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

[demonqueen666.livejournal.com]

I see your concerns and, based on fic exchanges and ficathons I've seen past, here are my suggestions:

That's not to say I wouldn't know how to set it up, but would there be enough prompters/requesters?

You could make it a requirement that in order to be a writer, you must also submit a prompt. Ala "yuletide", in a way. That way you are always guaranteed to have exactly as many prompts as writers.
(And, BTW, I'd recommend setting some guidelines for the prompts, like "a pairing and some words", because otherwise you'll get some people who just give you a pairing and nothing to work with, and other people who'll give you an entire outline of a scenario, which might just be me, but always smacked to me of the unfair.)

And would there be enough writers willing to write each request?

Well, there are two ways to work around that: one is to tell people they're going to have to suck it up. The very popular mctabby Cat's Birthday drabblethon is worked this way. She collects all the prompts and pairs them with users via the highly scientific method of writing them on notecards and letting her cat paw at them, and whoever gets paired with what just has to deal with it. Of course, it's a bit easier in that case, as these only have to drabbles so it's easier to fake it, and it's also for the Harry Potter fandom which, you may be aware, is jackass crazy.
Of course, I understand why you might be a little leery of putting such a restriction down the first time out. But I offer the caveat that you'd be surprised how willing some people can be, and also that if you keep the prompts at only a pairing and some words, at least people are free of having to write hardcore sex for a pairing they're not quite comfortable with (for the aforementioned Drabblethon, my prompt asked for Hagrid/Snape, a pairing I never would have thought of and sure as hell was not going to write a full-on sex scenario for; I had them get drunk and turned it into a humorous innuendo-filled thing which still fulfilled the prompt without breaching my comfort zone).

The second option is to allow people to give a brief list of things they don't want to have to write when they sign up: pairings, characters and/or (depending on how specific the prompts are going to get) certain scenarios/ratings. Of course, this makes prompt matching a little more complex, and also opens the possibility that there will be prompts that can be matched with nobody. I've seen other fic exchanges combat this by asking ahead of time for people to volunteer as back-up writers in case of this eventuality. (really, what I'm noticing looking back over all the advice I've just given is that this really a less-is-more scenario: the less info you allow people to give in prompts, the less things you have to worry about.)

but our pool is so small, it might just backfire on us.

I dunno; again, maybe it's just the corners of fandom I hang out it, but I think you'd be surprised how many people might be eager to do some BSG manslash. I think it might be quite sucessful...if properly pimped, of course :)

[crickets.livejournal.com]

First, you need to be pointing me to these corners! LOL.

And secondly, I think you've covered a lot here, and given us a lot to think about. I really don't want to force writers to "suck it up" because I want everybody to have fun. But your ideas of having prompters list options is a good one to get around that. I think we may be going a different route, but you've definitely given us some food for thought! So thank you very much for that.

[demonqueen666.livejournal.com]

First, you need to be pointing me to these corners! LOL

About 50% of what I catch is just by crusing the round-ups in the_wireless, although a good place to go to get bombarded with the slash is gaeta_squee where, I shit you not, they will pair Gaeta with anything. Seriously. A. Ny. Thing. Right now someone's doing a series with him and that guy from Torchwood. Also, I recommend good buddy cerebel's fic journal (it's linked in her user info), because she will write pretty much any pairing you can dare her to, and WELL.

I think we may be going a different route, but you've definitely given us some food for thought! So thank you very much for that.

Well, you're very welcome! And I'm looking forward to the ficathon, whenever you get it set up.
(BTW, it seems like we have a lot of common interests, so I friended you ^^;)