#auroulette2023

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!

squeaking in under the wire for AU Roulette 2023! this was for the prompt "urban fantasy"

Angus was eight when he first read about changelings — in a book that he checked out from the library out of boredom, really. Boredom and disappointment, when he saw the new Caleb Cleveland wasn’t in yet. But what he read within, the descriptions of the fae children that swapped out for humans, well…

They were familiar. In a way that scared him at first, but over the years, began to excite him more and more — because maybe, just maybe, Angus could be like this for a reason.

Most obviously, he acts older than his age, and people notice, with some finding it unnerving. He can lie, but finds it so much easier to imply something false by omission. He’s mildly allergic to nickel, which isn’t quite the same as being repelled by cold iron, but that might just be a trait that varies among individual fae!

His parents are dead and his grandpa doesn’t remember enough to care for him anymore, so he has no one to ask stories about his birth, or early childhood — to ask if he acted more like a human, once — and he certainly does not remember every living in a faerie world, but the evidence is compelling nonetheless.

Most compelling of all — the thought that there might be more people out there who are like him. Who would like him, and actually treat him as one of their own.

And he’s starting to suspect, actually, that one of those people might be his middle school shop teacher.

Nineteenth Century Whalers. Captain Minkowski is captain of the whaling ship Hephaestus but the ship's figurehead is an image of the goddess Hera and also she can talk don't question it. It is a shitty ship and shitty crew and shitty job. There are only three of them because reasons. They are chasing a mystical White Whale for their boss back in Boston which they aren't even sure exists. They find Lovelace marooned on an island; the captain of the previous crew sent after the Whale by Mr. Cutter. She has 19th Century Novel Trauma Amnesia. She can't remember what happened to her. (What happened to her was her whole crew died and the whale rammed and destroyed her ship and she was swallowed by the whale and spent an undisclosed amount of time in the belly of the whale before being ejected Changed.)

1200s BCE Aegean. Captain Minkowski is once again the captain of a ship, a like, knockoff Argo with the rejected Argonauts trying to find some mystical artifact like the Golden Fleece (the Golden Apples that grant eternal life?) for her wanax. It's part of her mandatory military service the way Late Helladic Mycaenean city-states would do. For Eiffel it's a punishment and he does not want to go on this quest at All. Their boat can talk because magic and they named it the Hera after the queen of the gods as a blatant attempt to curry favor with a powerful goddess for protection. Lovelace has once again been shipwrecked, betrayed by the wanax and the gods and Very Angry about it.

AU: Community theatre

Barry's in hell. He died in a horrific car crash and everything that's happened in the last hour has been the universe punishing him for stealing Alex J's cupcake on the last day of 3rd grade. This is the only explanation.

It couldn't possibly be because he's smitten for a very pretty girl he's known only since he forced himself to socialise and volunteered to do lights at the city theatre. How long has it been? Three weeks? Twenty years? Fifteen minutes? 

But she caught him singing to himself and convinced him to sing to her for real. Then when the guy playing the titular character turned out to be an absolute jerkwad, he was shoved into an audition room and now he's sitting in a chair trying not to cringe as Taako paper machés half his face. 

Why they decided to do Phantom of the Opera, Barry will never understand. Their funding is about 20 dollars and a paperclip, but the things Magnus can rig up with some plywood and a quick trip to Home Depot are truly magical. 

The dressing room door opens and in the mirror he sees Lup come up behind him, very obviously suppressing a smile. 

"You're laughing at me," he deadpans.

"No I'm not!" She looks offended at the notion. "It just looks silly before the mask is painted." 

He chances a look at himself, and she's not wrong. There's some glue-water dripping down his chin, he has a makeshift cotton-ball-and-medical-tape eyepatch, and there's a full colour Garfield comic across his forehead. "I can't believe I agreed to this." 

"You'll do great." 

He resists the urge to shake his head as Taako puts another strip of paper on his face. Moving too much is what got him stuck with Garfield. "I haven't been on a stage since I was thirteen. I'm a backstage kind of guy."

"Who can sing like a leading man." 

His face flushes, and even with his half vision he can see Taako roll his eyes. "I'm just glad Greg's finally fucked off," he says. "That guy was getting way too into it." 

Barry frowns. "Really? How?" 

Taako snorts. "You know that guy who played the joker who left, like, gross shit on people's doorsteps?" 

"Nnnnno? I'm not really a celebrities kinda guy." 

Taako covers up the Garfield strip with the last of the newspaper (probably because he knows Lucretia would throw a paintbrush at him if she had to cover a full colour comic with the theatre's mediocre paint) and starts washing his hands. "Well some dude was being a freak about playing the joker cause he's "method" and Greg was also being a freak." 

