Pretty convenient.
Alexandria Ablaze
is a The Magnus Archives Role Swap AU, written by seaer.
The story follows a pact made between a pre-Vast Michael Crew and Gerard Keay, an avatar that feeds his entity via burning things, often books or bookstores. In exchange for help escaping the Lichtenberg figure that has tormented him for most of his life, Mike allies himself with Gerry to burn down the Archives.
Alexandria Ablaze contains examples of:
- Audience? What Audience?: Oliver, oblivious, with Gerry, who is Medium Aware.Gerry: I have……what, two thirds of a chapter left to find him? Three fourths if you count the website, but that’s bygone stuff.Oliver: Sorry?
- Book Burning: Nonpolitical. Gerry does this to feed his unspecified eldritch deity.
- Cosmic Horror Story: Just like in canon, the fears rule and subsist on humanity.
- Deadly Book:
- The unspecified book Gerry sold to a family in Toulouse ends up burning their house down, somehow.
- The Memoir of a Man of Blue Air, by Orla Fairchild, is implied to be able to sway a person to the Vast.
- Distant Prologue: The first chapter begins with an article about the burning of Pinhole Books in 2005.
- Evil Evolves: So much so that Mike would like to write a research paper on its phylogeny.
- Infallible Babble: The horoscope column.
- Let the Past Burn:
- Used as a Beginning Trope rather than an End Trope with Gerry’s burning of his childhood home.
- Medium Awareness: Gerry, constantly. Played for Drama and Played for Laughs, in equal measure.
- The Omniscient:
- Neerie of Neerie Strikes The Net demonstrates knowledge of things she doesn’t seem to have any business knowing.
- The Archivist.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. Mike dates Misha Dyatlov, whose name, of course, is the diminutive nickname form of Mikhail.
- Playing with Fire:
- Gerry’s main gimmick. Includes a Finger-Snap Lighter.
- Agnes, the Lightless Flame, and Gerry, to an extent, work with Sacred Flames.
- Religion of Evil: The Lightless Flame.
- Scrapbook Story:
- The unpublished newspapers.
- N.S.T.N.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Gerry and Mike’s early dealings.
- The Undead:
- As with all avatars, Gerry sacrificed himself to the Desolation/Dark/whatever in 2005, burning Pinhole Books after Mary’s binding and absolving himself of any potential murder charges.
- It’s assumed that all other avatars, like Oliver, have gone through similar processes.
- "Uh-Oh" Eyes:
- Gerry’s, but concealed by mirrored sunglasses.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Subverted from source, with the use of dead or exited characters as protagonists.
