What If? AU Challenge

[brumeier]

Hello! I’m your host, brumeier. For my birthday I decided to treat myself to one of my favorite fic things: an AU! How do I define an AU? For me, it means taking canon characters and making a significant change in their circumstances. This can happen within the confines of canon (canon divergent) or the characters can be dropped into completely different worlds.

Basically, an AU is a fun way for me to see how I can keep canon characters familiar in wholly new surroundings or circumstances. As simple as ‘what if character A had done this instead of character B’ or as complex as ‘character A is now a barbarian with mystic powers’. And everything in between!

Starting April 2021, the monthly posts will be going bimonthly. I'm keeping this community nice and simple, so here’s everything you need to know:

We’re multifandom! This challenge welcomes all fandoms, including RPF and original fic. All ships, romantic or platonic. I only ask that everyone remains respectful. There’s room for all of us here.

No minimum wordcounts! You can write as little or as much as you want to meet the challenge topic. In fact, you don’t have to write at all. Challenge fills can be fanvids or fanart or whatever outlet your creativity feels like using.

Prompts welcome! I'll offer up some suggestions for each theme, and encourage anyone else who wants to do the same. If you have a cool idea for how a particular theme could play out please respond in the comments.

No deadlines! Every other month, a new theme will be posted, but if you start working on something that takes on epic proportions, you can post it any time. You'll still get added to the masterlist even if you write something for a theme that's years old.

Must be a joiner! Only members of this community will be able to see posts and leave comments. We want this to be a safe place for ideas to be shared. I will also be cross-posting to LJ to maximize participation.

That’s pretty much it, folks. I hope you’ll be inspired by each theme. I’ll be trying to write something for each one as well because, as I mentioned, I love AUs!

You can post your completed works anywhere, as long as you link it back here to be included in the masterlist that I compile for each AU theme. And we can all revel in the loveliness of AUs!

You can find the AO3 collection for this community here.

*o*

Update: If you're looking for a beta reader or would like to offer your services as one, please check out this post.

