WIP Big Bang 2023 Round Schedule & FAQ!

Schedule

All times are by 8:59pm PST. Convert time zones.

Sign-ups Begin- April 1st
Sign-ups Close- April 21st
Check In #1- April 22nd
Check In #2- May 15th
Snippets Due- June 1st
Art Claims Begin- June 17th
Check In #3- June 22nd
Check In #4- July 6th
Rough Drafts Due- July 15th
Posting Claims Begin- July 23rd
Posting Claims Ends- August 1st
Final Drafts/Art Due- August 7th
Posting Starts- August 8th
Posting Ends- October 31st (the last two weeks are reserved for emergency posting)

FAQ

What is the WIP Big Bang?
Good question! This is a Big Bang with one goal in mind: to clean out your fanfic drafts folder. These are stories that were unfinished for whatever reason, that authors returned to and completed, and the art that goes with them!

Keep reading

The template for the bragging rights and the instructions to post (as well as a link to the AO3 collection) are now up at Dreamwidth!

This is the link to the final check-in form. Once your bragging rights have been posted on @wipbigbang or the Dreamwidth site or your personal Tumblr with @wipbigbang @-ed in the post, use that post URL to check in here, and then you have officially finished the 2033 round of WIP Big Bang!

(Yet Another) Fanfic Writer Ask Game!

1. What is your most popular fic?
2. What fanfic do you wish you got more response on?
3. What’s a fic idea that you have but haven’t written yet?
4. Do you prefer writing multi-chapter or oneshot fanfictions?
5. What rating do most of your fics fall under?
6. Have you written any fanfictions featuring OCs? If so, elaborate!
7. What’s a troupe you love to write?
8. What kind of document do you use to you write? Microsoft Word? Google Docs? Straight in the AO3 text box?
9. What’s your favorite line(s) or scene(s) that you have written?
10. What are your top five fics by kudos or by reads
11. How many words do you have on AO3 (if you use that platform)
12. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?
13. Have you ever received hate on a fic?
14. Have you ever co-written a fic?
15. Are there words, phrases, mannerisms or scenes you tend to use a lot?
16. How long is your longest fic?
17. Are there any writers and/of stories that you consider an influence?
18. Recommend someone else fic! (And tag them if they have a tumblr!)
19. For the readers: send in your favorite fanfic, scene, title, phrase, etc. by the person who reblogged this!

Saw my first post with someone admitting they used chatGPT to ‘write a fic’ which they then shared here on tumblr and on Ao3.

To be clear, using AI to churn out a piece of fiction is not writing.

Using a bot (possibly one that was trained using a scrape of Ao3, that is to say, the theft of work from every writer who has posted their work on Ao3) is NOT WRITING.

It is theft. It isn’t creation. It’s a regurgitation of the consumed collective work and effort and heart and time of every writer who has shared their work on Ao3.

‘I’m not a good writer’ is no excuse.

Want to be a writer? Put in the time everyone else does to practice.

Don’t feel confident in your work? Open yourself up to the same vulnerability and risk that the rest of us do.

You don’t get to use a fucking bot to vomit out an approximation of a story and pretend you’ve got skin in the game.

The sad thing? This bot-assembled fic wasn’t bad. It was bland, but it had internal logic, some passing context to character and canon. It wasn’t like those early AI art pieces that had surreal compositions and extra fingers. It wasn’t immediately obvious it was made by a bot.

In this instance the person who posted it admitted they had used a bot. Which, actually, I have some respect for. But it probably isn’t the first and it won’t be the last.

I don’t know that there’s a solution to this, but it is both hurting my heart and enraging me.

Just wanted to add to this really important post. (Thank you sm @shealwaysreads)

I think part of the issue here is that people who do this think of fic as an end product. As a thing to be consumed. As content.

That's not fanfic.

Fic, in its essence, is the act of creation, of transformation. It is critically analyzing characters, exploring ideas, relationships, societal values, the dynamics of love and sexuality... the list goes on. Fic is a process that encapsulates all of this, the effort to make something that means something. That says something about what it means to be human (yes, kinky smut included). That takes vulnerability and guts and love to put out into the world.

