Femgenficathon Changes...and a Question

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

In a few weeks--April 2, 2010, to be precise--it'll be time for Femgen yet again. (Femgenficathon VI. Six years. That's a long time on the Internet.)

A couple of things are changing this year.

1) I think that six months is just too long a deadline. People forget about what's due, forget that they signed up, lose inspiration and enthusiasm, etc. So I've cut the posting dates. The first date that you can post will be July 15; the last date will be July 31. That still gives people three months to write, and a month to two months if you have to worry about things like term papers and finals.

2) Second, I've thought a lot about this for a long time, and I've decided to alter one of the definitions in the ficathon. For the purposes of the ficathon, I've decided to define women as canonically female characters (cis or trans). (Bree from Transamerica, Wanda from Sandman, and so on.)

Disguises, canonical or otherwise, do not count. If the character is, for example, a cop or private detective dressing up as a woman as part of an undercover operation--no. If a boy who, in canon, has to dress up as a girl to attend a certain school because that's what his grandfather wanted--no.

Curses, spells, one-time bodyswap, alien intervention, etc., that involuntarily transform a male character IN CANON into a female form do not count for Femgen unless the character subsequently chooses to embrace this female identity for the duration of canon. If the character is still striving to break the curse and/or turn back into a male--like Ranma, for example--this character is ineligible for Femgen.

If the character alternates IN CANON between representing as a male and representing as a female, this character is not eligible.

Genderswapping male characters into female ones so that you can write about them in this ficathon is absolutely not allowed. Don't bother asking. The answer is NO.

If you have any questions about the character you're interested in that you don't don't feel were covered by the above, please e-mail me and we can talk about it.

Finally--and this is not a change, given that I've been posting quotations from women as prompts for the past five years--I'm hoping that some of you can suggest names of women of color whom I could quote. I'm particularly interested in finding quotable Hispanic or Latina women, quotable Native American women, quotable Asian and Pacific Islander women, and quotable Middle Eastern and African women. I'm looking for people from all times and all areas of the world. I tried to do this last year, but this year, if possible, I'd like to have a richer variety. So I'm asking for suggestions, because it's quite likely that some of you know names that I don't.

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Crossposted to gehayi

Possible Archive for Femgen

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

For those of you with accounts at the Archive of Our Own, I've set up an Femgenficathon collection, with sub-collections for Femgenficathon_2005, Femgenficathon_2006, Femgenficathon_2007, Femgenficathon_2008, Femgenficathon_2009 and Femgenficathon_2010. (The sub-collection for 2010 won't be open until July, but at least it exists.)

I've seen people tagging their stories on A3O with "Community: femgenficathon," which I'm thrilled about. Heck, I've put a story of my own under that tag. But--if possible--I'd like to encourage those of you who have accounts at A3O and who are posting there to add stories written for Femgen to the appropriate sub-collections. While I'm keeping the master lists here on LJ, I think that a number of other people will see and read the stories at A3O, so it will be good for you-the-authors and for the fest itself.

(If you're wondering how to add a Femgen story that's already posted to A3O to any of the collections--well, at the bottom of the story page, there should be a link that says "Add to Collection." Click that, and then type "femgenficathon_2005," "femgenficathon_2006," "femgenficathon_2007," "femgenficathon_2008" or "femgenficathon_2009" into the box that pops up. I mention this because I honestly didn't know how to do this initially, and someone else might be in the same situation. I'm quoting penknife's precise words of advice to yours truly.)

And if you're wondering which year your story was written, check here:

Masterlists of Fics

Masterlist of fics 2005
Masterlist of fics 2006
Masterlist of fics 2007
Masterlist of fics 2008
Masterlist of fics 2009

If you don't want to archive there, you don't have to. I'm just offering this as an option. (We don't have a website to archive the stories, unfortunately.)