February Festival
Many thanks to those who commented with your preferences for getting something moving on the popslash front. I would love to see a fabulous flurry of popslashy posts, so I'm going to propose a February Festival. And then stop with the alliteration.
There seem to be so many possibilities for challenges, so many ways of trying to encourage one another to write (and draw, and make icons, and post recs, and produce picspams, and so forth), that it seems to me it'd be a shame to pick just one. I know how important other fans have been in persuading *me* to write, so I thought what I would do is throw out a bunch of challenges and say, let's get to it!
My hope is that *everyone* (!) will post something, preferably more than one something, during February. However, I'm not going to take names and fill dates in advance, because that'd mean I would have to 'police' things, and I don't want to do that. I will, however, provide some kind of tangible Reward to anyone who posts five or more stories during February (or, if they are suitably epic, five or more rec posts/picspams/meta posts or something else I haven't thought of).
I am going to suggest that we approach the Festival in two ways. Firstly, here are some general challenges for the month:
Anonymous Recipient Challenge: Brave Authors Wanted! Make a post to this community offering yourself as a Brave Author, and screen the comments. The *first* person to comment with three story options for you 'wins' your services, and you will write up one of these options in the earnest hope of pleasing your secret recipient. Edit your post to say, Claimed, when your recipient has commented. The resulting story should be at least 500 words in length. (Incidentally, if anyone would like to run this as an organised exchange challenge instead, I'll be more than happy to go with that-by which I mean, pimp it and join in-whether you want to do it in February or not.)
New Pairing Challenge: at some point during the month you will post a story featuring a pairing you have never written before. There are forty-five possible pairings which just use Nsync and/or Backstreet. Anyone written them all already?
The 'three things I will never write' meme: You post the following text to your own journal: Name three fics you think I will never, ever, ever write. In return, I will attempt to write a snippet of one of them. I think this qualifies as another 'brave author' option, but it's not quite the same as the first one. Of course, for it to count, you have to actually write at least a snippet of at least one of the prompts you get. Drop in a link or two to the community, yes?
Guest Starring! A fic which pairs at least one of our boys with someone outside the two groups-either RPF or a fictional crossover. If you're into a new fandom, here's your big chance to reconnect with pop!
Not everyone is going to be inspired to have a go at any of the above, so the other thing I would like to encourage is prompting. Like those kink memes that are so popular in other fandoms, yes?
I actually thought up a prompt of some kind for every day, but I don't think it's really a good idea for me to dictate the whole thing, so I'm asking you all to suggest story prompts. One word, three words, a sentence, maybe even a whole paragraph (tho' that's the kind of thing that'd probably work really well if you 'win' a Brave Author). So comment with your prompts, to help inspire everyone to write *something* for the February Festival. Incidentally, I don't see why we shouldn't also have prompts for rec lists, picspams etc, so if you don't write fic, do please participate in another way. Of course, you may have a story/rec list/meta post in mind-or on computer-that doesn't match any of the prompts or challenges. Please post it anyway!
Oh, and… 2nd February is Trickyfish Day, and 20th February is Brian's Birthday. I think we can all see where I'm going with this?
February is a short month, but how very awesome it would be to have something popslashy posted *every* day. Who's with me?
There seem to be so many possibilities for challenges, so many ways of trying to encourage one another to write (and draw, and make icons, and post recs, and produce picspams, and so forth), that it seems to me it'd be a shame to pick just one. I know how important other fans have been in persuading *me* to write, so I thought what I would do is throw out a bunch of challenges and say, let's get to it!
My hope is that *everyone* (!) will post something, preferably more than one something, during February. However, I'm not going to take names and fill dates in advance, because that'd mean I would have to 'police' things, and I don't want to do that. I will, however, provide some kind of tangible Reward to anyone who posts five or more stories during February (or, if they are suitably epic, five or more rec posts/picspams/meta posts or something else I haven't thought of).
I am going to suggest that we approach the Festival in two ways. Firstly, here are some general challenges for the month:
Anonymous Recipient Challenge: Brave Authors Wanted! Make a post to this community offering yourself as a Brave Author, and screen the comments. The *first* person to comment with three story options for you 'wins' your services, and you will write up one of these options in the earnest hope of pleasing your secret recipient. Edit your post to say, Claimed, when your recipient has commented. The resulting story should be at least 500 words in length. (Incidentally, if anyone would like to run this as an organised exchange challenge instead, I'll be more than happy to go with that-by which I mean, pimp it and join in-whether you want to do it in February or not.)
New Pairing Challenge: at some point during the month you will post a story featuring a pairing you have never written before. There are forty-five possible pairings which just use Nsync and/or Backstreet. Anyone written them all already?
The 'three things I will never write' meme: You post the following text to your own journal: Name three fics you think I will never, ever, ever write. In return, I will attempt to write a snippet of one of them. I think this qualifies as another 'brave author' option, but it's not quite the same as the first one. Of course, for it to count, you have to actually write at least a snippet of at least one of the prompts you get. Drop in a link or two to the community, yes?
Guest Starring! A fic which pairs at least one of our boys with someone outside the two groups-either RPF or a fictional crossover. If you're into a new fandom, here's your big chance to reconnect with pop!
Not everyone is going to be inspired to have a go at any of the above, so the other thing I would like to encourage is prompting. Like those kink memes that are so popular in other fandoms, yes?
I actually thought up a prompt of some kind for every day, but I don't think it's really a good idea for me to dictate the whole thing, so I'm asking you all to suggest story prompts. One word, three words, a sentence, maybe even a whole paragraph (tho' that's the kind of thing that'd probably work really well if you 'win' a Brave Author). So comment with your prompts, to help inspire everyone to write *something* for the February Festival. Incidentally, I don't see why we shouldn't also have prompts for rec lists, picspams etc, so if you don't write fic, do please participate in another way. Of course, you may have a story/rec list/meta post in mind-or on computer-that doesn't match any of the prompts or challenges. Please post it anyway!
Oh, and… 2nd February is Trickyfish Day, and 20th February is Brian's Birthday. I think we can all see where I'm going with this?
February is a short month, but how very awesome it would be to have something popslashy posted *every* day. Who's with me?