Writcraft

Checking in for Challenge #3 - Pimp Your Favorite Communities, Fests or Challenges! over at the snowflake_challenge.

This is a tricky one because there are so many things I've absolutely loved being part of and I want to say how enormously grateful I am to everyone who has moderated, run communities or chatrooms and generally provided spaces where we can all hang out. With much gnashing of teeth I've limited myself, High Fidelity style, to five communities, fests or challenges that are still active and have been particularly central to my fandom experiences over the years.



#1. snape_potter. I said to torino10154 the other day that clicking on Snape Potter and seeing the art in the header feels a bit like coming home. This was one of the first communities I ever joined and the fests it hosts - with utmost professionalism - and the friends I've made there have been a joyous part of my fandom experience. I'm not positive but I'm fairly certain I've done Snarry-a-Thon for every year since I started writing, I rarely miss the holiday fest and I did my first Big Bang there. It's a home from home!

#2. daily_deviant. I remember getting my invitation to join Daily Deviant back in 2013 when it operated primarily on InsaneJournal and I was so freaking EXCITED. The community has been running for well over a decade and its mods are absolutely fantastic. It has provided such a glorious array of pairings and kinky themes. The events are fun and lowkey and the mods are terrifically supportive and generous with their time. I'm so thrilled to see new members being invited and I hope this wonderful comm continues to thrive on its new Dreamwidth home.

#3. hd_erised. I never got round to participating in HD Hols so as a writer, HD Erised has always been the big Drarry holiday exchange fest of my era and I get a little thrill of pleasure seeing the banners go up as the fest begins promoting for new sign-ups. I've done it most years it's been running, either as an original sign-up or pinch hitter, and had a blast every single time. The work that goes into moderating a fest of this size, at this time of year, and wrangling with all the difficulties that come with moderating an exchange is phenomenal. This year the fest posted 985,000 words!! that's nearly ONE MILLION words of new Drarry fic. Amazing.

#4. HP Femslash Mini Fest (link goes to Tumblr). This has just been up and running since around November 2018 but it's a brilliant blog servicing all your femslash needs and providing an open pairing space to play around with our favourite WLW ships. With new prompts once every two months (and the opportunity to continue to post to the subcollections relating to the previous cycles) it's low pressure, inventive and loads of fun.

#5. hpkinkfest. This fest has been a firm favourite of mine since I started out in fandom. The openness to kinks of all shapes and sizes and the posting format makes this such an easy-going and fun fest to participate in. Being given the opportunity to take over the modding reigns of this long-running fest in 2015 by the wonderful vaysh was a massive honour. I'm delighted kitty_fic, my co-mod for the last two rounds, is going to run the fest this year as I have to take a year off modding duties and I can't believe it's in its eleventh year already! PROMPTING OPENS TODAY so when the post goes up be sure to leave some fabulously kinky prompts!

Finally, something old and something new...

I didn't want to go back over all those iconic fests that used to run and are now defunct, the H/D Big Bangs, Pornish Pixies and so on, but I did want to give a quick, final shoutout to the now defunct HP Beholder (link goes to LiveJournal). This fest, based around the characters in HP who didn't get as much love as others, was such a cool idea and it's one I remember very fondly.

In terms of a brand new fest, I'd like to give a shoutout to the HP Trans Fest (link goes to tumblr). In its first run, the fest is currently open for prompting. A multi-ship, multi-era, multi-media fest designed to celebrate trans characters in Harry Potter fanworks is a very timely fest and one I'm looking forward to following.