#rnac

[image description: drawing of role swapped geordi la forge and data from star trek: the next generation. data looks quietly shocked, asking “an android!?” geordi grins at him, and says “that’s what I said”. text by data’s head indicates he’s about to walk into a wall because he’s so distracted staring at geordi]

most important role swap au points:

android!geordi doesn’t have emotions, but he has a personality chip to help integrate himself with humans. he says something to data like “I’m programmed with a list of 77845 jokes, but am incapable of forming my own. I don’t understand humor - I just laugh when I process it.” his goal is still to be more human

data’s father is actually noonian soong, who failed to make a positronic brain, then went a bit nuts. data has disowned him & ran away to starfleet (I think maybe the twist where his ‘mom’ is now actually an android should remain!!)

data is still awkward, naive and adorable, bc of the way noonian raised him

geordi initially struggles with human actions more than data did - he forgets to blink and moves inhumanly, and his personality chip can still be abrasive and tactless. in the same way as data, he slowly gets better at this

BUT he does it by reprogramming himself a lot - he’s his own engineer! data walks into him glitching out bc he messed something up, and shows an in depth knowledge of robotics (grudgingly inherited from his father) and saves geordi. they immediately become fast friends, working together to keep him fixed and updated

in the equivalent of s1, geordi is already chief engineer, but data is lt jnr in a science bridge position (like data was meant to be but his makeup clashed!!). s2, data gets promoted to his canon role and up to lt cmdr

lore is a regular human twin brother data didn’t know about who still turns up and wrecks havoc - there’s no geordi!lore

geordi sees the same way as he usually does with the visor, like the cybernetic eyes post tng

...it was probably q

second ask: “it just occured 2 me data was never a kiddo..but maybe some au idk ahsbdmf”

howwwwww’s kid!geordi and data!! because data is so good with kids and geordi is this fledgling engineer who canonically sees an angelic haze around data

[image description: drawing of data and geordi la forge from star trek: the next generation. data sits with his sleeve rolled up and a cover on his arm rolled back, showing his mechanics. geordi is a young kid, around 10, with an older style visor. he’s holding data’s arm and looking in wonder inside, exclaiming “WOAH!”]

(p.s I’ll draw something with them both as kids soon ;))