#alumnix AU

[shipwreckedshadows]

Derry Girls - Good Omens AU

Focusing on Sister George Michael and Janet Taylor

- Throughout the series Sister Michael is a chaotic yet predominantly “good” force of nature. She bends around the rules but will not hesitate to put those beneath her in line. in other words, she’s a hardass as far as her role as headmistress goes but we do see parts of her that are benevolent towards her students. In that regard, she’s a lot like Aziraphale. Therefore, I would set her up to be the angel.

- We hardly get to see the way Janet Taylor conducts order at her own school but that just means we get more creative freedom with her world view and behaviour. She doesn’t give me Crowly vibes. I’d set her up to be the demon but give her different motivations from Crowly’s.

- I would make the story more character-centric, steering the focus away from the Adam plot and end of the world business.

- To that end, I would also make both characters low status beings.

- Sister Michael will be an archangel (different from the capitalized Archangel). Lower-case archangels have lower status than Principalities (which are lower than capital Archangels) and therefore lower accountability and powers. Her lower rank means she’s sent to watch over small groups of humans, rather than large regions or countries. Because her powers aren’t very strong, she has to fall back on pragmatism to keep her identity secret while staying in line with her duties. So she still ends up becoming a nun - free room and board that she doesn’t have to miracle into existence, and it puts her in a good position to  gain power within the more prominent institutions of Derry (headmistress within the educational structure). Her overall personal mission is push people to “do good” without focusing on a particular virtue or sin. She’s not important enough to have to bother beyond that, she figures.

- Meanwhile, Janet is just a demon. She denounced her angelic name and changes her demon name as she sees fit. Her powers are also limited - though she’s learned how to channel terror and fear to get what she wants out of others. She finds that its easier for her to influence people towards sins of greed, wrath, and pride. She’s not particularly interested in pushing people to sin, but she has a quota to meet. I would still have her be a teacher but she would teach at Our Lady Immaculate College.

- The best way, figures Janet, to piss off any sane human is to make them engage with trigonometry - which is why she exclusively teaches math (heavily regarded as the most evil school subject). Any teenager, sinful or not, when enraged to just the right degree pick at small threads with a solid focus. At home, they start fights and raise tensions enough to ignite pride and wrath within their parents. The most natural path to wrath was through pride, and parents always feel their pride swell in the worst ways when their children step out of line. Teenagers were Janet’s best amplifiers and all she had to do was assign extra homework pages.

- Janet has been influencing Derry, and has been teaching at Lady Immaculate, long before Sister Michael arrived in Derry and became headmistress. Janet doesn’t feel threatened with the angels’ presence but she still feels she needs to make her claim on the territory known. 

- The headmistress/teacher power dynamic doesn’t exist because Janet can always miracle her way into another teaching position at another school - as headmistress, if she really felt like it. Besides, we all know Sister Michael is so below willing to fill out the tedious paperwork required to fire someone (its more so the principal of having to do more work than necessary, rather than a willingness to do the work itself). They’re also at equal ranking within demon/angel society and their influence on Derry are equal to the point that they start to cancel each other out.

- They start of weary of each other but soon come to an understanding that, if they both do their jobs equally well, neither of them will have to put in more effort. Janet gets her numbers in through individual students and families (and occasionally the faculty). Sister Michael gets her numbers tallied through overarching groups, such as the staff, student assembly, and educational community within Derry. Essentially, their impact is the same, just at different levels of societal structures. If Heaven and Hell truly wanted to make any sort of difference, they would send higher ranking officials.

Anyway, sort of my baseline thoughts on the subject. Might write more regarding this specific AU, we’ll see.

[shipwreckedshadows]

Raine and Eda as an office couple except now there’s a new branch of Blight Industries run by Odalia’s new buisness partner, Alador, that focuses on integrating home design with AI and home security.

Eda and Raine catch glimpses of Alador’s assistant. He carries himself in a way that extenuates his figure past tall towards towering. Raine says he might be taller than Eda, especially when he wears those purple-tipped heeled boots. They click evenly, even against the carpeted floors, as he stalks through the office. Eda swipes his name from one of the administrators. His name is Darius and everyone at the office seems to know a little bit of something about him - and yet nobody seems to know anything substantial about him at all.

Eda and Raine both agree that he’s very attractive.

They finally properly meet him when Alador is properly brought on board and all three executives, Alador, Odalia, and Philip, call an official meeting. Their respective assistants are present only at the beginning to arrange coffee and become antiquated with each other. Then they are banished outside the conference room to finish menial tasks until they are called on again.

The three assistants linger. Darius sizes up Eda and Raine, and they return the favour. The tension stretches on forever between them until Darius opens his mouth and asks them in his smooth velvet voice:

“So how long have you two been fucking?”

