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.

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*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

[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*