Opening Ceremonies (Or, the Brainstorming Post)

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that there is Not Enough Culture Fic.

Or if it isn't universally acknowledged, it's certainly the consensus among a significant number of us who love the series, and who read fic for it, write fic for it, and just talk about the books. For proof, I give you the fact that when the fandom came up in discussions around this past Yuletide, people began to try to arrange a single-fandom exchange for it on the spot.

It's a fabulous idea. We've got enthusiasm, we've got a gloriously complex canon that's a joy to work with; we've got a lot of really good writers. All we need is to get together and figure out a schedule and details that will work for everyone (or for a critical mass of everyone).

This post is intended as an initial get-together and brainstorming venue. Some of the discussion around this has taken place in anonymous spaces, which aren't exactly an ideal place for doing this sort of organizing;* so this is a place to meet up in namespace (or, okay, in pseud space), to get acquainted, and to start thinking about what we want to see in this kind of exchange.

Since we'll be running this for the first time ever, we should probably start by talking about the basics. To wit:

1. What's the best timing and schedule for everybody? The exchange calendar has gotten fairly crowded in recent years, and ideally we should time this so that it doesn't interfere with other exchanges people want to take part in. And questions of timing include not only the due date for the exchange, but when signups, etc. should open and when assignments should go out -- i.e., how long participants feel would work best for writing.

(As an initial guess, we were thinking that a March due date might be the most practical -- after Chocolate Box, but before SpaceSwap. But that was just a rough guesstimate, and totally up for discussion.)

2. What kind of minimum word count would participants be most comfortable with? 1K seems to have become something of a standard for most exchanges, but is there an argument for a longer or shorter minimum?

3. Given that this is a single-fandom exchange, and for a small fandom, do we need to concern ourselves about any more granular matching? (Remix Redux used to match only by fandom, in its pre-AO3 days at least, and that was part of what made assignments interesting; on the other hand, Remix isn't and wasn't intended as a gift exchange.)

4. What obvious, basic questions am I forgetting even to ask? I feel sure that there's at least one. Whatever it is/they are, if we think about them now, they won't come back to bite us later. Right?

So, welcome! And let the discussion in comments commence.

______________________

*The Bad Bang mod somehow managed to put together an entire exchange via F_FA and AO3, but Bad Bang by its nature enjoyed, well, special circumstances.

Comments

[karanguni]

I AM SUPER EXCITED, let me first say!!!!

1) I'm going to be doing Chocobox, but I'm basically happy whenever. I'm thinking of Spaceswap, so maybe let's not collide with that, but I'm happy at whatever time THE MOST OF US CAN WRITEEE

2) 1K seems fine to me!

3) I think we should maybe match on Characters? Do we want relationship matching (A/B, A&B) or just characters? Maybe... split requests into multiple requests and each request contains AND matching? I'm just thinking we need to be granular because the canon is large enough someone might want to write for Consider Phlebas but not Surface Detail characters, or a mix or not a mix...

[lemniskath]

This is Gammarad on AO3

I think matching on characters would work. I don't think we need to match on relationships; just match at least one character and then go by prompt; character would at least narrow down what book you were most closely basing your story on, I think.

We need to get a decent list of characters down during nominations or by moderators. Chocolate Box had one Mind and two human/humanoids. That's pretty minimal and made it impossible for me to offer Culture for chocolate box because sorry, I don't like to write about Zakalwe.

We might also want to allow original characters with just a Original Drone Character or Original Mind Character or Original Culture Human Character etc. options in the request / offer - maybe we should do freeform nominations for that? The star is the setting rather than the specific characters for a lot of people, I think.

As for timing, I'd like at least a month to think about ideas and write. That way there's time if things go wrong, or if I want to write multiple stories, or whatever else. Canon is long and canon review may be time consuming for such long books.

[karanguni]

Ooh, good idea on Original Drone/Mind/Human Character, I like that.

Agreed about nominations - we should have a normal nominations period, I'm guessing? Moderators can properly pre-fill in the main characters of most of the (canonically) Culture books and people can come in an add anything else they want?

\o/ EITHER WAY AND ANY WAY WE DO IT, I'm excited.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

You're illustrating exactly why I had inchoate concerns about the now-standard nominating process.

