BSD ROLLING REMIX

Rules & Guidelines

A rolling remix is basically a game of "fic telephone". Starting from a single starting point and moving down a line, writers remix each other's works. The process planned will go as follows:

  1. Participant A writes a fic and sends it to mods. When approved, this person posts it (without tags) to a locked AO3 collection.

  2. The mods send Participant A's fic to Participant B, who then remixes it. When Participant B is done, Participant B sends their fic to the mods and subsequently posts it (tagless) to the same locked AO3 collection.

  3. The mods send Participant B's remixed fic and not Participant A's fic to Participant C, who remixes the remix.

  4. Rinse and repeat until everyone's had their turn to write. Each writer only sees one other person's fanfiction during the process.

  5. Each participant needs to have the same date listed as date posted, no order identifying information, no information in notes that could identify the writer, etc. The mods instruct them to add in tags to the works.

  6. The previously locked community goes live with anonymous works and a list of participants. People try to guess which writer wrote which work and when. The writers and order remain hidden for a week.

  7. Mods reveal writers and remix order.

Our event is modeled after the MCU Rolling Remix and the previous BSD Rolling Remix. For more information on what a remix is and examples of rolling remixes, please see our FAQ.

RULES:

  1. Participants must be 18+ years old.

  2. Content not allowed: rape/non-con, non-canonical incest, MCD (main character death), graphic gore and graphic nonconsensual violence, sex involving characters under sixteen.

  3. No grudge remixes— spitefic which mocks the decisions of the fic being remixed. Similarly, no ship or character bashing in response to a decision made by the previous writer. The mods reserve the right to call this.

  4. Classic crossovers which draw in characters from other media aren't permitted because there's a chance the next person won't be familiar with the source. Fusions which use the worldbuilding, setting, or plot from another media but are able to stand on their own are accepted.

  5. Any pairing or character combination which aligns to our guidelines is permitted, and it's encouraged to be liberal with remixing (swapping or shifting pairings is allowed; it's fine to make the fic center around a minor character or to tangent off on a small detail), but please be ready to write a variety of characters and dynamics.

  6. Each writer is given two weeks to write 1k+ words when it's their turn.

Schedule

Writer Sign-ups: August 27 to September 30 [form open here]Details on timeframes for each participant TBD. Each writer receives two weeks to write a fic which is at minimum a thousand words long.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's a rolling remix?Please see the Rules page for an explanation of our process and of what a rolling remix is. If you're coming from there and would like further explanation, this Fanlore page may be helpful.

What's a remix?A remix is a type of fandom challenge in which a writer takes a fanfiction and writes a piece based off of it, in essence a fanfiction of a fanfiction. Examples taken from Fanlore's wiki entry and this post may help explain what a remix looks like, but feel free to contact us on Twitter if you're confused.

  • POV flip

  • Role reversal

  • Missing scene

  • New spin/tone shift

  • Genre swap (western to space opera, etc)

  • Scope of events (cover a smaller or larger scope of events. If the original work took place over a day, the remix could take place over an hour or a month)

  • For want of a nail (pulling out and change a small detail from the original work, then gauging the ripple effects through the rest of the work)

  • One crucial detail (examination of what the remixer deems the most important detail of the original work)

What will the process look like if there's a large enough amount of participants?If we have approximately 12+ participants, we plan on splitting the rolling remix into chains— different groups/teams of participants. Each chain will begin from a single starter story, but diverge from that point onwards and work simultaneously. Part of the fun can be seeing how different the final stories coming from a single piece are.Either way, the starter piece will be chosen based on optional responses to the writer sign-up form asking for your most niche pitch ideas.If there's enough interest and enough participants, content restrictions may vary chain-to-chain (for example, a purely SFW chain, a chain which accepts MCD, etc), but the current restrictions are designed to be universal throughout the event.

Can I specify preferences on the work I'm remixing?No, sorry. As mentioned in the above message, the current restrictions are designed to be universal— it's difficult to specify further because the writing order will be decided before the fics are written, so we won't add on new restrictions in-between. If you request any specific content warnings, we can have the previous writer attach them to the work.

Can I participate if I'm below eighteen?Unfortunately, no. This may be amended if there are enough participants to do an entirely SFW chain, but as of now, we can't guarantee that anyone will be given a SFW piece to work on and we'd rather play it safe.

How much can I change from the previous work?This is an anything-goes remix— characters/pairings/rating/genre can all be changed, we just ask that you don't bash the previous work's choices and that the point where you drew inspiration from is clear.

What pairings are accepted?We accept any pairings which align to our guidelines and are fine with shifts or swaps in pairings when writing a remix. Mainly: be creative and branch out. We want to encourage rarepairs and exploration of minor characters— we'd hate for this to turn out fully homogenous. Bungou Stray Dogs is a vast playground; we want to encourage climbing all over it.

I write and/or enjoy [disallowed content], is that an issue?No, the boundaries for the event are constructed because of how closely writers will be interacting with one another's work. The restrictions are a catch-all in place of more personalized DNWs. Our policy is that we don't care/mind what participants do in their own time and space so long as it does not involve harassment, bigotry, or otherwise something that has real and tangible harm.

I have restrictions on when I can write, is that okay?Yes! The nature of the rolling remix is that only one writer in each chain is working at a time. The order of the rolling remix can be rearranged to suit your schedule if you're not free for a specific length of time, and there's a question on the writer sign-up form for what we should take into account in scheduling your turn.If your turn has already come up and you'd like to defer, you may do so once and be put into a later slot. If you've already seen the fic you were meant to remix, you'll have to either take your turn or drop out, since the point of the rolling remix is that each writer only sees one other version of the fic.

Are you associated with the previous BSD Rolling Remix?No! But we did definitely take inspiration from it, and we encourage you to go check out the works created from the 2018 and 2019 versions of it.