he'p me!

[krickets]

I was just about to go to bed, but I remembered I have wanted to post this all week!

Has anybody reading this ever participated in, run, or even heard of, a fandom-specific slash-a-thon? I'd like to take a look and see how they've been done in the past to get an idea of how to stage one in the future.

cynthia_arrow and I are talking about putting one on for Battlestar Galactica due to the painful lack of m/m slash in that fandom and our quest to remedy that. (If only for a short while.) But neither of us have experience in holding fic-a-thons, let alone slash-a-thons.

Can anyone point me in any kind of direction?

Thanks!

Comments

[lizardbeth-j.livejournal.com]

Here via cynthia_arrow, hi! *waves*

I'm also dismayed at the lack of BSG slash, so I support your effort wholeheartedly. As one of the relative few who's written ANY, I wouldn't mind a ficathon sort of thing. er, after the new year for sure, though.

I have various theories WHY there's so much slash in the fandom, but it's hard to know, though obviously the canon het relationships require more work to get around.

There's been no specifically BSG slash ficathon that I know of, but inlovewithnight ran the Helo ShAgathon (http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/914180.html) earlier in the year, which produced a handful of slash stories, including mine. It had about 25 participants, which is pretty successful, I think for the size of BSG fandom on lj. As someone said above, if you really want people to finish their fics - making it a gift exchange is really the only way to boost the odds, though it's more work to match prompts.

Your idea of Choose-your-own-pairing with an assigned prompt reminds me of comment porn battles, except with the prompt given rather than chosen. I've never been in a ficathon-thingy that worked that way (and it shocks me, considering the great numbers of ficathons I've done), but I can see that working a bit better than an open grab bag.

And, oh yes, there was an actual question in there wasn't it? "slash-a-thon"? Thinking... Not with that name, I'm pretty sure, but I know of ficathons that are (slash) pairing specific for sure in big fandoms. I have vague memories of a call for a slash-only PotC ficathon, but I'm not sure if it actually happened. Otherwise, since ficathons tend to be request driven, they match the slashers all together.

um, that's probably enough from me. If you have questions, I can try to answer. I'm a charter member of Ficathons Anonymous, so I have lots of experience. :)

[cynthia-arrow.livejournal.com]

Canon is, indeed, a huge problem, especially since in this fandom we seem to be the realistic sort, loving our canon so much we want to write in it...then finding that all our boys are emotionally unavailable or rather shockingly hetero (I can't slash Helo to save my life!). Perhaps there should be some playful element to a slashathon, freeing us from the canon-driven angst and things like, oh, 8s, 6s, and blonde pilots. Who we of course love but who are not conducive to the slash.

Thanks so much for your input! It's also good to know that somebody else is interested in this crazy idea of ours. :)

[lizardbeth-j.livejournal.com]

yeah, something to free us from those pesky chicks all the guys are in love with! :) Aside from the classics of getting drunk/drugged up or Aliens Made them Do it, it's hard to think of a semi-plausible way to get some pairs of guys together at all.

Maybe you could call it the "Everybody's Gay!" Slashathon. A lot of slash fic is based on that premise anyway, so you could just acknowledge it from the beginning as the AU for the ficathon. :)

[cynthia-arrow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think we definitely need to not just encourage AUs but maybe even provide some for people to think about. And the "gay already" AU, in a widespread way or just with particular characters, is probably a lot nicer than the way I killed off Cally so I could slash Anders and Tyrol, LOL.

[crickets.livejournal.com]

Hi! Thanks for taking the time to come on over! I haven't really given much thought into the theories about why BSG is so slash-less. There does seem to be a lot of femmeslash, so my mind just boggles. I'd love to hear some of your theories though!

I'm super stoked to see those slash stories over at the heloshagathon! That's definitely encouraging. Though I can see we've got some major plotting to do.

Thanks for our advice! :D

[lizardbeth-j.livejournal.com]

about requests, I've in small ficathons where you have to offer to write and request at least three pairings, and are encouraged not to make your prompt too specific, to make the matching easier. You have to request and offer alternatives, in other words.

Like I couldn't just request Helo/Anders - I'd also have to request, say, Anders/Leoben and Tyrol/Lee. And you can also make a list of main characters and require that at least one pairing to be drawn from that list - so nobody tries to request only Crashdown/Hot Dog and Socinus/Fisk or something odd. Anyway there are ways to set it up to force writers to be a little more open to writing outside their comfort zone, if you want to.

Multiple requests and offers sounds like matching is complicated, but it's really just tedious. Can person A write for person B, yes or no? And go through the list. If someone has no match then you ask them if they can widen their requests or offers and try again. I think you're likely in a small ficathon to have people offer pretty broadly -- I usually offer to write things like Anders/Anyone (so I usually get the weird stuff that's harder to match, but that's what I like doing, so it works out).

[crickets.livejournal.com]

I am so embarrassed to say I have no idea who Fisk is. Haha. *hides behind a rock* So yeah I'd have to be pulling up Battlestar Wiki for that one!

Thanks again for your input. We're still working everything out. Just in brainstorming mode at the moment, so we need all the thoughts and advice we can get.

Thanks so much!