But I too wonder how good a fit it is for the Culture, where there are so few continuing characters (and the aesthetic and worldbuilding to some extent depend on that sense of vastness you get from the way no character or set of characters is central to anything like every important event in the Culture's space). All these suggested modifications strike me as directions we should consider.

However we do this, I definitely vote for allowing (and even inviting) original characters, human and not. It wouldn't be the Culture without a cast of thousands available, and relatively few continuing characters: it's part of the way Banks conveys the sheer scale of the civilization. And after all, if there are 2000 Abominators, you'd expect that every so often we'd see more than just the FONMC, right?

I also agree that at least a month makes sense for the thinking/writing period. Which, okay, I have a personal interest as the World's Slowest Writer; but it's a complex canon, and yeah, there's no fast way to do the review.

. . . and ack, there was going to be more, but I need to be a bit more coherent before I start free-associating about whether it makes any sense to try to match on books or time period rather than, or in addition to, on characters.

[kangeiko]

You make a very good point. We'd either need people to be flexible with requests or with nominations - if you have someone who is only willing to write characters from, say, Surface Detail, then we'd have a problem if the requests are all for characters from Consider Phlebas. We'd either need a wild card (everyone must have an Original Character request so matches are possible) or a compulsory spread across core characters. Either way, I think we need to consider carefully as the maths strikes me as pretty fragile on this, given the breadth of canon available.

An alternative is matching on prompts, rather than characters, e.g. three word prompts, first sentence prompts, image prompts (possibly as a wild card?) - the downside to this is that people are less likely to be enthused about an exchange where they don't have a high chance of receiving a specifically tailored gift.

I think it would be helpful to understand prior to locking down nominations whether the proposed spread of characters would work - maybe getting an indication of how many people would be willing to write each character nominated, for instance - and I'm sure there's an algorithm that would confirm whether the proposed set-up is mathematically possible.

An alternative to matching is prompt-claiming. Disc Fest might be a useful comparator fest - a cast of thousands, and the initial fest had less than 20 participants. Anyone could leave prompts, and there was a claiming round during which prompts were staked out, and then a writing schedule and posting schedule. It does mean that there isn't an official 'recipient' per se, but it might eliminate the risk of lack of matches.

I second the motion for a month's writing time! I'm a slow writer when I have canon to review, and I feel like this would be one canon I'd definitely need to review before attempting any writing.

matching

[lemniskath]

If we match "or" on characters or crossover fandoms, and require people to do a request of 3-4 characters or crossovers and offer of 4-5 (including the "original" characters) I think we'll get enough matches. We can always do the prompt post of the unmatched people to let someone claim them in the pinch hit style.

Re: matching

[kangeiko]

That sounds like it might work, yes! *is excited*

[weakinteraction]

(Late to the party but definitely here for this exchange)

The star is the setting rather than the specific characters for a lot of people, I think.

100% agree with this - I'm definitely planning to nominate it for worldbuildingex ... (I ended up not requesting or offering it the last two rounds because I didn't have enough time for canon review, but this year's going to be different.)

... in fact, thinking about the specific worldbuilding tags, I'm almost wondering whether it might be worth copying the approach that (the The Goblin Emperor exchange) uses. They have character tags and ship tags and worldbuilding tags all nominated in the character field.

[weakinteraction]

Oh, and excellent name.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

You can't be that late to the party, because I'm now later than you are -- started this up, had a work emergency, and have vanished into the equivalent of the spaces between the galaxies for what feels like eons. Anyway, I'm very glad you're here!

I'm liking the idea of throwing all the tags into one big pot. This is going to be a tiny exchange, and while a giant tag set might make automated matching tricky, it strikes me that at least hand matching would be readily available as a fallback -- with a small group, made up of people who really want to make this work, I'd guess it wouldn't be all that burdensome.

. . . famous last words, maybe. But it feels like it should be workable, and not too Rube Goldberg-like on the mechanical level.

[lemniskath]

How about if we allow nominations for crossovers with the Culture? I think that'd be a good idea and increase participation.

People could nominate another fandom to cross over with Culture however they wanted, whether setting characters from Banks novels into the other settings, or sending characters from other settings into the Culture.

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Man. That could be really fun. I love crossovers in general, so I'm easily persuaded; but not only does it sound like fun, but as you say, it could increase participation -- and it's very likely to increase audiences, since people will often read crossovers if they know even one of the canons.