once the town is starting to feel better about it, less on edge, they start to joke about it even. it happens again. green raindrops fall, their tvs turn to static, the plants start growing faster than they should. and they're back in it all over again

[pluto-glow]

So I had this idea for a Church lives au

But worse and more angst

Church lives but the reds and blues don’t find him after the EMP so they think he’s gone and they find Epsilon like usual, and Church’s memories get a little scrambled so he doesn’t fully remember them or know to look for them

So who ends up finding him? Only a couple certain Mercs who’s colours are orange and green

At first they don’t know he was a part of PF and they keep him for themselves and don’t really tell Hargreaves about him except that they got their hands on an AI and no it’s not a PF AI. But then Chorus happens and they run into the Reds and Blues and something feels off and too familiar to Church

I have so many ideas for this

[pluto-glow]

So I've had this RvB au bouncing around in my head

You know those like "tattoo artist x florist" au's? It started as a Grimmons one of those, but it turned into "the Reds and Blues all own shops in a mall or something along those lines and antics ensue"

The Grif sibs run a piercing/tattoo place (Kai does piercings and Grif does the tattoos), Simmons is new to the area and just opened a flower shop. Church does IT/has a computer shop that also does tech repair. Tex is Kai and Church's biker girlfriend. Caboose runs a puppy day care. Donut runs a clothing shop where he even makes and sells some of his own designs. I was thinking Doc might have a vegan food place? Or Flowers might run the vegan food place, I haven't decided yet. Idk yet what Tucker's doing, maybe helps Church and Caboose out. I was thinking Sarge might run a gym, maybe a gym for veterans? No one quite knows what Tex does for work, anytime someone asks her she makes a comment like "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you" and people can't tell if she's joking or serious so no one pushes further than that.

(more rambles under the cut)

I don't 100% know what's gonna happen plot wise yet, I do have it planned tho that Simmons and Church meet because Tex saw Simmons putting up fliers for the opening sale of his flower shop and Tex loves messing with Church so she told Simmons he could put one on Church's window, knowing that Church hates when people do that. Church gets pissed but Simmons mentions that Tex said he could and maybe he had the wrong place, and Church just sighs and rolls his eyes and says that Tex's his girlfriend and was just fucking with the both of them, but Church has somewhere inside Simmons could put a flier up.

I think the fragment AI's (except Tex course) are gonna be Church's siblings. Church doesn't talk about them a ton, but they visit Church's shop a decent amount so everyone's met at least one of them. Sometimes people get confused over it like- "oh I think Church's brother just drove past" "Church's brother??" "yeah?" "isn't his brother like 8?" "no? He's in his 20's?" "no way- Theta's like 8" "Theta? I was talking about Delta, who's Theta?" "who's Delta?" Tex, Wash, and a few others used to work with some of them so those guys know that Church just has a fuck ton of siblings, but they keep quiet about it because they think it's funny.

I also think that Simmons is gonna low key express his feelings to Grif through flowers. Simmons isn't great with his words and won't know how to say "I don't even know what your sexuality is or if you like guys but I like you even though I think you're annoying sometimes and you can get on my nerves but I still think it's kinda cute" so he just says it in flowers. Grif doesn't catch on, he just thinks Simmons is being nice or doing free advertising for his flower shop by giving Grif flowers to put up in his and Kai's place. Until Doc comes over one day, sees the flower arrangement, and points out what it means. Grif has a big gay panic moment, realizes he fell in love with Simmons, and just kinda "that nerd?! What do I even do?!"

