Tolkien Femslash Week Bingo 2016

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

The Tolkien Femslash Week Bingo Parlour is OPEN!

In a joint effort to celebrate the erstwhile International Day of Femslash in mid-July, The Silmarillion Writers’ Guild and Silmladylove have joined together to play a week-long bingo game involving the women of the entire Legendarium in love and lust. As announced in the SWG Newsletter, the game will run from July 15 - 24, with two bingo numbers being posted daily around Midnight CEST/6PM Eastern.

While the SWG and its satellite groups on LJ and DW only accept Silmarillion-based responses (see how the SWG defines Silmfic), responses for all of Tolkien's canon are welcome and may also be posted to the Silmladylove AO3 collection or the #tolkien femslash week tag on tumblr.

Use the link below to find out how to play, claim your bingo cards, and find the daily bingo numbers! Happy creating!

Enter the Bingo Parlour!

Comments

[independence1776]

Questions: in the "How to Play" section, it says about WIPs that we need to post evidence of them to LJ/DW/SWG/Tumblr. What counts as evidence: a screenshot of a wordcount, a sketch or graphical equivalent, etc. or does simply saying, "I'm working on this" count?

And if I'm understanding correctly, unlike B2MeM 2012, there is no official claiming of cards; it's on the honor system and our cards are hosted on our own blogs. Is that right?

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

What counts as evidence: a screenshot of a wordcount, a sketch or graphical equivalent, etc

Yes, this was what we'd envisioned - something to show rather than tell that you've started your project. :)

And if I'm understanding correctly, unlike B2MeM 2012, there is no official claiming of cards; it's on the honor system and our cards are hosted on our own blogs. Is that right?

That is right! We wanted to keep the effort a little more manageable than with the B2MeM Bingo, so we discarded some of the formalities.

[independence1776]

Yes, this was what we'd envisioned - something to show rather than tell that you've started your project. :)

All right. Then I'm definitely not going to be claiming any prompts; I'm still suffering from burn-out and between the deadline and being forced to show exactly how much work I've put into a given project has tipped me over into: pick a card, see if the called prompts fit into the story, and not worry about the deadlines/stamping. (To make it clear: this is not a commentary on how you're running the bingo. It's just not going to work for me at this point in time.)

We wanted to keep the effort a little more manageable than with the B2MeM Bingo,

It worked! I like being able to host my own card(s).

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

It's just not going to work for me at this point in time.

That's fine; circumstances can easily get in the way - I'm happy that the game and the cards have piqued your interest to begin with, though, and I'm looking forward to what you're producing, whether that happens during the game or in your own time. :) We just wanted to avoid what we'd observed to be happening during the B2MeM Bingo, that some people had lots of WIPs that had barely been started in order to claim a stamp, so we were opting for a little more documentation than the honors system we used then, while still keeping the playing field relatively open.

[independence1776]

I am really in love with the "Story Elements" card; almost all of the prompts on there can fit. So I'm chomping at the bit to see what numbers are called. (Because, of course, the one called today that's on the card is one of the two or three prompts that don't. But that seems to be the way world works. :P)

We just wanted to avoid what we'd observed to be happening during the B2MeM Bingo, that some people had lots of WIPs that had barely been started in order to claim a stamp

Ooh, yes, I remember that. Vividly. And I wasn't even a stamper. Numbers went up; two minutes later people were claiming. Definitely a good idea to make it a firmer claim this time.

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Eeee, I like that one a lot as well! :) And don't worry - it may be a bit of a late bloomer, but it's going to cover a good number of prompts during the course of the event, so you'll get to do plenty of writing! :D

Definitely a good idea to make it a firmer claim this time.
Thank you. I'm glad the idea makes sense given the circumstances, even if it's not ideal for you personally.

[ladybrooke]

Out of curiosity, is there anyway to provide proof we've started them that is not public if we write a longer piece? Because I don't see how a word count works as evidence unless it includes the actual work, and I am not comfortable at all showing anything other than a final, completed, proofread and thought about work where anyone can stumble across it. *shrug* I'm barely comfortable showing it to the people running a thing, no matter if I'm friendly with you all or not. (This is why I have probably 3x my publicly available word count of fanfic that might never be seen by anyone other than me, including yes, most of the prior Bingo. I'm not ashamed of that, because I think knowing when not to post something is an equally valuable skill for somebody like me).

If not, I'll likely still take a card but just stick to shorter fic that can have all of that done in a day.

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

There's no reason to be ashamed over being selective over the works you show in public (I think a lot of writers are familiar with that particular phenomenon) and I'm sorry our decision is an inconvenience to you. If you'd rather not share anything publicly, you're welcome to email us a snippet of your work and your wordcount at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org or send an ask to either the SWG or SLL tumblrs (I forget if you have one, sorry), so we can confirm you got started. No one's going to come after you with a rule book. ;) We're keeping things less formal on purpose, we just want to avoid a repeat of some of the lightning-fast stamp claims that happened last time.