Raine’s face goes immediately red and a look of terror flashes across Eda’s expression. Unlike Raine, she immediately plasters it over with a smirk and a cocked hip. Raine opens their mouth to speak but Eda places a hand on their shoulder, indicating that she has a plan to take control of the situation.

She eyes Darius and doesn’t say anything. She hopes the silence will drag more words out of him but he stays stony and says nothing more.

Finally, she pokes him and says, “Why? You want in?”

Flash forward to next week, after they’ve all discreetly outlined expectations and boundaries. Now sometimes its Darius who has Eda against the file room shelves. In the copy-room, he has Raine against the wall, high enough for them to wrap their legs around his head and shoulders while he uses his mouth to play with them. Now sometimes its Darius who, on days he wears dark, pleated skirts, retains carpet burns on his knees. Either he’s submitting to Eda or simply sitting pretty as he watches Eda kneel beneath Raine.

Darius and Eda sometimes show up to work with subtle, slutty changes to their usual business attire. Sometimes the change is a couple of inches subtracted from the hem of a skirt, possibly added to the heal of a boot. Sometimes its a revealing neckline after days of restrictive crew collars and turtle-necks.

Raine finds that changing their cologne isn’t enough to keep up and they try other things. They start wearing sock garters. When they cross an ankle over a knee, their pant leg slides away, revealing inches of sock, usually patterned with argyle or stripes or dots. The pant leg never hikes up enough to reveal the soft leather and brass buckles, but Eda and Darius, who doubtless have seen the garters before, know they are there, unfairly hidden. Darius does a better job keeping his attention away from Raine and their crossed leg, but its all Eda can do to at least conceal the fact that she may start drooling.

Eda and Raine still think they’re doing an excellent job of hiding their relationship. Darius is a little more realistic and tuned into the rumour mill. Nobody knows about the secluded, stolen, less-than-appropriate-for-work “kisses” the three of them occasionally steal, but they still suspect something is up.

Odalia and Philip know that their assistants are depraved lunatics, but they are depraved lunatics who do their jobs far better than most employees in the building.

Meanwhile, Alador has no fucking clue what Darius gets up to when they’re not in the same room together, and he has no interest in keeping tabs on Eda or Raine either.

He’s probably the only one who doesn’t know.

[shipwreckedshadows]

A Thin Blanket of Snow

Derry Girls, Good Omens AU

Sister George Michael x Janet Taylor

The introduction to this AU can be read here.

__________________________________

Janet had finished marking the sixth years’ algebra tests with a regrettable, flourishing check mark when she felt it. A striking, benevolent force settled over Derry like a thin blanket of snow. A chill travelled up her spine as she scrawled a begrudging “well done” on the top of the last test paper. Heaven had placed one of their angels in Derry and it was only a matter of time before it was drawn towards Janet and her cozy, practical teaching job.

For several months after the presence arrived, Janet operated her daily life on edge, constantly vigilant. If the faculty noticed her agitated aura, the students definitely did as well. Students seated near the front often fell under Janet’s ire. They fought over who got to sit in the back row so often, Janet ran out of detention slips.

As the year dragged on, she became increasingly more distracted and less than efficient at either of her jobs. She found herself relying on miracles to finish her grading - a meagre power of which she was dimly supplied, and she received a letter from the department of Inconvenience that she was not prodding enough sinful behaviour out of the humans in Derry. Her efforts were scattered and unfocused. She needed to get rid of that angel - or at the very least, learn how to ignore its gentle yet alarming presence.

One bright Monday morning, as she stepped off the bus and walked to her office, she could feel the angel’s presence more clearly. Bright, gentle waves of goodness emanated from the west side of the college building. No doubt the angel had sniffed her out. She paused in the grand entry-way of Our Lady Immaculate College, the gears in her brain turning. Janet forced herself to put one foot forward, then the next. She was an absolute terror, she reminded herself. She had scared off her fair share of angels in her centuries of work - she could scare off another. The thought projected her en-rout to her office again, yet did not make the prospect of eventually encountering the angel any less nerve-wracking.

She decided to resume her day as normal and wait for the angel to come to her.

----

George Michael - or, Sister Michael as she was known to the humans - set the last box of her things down in the office. She stared out the window and contemplated the view of the patchy quad. Ever since she arrived in Derry, she could sense a tiny, dark inconsistency hidden neatly among the populous. As much as she enjoyed the perks of her lower angelic status, she couldn’t say there was much to be said about the power it came with. Much as she tried to reach out and sense where or what this dark entity could be, she couldn’t get a decent read on it. Hopefully, for the sake of the children, it wouldn’t turn up here.

At about 9 AM that morning, the students and day-staff congregated in the gymnasium for daily assembly.

The head secretary invited her up to the podium and that’s when George felt a pair of wicked, beady eyes upon her. Though the same could be said about most of the students that gazed upon their new headmistress, one glare in particular drew her attention.

