to ficathon or not to ficathon

[thedarlingone]

So intoabar is happening this year. Signups are open through July 14. Word minimum is 500, which is usually doable for me. And cracky crossovers used to be my jam. I've never actually done intoabar due to life shit, but I am pondering whether to sign up this year or whether (as so often happens) I'll get an assignment and draw a complete blank.

So the way intoabar works is that you pick one character, plus up to four fandoms that character is not from. Your chosen character walks into a bar (or any establishment where one can similarly strike up conversation with strangers) and meets a randomly chosen character you are assigned from one of the fandoms you picked. You can wind up with some pretty minor characters, and we all know random number generation has an evil sense of humor, so "I would definitely be able to write literally any recurring character from this fandom" is quite a commitment. I couldn't do SG-1, for instance, because the cast changed so heavily for the last two seasons.

I might be able to pull off "Wes Janson walks into a bar and meets anyone from the Mass Effect trilogy". Might. Would it be fun? I genuinely don't know. I'd probably get Thane. ;P

I mean, there's no penalty for defaulting, other than me going "omg i am a Failure" a lot... o_O So I could hypothetically sign up and then if I don't like my assignment just be like "nah I can't write this character I'm out". But in practice, I would keep fretting about it.

Also, the last several times I tried to do ficcish things with time components, I wound up losing my job or being homeless or moving cross-country or something equally disruptive. I'm a little wary there. :S

Comments

[corvidology]

While I'm not superstitious -*touch wood* :D - I can see how that last paragraph might make you wary.

Still, I love this challenge and it's about as low stress as a writing challenge can be.

[thisbluespirit]

Well, it is a low-key one, with a long amnesty, and no recipient, so the worst that can happen is you can't sign up next time. Which if you don't sign up for fear of the worst that can happen, you won't anyway, so that's no penalty at all.

I get fretting about it, though. The first time I signed up, I was much more ill and failed and felt bad about it for ages. But one day I eventually finished the fic, intoabar came back, and I finished it this time. And I never really regretted signing up. Sometimes you have to try things to see if you can and can't do them and something like this or a bingo is about as painless a way as exists to find that out.

Do the thing! \o/ Signing up for exchanges does not cause bad things or good things, save pleasure of writing/reading and/or stress. If you feel you have enough of that, then fair enough. Wanna try crossoverbingo instead? ;-p

[thedarlingone]

They're actually doing blanket amnesty now, so if necessary I can just say "yeah I can't write this prompt I'll try again next year". Whether I will is another question... ;P

'Wanna try crossoverbingo instead?'

This actually helped me make up my mind, because I pondered and no, I do not. A bingo is too open-ended and requires the writing of too many separate Things. intoabar, besides being a specific challenge I've always wanted to... be someone who would participate in (dear lord, occasionally you can really tell I took Latin grammar in primary school, with the word rearrangement and all), is only a single Thing and it has / will have a very specific prompt that I can look at and go either "I will write This" or "yeah I got nothing". Which apparently is much more what my brain wants right now.

♥ ♥ ♥

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, I'm glad you decided - and good luck! And no penalties, well, hey, definitely no harm done then. *nods*

and glad my joking about crossoverbingo accidentally helped!

[thisbluespirit]

Hey, you remember you were asking about free art editors and that? Someone on icontalking just linked to this: https://www.photopea.com/

Which looks like a pretty painless one to try out if you want to do some basic editing - no downloading needed, although you'll have to upload each pic, which can be a pain too.