[zdenka]

Edit2, because I feel like my original phrasing was overwrought (sorry about that):

Could you elaborate a little on the "evidence" bit? I was imagining sharing my word count and a snippet of what I'd written. I hope an actual screenshot of the word count wouldn't be necessary?

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

No worries, technical constraints are a good point we (I; I don't know about the rest of the organizers) hadn't considered that regarding the proof issue. So no, you don't have to post a screenshot - basically, as long as we're able to see that you have started working on something rather than making a plan to and claiming stamps for that (which we felt was taking the honors system we had during the first bingo game a little far), it's fine. :) The screenshot was Indy's suggestion, but it's just one possibility, and wordcount and snippet work equally well.

[zdenka]

Oh, good. And that makes sense, thank you.

[zdenka]

I'm excited for this! Are we supposed to publicly claim cards, or just pick the ones we like and start working?

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Just pick the ones you like and start working, that's what counts as claiming this time. Glad you're excited, I'm excited to have you on board! :D

[greatandgrey]

First of all, I want to say how much I utterly love this and thank you SO SO MUCH to all of the mods for all of your hard work putting this together and getting it out! :D I hope to get something done during the time period, but if not then I will have some awesome femslash WIP left over to play around with later on!

I don't know if this was addressed already, but after looking through the cards again, this just came to my mind: the Free Space square. Do we make a fanwork for that square using "anything goes" as our prompt (that still follows the theme of the card), or is it automatically "stamped"? :)

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

I just squeed out loud reading this, I'm so excited to hear about your enthusiasm, and I know everyone involved in planning this was happy to see this come together! :D ♥ So, thank you, and I'll love whatever you come up with whenever you come up with it!

During the B2MeM Bingo the free space was considered automatically stamped, but we didn't discuss this at all; I think we all just thought to leave it that way. I'll bring it up with the other mods, but since Dawn is attending a conference this weekend, it may be a little while until there's an answer.

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

And we got an answer - the free space is considered auto-filled, so you don't have to create anything for it. :)

[zdenka]

First, I want to say that the cards look awesome, and I already have plotbunnies. I'm taking the Crack Pairings card as a personal challenge. ;)

Next, at the risk of asking more silly questions:

Where do I post? If I have a completed work, I see that I can post it to SWG (if it's Silm-related) or the Silmladylove collection on AO3. But what if I have a WIP -- where do I post evidence for that? I thought there might be a daily post to this comm, but it looks like the bingo numbers are being updated on SWG in a place where you can't post comments. Likewise, I'm really liking the idea of the Rec and Review card, but where do I post those in a way which counts for the event and where other participants can see them? I don't have a Tumblr, so I can't use the #tolkien femslash week tag which seems to be the third option. I'd be a little afraid of spamming the LJ comm if I made a review post there every time the number is called, and no one else has posted here yet, so I was a little hesitant to do that, though I can if that's the thing to do.

I like to keep my drabbles all together in one collection, and some of the cards call for drabbles, so I expect I'll have some. Is it okay to use the Silmladylove collection or the SWG challenge tag on a work if it only applies to one or two chapters?

Lastly, about deadlines: Do we have until the end of whatever day in our own timezone, or is it just until two more number posts are made? And if it's the latter, what time and time zone is that? I'd rather not run into issues because I thought I had a few more hours to work on something. :)

Thanks! And thanks again for running this event.

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

I'm so happy to hear that! :D The Crack Pairings card was one of my favourite ones to make, both in thinking up part of the pairings, and going a little over the top with the graphics, and I'm so happy to hear that one's being worked on! :D

Questions aren't silly at all! Thank you for bringing these up!

I thought there might be a daily post to this comm
That's actually an excellent suggestion; thank you! I'll be putting one up once I'm done writing this comment so you'll have a place to put evidence, snippets, and recs for others to see (the reviews part of that card should of course go onto the story itself).

Is it okay to use the Silmladylove collection or the SWG challenge tag on a work if it only applies to one or two chapters?

I'd say so! I'm perfectly fine with it for the SLL collection, and I don't expect you'd run into trouble for it on the SWG for this either, as long as there actually are stories in there that belong to the challenge.

Lastly, about deadlines: Do we have until the end of whatever day in our own timezone, or is it just until two more number posts are made? And if it's the latter, what time and time zone is that? I'd rather not run into issues because I thought I had a few more hours to work on something. :)

Numbers go up around midnight Central European summer time or 6PM Eastern, and ideally things should be posted by then - so you have two days (48 hours) for the fills, but I'm definitely not going to deny you your stamps if things don't come in directly on the hour. :D

Thank you for being so helpful with this! Now to put on today's post! :D