When she met those eyes, she found they belonged to a petite, simmering demon with rather short, voluminous black hair. They were the first demon George had encountered in a long time but there was no mistaking the timid hostility that possessed every demon in the presence of an angel.

George collected herself and addressed the student body, “Good morning everyone.” she said flatly into the deafening silence, “Thank you all for having me. I hope my placement here will be less painful for you than it will be for me. Please know that while sun may smile down at you lot this morning, I for one do not. That is all, thank you.”

She caught a quickly concealed cheeky look from the demon in the back.

As George made her way from the gymnasium, she decided to resume her day as normal and wait for the demon to approach her, if they so liked.

----

In the end, Sister Michael won out. Janet wanted to peel herself out of her corporation’s skin and leap three districts north, away from Derry and its new angel. With all the students away for the evening, there was nothing to muffle the kind force of Sister Michael’s presence. It was like an awful itchy rash on her conscious and Janet needed to do something about it.

Janet rarely had the opportunity to engage her influence over the sin of lust - she was a demon of standards, who also happened to teach at a high school. But she figured she might win her favour with the angel if it at least thought she was attractive. Angels, after all, were not immune to sin.

Sister Michael apparently was not immune to sloth, as was evident by its rather concise speech this morning. The angel almost seemed disillusioned, as if the grand scheme of goodness wasn’t worth the hassle.

With a wave of her hand, she shortened her skirt an inch and a half - not a large margin, but enough to break the dress code. The toes of her heals became pointed as they shaped themselves to become more like pumps and less like practical mary-janes. The top-most button of her blouse popped open, revealing the tiniest v of skin.

Subtle, sweet, and sexy - a trio of words that Janet valued very much.

Janet paused at the top of the stairs.

As Janet made her way to the headmistress’s office, Sister Michael’s presence increased in clarity. It was like increasing the resolution on a photograph or bringing a picture closer to your face to see the details better.

The angel had its full being on display. Janet could pick out the angel’s strongest virtues if she wasn’t actively trying to block out the sensation. It had to be an intimidation tac-tic, the way a pea-cock opened its feathers to scare away competition. It had to be intimidation, otherwise...

... otherwise it meant that the angel had no control or awareness that it was broadcasting its light across the entire city of Derry.

Janet thought back to the morning assembly. Sister Michael seemed the tiniest bit surprised when it laid eyes on Janet. Either the angel wasn’t paying attention or it didn’t know Janet had been occupying territory within the school.

If that was the case, Janet smiled as she turned a corner, then it meant that this angel wasn’t particularly strong or in tune with its power. It was just an average, low-ranking ethereal being.

Just like Janet.

Perhaps, Janet hoped as she knocked on the grand door of the head teacher’s office, they could reach an understanding on those terms.

________

Some notes: Angels and demons have certain pronoun conventions. Demons and angels both refer to all ethereal beings using it/its, unless told to do otherwise. George uses they/them to refer to all entities, unless she is told to use something else.

[shipwreckedshadows]

a while ago, while i was really into my SPOP phase, I developed a shangella story idea that i dubbed the Swap AU. in the AU, angella and shadow weaver swap places - angella performs the spell of obtainment instead of light spinner. I was going through my old work on the blog and decided that I don’t like the way I wrote it - particularly the relationship between angella and shadow weaver. it was toxic and borderline abusive, and while it was interesting to explore that type of relationship at the time that i wrote it, its not really the sort of thing i currently enjoy writing about. it also comes with the caveat that im not really writing the shangella that i wanted to write, and also light spinner eventually leaves angella at some point in the story.

so here is an outline of a potential re-write that ive been thinking about for a couple of weeks now. these are plot points, largely removed from character work. i want angella’s and light spinner’s relationship to be softer and healthier than i originally wrote in the first version of this story. as such, the spell of obtainment doesn’t turn angella into a meaner version of herself. she’s still caring and nurturing like she is in cannon, her priorities are just different.

Act One:

- also i tagged this post as swap AU, which also where all of the older posts are housed, [including this post on the basic set up for the AU]. not necessary to read but there if you want to

- angella has always put her emotions away and hated being vulnerable, so that becomes more predominant now that she’s transformed. the spell of obtainment works off of the main goal and motive the user has. angella’s main goal and motive was to have enough power to eradicate the horde and restore order to etheria. she’s motivated to do so as a good leader. so the spell feeds into and pushes her ideas of being a good leader to top spot priority and makes them stronger.

- magic has always been one of the most powerful resources (next to military weaponry, which is primarily used by the horde) so she enlists the help of mystacore’s military, which is where light spinner comes in.

