Info & Guidelines

[lgbtfestmods]

Inspired by the now-dormant queer_fest, 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:

<b>Title:</b> <b>Fandom:</b> <b>Rating:</b> K for Kid-friendly, T for Teen, M for Mature, or X for Explicit. <b>Fanwork type:</b> <b>Prompt:</b> <b>Notes:</b> <cut text="Your cut text here!"> Your fanwork here <img src="URL of image for fanart etc"> </cut>

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.

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

Hi, sorry if I missed something but is this just for fic or is fanart included too? Or other kinds of fanworks, but fanart's the one I personally care about.

[(Anonymous)]

Characters haven't be LGBT in canon in order to be prompted, right? I mean, could I prompt about for example gay!Lex Luthor if he's portrayed as straight in canon?

(frozen comment)

[meatball42.livejournal.com]

I really adored queer_fest and am really looking forward to taking part in this challenge, and perhaps writing some stories I didn't find time for those years. As such, I'd definitely not like for this community to end up a huge mud-slinging pit, which I can see happening very soon without the benefit of a judicious edit or two. I understand wanting to use 'LGBT' in a very concise way to make things go more smoothly, but I implore you to widen your criteria to include asexuality as well.

if you go on the original lgbtfest's prompts pages, or the pages for queer_fest, you'll see a plethora of asexuality prompts and successful fills. Even in the first year of the original lgbtfest, the mods were willing to accept prompts regarding asexuality. They still used the terms 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender' for simplicity's sake, but their criteria was wider, including stories 'dealing with issues like:

'Figuring out sexual orientation and gender identity (deciding you're LGBT, making a gender transition, moving between labels, dealing with other people's labels that don't necessarily fit you.)

'Dealing with prejudice (job discrimination, hostility from family or friends, legal problems, violence, and what characters can or can't do about them.)'

In practice, the community did accept prompts that dealt with the experience of being asexual, usually the struggle to figure out or accept this identity, or to navigate relationships and/or the world while saddled with this identity that some couldn't accept. The spirit of the challenge was about the experience of being queer (although that terminology wasn't so prevalent at the time), not the letter(s) of the law.

Queer_fest was more explicit about the inclusion of asexuality, probably because a lot of growth happened in the wider lgbt community over the interim few years and asexuality became a common term: 'The purpose of queer_fest is to celebrate and examine the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, genderqueer, asexual, intersex, and trans characters through fanfic and fanart. There are many themes of intersectionality that you can explore through prompts/stories about disabilities, race, being poly, being kinky and all of those are welcome, as long as they focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, genderqueer, asexual, intersex, or trans characters.'

Like I said, I'm only bringing this up to help you out, I'm not coming with pitchforks and torches. My personal definition of queer is sexual or gender identities which have been stigmatized by [whatever time period/culture you're talking about]. This definition, for me, includes polyamory and kink, and I would have loved to write fic for this fest regarding the ways these identities fit into the larger queer community, but the inclusion of polyamory and kink under the queer umbrella is very contentious, so I completely get not wanting to include them in the fest. However, asexuality has had a long history of being erased and insulted, and it's as much a sexual identity as being homosexual or pansexual, just as agender is as much a gender identity as cisgender or transgender. Not including any of these identities follows a similar logical path as saying that trans people or bi people aren't really queer, and is going to go over just about as well, particularly in fandoms with fanon ace characters, like Sherlock or Leverage.

On the subject, you're going to get prompts for agender, bigender, genderfluid, etc.; basically trans*, along with sort of amorphous prompts about people feeling weird about their attraction to people or how they relate to the world, gender-wise. I'd recommend accepting those as well, both because it will save you a lot of headache, and because they do fit with the spirit of the first lgbtfest, queer_fest, and I assume your fest as well: the complicated work we do as queer people to protect, accept, and celebrate our identities, our relationships, or our lack of the same.

[meatball42.livejournal.com]

As an entirely separate note from above, Supernatural RPF is probably not the best example to contrast fictionalized versions of RL figure; idk if SPN's going to get into this fest bigtime, I guess that depends on how it's advertised, but there was actually an episode where some actors played parody versions of themselves. :D I'd just say, like, Harry Potter RPF or something. (is that a thing?)

[meatball42.livejournal.com]

Do you have any pimping posts? I would try to make them but that would likely scare people away from the fest.

[(Anonymous)]

If I don't understand a prompt, can I ask the person for clarification?

[lalalalalawhy.livejournal.com]

Supposing I don't have a Dreamwidth account, can I still participate? Or would you suggest getting a Dreamwidth account?

[afterandalasia]

Hi there! I know this is pretty super late, but I ended up writing a fic inspired by one of the prompts here. Is it still okay if I post here and/or to the AO3 collection? Do you have a preference about which (or both) I post to?