Weekly Chat!

[mi6-cafe-mod.livejournal.com]

Yep it's that time of the week lovely people! The cafe is open for all of your chatting needs!

Don't forget that anonymous comments are now turned ON so you don't need an LJ account to join in the fun! If you are commenting using anon comments, please can you put your name/handle in the subject of your comments! It makes it easier for everyone to know who they are talking to!

WEEKLY RECS!

This week, we're going to take a slightly different approach to the weekly recs. So as well as the recs for those fanworks you've seen during the week (art/fic/podfic/memes anything goes!), there is going to be a 'Weekly Genre' where you can rec your favourite fics of all time that come under that heading!

This weeks Weekly Genre: Fluff!! Lets see how many fanworks we can rec this week under this genre - go find that one fic or piece of artwork that you think deserves a bit more love and recognition and post it in the recs!

Halloween Exchange
The Halloween Exchange is being run over on tumblr this year, and you can now go submit your prompts! Please note that the NYP Mod asks for prompts to be written in a certain way, so take that into account when you're thinking of your prompt!

Once the creating gets underway, I'll see if there is enough interest to create a specific 'fan exchange' cheerleading thread within the Weekly Chat for everyone to share their creating woes and make sure those muses get to work!

Starter questions!

To welcome the new people to the cafe I've added some introductory questions to the top of the list, which you are free to use/not use to introduce yourself!

Who goes there? Introduce yourself!
1) Name
2) Ususal internet home
3) What is it that you love about 00Q?
4) Favourite 00Q headcannon
5) Favourite 00Q fanwork (NB Put at ** next to the links if you want these fics to be included in the weekly recs too!)

Everyone is standing around drinking everything from tea to scotch! Quick, give us some ice breaker questions!

1) if Q and James had superpowers what would they be and why?
2) What is the one thing you love about the 00Q fandom community?
3) If James and Q were lost on an island with only a radio, a pair of horrendously ugly underpants, and a box of ice lollies, what do you think would happen? (Short fics or artwork using this a prompt is welcomed and very much encouraged)
4) One thing you hate about the creative process, and why
5) Anything you want to see included in the MI6 Cafe (This kind of depends on your dear mod's time allowances, but I'd love to see your ideas for the cafe and where this little comm could go!)

As ususal, you can add more questions if you wish! More chatting the merrier!

Comments

Re: Castillon

[(Anonymous)]

I super love your fest idea, especially the idea that people get points for commenting! That is just what we need in AO3's more kudos-oriented environment! I might still make some generic bingo cards available as team resources (fluff, h/c, tropes, character POVs, that kind of thing; we could make our own, or we could probably borrow from other comms if we ask nicely). I don't mind gathering them provided life isn't 100 percent crazy at the time. The reason I think they'd be a good resource is that they would just be like...a possible guideline for people who aren't sure what to write about next? Some people do really well with loads of freedom to be creative and give their plotbunnies free rein, while others benefit from a little structure; I wouldn't want the latter to feel like they're getting stuck without a handhold. As a practical consideration, I might also cap the amount of points you can get re: word count for a single fic (maybe at 15k or 20k? so you'd have a 150- or 200-point maximum?), because if someone on one team happens to churn out a 50k novel (fingers crossed, I would read the hell out of that!) then it'd be a bit hard for other teams to compete after that. Kind of like how it's almost impossible to win at Quidditch if the other team catches the snitch. And you'd have to figure out how to give points to artwork; perhaps that would be judged by amount of time it took to complete, with 10 minutes=1 point? (Would that work for cosplay too?)

Also, just while I'm thinking about it/so it doesn't get forgotten, Inceptiversary (Inception fandom's summer fest) had something like a craft day last year that was really neat; things like origami and, IDK, sewing stuff and other crafty submissions happened. We wouldn't need to make a specific day for it, but I think the inclusion of crafts might be something to explicitly mention at the time of the fest, bc I think people get caught up in "traditional" forms of fanwork like visual art and fanfic, and don't always realize that their secret yarn skills or papercraft hobby or drink-mixing or ability to stitch "BLOODY BIG SHIP" onto a pillowcase or make 00Q-themed bentos or WHATEVER are also really cool. And meta! Any kind of meta is awesome.

I AM ALREADY SO PUMPED FOR 00Q TEAM FEST 2016.

I really like the weekly guest idea, partly because we have so many awesome fanwork creators in the fandom and it would be such a pleasure to hear their ideas and opinions about things, and partly because it would, hopefully, help more people find their way to MI6 Cafe! I'm strongly considering volunteering to run it, as you say, as a kind of MI6 Cafe mod, but I'd have to give it a little more thought. (Among other considerations: Reaching out to people is hard! But at the same time, this would be great practice at reaching out to people, haha.) So I'll check back in with you next weekend, if that's all right? Or we can talk in two weeks when you're on break and have had time to think more about fandom as well as IRL stuff!

I can completely empathize with the balancing act you're describing. The weekend has been the only consistent time for me as well, though that's a bit more flexible now that it's summer break for me. And it will certainly be weekend hours in August as well when school starts up again (provided I have a job--fingers crossed for that too). Thank you again for taking what time you have to think about how to make a more active 00Q community!

P.S. I am also SO PUMPED for Spectre! Coming from Inception fandom, I'm finding it such a novelty to actually have a sequel to be excited about, haha. 22 weeks!

Re: Castillon

[teacass.livejournal.com]

Yeh, the points system is incredibly rough at the moment but it would have a number of equivalent points for whatever people created (fic/art/crafts/cosplay etc). I'd try make it as fair as possible to ensure that whatever someone did for the fest, if you've created it for fandom then it gets points (somehow!). I certainly think points for commenting would be good (even a reblog on tumblr with some comment in the reblog as to why the fic/art is good would count) because a) it allows readers to participate and b) gets people actually verbalising what they like about a fic/art rather than just going 'THIS IS NICE' or leaving a kudos (not that it's a bad thing, but some proper comments won't go amiss amongst creator types).

The bingo cards are a good idea, it helps keep the creativity flowing (and maybe you could get bonus points for using some of the bingo card prompts?). There is LOADS of time until it would need to be organised, so I'm thinking just sketching out a rough idea at the moment (I'm considering making a 'whats coming up for the next few months at MI6cafe in a few weeks time to get some people interested) and then probably early 2016 I can see who wants to be team leaders (so the leaders can organise the teams/deal with the individual teams) and how many people would be interested in it.

TEAM FEST 2016 FTW.

Sure! If you want to volunteer that would be amazing, I know from my schedule (summer of bouncing around places + starting new job in the latter end of the year) I'm going to be busy has hell to do it justice. But I could certainly help with coming up with questions/bouncing ideas, it's just the regularity of posting/organising people I would have time trouble with (especially if I'll try and set up the team fest next year). But seriously, no pressure at all :D Everything's all very ad-hoc right now so we could start off small (maybe like a small month of 'guest posts' - one a week would only be 4 people for example) and then if there is interested start building from that onwards :)

SAME! It'll be nice to have some new interest injected in the fandom, I loved how much fic/commenting went on around Skyfall coming out :P