alyndra

Ever wonder how many big-bang-style challenges Supernatural fandom really has?

Various people have compiled various lists and posted them in various places. Trust me, I have a list of these lists. Everyone also defines the parameters of their search a little differently. Personally, I chose to look for past and present SPN Bang challenges, and then I made a spreadsheet with info about each bang. There are 70+ entries on it.

I included big bangs, mini bangs, reverse bangs, and the herculean mega bang. I did not include other kinds of fic challenges, such as gift exchanges, flashfic or drabble communities. What makes a bang a bang? ( Read more... )

My Google Spreadsheet of SPN Big (and otherwise) Bang Challenges!

Anyone can comment directly into the document or contact me with additional information or suggestions! Feel free to link to this from anywhere you like as well. Note that there are a couple new challenges with author sign-ups closing TODAY, August 31!

ETA: Fun with filters! The awesome thing about speadsheets is that you can sort all the data any way you like! Here’s a quick rundown of possibly-useful information.

Even if you don’t have editing privileges on a Google Doc, you can still sort columns. It won’t permanently change the doc or impact the way others are seeing it if they’re viewing it at the same time as you. All you do is mouse over the top of a column where it says “A” (I don't think it's possible from a phone) and a little arrow will appear for you to click on. So if you’re an artist, feel free to sort by ‘artist signups,’ or if you just like reading everything as soon as it comes out, sort by ‘posting starts.’ The default way I have the Doc sorted is first I sort by ‘status,’ then by ‘writing signups,’ then by ‘latest round.’ This means that the doc will be sorted primarily by the year of the latest round, then by the month writers should sign up in, then by status.

I renamed challenges which haven’t yet gone a round from “new” to “virgin,” not just for amusement, but so we could have an alphabetical list: Closed, Deleted, Dormant, Hiatus, Polling, Ongoing, Virgin. Is that not sweet? You can sort by that, or alphabetically by name, etc. Play around, have fun, and when you’d like to go back to the standard view, just ‘X’ out of the dark gray filter bar.

I keep hearing variants of the line "Why do the Atlantis people keep acting so STUPID" and I was thinking about it and it just clicked. They don't do contingency planning. SG-1 totally does it, not all the time but when they can, yeah, and you don't always see it but you see the results of it, when things go pear-shaped and they deal with it.

On Atlantis? Not so much. It's not necessarily that the plans they come up with are less wacky and improbable, it's that on SG-1 where the general tells the people who come up the latest insane plan "Okay, write it up, we'll do a briefing and see how many of the holes we can fill in and if there's any improvements we can make" while on Atlantis Weir says "But . . . well, if you have to, okay, do it." Which makes for a more action-packed TV show, but also we notice the change.

The thing is, I kind of buy it. Partly I associate that kind of competent contingency planning with the military, and it gets done when Hammond and O'Neill and Landry and Carter and Mitchell and even Teal'c and Bra'tac are in charge (although the Tok'ra contingency plans suck, that may be part of why Jack doesn't like them).

But Sheppard, he might not trust his superiors, but mostly he just doesn't ever think his own plans will ever go wrong. We do see him making good plans when the Genii are involved, so we know he can do it, but then he's always put a lot more effort into battling the Genii than we see out of him most of the rest of the time.

And Ronon's a lot younger than Jack or Teal'c, and also maybe more used to responding to the crisis of the moment, where you act or you're dead, rather than complex operations (though I haven't actually seen Sateda yet, sorry).

And Rodney, back when all his physics were still theoretical, used to have time to work everything out carefully and methodically and not miss anything, but since he got to Pegasus he's been flying by the seat of his pants most of the time and he might point out when they're screwed, but it doesn't occur to him to sit everyone down and talk it all out beforehand.

Elizabeth? Actually, I'm having a harder time justifying her actions than the rest. I guess the only thing I can say is that she really never was trained for this, and also the people peering over her shoulder are a hell of a lot farther away than they ever were for SG-1.


Also, Jack and Teal'c and even Daniel, though he puts a cover over it, I see as being pessimists. And Sam is maybe a bit of an optimist but she's also very practical, and would probably prefer the term realist. So they kind of expect to go down in flames, and plan accordingly. Whereas Atlantis, they are mostly optimists. So they expect, well, not to go down in flames, despite all evidence to the contrary. Which explains a lot, to me.

(I've seen most of the shows at this point, but not the SG-1 S9 or SGA S2, except for the last four episodes of each, and also not the episodes from two days ago.)

Okay, I realised what was missing from the last post, and it was my overall reaction to the book. I think in order to understand that, though, you have to understand what OotP was to me.

In retrospect, I was really wound up about OotP. I tried not to have a lot of specific ideas of what to expect, though of course I did, but my one great expectation was that JKR was going to surprise me. There would be a unique and brilliantly creative plot which nobody had predicted. There would be a fabulous and unexpected twist at the ending.

And it didn't happen. It just plain flat-out didn't happen. Instead we got a stupid prophecy, which half the fandom had predicted, saying that Harry and Voldemort were going to have to fight to the death, which the entire fandom, including most of the lunatic fringes, had predicted.

Even finding out what the Order of the Phoenix was -- a secret Voldemort-fighting group established by Dumbledore -- wasn't at all surprising.

Adding injury to insult, she killed one of my two favorite characters.

I can't say I disliked the book. Parts of it were enjoyable. But to this day, I haven't gotten around to reading it more than about three times. Compared to the number of times I've reread the rest of the series, that number is just pathetic.

Part of my reaction was that OotP was the first book that had come out since I'd discovered fandom. I had devoted way more obsessive thought as to what it would be like than to any of the the previous books. I had built it up onto a pedestal from which it could hardly help but fall.

This book, I went into differently. I had my ideas about what would or would not happen, yes, but I wasn't really attached to them at a visceral level. I was really surprised, actually, about how not-worked-up I managed to remain. So I got the book, read it through, but on some level I kept the attitude of, okay, whatever. JK's human, the book will go however it goes, and I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the ride.

( Extremely vague spoilerish material; totally safe to read, but cut just to be on the safe side )

It'll be interesting to see reactions -- my own and others' -- to book seven. I'm a little afraid right now that I may not be able to maintain this nice detachment, but I guess I've got a couple of years to work on it. :g:

OotP has some very useful spells in it. So it bugs me when I see the same old "he picked up his wand and threw locking and silencing spells at the door." Remember when we learned Silencing spells? We cast them on the things making noise and thus no more noise was made.

So unless we are dealing with one of those annoying doors which won't stop making lewd comments and belching loudly, a silencing spell is canonically a pretty pointless thing to throw at it. Most doors already are the silent type.

In canon, when people want to avoid being overheard, they cast an Impenetrable charm, which is presumably also useful in that objects and people cannot get through it, and so the occupants of the room are pretty much assured of privacy.

If this is not good enough, we might also remember Hermione's squelchy door-sealing spell in the DoM. (Colloportus, I think the word is.) And don't forget that handy spell for cleaning up messes, Evanesco. JKR provides us with some very useful spells, the least we can do is to use them.

"Locking and silencing spells" is just plain lazy writing. Pre-OotP it can be forgiven, but now that we know better, shouldn't our writing reflect this? Or is it a habit just too deeply ingrained to change?

Of course, this is the fandom which nine times out of ten willfully ignores the fact that Pepper-Up Potion has the side effect of making steam shoot out of its taker's ears. :/

[/ranty thing]