Idk what'll happen at that point, probably the Reds and Blues taking turns dragging Grif through a "if you really wanna impress Simmons you gotta do [ insert thing here ]"

Again this is majorly wip so some things may change

[pluto-glow]

Idk if anyone’s done this yet but I’ve had the basic concept for an rvb tma au bouncing in my head for forever now

Did this start purely because I realized how well the Director and Church would fit Elias/Jonah and Sims after MAG 160? Yes

Church as Sims

Isn’t quite sure how he ended up with this job, especially as the head of the department, but the pay’s good and he doesn’t 100% hate it so he’s not complaining

Doesn’t believe at all in all this spooky ghost stuff they have him reading

His assistants get on his nerves, especially whoever keeps leaving him hot chocolate and leaves their drawings around

Is confused why tape recorders keep randomly turning on when he’s at work but “maybe they’re just busted”

Doesn’t know much about the archivist before him

Caboose as Martin

So friend shaped

Lied on his resume so he could get a job to help support his sisters

Loves hot chocolate

His boss is super grumpy so he leaves him hot chocolate sometimes because hot chocolate makes him happy, so maybe it’ll help his boss too

He’s sure him and his boss are good friends because of this. The other assistants don’t thing so, but what do they know?

He likes using his time to draw and sometimes his drawings accidentally get mixed up with statements

He especially like to draw him and his friends fighting aliens in space wink wink nudge nudge

Tucker as Tim

Biggest flirt at the institute

Dodged the question anytime anyone asks him why he’s working at the institute

Especially flirts with one of the other assistants

Actually wasn’t the biggest fan of Caboose at first, but warmed up to him by the time Church got there

Would secretly kill for the other assistants

I’m considering him being marked by the Hunt so that might be literal

Tex as Sasha

Doesn’t like her coworkers

Why does this Tucker guy keep flirting with her

Knows the Director the best out of all 4 of them but won’t explain how

Might already be a Not Them or something that took place of the original Allison

Maybe the Director somehow got her to take Allison’s place

She’s been in the archives the longest out of the 4 of them

[pluto-glow]

I've been meaning to ramble about this for a while oops but me and one of my partners worked on an rvb au based on this art We don't exactly have an official name for it- we've called it rvb ai swap au and rvb freelancer fix-it since a lot of the freelancer's ai's were swapped around and we added a lot more ai's and freelancers and it kinda fixed somethings? But also fucked up some other stuff so ya know

But the ai swap that started this entire au was North and South getting Eta and Iota. North got Eta since Eta's associated emotion was fear, so that just ended up with North taking on even more of a caretaker kinda role for Eta. South got Iota who's associated emotion is happiness. The Director saw how well North and South worked together and when Eta and Iota formed together, he wanted to see if giving them to the twins would help North and South work even better together than they already were. And it honestly does kinda work, North takes care of Eta so some of his anxiety and worry about South has an outlet, and Iota helps South have more fun.

But where does Theta go if they don't end up with North? In this au North gives up Theta to Maine instead of Carolina giving up Sigma and I love Theta and Maine being paired up so much you have no idea. Theta helps Maine with communication and Theta figures out a way for some of the Freelancers to learn sign language so Maine can talk to people more directly. Maine also gets protective of Theta after a while which helps Theta a lot when they get scared at night. Maine doesn't have as many headaches from Theta as he did from Sigma either.

Wash still gets Epsilon, but the Director and Counselor figured that implanting an AI who's associated trait is literally memory directly could end up with Wash knowing more about the program than he should- so they did something closer to when Epsilon/Church was in that mongoose I think it was? He's in Wash's armor, can project and all that, can still access the armor, but can't access in Wash's head. It makes the 2 of them communicating a lot harder, but it also means that Epsilon being implanted doesn't fuck up Wash's head so-

One of the non-canon Freelancers that I've been working on for this au is Maryland. She's easily distracted a bit of a major klutz, and can get pretty social anxious, but she's one of PF's best snipers. She gets paired with Kappa who helps her with focus. Honestly helps with focus a little too much. Kappa doesn't see the point in doing anything that doesn't have to do with Project Freelancer, but Maryland still likes to relax when she gets the chance. They but heads a lot when it comes to when to work and when to relax, but they still work pretty well together. Maryland's armor upgrade is a rations pack, it holds everything from water to ration bars to fluids that can be injected through an IV if needed.

