lgbtfest | Info & Guidelines

Inspired by the now-dormant

lgbtfest is a panfandom prompt fest focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual/pansexual/otherwise multi-gender-attracted, and transgender (including non-binary) identities. Please read the guidelines, and feel free to ask for clarification on any points.

How does LGBT Fest work?

On May 1, the first prompting post will go up. It's there that participants will leave prompts -- if you've ever participated in a kink meme, it's sort of like that, only without the smut. (Well, without a focus on smut, I should say.) Prompting should be done in the following format:

Sleepy Hollow; Ichabod Crane; Ichabod has always known he was attracted to men. How does he react upon awakening in a future where these attractions are much less stigmatized? (Gay or bi Ichabod okay!)

Please use semicolons to separate fandom from character(s) from prompt so I can have an easier time search-and-replacing for the inevitable prompt-collating post. You can include however many prompts from however many fandoms you like in one comment. Both "Any fandom" and "Original work" are acceptable as fandoms.

Prompting will run through the month of May, closing on May 31.

Fills will open on June 1, after I've had the chance to collate the prompts into an easily-searchable database. To fill a prompt, simply make a new post on this community with the following template:

Non-textual fanworks will need to be uploaded somewhere and linked to. Try Imgur or Tinypic for images, Soundcloud or Dropbox for audio, and Youtube or Vimeo for video.

You can also post your fills to the LGBT Fest Ao3 collection.

What kinds of prompts and fills are allowed?

Anything focusing on one or more lesbian/gay, bi/pan, and/or transgender characters. This can range from romance, introspection, and coming out, to action, adventure, and mystery.

I know that "focusing on" is a bit vague, but honestly, use your best judgment. A story with one throwaway line about a character being gay is not appropriate, but it doesn't have to be a navel-gazing angstfest, either. Do What Feels Right.

Because speculating about the identities of real people is a moral grey area, only fictional characters and OCs are allowed. No real-person fiction, unless it's of fictionalized versions of historical figures -- Harry Potter RPF is not allowed, but Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton is.

Minimums:

There is no minimum or maximum length for prompts.
There is a 300-word minimum for fanfiction fills.
There's no minimum size for fanart. Please don't draw on lined paper.
Fanmixes should include at least five songs.
Fanvids and audio (other than podfic) should be at least 30 seconds long.
Podfic should be at least 300 words. Please make sure you have permission (either explicit or blanket) before podficcing somebody else's work.
For any work type not listed here, go ahead and ask!

Do the characters in my prompt or fill have to explicitly identify as LGBT?

No. The "LGBT" in

lgbtfest is meant to describe the subjects of same-gender attraction and identification as a gender other than that assigned at birth, utilizing words that are in common use today. That doesn't mean that any of those words have to be used in your prompt or fill. After all, depending on the characters involved, it may be completely out of character for them to identify as anything in particular. It may also be the case that the setting of your story uses completely different terms for sexuality and gender, or no terminology may be in use at all.

If a specific identity is requested in a prompt, you are required to not deviate from that in your fill. For example, if you're filling a prompt for "lesbian Mary Sue", even if you don't use the word "lesbian" she still has to be a woman who is attracted solely to women. She can't be bisexual or pansexual, or identify as male.

In addition, characters do not have to be canonically LGBT to be eligible for LGBT Fest. One, that would seriously limit our pool. Two, it would just lead to identity policing. Headcanon to your heart's content.

What about marginalized non-LGBT identities?

Prompts and fills about how LGBT identities intersect with other identities such as gender, race, ethnicity, disability, religion, intersex*, class, asexuality, polyamory, kink, and so forth are more than welcome. LGBT identities are the focus of this fest, but that doesn't mean they're the only thing you have to include.

*Out of respect for intersex individuals who have asked that their identities not be automatically lumped together with LGBT, intersex in its own right won't be included in this fest. Of course, you can still prompt and write stories featuring characters who are both LGBT and intersex, and non-LGBT intersex characters can be included alongside LGBT characters.

However, prompts along the lines of "For John Doe, being [X] is easy. It's being [Y] that's hard." for any given values of X and Y (e.g. "trans" and "gay", "black" and "gay", "bisexual" and "kinky", etc.) will not be accepted.

Are you affiliated with queer_fest or LiveJournal's lgbtfest?

No. This fest was started out of nostalgia for queer_fest, but admittedly, I didn't know that queer_fest had started to fill the void of LJ's lgbtfest -- which I didn't even realize existed until I tried to start an Ao3 collection called lgbtfest.

Whoops.

Stealing their name was not my intention, but I also really like the name because it's concise and descriptive. I thank queer_fest and, in turn, LJ's lgbtfest for inspiring this fest theme; without them, none of this would be possible.

Info & Guidelines