Roads Diverged

Rules for Claiming:

- Your claim should note which themes you plan to work with, and what your focus will be: this can be a character, pairing/grouping, or fandom. Please make sure that you will be comfortable working with your claimed subject matter for all of your pieces: you should not, for example, claim Edward Elric and then write a story in which all the action revolves around Lust.

- You may claim a single category, and produce works for every theme in that category; OR you may claim a mixed bag, and produce a work for ONE theme in EACH category.

- You may make two claims at a time, should you so desire; they can be for the same subject or two different ones.

- You may not claim a subject+category that someone else has actively claimed; you MAY claim one that someone else has finished or dropped. (That is, if someone else is working on the Cosplay category for Harry/Hermione, you may not claim that pairing and category until the other participant finishes hers or drops her claim; in the meantime you may claim Harry/Hermione as a mixed bag, or for the Myth & Folklore category, or you may claim Ron/Hermione for Cosplay.)

- If you are trying to complete the entire set of 50, that means taking a total of seven claims -- 7 x 7 themes = 49 -- and then taking the "writer's/artist's choice" option as your final one. Obviously, you will have to do this in succession; also, if you choose to do this by making successive mixed-bag claims, make sure you don't repeat themes you used in earlier sets.

Rules for Producing:

- This community is *-friendly: m/m, m/f, f/f, gen, and other possibilities are all welcome. The only thing that's not welcome is bashing other people's preferences. :)

- All fiction should be at least 500 words long; all art should be more detailed than simple facial portraits. The reason in both cases is the same: we need you to provide enough detail in your work that the AU is clearly demonstrated. (...There is no upper limit; if you want to write 50k or produce a full-color doujinshi for an idea that completely ambushed you, we certainly will not complain!)

- To maintain your claim, you must produce at least one piece every three months. Remember, when you have a claim active, nobody else can make that claim, so it's not fair to other community members to take a claim and then let it languish.

- You are not allowed to combine themes in completing a claim. There is definitely overlap between some of the themes, but to get credit for completing a set you need to produce seven distinct pieces.

- You are not only allowed but encouraged to interpret the themes creatively! If you take the Wild West theme and you want to do that as a space-cowboy universe a la Trigun or Firefly, feel free (unless of course your fandom *is* Trigun or Firefly, in which case you probably want something a little more alternate to your canon's universe). A lot of the fun of AU is the chance to experiment and do things a little differently, after all!

- If one of the themes in your claimed category is canon for your fandom -- e.g., you've claimed Captain Jack Sparrow in the Cosplay category, which contains "pirates" -- then you may either put a creative spin on the theme itself (interstellar pirates! Vikings! highwaymen!) to make it AU, or else substitute in a "writer's/artist's choice" for that one theme.

Rules for Posting:

- ALL entries should be placed behind cut tags; if you don’t know how to make a cut tag, see the FAQ entry that explains it here.

- All entries should have header information above the cut; please use the following headers:
Title:
Author/Artist:
Fandom:
Pairing:
Rating:
Warnings: [if necessary; please warn for character death, rape/non-con, and shota/chan/loli-con at a minimum -- otherwise use your discretion]
Theme:
Any additional headers you want to include, such as summaries, author's notes, etc.

- Please post your works in the asylum itself, not just as a link or fake cut. This allows us to keep all responses to the challenge in one place, even if you later delete/abandon/lock your personal journal.

- For ease of archiving, please put the Fandom, Pairing, Title, and Theme of your work in the subject line of your post.


...Questions? Please ask!

Make your claim here for your AU themes!

You may choose one category, in which case you are committed to all the themes in that category, or you may choose a mixed bag, in which case you must do one theme from *each* category (though you don't have to tell us which ones ahead of time).

Please check the list of already-claimed themes here before you comment, since we will not allow doubled claims.

Your comment here should include: [fandom] - [name of character, pairing, group, or "general series"] - [name of category, or "mixed"] - [your medium: fic, art, or a mix]
Example:
Harry Potter - Draco/Hermione - Cosplay - art

Please write out the names of your fandom and characters, to make your mods' lives easier -- fandom acronyms are sometimes less obvious than they seem at first, and name-smooshes are almost always difficult for people outside your fandom to follow.

You may have up to two active claims at any time.

( List! )

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost

....And the fan of AU says, two roads? And you only took one?

This is a community for fen who can't get enough of taking the road less traveled by, for people who want good excuses to take their favorite characters out of canon continuity and see what happens to them when their circumstances change. Fanfiction and fanart are a form of play, a way of exploring things that might be, could be, should be (and shouldn't be!) -- a chance, if we might expand on Mr. Frost's metaphor, not only to take the road less traveled by but to travel the road backward, to blaze new trails, to take shortcuts and detours and picnic by the side of the road in appealing spots and possibly go off the map entirely. If that sounds like fun, you're in the right place.

We welcome writers and artists who want to try their hand at a few different branching paths, and take their characters to new places. We welcome readers and viewers who want to see it happen, and maybe offer some encouragement to the participants. We hope this challenge will inspire creativity, spark some ideas you might not have played with otherwise, and give you a lot of chances to have fun.

If this sounds like a good time, check out the theme list here.
Then browse through the rules here.
Then, if you're ready to jump in, join the asylum and leave a comment with your claim here.

Welcome!