Now I know Temple isn't exactly a Freelancer and he hates them but- Temple is supposed to be Church's counter part, right? So why not make Temple an AI. Temple was originally an AI named Tau, he's the Alpha's want for revenge. The Director and Counselor figured that having an AI around who just wanted revenge on them would be a bad idea, so they shipped him off to a sim trooper canyon and made up this fake backstory for him that his name was actually Mark Temple and he had signed up for Blue Team, and did the best they could to make sure that Tau didn't remember Project Freelancer. But if Temple was really an AI then what about Biff? Biff was actually a Freelancer sent there to watch Temple like what Florida was originally supposed to be for Church. Biff didn't really know a ton about the "memories" Temple had, but Biff had to go along with them anyways. The Director and the Counselor decided they liked how the experiment with Tau/Temple went, so they ended up trying the same thing with the Alpha when the time came

We have a lot more than this- the google doc we made for the AU is like 60 pages? But this is just some of the main characters I've worked on

[pluto-glow]

these are only sketchy doodles but uh a human/band au idea popped into my head and next thing i knew i had these doodled out

rambles about ideas for the au under the cut

blitzo still has his facial scar

so does fizzie but fizz hides it with make up

fizz still has his prosthetics

blitzo and fizz were best friends going up

they had crushes on each other in high school, but they fell out after a big fight

they were starting to put together a band before the fight, but after the fight fizz took the work he put into the band and started his own band

fizz’s manager (mammon) was a dick and overworked fizz, but fizz just put up with it because he was “living the dream”

blitzo and stolas were kinda friends growing up? they went to the same park a couple times as a kid, and blitzo’s dad wanted them to be friends since stolas’ family is rich

but stolas’ dad wasn’t fond of blitzo and thought he was a bad influence after a while so stolas’ family moved away

eventually they ran into each other after stolas got stood up on a date by stella

one thing led to another and stolas started helping the 3-4 of them with the band (idk how loona’s gonna be worked into this so 3-4)

yeah verosika’s in there somewhere, can’t have a band au without her

maybe blitzo dated her before the band with m&m and was in a few of her songs? but after the breakup verosika refuses to acknowledge those songs

i have some possible ideas for blitzo and fizz working stuff out years later and dating because i am a sucker for blitzo/fizz (idk what their ship name is)

(keep in mind this au is very much wip and a lot of this is prob gonna change at least a little but ya know)

[pluto-glow]

Hey! You don't have to if you don't want to and all that but you should talk about your rvb fix-it au more! It seems interesting!

This ask made me so happy you have no idea

Rambles under the cut

Plot wise the au’s pretty close to canon

There’s just a lot more AI’s and freelancers

Like in season 15 when Locus saves Wash and Carolina from Temple, Wash and Carolina aren’t the only Freelancers in there who are still alive. Instead of dragging out 2 Freelancers Locus has to drag out 5. Luckily Maryland with her rations are there so they all get to fuel up a little, but Wash isn’t the only loopy one.

Oh and Maine lives since he got Theta and never became the Meta. Like I mentioned in that original post about it Maine's a lot happier in this au with Theta's help. Theta and Maine really help eachother and it's so sweet and probably my favourite Freelancer and AI pair from this au.

Georgia and Florida both also got AI's, Georgia got Xi who represents greed, and Florida got Psi who represents pride. You'd think that since Xi was greed he'd make Georgia do stuff like steal stuff but no, Xi just made Georgia into a bit of a show off. The 2 of them really tried a lot to impress people and to make people think they're cool. Georgia did end up into space in that whole accident with the jet pack, but Xi was able to help keep him alive until PF could pick him up again. But he still missed a while, including when Wash got there, so the "you don't want what happened to Georgia to happen to you" jokes still happened, even when Georgia got back. I've been going back and forth between what Psi's like and how he affects Florida so I'll save talking about those 2 for another time.

A concept that my partner came up with that I think is so genius is that CT got Lambda, who represents loyalty. CT agreed to get an AI implanted so she could easily take an AI with her when she left. The Director had heard of a rumor that there might have been a mole in PF, the Counselor believed that CT was one of the more likely people to be the mole if there was one, so they figured that Lambda would make CT rethink that and become loyal to PF again. It didn't work and CT still left, but Lambda made it harder for CT to leave.