*o*

Masterlists

Challenge #1: No-one Dies Masterlist 

Challenge #2: Cowboy Masterlist 

Challenge #3: Soulmate Masterlist

Challenge #4: Apocalypse Masterlist

Challenge #5: Time Travel Masterlist

Challenge #6: Historical Wars Masterlist

Challenge #7: Supernatural Masterlist

Challenge #8: Magic Masterlist

Challenge #9: Space Masterlist

Challenge #10: Workplace Masterlist

Challenge #11: Ocean Masterlist

Challenge #12: Lost/Stranded Masterlist

Challenge #13: Double Trouble Anniversary Masterlist

Challenge #14: Movie/TV Fusions Masterlist

Challenge #15: Good Guys Go Bad/Bad Guys Go Good Masterlist

Challenge #16: Dystopia Masterlist

Challenge #17: Characters As Animals Masterlist

Challenge #18: High School/College Masterlist

Challenge #19: Supernatural 2 Masterlist

Challenge #20: Sentinel/Guide Masterlist

Challenge #21: Food Service Masterlist

Challenge #22: Steampunk Masterlist

Challenge #23: Kid Fic Masterlist

Challenge #24: Fairy Tale Masterlist

Challenge #25: Party Hardy Masterlist

Challenge #26: Regency Masterlist

Challenge #27: Celebrity Masterlist

Challenge #28: Crack!fic Masterlist

Challenge #29: Decade-Specific Masterlist

Challenge #30: Mythology Masterlist

Challenge #31: Supernatural 3 Masterlist

Challenge #32: Superhero Masterlist

Challenge #33: Christmas/Winter Masterlist

Challenge #34: Royalty Masterlist

Challenge #35: Medical Masterlist

Challenge #36: Law Enforcement Masterlist

Challenge #37: Anniversary Challenge - Reunion Masterlist

Challenge #38: Tourism Masterlist

Challenge #39: Political Masterlist

Challenge #40: Sports Masterlist

Challenge #41: Natural Disaster Masterlist

Challenge #42: Music Masterlist

Challenge #43: Supernatural 4 Masterlist

Challenge #44: Robot Masterlist

Challenge #45: Holiday Mythology Masterlist

Challenge #46: Reversals Masterlist

Challenge #47: Coffee Shop & Variants Masterlist

Challenge #48: Modeling Masterlist

Challenge #49: Triple Threat Anniversary Masterlist

Challenge #50: Espionage Masterlist

Challenge #51: People With Disabilities Masterlist

Challenge #52: Supernatural 5 Masterlist

Challenge #53: Teacher Masterlist

Challenge #54: Crossover Plus One Anniversary Masterlist

Challenge #55: The Staff Masterlist

Challenge #56: Treasure Hunter Masterlist

Challenge #57: Supernatural 6 Masterlist

Challenge #58: Circus/Carnival Masterlist

Challenge #59: Pygmalion Masterlist

Challenge #60: Wonderland Anniversary Masterlist

Challenge #61: Radio/Podcast Masterlist

Challenge #62: Punk Masterlist

Challenge #63: Air Travel Masterlist

Challenge #64: Winter Wonderland Masterlist

Challenge #65: Immortal Masterlist

Challenge #66: AU Bingo Masterlist

Challenge #67: High/Low Fantasy Masterlist

Challenge #68: Supernatural 7 Masterlist

Challenge #69: Winter Plus One Masterlist

Challenge #70: Soulmates: Pet Edition Masterlist

Comments

[digthewriter]

Hi there, I was wondering on your challenge posts, can you use a tag that if I do a search by tag would give me all the challenges under that tag. I tried to look up challenges under "admin" but it gives me other stuff... so on the main challenge post like for challenge01, challenge02, ... can you also add the tag "challenge post" or something like that -- it's hard for me to filter through the original challenge post to read more about it.

I hope this makes sense.
I'd love to participate and want to see all the challenges!
THANKS

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

What with about half a dozen fics already submitted since I joined, I'm a smidge late to the whole asking-questions game. ^.^ But I do have one that doesn't seem to be addressed.

If a particular prompt happens to inspire more than one idea, are multiple entries for that prompt permitted? Such as, I come across Prompt ~~, and I get Idea 1 and Idea 2 that both are triggered by Prompt ~~. Would I be allowed to post both? (As separate entries, of course. :) )

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

Got a question.

About twenty years ago, a friend and I started an AU, and never completed it. She's pretty much vanished from social media, nowadays; but I'm planning to finally finish the story, myself, as we were several chapters in before we both lost interest. I'll never be able to get her input, but it's a good story, and I really want to see it finally completed.

So what I'm wondering is this: Are collaborative efforts allowed?

[mythicmistress]

I just have a small suggestion. Could you add a link to the AO3 collection to this sticky post? It would make it easier to find.

I'm still hoping to get something written to post here, and it would be a huge help if I ever manage it.

[duskpeterson]

Just found this comm; looks like I have lots of good reading ahead of me!

"How do I define an AU? For me, it means taking canon characters and making a significant change in their circumstances."

I wanted to know whether you had any guidance to give on how you define AU in terms of originalfics, where there are no canon characters. I've been tagging some of my alternate history as AU; would that count, for the purposes of this comm?

[vexed_wench]

I was wondering if I have a series that I started elsewhere can I count the updates here if they can stand alone?
Thank you.

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

Hello to our charming leader! I have a new question. Given how generous you are at working around the basic definition of "alternate universe", I have a suspicion that you'll okay this. But I'd much rather ask, and be one hundred percent sure, than to just take matters into my own hands.

I have recently become a huge fan of a pair of sketch comics who are, sadly, deceased (I always come into new things too late). And I keep getting wonderful ideas for sketches for them. Now, to them, it'd certainly be AU, as they're hardly around to perform such things. But I'm not sure how it stands, for the rest of the universe.

Would this still be in keeping with the spirit of the community? I have a playlist of their work on YouTube; if you like, I can link you to it for the sake of context/full disclosure.

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

Hello again! Sorry for the inconvenience, but I recently got a rename token, 'cuz I was bored with my old (cyberiad) screenname. Could you please edit my author tag accordingly?

Thanks!💗