Pleas elaborate on that challengers au??? Obsessed rn

So I’m going to properly get to working on this once the next chapter of “Reading TRB” is up and once I can rewatch the movie to develop the ideas more but I’ll just type up some of my brainstorming / thoughts and post it here rn!

— basically a Challengers au where Gansey is Art, Blue is Tashi and Adam is Patrick. Was discussing with a few other people and I think Adam could also potentially be a Tashi but that fits more for a Rodansey au which would also slap if someone wants to write it but I’m going for the Bluedansey version because I was in major brain rot over them over my last reread. 

— so the set up of Gansey and Adam meeting in high school is similar just without the other chars as factors (Ronan might still show up in the fic but if he does it’ll be the timeline where they’re older he won’t have known them in high school). With Gansey still the rich golden boy and Adam as the scholarship student and them having an unlikely really close and intense friendship.

— I’ll actually have tennis be something Adam picked up for kind of mercenary reasons he needed an elective + he wanted to spend time with Gansey kind of in the way he goes along with the Glendower quest for Gansey. But then it was noticed that he’s really good at it and Adam would capitalize on that and use it as a way he can get out of Henrietta even if at first he thought that would be through his book smarts. He does also grow to love tennis but isn’t fully cognizant of that the way he struggles to understand love in the series (his relationship with tennis follows a similar path to his relationship to magic in the books basically, arc wise). 

— Even though I know it is canon in the books that he’s Captain of the rowing team I have the hardest time jockifying Gansey in my mind because suuuuch a fucking neerd (affectionate) I’ll keep some of his nerdy interests obv but trying to redirect my perception of him overall for this. Taking a bit of inspiration from my friend Kevin Day for this re: balancing the jock-nerd. But I think playing sports professionally to him is partially going to be his escape from being just like his father / living the life his family wants for him, while also being more passably acceptable in the eyes of his family than some other things he could pursue, as well as being something he genuinely loves. 

— enter Blue she meets them at a tournament beginning of college like in the movie, she  comes from a small town like Adam but will change it to her being from a different state still in the south. I am keeping her background of being raised by the psychics of 300 fox way and Maura will be an active character in the later part of the fic/movie, but for her tennis is her something more in a sense and when she finds that she doesn’t want to give it up. But at same time she’s sensible as much as she has big dreams, so she still wants to go to school and have other skills besides going pro also I think getting into tennis would have in some ways accentuated the bullying/judgement she got from her peers in high school, and then once she proved herself to be good there also would have been elevated respect but I think that effects her whole superiority-inferiority thing, it doesn’t change her general mo with new people and she’s still quite isolated and lonely (more so than in canon since she didn’t meet the Gangsey in hs), but I think a bit more.. actively trying to be seen as socially acceptable with specifically professional situations. I also kind of want a plot point to have to do with how her style changed when she got into tennis and navigating expectations of her style related to her profession, which will be interesting for continuing the pursuit of looking on the outside as you are on the inside theme from the books. 

—Oh and even though the 300 fox ladies are still psychics there’s no kiss curse involved so I do think this version of Blue has had a couple boyfriends and a girlfriend, none of them were serious relationships because her priority was tennis and she’s a prickly babe but I do think this could change her relationships with the boys in interesting ways, especially Blue x Adam tbh because so much of how it plays out in canon is influenced by it being both their first relationship… 

— I do think that it’ll be better for me and my writing process to write this chronologically rather than bouncing between the timelines the way the movie does, and I’m definitely going to use all three perspectives so we’ll see what feels right at different times but I think I’m going to start with Adam pov, the first switch to Gansey pov will be in the breakfast Tashi-Art scene (which is a super tdt era Bluesey coded scene imo but anyway), Blue’s injury is from her pov and maybe some going back and forth between her and Gansey’s povs for a bit in the middle, then I want to weight the second timeline to mostly Blue pov and some Adam I’ll see if another Gansey pov fits in there or not. But obviously will play it by ear this is just what I’m thinking rn.

— for the relationship dynamics: when it comes to the college years the dynamic structures are already pretty similar imo which is a big part of why I wanted to write it particularly the dynamic circa the Dream thieves of Gansey going back and forth between Blue and Adam’s sides of the relationship drama then getting with Blue when both their relationships with Adam implode is … I don’t actually need to change much there. I do think I’ll tweak the story of Patrick teaching Art how to jerk off so the gist is the same but it fits into the early trc dynamics of Gansey trying to wingman for Adam and give him advice about girls and at one such occasion there was a practice kiss, and then maybe also a practice handjob. Like I said some Art/Tashi scenes like the “he’s not in love with you who wouldn’t be in love with you” scene give Bluesey to me already and there’s a general patheticness (affectionate) to Art/Gansey that’s similar. I do need to think more about how to shift their dynamic for the adult Art/Tashi stuff since that’ll be more challenging I think… and Tashi/Patrick scenes kind of rely on them both being prickly and argumentative in a way that very much fits the energy of Bluedam’s multiple iconique fight scenes I’m especially going to have fun paralleling the Tashi/Patrick car convo (feels like I can get significance out of Gansey being the one associated with his car and inclined to having romantic moments in them) with the Bluedam ninos fight. 

So, there are some bullet points I have other thoughts obviously but this is already quite long so if your curious about something else specific feel free to ask (also in general re: that poll am open to questions about my ideas for those aus. or about my in progress fic, or whatever)