Questions Post

[infinimato]

Have questions about the rules? Or something else? Ask them here!

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I didn't have a question, I was just gonna say now I want to see John Winchester and Sam Carter, but now I do have a question: why's commenting restricted to members?

[infinimato]

Dang it. Commenting shouldn't be restricted to members, just posting.

I guess the answer to your question is: Because I screwed up!

Fixed it! Now anyone can comment. Thanks for the head's up.

[cordialcount]

Could you give your rationale for the rating restriction? Some people rate dark themes and plot elements (or graphic violence, past mentions of sex, etc.) mature, and I think this fest's concept is fascinating but am curious where the exclusionary line will be drawn.

[infinimato]

Sorry, we're not ignoring the issue, we're debating a few nuances. We'll address this asap.

[infinimato]

Real Answer:

People have different definitions of gen. The two most prevalent ones are stories that don't focus on romantic relationships and stories that are suitable for a general audience. Rather than choosing, we decided to do both!

If you write something that you feel is too graphic for a PG-13/Teen rating, based on a prompt here, feel free to post it elsewhere. We love more works, we just want to have a battle that everyone, including those who are easily squicked by things like graphic violence, can enjoy and participate in.

[jack_of_none]

Sorry to be a bother but I was wondering why you listed PG-maximum? I understand that explicit/nc-17 tends to mean sexual content, which you want to avoid, but there are a lot of ways a fic can go up in the the R/Mature zone without being about sex or relationships. I ask because I read/write a lot of horror-themed gen and don't want to step on any toes.

[infinimato]

See the above reply to cordialcount

Also, we intended to say PG-13 (as a match for the AO3 "teen audiences") and messed up. We've corrected the rules.

As for horror-themed gen -- There's a lot of YA horror out there! I'm a big fan of writers like Neal Shusterman and William Sleator, both who write/wrote horror for teens.

[taichara]

Will entries automatically be submitted to AO3, or is that an optional feature?

[infinimato]

The AO3 collection will be completely optional. We hope folks will use it, but there's no requirement.

[wendelah1]

So the prompt can be a fandom (or two) and a character name (or two)? Providing anything else is optional?

Your spoiler policy is six months? So for any television fandom, anything specific to the entire fall season would need to go behind a spoiler cut? For any new series, the entire series?

What about books and movies? If it's from the last third of 2012, put it behind a cut, otherwise no need?

Can you request "any character, any fandom," with a specific prompt?

[tptigger]

You can provide any number of fandoms or characters you want for a prompt. If you do too many, your prompt will be harder to write and ay not get filled. Phrases or words are optional as long as you specify at least a fandom. Requests for any fandom any character are permitted, just be advised that if filled, it may be for a fandom you are not familiar with.
As to spoilers, that's correct: we're trying to allow for the international nature of the 'net and give folks a chance at (legally) seeing things from other countries without being spoiled for them.

[ozqueen]

Do prompts always have to have two or more characters? Could you prompt a fandom and just one character?

[infinimato]

Yes, you're more than welcome to have just one character. You can also list more than two!

[taichara]

Me again --

Just wanted to check, but how would you prefer one write a prompt for a fandom that has multiple iterations/versions?

The difference between the Marvel and Dreamwave and IDW series for Transformers (G1), for example, or even between versions in different media (animation/game/book/manga/etc) ...

[tptigger]

I don't know Transformers, but I'd guess: Transformers (Marvel), Transformers (Dreamwave), or Transformers (IDW). Or, if you were crazy: Transformers (movie), Transformers (Michael Bay movie), etc.

We're not terribly picky-- the idea is to have it so people writing the prompt understand what you want. If I wanted to make an Avengers/Cinematic universe prompt clear (I do know the Avengers movie), I would do it as:
The Avengers (2012), Thor (movie), Iron Man (Marvel Cinematic Universe)
Or for the Comics:
The Avengers (comics), The Avengers (616)
Or other things:
The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (TV), Iron Man Armored Avengers (TV), The Next Avengers (DVD movie? IDK, it's on Netflix)

Does that help?

[(Anonymous)]

Will you allow higher rated fic in future gen battles?

[tptigger]

No, we won't.

[fffffff01.livejournal.com]

Hey thanks for hosting this. Looking forward to participating.

Anyway, I was wondering if it was also possible to prompt/fill using a mail-to-mod proxy type thing like in porn-battle?