Man I need to draw more of these guys. I did a doodle of a Temple/Tau concept a while back but there's some scenes I wanna draw out and maybe make into comics sometime (I'm kinda shit at comics tho so- /lh nav)

[pluto-glow]

I’m having brain rot for my rvb mall au so have some notes and thoughts I have so far for the Grif sibs and Simmons. This is still very much in progress so some of this might change

I’m gonna make more of these for the other people too- but this whole au started Grimmons centric, so I’m starting there

Psst here’s the original post where I talk about this au

Grif:

He/they pronouns? Gay and poly

Owns a piercing/tattoo shop with his younger(?) sister

Is the tattoo artist at said shop

He’s kinda shy about his artistic abilities and down plays them a lot, but he’s been drawing since he was a kid and he’s really good at it

He’s also a good cook from having to cook so much for himself and Kai when they were growing up

Has overworked smart kid burnout syndrome but he tries to push through it since him and his sister own a shop together and he ends up handling a lot of the paperwork type stuff

The first year Grif and Kai had the shop Grif didn’t have the money to get Kai a birthday gift so he did a tattoo for her and they add onto it little by little every year

Has vitiligo and is originally from Hawaii

Maybe has OCD? Or is neurodivergent in some way? Possibly ADHD

Kai's the only one who gets to call him Dex, only friends get to call him Dexter. Some of the others sometimes call him Dexter, but Tucker's the only one who calls him Dexter more than Tucker calls him Grif

Dating Tucker maybe? And eventually gets with Simmons

I know I said this is Grimmons- and it is- but I’m curious about playing around with Grif x Tucker in this

Kai:

She/they pronouns (maybe neos too?) bi and poly

Owns the piercing/tattoo shop with older(?) brother

Is the piercer at said shop

She likes to play music in the shop and she’ll probably be dancing around to it while doing stuff like cleaning or restocking supplies

Is a pretty good cook, but she likes Grif’s cooking more

Is originally from Hawaii

Is colour blind (I need to double check some stuff about colour blindness, but I'm leaning towards protanopia?)

Probably has ADHD too

Probably has the combined type of ADHD (am I projecting my ADHD onto her? Maybe a little)

Probably has at least one matching tattoo with Grif that they designed together, maybe a saying that their mom used a lot when they were kids, or the first logo for their shop, or something related to Hawaii, I haven’t decided yet

Absolutely has a bunch of piercings 

I haven’t decided what all piercings yet tho- probably at least her seconds on her lobes, stretched ears, an industrial bar, maybe spider bites? (I love spider bites so much you have no idea)

Dating tex

Simmons:

He/him trans guy. Gay or bi poly

Is the owner of the new flower shop in the area

Neurodivergent and has an interest in flowers, especially their meanings

Not great with words and expressing feelings so tends to do it through more- uncommon non-verbal ways? Like flowers and their meanings and gifts

Was in an accident as a kid so now has a prosthetic leg on one side, plus a lot of scaring

He hides his prosthetic and scaring a lot and is super self conscious about it

Pre-op when the story starts, but he’s on the waiting list for top surgery

Part way through the story he gets his top surgery, but since Simmons cut contact with his family, Grif and some of the others help with his recovery

It started as Simmons just asking if someone could check on his shop while he’s gone but evolved into people insisting on running his shop for him so he doesn’t end up super tight on money from having his shop closed for however long his recovery takes

Grif stays with Simmons for a few days, he was originally only supposed to be Simmons’ ride to and from the surgery but at one point while talking with the doctor or nurses about the recovery and post-surgery care it gets brought up who was gonna be at Simmons’ place with him to help him out. The doctor/nurses thought it was gonna be Grif, and Grif just responds with “well it is now I guess”

Whoever Grif was talking to was concerned that this wasn’t already figured out-

But it worked out in the end so oh well

Some fruity stuff happens while Grif stays with Simmons to help him with the recovery

Maybe a little bit of “oh no, he has to spend the night and there’s only one bed!”, who knows /hj

Eventually gets with Grif