If you think of fic as content that is there to be consumed, then yeah, it makes sense to find a quick and easy way to produce it. If the point for you is getting attention (kudos, reblogs, etc) with little to no work, using AI is tempting. But that's a capitalistic mindset that entirely negates what fanfic is.

If we instead think of fanfic as a creative process, then AI fic is not fanfic at all. Call it something else.

Lukewarm take from left field. I'm not threatened by this, in part because I write weird. Like, nobody following me is here for a bot-logical good story. If I thought my writing could be indistinguishable from a bot, I would *die* terrifically.

Fascinating to see a take on a post about the intrusion of ai tech into a creative community be so entirely focused on the self.

To clarify for anyone confused:

I made my original post because this is the first time I saw it happening, despite the fact we all knew this was coming as soon as midjourney landed in the art scene and we heard about the ao3 scrape.

While my writing is my own, and I’m secure and proud of it, I’m not under any self-congratulatory illusion that I was that good when I started. Many of the fics I’ve read by first-time writers are similar to what this bot produced, and those writers still deserve basic respect and civility.

Anyone working under the delusion that ai tech won’t get better at its manipulation of the data is sadly mistaken. If you haven’t been following the ai progress on visual art, you might have missed that you can now request pieces to be produced in the specific style of an established artist. And the bots can do that now! They can make visual pieces almost indistinguishable from the original artist’s style—no matter how unique, or weird, that original artist’s style is.

My post wasn’t about me, or my writing. It was about the encroachment of ai and the accompanying cultural devaluation of human artistic expression outside of the work-based capitalist model.

It was about the impact of wholesale thefts of a community’s collective work.

It was about the meaning and importance of people’s generosity in sharing their genuine creations.

It was about vulnerability and the creative process being more important than the ego.

Pulling this out of Tee's tags because it's brilliant:

I am interested in reflections on the human condition from other human beings. I am not interested in the guided narrative of a theft powered sophisticated averaging machine.

Thank you for saying this so powerfully @skeptiquewrites

If the point for you is getting attention (kudos, reblogs, etc) with little to no work, using AI is tempting. But that's a capitalistic mindset that entirely negates what fanfic is.

Hitting the nail on the head @thehoneybeet

If I ever come across a fic that I liked and discovered it was written by a bot I would feel extremely cheated tbh. I'd rather read a badly written fic by a first time writer who poured their heart and time and love for their fandom into that fic than some souless attempt for clout, kudos, and online attention that AI fanfic "creators" have posted.

AI is a plague on creativity and I truly hope we can find ways to make it fail.

#write bad until you get better or don’t write. #Art bad until you get better or don’t art #there is a reason homemade food tastes richer and better than something made in a factory on a big machine (via @wittywallflower)

💥🙌👏

Well shit, Henry Jenkins, out here in 1997 dropping truth bombs

Oh hey I need this for a research paper I'm writing, thank you!

i mean he had been out here since 1988 dropping such bombs:

"'fandom' is a vehicle of marginalized subcultural groups (women, the young, gays, etc.) to pry open space for their cultural concerns within dominant representations; it is a way of appropriating media texts and rereading them in a way that serves different interests, a way of transforming mass culture into a popular culture"

Jenkins, Henry. “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual Poaching.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5, no. 2 (1988): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295038809366691.  

there are even some earlier works in fan studies but that’s what i have ready to hand. 

Henry's been amazing for a long time.

Long time no see Tumblr. Quick guide on coloring deeper skin tones

Gentle reminder that often creativity decides to hibernate for a bit.

It’s okay.  You’re not broken, you’re resting, and much like spring, creativity comes back.

ao3 is not instagram, and it’s not embarrassing to comment on a story that’s old. we understand that you just happened to come across it now; writing is magical in that you often come across the right story at just the time you need to read it.

also, authors will literally cry over their keyboard if you comment on the stuff they write.

Tumblr is shit for artists but I’m really bullheaded and I don’t want to move

Reblog to support artists on this godforsaken website

also reblog to support writers on this godforsaken website

none of us get the exposure we deserve