AU Roulette Challenge

What is AU Roulette? A casual fic-writing challenge encouraging authors to play around with different types of alternate universe stories, which will be randomly assigned to each participant regardless of the fandom they sign up with. The goal of the challenge is to encourage creativity and get authors to write fics with premises they might not otherwise have considered, with varying difficulty levels of participation for writers of all experience levels.

How does it work? Writers will be able to sign up with their fandom of choice starting Monday, July 31st. Sign-ups will run for one week, at the end of which each participant will be assigned three AUs from a masterlist using a random number generator. Each author will then have the choice of completing the challenge on easy (writing one of the AUs), medium (writing two of the AUs) or hard mode (writing all three AUs). Any fic exceeding a 500-word minimum will be considered a completion, so long as it employs the AU premise. The fic-writing period of the challenge will run for a month. Fics can be posted at any point during this time, and authors will have the option of having them added to an Ao3 collection for the challenge if they desire. They can also be posted to tumblr using the tag #AUroulette2023.

What kind of AUs will be included in the challenge? The AU Roulette challenge will focus largely on popular, staple AU types with broad applicability to any fandom or relationship type. For example, a possible result might be something like a Time Travel AU (encompassing all the possible subsets, such as fix-it time travel, time loops, or other tropes under the same umbrella), but more restrictive AU types like a Soulmate AU that make assumptions about the author's interpretation of character relationships in canon have been intentionally kept off the AU masterlist. The official list of AUs will be kept under wraps until assignments are given, but will have over 30 different prompts to ensure authors receive a good variety of options, and if you have suggestions or concerns about what AUs are being included, feel free to reach out.

What if I get an AU type that doesn't work for the canon I chose? Limited re-rolls will be allowed on a case-by-case basis. For example, if you signed up to write fic for His Dark Materials and ended up getting a Daemon AU, your result would automatically be re-rolled. Similarly, if you were writing for a different fandom entirely but were unfamiliar with what a Daemon AU entailed and wanted to write something you didn't have to research the premise of, I would likely approve a re-roll (However, you would be free to give it a try! My goal is for this challenge to be accessible to people with all levels of familiarity with fic tropes, so you are also welcome to reach out and ask about your assignment).

You are also encouraged to be as creative as you want with your interpretation of your assigned AUs, which may help with making them fit. The goal of this challenge is to encourage weird, creative fanfic, not to have every author who rolls the same result write cookie-cutter versions of the same types of stories. If you were to get a Coffee Shop AU, for example, there is no requirement that the coffee shop in question be a real-world 21st-century Earth Starbucks. In fact, deviating from the mold is highly encouraged. So long as you can make a case that you filled the loose premise of your AU type, you will get credit for having completed it.

Can I participate if I am not a writer? AU Roulette is a fanfic writing challenge, so official sign-ups are for those interested in writing (regardless of skill level or experience writing AUs). However, if you are interested in the challenge but not in writing fic for it, consider having a look at the #AUroulette2023 tag or the official AU Roulette 2023 collection on Ao3 once authors have begun posting their stories. If one of them really speaks to you, it might be a nice gesture to draw a piece of art, make a playlist, or create some other fanwork inspired by the fic and share it -- in which case you would also be more than welcome to use the official tag!

(Authors are of course also welcome to do this for their or other participants' stories, too.)

How do I sign up? I will be reblogging this same post with a link to a Google form for sign-ups on Monday, July 31st! Watch this space and feel free to send me any questions you have about the challenge!

Looking forward to seeing the AUs everyone creates!

AU Roulette 2023 sign-ups are open!

Please fill out the above Google form if you are interested in participating. Sign-ups will run until midnight August 7th, US Central time, and AU assignments will be sent to participants via email the next day (August 8th).

Last day for sign-ups! Prompts will be sent out tomorrow!

and then they make out

Redesign seekers

Nobody asked for more phantom hourglass sketches but I did. With some spirit tracks :3 keep in mind that I have not played it yet (I don’t have a ds atm) so I am drawing ST gang to cope, so please, no spoilers

reblog if you love autism

Lol. I saw this and started laughing so hard. I love it. 🤣 (not my tweet). Trekkies, our new slogan is "Live fast and get fucked!"

[Image description: a tweet by kailey🛸 that reads, "my boss told me i looked like i watched star trek and then as i was leaving she said “may the force be with you… wait no it’s live fast and get fucked or whatever” and held up the hand salute. so i guess it was a good day at work

/end image description]

🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♂️ 💦

I LOVE THEM..

hey i made a chart

this is alien-fucker erasure

@in-alptraum-verloren

Basically all of these venn circles belong inside a bigger one labelled ‘Transformers fandom’

#how is it that transformers. always wins any sort of fandom battle

@federations

This genuinely made me laugh

Boldly going

It was to distract censorship groups from the political statements.

I’ve heard this

My friend got me into Transformers. Here's some Scavenger boyfriends.

