One Down, Time To See If I Can Get The Other Two Cleaned Up And Posted Before The Cut Off. This Month

One down, time to see if I can get the other two cleaned up and posted before the cut off. This month has been a wild ride.

AU Roulette Challenge 2024

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 from now through June with a fandom of their choice. At the start of July, 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 one, two, or all three of the 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 #AU Roulette 2024

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. 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 #AU Roulette 2024 tag or the official AU Roulette 2024 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? Fill out this form with your email and fandom of choice.

Looking forward to seeing the AUs everyone creates this year!

I have started yet another fic. My wip folder is groaning. Last I checked I had over 200 wips. Many of them have between 2-5k words. *headdesk* my longest wip has 36k words at the moment. Why am I like this? Why can't I write one shots? Why can't I finish anything?

My fingers hurt. This is what I get for taking a month off of practicing my dizi. And I can't remember the fingerings I was just getting good at it too. Ah well. Time to practice. Someday I am going to be able to play WangXian on the dizi and make my wife learn the guqin part. Then we will be unstoppable.

sometimes I think about how red is the first color in the visible light spectrum to be absorbed in ocean water

and how many deep-sea creatures evolved to be red as a stealth adaptation, making them near invisible when there’s little to no light present

and it makes me think. If there’s never any visible light present in these animals’ lifetimes, if no ROV shines a little flashlight in depths that would otherwise not have light, would these animals ever get the opportunity to actually be red? that might be a stupid question.

imagine being a little deep sea creature and having no idea you’re red until something comes along and shines a light on you except you still wouldn’t be able to tell because you’re probably colorblind. anyway. I don’t know where I was going with this post

I like to think about the white robed cultivators introducing their husbands (I know Shen Qingqiu wears green robes, but go with it). Xie Lian would be like, "this is my husband, he's a ghost king who searched for me for over eight hundred years and sacrificed himself three times for me, and all of heaven fears him" and there's Hua Cheng in the background, looking sexy and mysterious, probably sculpting a statue of Xie Lian because he's bored. Shen Qingqiu would then be like, "this is MY husband, he's half heavenly demon and emperor of the demon realm who almost ruled both realms but stopped because he only wanted me" and Luo Binghe is in the background, ominous and yet undeniably handsome as he cooks Shen Qingqiu some of the most delicious looking food ever. Then there's Lan Wangji. "Oh, this is my husband. He's a human cultivator who plays the flute so well that even the dead come back to listen to it" and it cuts to Wei Wuxian, who is clinging to a tree and screaming as a dog tries to bite his robes.

Cut my bangs and gave myself a trim and.... it's giving Pollyanna vibes. Which isn't exactly what I was going for. But I can rock it while healthy hair grows.