ficathon dilemma

[kerravonsen]

It is a new year, and a new round of ficathons is coming up. However, there are conflicting ones, and I'm not sure what to do.

Option 1:
sshg_exchange (don't know when, but soon)
tthdrabbles March birthday fest
multific finish-a-thon (March-April-ish) (March-May-ish)

Pros:
I would get to write SS/HG for the first time. And get someone to write or draw SS/HG for me.
I would get more jedibuttercup fic.
I would finish a long story or a short story of mine.

Option 2:
au_bigbang (January-April)

Pros:
I would finish a long story of mine.
And it would have illustrations! (Well, a minimum of one, anyway)

Option 3:
sshg_exchange (don't know when, but soon)
tthdrabbles March birthday fest
multific finish-a-thon with ADDED ARTISTS.

This option would have me altering the finish-a-thon so that artists would sign up too, so that people could have their stories illustrated like the Big Bang writers do. Unfortunately, this has a number of drawbacks which probably make it infeasible:
1. It would be more complicated to organize.
2. I doubt that I could get enough artists to sign up. Where does one find artists? As a zine editor, I could never find artists, how do the Big Bangs manage to do it so easily?
3. People would have to host the art for their stories themselves. That, or the fic and art would all be hosted on my site, but if that was the case, then I would have to restrict what was allowed (no slash or adult stories) and that would piss people off.

So I don't think Option 3 is really an option.

So what should I do?

Comments

[jedibuttercup]

I'm afraid I'll have to avoid answering that on the grounds that I may incriminate myself. =)

[kerravonsen]

(laughs) So I take it you're voting for Option 1, then?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

You seem to be running the finishathon earlier each year. Is that right?

[kerravonsen]

No, I intend to run the finish-a-thon at the same time this year as I did last year. (edits post)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Ah. I didn't remember it being at that time.

As for artists, there are some here:
b7fanart - mod me and vandonovan
and quite a few here:
naarmamo - mod jekesta

Some of us might be willing to sign up. How does it work? Do artists specify fandoms, or do writers ask for artists who respond?

[kerravonsen]

How does it work? Do artists specify fandoms, or do writers ask for artists who respond?
That's the thing: I don't know.

The only Big Bang I've participated in was the Doctor Who one, and artists signed up at the same time as writers, and were assigned a story after the "first draft" deadline. The writers would send in a first draft (or a partial draft with summary), and the mods would assign an artist (or artists) to that story, and would send the draft to the artists, and they would art from that draft. There was a certain amount of "fandom-matching" too, because Doctor Who is such a vast corpus that the artists would have to say, when they signed up, which Doctors they could do, and whether or not they could do Torchwood or SJA.

If there was to be arting for the finish-a-thon, we wouldn't know what fandoms would be needed until after the writer-voting pass. Some of the people participating in the finish-a-thon have had fandoms I've never heard of, and would have no hope, as far as I can see, of recruiting artists for them. And I don't want to promise art if it can't be delivered. Which means that the whole thing is hopeless. I dunno, is it fair to say "If you write in an obscure fandom, you will not get art unless you persuade an artist to sign up who knows that fandom"?

Or I suppose I could do a poll to try to figure out what "major fandoms" would have artists for them. But even then, nobody would sign up. (sigh)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty hard. You have a lot of animé fandoms there and artists would have to get the characters exactly right--and that's if they know the fandom. Maybe it's easier not to have artists.