Can you believe fiction podcasts basically invented a new genre, “gays and conspiracies”

I know literally none of you care about Star Trek but you have no idea what it was like to sit in a crowded theater for the deep space 9 documentary and have the actors and creators of the show tell us “yes this lizard character is gay and yes he should have fucked the twink but we were too pussy”

Joking aside, it was pretty crazy to see creators not immediately pat themselves on the back for their one token gay episode (that was quickly forgotten about within canon and never mentioned again) and admit to not having as much lgbt representation needed to accurately reflect the time in which it was produced... plus admitting that the fans were right in their assumption that the (possibly accidentally) gay coded character was in fact gay, and not writing them off as weirdos with nothing else better to do with their time. The older people in the audience of the theater were noticeably uncomfortable with the show runners saying a fan favorite was gay and in love with another fan favorite, and that took some guts.

Finished the shield to go with the axe I made for a friends Kratos Cosplay! Very happy how this turned out!  I take commissions like this & I uploaded a making of & tutorial (Incl. how I did the LED) to my https://www.patreon.com/Chaozrael  :)

I NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS SHOW

sorry, I really do. I love it, I’m in love with it, and I want to try and shine a light on where that love comes from. so, apologies, gonna ramble, block me if u don’t want none of that, it’s cool.

so that up there is the first page of the book. what’s fun is to see what the show did with it.

for 1 thing, the show made it fuckton more queer (and btw if we could start saying that instead of describing the show as ‘gay’ that would be awesome, thx, ace pride, nb pride, etc.). 

in the book, we open on aziraphale and crowley mid-conversation. in the show, we see how they met. 

and it’s CROWLEY (crawley but the book lets us know that he doesn’t like that name on the second page so i’m sticking with crowley) who makes the first move.

in fact, through the entire opening scene it’s crowley putting in the donkey work to get the conversation going. he’s the one who approaches aziraphale, just slithers right up to his mortal enemy and starts talking like that’s a normal thing to do when, really, aziraphale’s reaction suggests that it isn’t

like. here’s zira’s face before he notices crowley, when he’s still watching adam and eve walk away 

*fret fret fret oh dear oh dear*

EH?

what. what is happening. 

he’s clearly not sure how to deal with this; his opposite number sidling up all casual-like and providing commentary. should he attack? best not, he just gave away the flaming sword. stiff politeness, then. 

(btw in the book, crowley’s a snake for the entirety of this sequence, we won’t meet human-shaped crowley until he picks up the antichrist. which is one of many many small ways in which the tv show works to make the subtextual romance significantly less so. bit difficult to have chemistry with a reptile. not impossible, god loves u monsterfuckers, but difficult)

oh but crowley plays it cool, he doesn’t treat this interaction like it’s in any way weird or unprecedented. ‘that went over like a lead balloon’ he opens with and then repeats it, in a lazy drawl, when zira’s like wtf 

it’s crowley who keeps the conversation going, commenting about how kicking adam and eve out of eden seems unduly harsh, and what’s wrong about knowing the difference between good and evil, and why was the tree in the middle of the garden and not on the moon, questions questions questions. he’s so curious and confused and he really wants someone to help him work all this out

hungry for knowledge, just like eve

and aziraphale has no clue what to do with any of this. this isn’t what he signed up for. he tries to stick to the party line, with all its circular logic and platitudes, ‘it’s ineffable’, ‘best not to speculate’, ‘it’s not for us to know’, ‘you’re a demon it’s what you do’

he’s doing his best to be a good soldier.

at this point crowley’s starting to tune him out, he’s bored and a little depressed, he’s had the party line recited at him before

and he just wanted someone to talk to and

THEN

crowley notices that the sword’s missing

‘…?’

and he asks what happened to it and at first zira won’t say and then finally zira admits ‘I GAVE IT AWAY!’

it’s the first really honest thing he’s given crowley, that guilty wail

crowley’s reaction:

‘…OH. oh. you’re special.’

they both surprise one another; crowley surprises aziraphale when he slithers up and initiates the conversation for no apparent nefarious purpose; aziraphale surprises crowley when he reveals he disobeyed orders just to be kind. 

oh, also you know how there’s that parallel between crowley and eve’s yearning for knowledge. there’s another parallel; while they talk, adam’s protecting eve from the lion

a moment later, it starts to rain, and. guess who immediately, without stopping to think about it, protects crowley?

while adam and eve walk off hand in hand in the background, adam holding the flaming sword. 

read that opening extract again. having aziraphale shield crowley from the rain instead of himself was a deliberate choice the show made.

Throwback to when I edited lip gloss onto brainstorm

Teethsies too

I’m actually kinda obsessed with the implicitly expressed femininity in David’s portrayal of Crowley.

Yes, there is the literal crossdressing (which imo was really tasteful for a comedy and isn’t necessarily even crossdressing for agender beings) but also just his general looks and behavior.

There was talk of the stills from the crucifixion before the series came out, how Crowley was dressed typically feminine for the time period and I absolutely still read him like that in the full context.

There’s also a clear preference for long hair judging by the amount of times he’s had long hair and then there’s The Walk.

It’s pretty slithery, kinda 50% snakes-don’t- have-legs-what-do and 50% Must Look Suave, but the end result is very Hips don’t lie and it ads a more feminine energy to him overall, I think.

Like I said, with the exception of Nanny!Crowley, it’s pretty implicit and I don’t know if it was a deliberate choice, or I’m reading too much into it, but I really like that reading personally.

(I could talk about the feminine energy Aziraphale expresses too, but it’s more consistant than Crowley’s so I don’t think I need to, I just appreciate the fluidity of their genders in general)