some ship aus i want on this beautiful wednesday.
phantom of the opera au // two guesses who hel would be in this equation. please let her be the mysterious mentor that got a little a lot obsessive and just wants to possess love, who wants to be recognized for their genius, and just wants some motherfuckers to stop disobeying them, seriously, this system has worked out fine for decades why do you all want to flip the script? probably a more problematic/not going to end well ship au, tread carefully if you want to claim it.
monte cristo au // honestly the titular character is the launcher of a thousand ships, just give your muse a canon-esque role and i’m sure we can work out how they and hel would end up involved. she’s here to get revenge and ruin lives like her own was ruined and the cast list is immense, just go wild. wanna be her ex lover she was torn from? awesome. wanna be some little dumbass looking for a sugar mama and finding nothing but suffering? sure. wanna be one of the people that destroyed her and made her a husk? kinky.
secret lovers au // in which the other muse falls in love with a death goddess who is technically not supposed to leave her realm except on professional business. in which the other muse falls in love with a woman who has lost so many before that she is half-mad with terror to ever let others know that she has found someone. in which hel and her partner both want a world where they can be open about their feelings but struggle with the reality of their lives and what it would mean.
au ships // honestly hel really only ships in her main/616/kh verses, give me ships in her other verses. fall for the half-hollow daughter of nito, have a rollercoaster romance with mcu hel that gets dark and harder to keep alive as the franchise continues. seduce your local american gremlin and meet her family to get fuckin rekt.
wartime au // in which hel ends up allied to another muse’s conflict, and that alliance slowly turns to a flirtatious allyship. try to distract her from battle plans. protect her honor and her life. joke about cementing this good working relationship with marriage only for her to tell you to shut the hell your mouth. just give me intrigues and battles and games nad oh look a budding romance.
wuthering heights au // as kids hel and the other muse were thick as thieves, wild and unfazed by convention, especially those that sought to keep them apart based on class/status. they ended up separated when hel and her brothers were cast out of asgard, but the other muse eventually worked their way up to a position of power, finds their old friend again… only to see her as a tamed, broken bird, with their past falling through their hands like sand. tragic, but can be played as platonic or romantic.
one thousand and one nights au // no, no, hear me out, i’m not saying we straight up adapt it, but we take inspiration. hel comes to collect a soul, who fends off their own death with a story, with a cliffhanger. hel knows that this is a game, a weak ploy to hold her at bay, but she likes the way they tell the tale. she returns daily for her ‘offering,’ knowing it only delays the inevitable. in time, she gets to know the person behind the stories, comes to like them… perhaps far more than she ought to. by the end she prays at every parting, with anguish deep in her breast, that this mortal never runs out of stories. this one can be played platonic, as in hel comes to love the one who holds her so captivated as a friend and doesn’t want to see them die, but i think it works especially well as a romantic shipping au.
deathless au // in which hel is the inhuman but beautiful creature who attracts a fey mate, spiriting them to her own realm of magic and curiosities. she is the dark, strict queen, who is weak only for her human mate, adoring them so long as they stay away from other humans, so long as they do not seek out her promised death. of course, it cannot be that simple, and her war with odin’s forces takes a toll on the both of them. eventually, her mate dance too close to their former people, and finds the promise of who they might have been had hel never come to claim them. after that it’s all a beautiful tragedy, but it is not a new thing, either. this one pretty much requires a romantic angle to work.
much ado about nothing // just let hel have a merry war with someone. she’s soft, yes, but she’s still daddy’s little girl. she can have some bite to her. she can rip someone to shreds with the best of them. she will play beatrice to whoever is brave enough to meet that challenge head on as benedick. hell, i even writing in her vertigo verse that hel’s interactions with a certain dream lord in the 16th century directly influenced the creation of such characters. amicable disdain. sexual tension laden roasting. dragging your loved one within an inch of their life. we can make this work.