I was also a bit confused about the rules - this is supposed to be 'gen battle' using both the no-romance genre and the general-audience rating definitions, but then the rules also say that PG and PG-13 rated fics are allowed? MPAA ratings aren't my 'native' ratings, but I though PG-13 means 'restricted/parental guidance for under-13s' not the 'general' rating, right? Could you please clarify about that?

[infinimato]

Hi there!

I think we can do a setup where we allow people to mail to mods to post. I'll consult with the co-mod and work out how we can do this. Once we've figured it out we'll add it to the FAQ and make sure it's mentioned at fill time.

As for "gen", we're using it to mean two things, "gen" as opposed to romantic pairings, and "gen" as in "not restricted to adults".

We used PG-13, which is roughly the same as Archive of Our Own's "Teen and Up", which allows for things to be more mature than Smurfs and Disney, but still non-adult or "mature".


Hope that clears things up!

[justhuman]

I've got crossover prompts dancing in my head. Can we call out teams or ensembles verses specific characters?

[tptigger]

As long as you're clear about what those are, go for it!

[alexseanchai]

Can I prompt something like 'Supernatural, any female character who appeared in only one episode'?

[infinimato]

Sounds good!

[cantarina]

Aside from extremely vague phrasing, how should I handle spoilery prompts? Should I skip them altogether?

[infinimato]

Oh. That's a very good question we did not consider.

We shall discuss and get back to you as quickly as possible.

[xans]

Okay, I appear to have only just discovered this and totally missed the prompt gathering while away on my honeymoon. There are going to be more of these, though, right? And I can wait for the next one to list any prompts I have?

[infinimato]

A honeymoon? How dare you get married before prompt gathering started!

:-)

Seriously, though: Congratulations! We hope you and your spouse have a long and happy life together.

There will almost certainly be more of these, but we have not discussed what kind of schedule we'd like to do.

correction of fandom name

[eliyes]

I tried to fix this by replying to my prompt comment (as per the "don't edit prompt comments" rule) --

In the crossover prompts, "Batgirl (comics, 2009-2011)/Magnificent 7 (TV show)" should be "Batgirl (comics, 2009-2011)/The Magnificent Seven (TV show)".

I got the tv show's name wrong when I posted the prompts (because I'm so used to the fandom's shortcut of using the numeral instead of the word for the number).

Re: correction of fandom name

[infinimato]

Whoops! Sorry we missed your correction, it's now fixed in the Crossover prompts. Thanks for catching it and calling us out on it! :-)

[eliyes]

King of Fighters: King, license, [any]

Erm... [any] seems to be appended whenever there are no optional prompt words after the characters. Just to be clear, here, King is a character in King of Fighters (and also in Art of Fighting), and license was the optional extra bit.

[infinimato]

Whoops squared.

Confirmed yours is the only King of Fighters prompt for the character King. I'll fix that.

(this is all Tigger's fault for jinxing us. :-P)

[ozqueen]

So if we write a fill, instead of posting it as a comment to the prompts post, we post it as a whole new post to the community? I just want to be sure before I do anything.

Edit: Never mind, I somehow skimmed over the dot point that explicitly says this.

Haha, I think it's time to unsubscribe before everyone starts posting fills :P

[her_own_faiths]

I have a correction for a name, I replied to my comment in the prompts post but I guess it was too late for you to see. I mixed up character & actress names, so the single Raging Phoenix prompt should be:

Raging Phoenix: Deu & Pai, rebuilding shattered lives & hearts

Also, may I ask why you chose the filling method to be in new posts rather than in comments to the prompts post? I don't necessarily object, it's just rather surprising for someone who's used to the porn battle method of filling in the comments.

[infinimato]

Sorry about the prompt. I've fixed it.

As for why the separate posts: The porn battle is run in someone's private space, and they have a website where the fills are categorized and linked.

We don't have a website for this, so if we want people to be able to find works later we can use tags. It's a lot less work -- coding up the pages for the porn battle website is time consuming!

[bring_me_sugar]

Hello! I've posted my first fill and tried to tag my fic, but I'm not allowed to add tags. Just alerting you!

[infinimato]

Yep, that's why the rules don't tell you to tag your fic :-). (Mostly it's because we don't want to get into Fandom Naming Wars. We recognize that some people have name preferences but we can only have one thousand tags!:-)

Thanks for the heads up! [scurries off to read what you wrote.]

[kalloway]

There seems to be a Fullmetal Alchemist prompt mashed onto the DN Angel prompt.

[infinimato]

Augh! Fixing it now. thanks for catching that!