"It was like he was trying to be the phantom of this theatre," Lup says, "but he didn't seem to realise it doesn't work when we all know he's doing it." 

"Well, I, uh," Barry clears his throat, "I promise I won't be a freak? But, you know, who's gonna do lights now? I mean I-" 

"Magnus," Taako says, flicking the water off his hands. 

"He couldn't take over the phantom?" 

Taako barks a laugh. "Trust me, you do not want to hear Maggie sing." 

"He's not that bad," Lup defends.

"He's not that good either. He's better off sticking to Shakespeare and woodworking." 

Barry's eyebrows raise. "Shakespeare?" 

"Face," Taako scolds. Barry drops his surprise back to neutral. "But yeah, the guy can't sing for shit, and he won't be acting in any blockbusters any time soon, but jeezums can he recite a soliloquy." 

"I can actually understand ol' Willy Shakes when Magnus does it," Lup says. "He was Macbeth last year." 

"Oh, I remember that!" Barry says, "my mom and I came, and afterwards she kept saying how-" 

He's cut off by loud, thundering steps out in the hallway. Somewhere outside the door a booming voice shouts, "TO BE, OR NOT TO BE," the door's thrown open and reveals Magnus, "THAT is the question." 

"Why do you look like that?" Sleeper asked from their perch on the back of their father's couch, imperious and cat shaped.

Like what? Toxin responded in the chemo-signal language of symbiotes.

"Like a pile of spaghetti."

Toxin was spread over Eddie’s coffee table, a mass of burgundy tendrils squirming and tapping against anything he could reach without having to touch the carpet. He wasn’t bothering with anything so complex as a mouth or eyespots. Sleeper wondered if it was because he couldn’t or because he didn’t want to before deciding that they didn’t really care about the answer.

What’s that?

“Pasta? Long, thin pasta in a tomato sauce? Surely you've at least seen it?"

A sense of amusement exuded from Toxin and a green-tongued grin split his mass. "Of course I've heard of spaghetti, and don't call me Shirley."

Sleeper winced at the subpar wordplay. Their tail tip twitched irritably. "I cannot wait until your host takes you back to South Africa."

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Gravity Falls Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dipper Pines & Ford Pines & Mabel Pines & Stan Pines Characters: Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines, Stan Pines, Ford Pines Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Bands, Teenage Dipper Pines and Mabel Pines, Singing, Monsters, Concerts, Family Bonding, Love Patrol Alpha (Gravity Falls), References to Canon, Anxiety, Television, stage fright, Music Series: Part 1 of AU Roulette 2023 Summary:

Mabel's decision to start Love Patrol Alpha as an actual cover band with her family the next summer snowballs until they're blowing up overnight. This concert is their debut; hopefully, they'll make a good impression. Nobody could expect such a Gravity Falls thing to happen all the way in California, however.

Title: The Names of All the Winds Author: greenapricot Fandom: Lewis Characters: Robbie Lewis, James Hathaway, Laura Hobson Pairing: James Hathaway/Robbie Lewis Rating: Gen Word count: 811 Chapter: 1 of 7 Warnings: None

“You’re allowed to take a holiday too, you know,” Laura says. She’s sitting across the pub table from Robbie, tan and relaxed, having just returned from ten days in Crete. Outside, rain is falling steadily, rivulets sliding down the window behind Laura’s head, the street beyond a watery blur.

“Might be nice to see the sun again,” Robbie says. He saw plenty of sun in the Virgin Islands—too much at times—but after two years he’d rather gotten used to it. Six months and an entire winter back in Oxford and the grey and the wet are weighing on him more than he expected. It’s technically spring now, but the weather hasn’t caught up with the calendar. Not that Oxford spring necessarily heralds sunshine and warmth anyway.

“Plenty of sun in Crete,” Laura says, tapping her finger on the edge of her glass. “Italy as well. Flights are cheap right now. Lago di Garda maybe?”

Robbie hums noncommittally. Though, Italy doesn’t sound terrible right at this moment.

“Val visited the lake with her family when she was a child, she always talked about going back. Used to tell the children bedtime stories about it,” Robbie says, and it doesn’t sting quite as much saying her name, it’s a happy memory, the stories she told and how much the children loved them. “Ancient creatures that live at the bottom of the lake and protect the entire valley from harm, lemons and olives that grow all winter long, enchanted winds with healing powers.”

“Maybe you should give it a go, then.”

Rating: G

Pairing: Lin Beifong/Tenzin

Word Count: 1,186

Summary: Tenzin works at his family's bakery. There's a customer one day that catches his eye.

full fic below: