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

[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]

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.