- LS’s injury has left her unable to perform strong feats of magic so she has stepped down from her posiiton, leaving michah to take it. though she is largely on leave until she fully recovers, she still hangs around micah and casta. kinda like the way seniors sometimes hang around administrators - she has nothing to do except offer advice and research (read also: annoy the shit out of mystacore’s two most prominant leaders). this is how angella and LS meet and develop a bit of a relationship.

- they take down the horde and restore scorpia’s kingdom (scorpia’s parents are still alive, as at this point the horde hasn’t taken over the kingdom yet)

- as a result of using her magic take down so many horde soldiers, the spell of obtainment has weakened Angella’s connection to to brightstone and she starts having trouble drawing from its powers. at first she doesnt notice as the spell of obtainment draws power from the life power of others, which it was draining from the horde soldiers. after a few weeks of peace, she uses up the energy stored up, starts to feel weak, and realizes she can’t draw on the brightsone’s power anymore. she contacts mystacore for help.

- light spinner still holds her career at a priority and recognizes that she is largely a vestigial part of mystacore. she sees that the queen’s unique disorder of magic is an area she can be of use, without having to actually use her own magic. the queen already knows light spinner and agrees to have her stay in the castle. light spinner makes it super clear that this is a job, not a favour (everybody is in a bit of a recession right now bc of the rebellion/war, and money is a bit hard to come by, especially for LS who’s on leave. its a paid leave but she’s still not making as much as she used to and she also refuses to ask michah or casta for help). angella agrees but secretly considers this a favour to mystacore.

Act Two

- angella and LS bond the longer LS is in the kingdom. they spend a lot of time together as LS conducts observational research on angella’s abilities and magic properties. every other day they spend about an hour doing this. on the days they dont meet, LS is going through library materials to figure out whats going on with angella’s connection with the brightstone.

- she takes her breaks in the castle gardens and starts attending to them as a hobby in her down time

- eventually they figure out that they can make an artificial connection by chipping off a small piece of the brightstone and attaching to to angella via a pendant or sth (like the piece of the black garnet shadow weaver embedded in her mask). the risk ofc is that sacrificing the purity of the brightstone by severing a piece of it will lessen its power. angella wont do it for several reasons including: the brightstone is a symbol of her kingdom and she would hate to disgrace it for the sake of her power. also the spell of obtainment makes it so that she has trouble seeing the bigger picture - so she’s more fixated on the downsides of taking a piece of the brightstone.

- they maybe have a fight about this, idk it depends on what the character building demons say when/if i sit down to write this. if they do fight, it’ll be for the sake of character development and they’ll eventually make up.

- LS has a hard time finding methods other than physically draining the life out of others to keep angella’s magic together (and also to keep angella alive, since the spell of obtainment is parasitic in nature). she leaves to go back to mystacore because they have a more extensive library on dark magic. angella eventually loses her magic and then she starts feeling physically weaker. she sends a scroll to LS asking for updates.

- LS has somebody teleport her to brightmoon. at this point she cares about angella enough to want to do anything to help her. she tells angella to take some of her magic. angella, who isn’t very in control of her power right now, accidentally takes all of LS’s magic. unlike my original draft, LS doesn’t lose her memories. she just passes out for a few hours. when she wakes up, her magic is in a very weak state - just barely there.

Act Three

- though she has power again, angella feels extremely bad for what she’s done and does her best to make sure LS is comfortable while she takes a few days to recover from the resulting exhaustion. LS keeps reassure angella that she doesnt blame her and she’s just glad that angella is feeling better.

- the rest of the act is dedicated to resolving angella’s connection with the brightstone, and building LS’s magic back up (by developing her plant-based magic abilities). maybe i’ll do an arc where they find baby adora and raise her together, or find a way to write glimmer back into the story, idk

[shipwreckedshadows]

Matchmaker AU

I had an AU idea. Its late and I’m tired so here are the main points:

> Spamton owns/runs a matchmaking service called Alrighty Aphrodite (rips of OKCupid) 

> It starts when Spamton takes the deal from “Mike” (or Gaster if you believe in that theory) and they give him some of their power. Spamton can see other people’s souls + their stats as a result

> They help him start a company and at first he’s running a sales firm in the auto industry

> Gaster stops calling Spamton at some point, before they can properly ruin the him (there’s a reason for this that will get explained later, when im ready to actually explore this AU). So Spamton’s frame of mind is relatively in tact

> Sales start tanking

> At this point in the time line, Spamton still has some friends so he asks them for help and they figure out what he should do with a failing company in a business he’s actually terrible at

> They figure out he’s good at this whole matchmaking thing (bc he can see souls and soul traits, and therefore know roughly who would be good matches) and the whole company undergoes a brand change

> His glasses are called the “Matchmaker” instead of the Dealmaker. I’ll explain this more in a later illustration

Anyway that’s the basis of it. Might draw/write a few things for it later.