SPN SUMMERGEN

First, I want to welcome quickreaver and hillz_85 to the mod team. Thanks to both for offering to help me out this year.

Now...drumroll... It's brainstorming time!

This is the part where I ask you about the genres, characters and crossovers you want to offer or request for this year's summergen. I know it's early to think about it, and nothing you say at this point is going to be set in stone. The point of this phase is to help me build the sign up form.

The signup form for Summergen is kinda long. It's in two parts: what you want to offer and what you are requesting. The first part - what you will offer to write - is made up of lists of characters, genres and crossover fandoms so you can tick the ones you can offer.

I do it this way for two reasons:

1. It's easy to forget something when you're signing up. Unless you're super-organised and plan your sign up well in advance, if you're asked to list the characters you can write you're bound to miss one or two, especially if there are a lot. Similarly with crossovers - you might see something on the list you hadn't thought of offering but you'd love to write.

2. It helps me make sure that *I* understand what everything is. This is a real problem for me each year. Someone will offer or request something that no doubt makes perfect sense to them, but leaves me scratching my head in confusion. The example I remember best, though it's not the only one, was the person who wanted a season five story but also said she didn't like apocalypse fic.

This doesn't mean you won't be able to offer stuff that isn't listed on the form - there will always be an 'other' option, but the more I can get on the lists the easier and faster it is to match up all the assignments.

So, here we go. Comment on one of the posts below to tell me what you want to see on the signup form - that's both what you want to offer and what you might want to request. If I see anything I don't understand, I will ask you to explain.

Character Nominations | Genre Nominations | Crossover Nominations

(Comments disabled on this post because I need you to comment on one or all of the above posts. If you need to ask a question just pick any one and leave a comment.)

EDIT: Brainstorming is now CLOSED

Comment on this post to tell me what genre options you want to see on the signup form. Genre means type of fiction, as in angst, au, wing!fic and so on.

You can list as many as you like. If you nominate anything I don't understand (it happens!) I will ask. You need to explain or I can't include it.

Please remember this is a GEN challenge. Wincest ain't going on the form no matter how many people request it.

EDIT: Brainstorming is now CLOSED

Pre-signup brainstorming post 3 of 3:

Ahead of sign-ups, I want to know what crossover fandoms you'd like to request in your prompts, and what crossover fandoms you're dying to get a prompt for.

The signup form has always asked for any crossovers you're willing to write, but the crossovers that get offered often don't match well with the prompts people give.

Last year, for example, a lot of people offered to write Justified crossovers. But not a single person gave a prompt for a Justified crossover, so I couldn't give any of those people a chance to write one for Summergen. In the opposite direction, someone gave a brilliant prompt for a Twilight crossover last year, but although I'm certain one or two SPN fans must have at least some familiarity with Twilight no one had offered to write it, so I couldn't match that one to any writer. It doesn't mean the prompter didn't get a story, of course she did. But I had to assign a writer based on the other prompts she'd given and ignore that one.

So this year, I want people to brainstorm it ahead of time. Tell me your crossover fandoms! You do not have to give away what your prompts would be, but for each fandom, try to say why you think it would be a good SPN crossover. Is there a particular character combo you'd like to see? A particular scenario or location?

The signup form will include all the fandoms mentioned in the comments as ticky-boxes, both to remind you which are available for prompts and to make it easier for you to list all the crossovers you'd be willing to consider writing. If it's not in the comments here, it won't be on the list for signups.

You have until April 10 to comment. If all goes to plan, signups will open on April 15.

ETA: Please be specific! Don't assume I'll know what you're talking about. It's no good saying (for example) you'd like a crossover with 'anime fandoms' - you need to list them.

This is the first of three pre-signup posts for SPN Summergen.

Here's the thing. When you sign up, one of the things you have to say is what kind of thing you can write, and what kind of thing you definitely don't want to receive. About 80% of the time, I have no trouble understanding what people write for those questions. But the other 20%... I kinda have to guess.

It's also kinda tough when you sign up to remember everything about your own fic preferences. It's horrible to sign up, think you've covered everything and then to receive an assignment which says the requestor loves a kind of fic you know you can't write.

The more people comment on this post, the more likely you are to find a genre list on the signup form this year, which will help with the remembering thing and the less likely it is I'll accidently screw up, genre-wise when I assign prompts.

Here's an example. Two years back we were at the end of SPN season four, and the whole season was about the upcoming apocalypse. Whether you read spoilers or not, every SPN fan knew that the season ender was going to kick start the apocalypse into a new gear. And in summergen sign ups, more than one person gave prompts based on either next-season speculation or on late S4 episodes AND in their dislikes said they didn't want apocalypse fic. Maybe that makes sense to some fans reading this but I've gotta tell ya, for me, that was a brain teaser. I couldn't figure out what it meant and probably each person who did that meant something different. All I could do guess and hope the assignments worked out.

So, here's your chance to help me out a bit. Tell me the 'shorthand' names for the gen fic genres you like, and the ones you loathe, and tell me what they mean. Your own definition is fine; if people disagree about what a particular term means, tell me that, too. I'm not going to force everyone to agree; but the debate will help me a lot when it comes to match-ups.

You have until April 10 to comment. If all goes to plan, signups will open on April 15.