Stargate Atlantis Flashfiction

Finally closing the Aliens-Made-Them-Do-It challenge; you can read the responses here and here.

New challenge: linziday suggested that, since its the start of the holiday season, we do a gift giving challenge: "team gifts, good gifts from outsiders, bad gifts from the Ancients, gifts of life or love... so many gift possibilities!" (Not to mention The Gift!)

Today's November 26; this challenge will not close before December 15 at midnight.

Very very belatedly closing the In Memoriam challenge, which (wow) you might want to check out if you didn't see it, because there was some gorgeous writing on display. You can find the 12 stories here and here, using the challenge tags, or in the community memories.

And now--at kriadydragon's request--an Aliens Made Them Do It challenge. She was surprised we hadn't done one before, but it looks like we haven't! However, she suggests that we think outside the box in terms of "it": Aliens make the team dress up as clowns and scare Sheppard just for laughs (or as lemons to scare McKay). Aliens make Ronon write romantic poetry. Aliens make Rodney babysit. Aliens make Teyla babysit Rodney. The possibilities are endless :D"

Make them do it! Today is October 12; your humble mod will be busy toward the end of this month, so we'll give this one a full month. Challenge will run until Nov 12, 2009 at midnight eastern.

The H/C Challenge is over (you can read the 15 challenge responses here or using the h/c challenge tag).

An anonymous commenter has suggested that we follow up with an In Memoriam challenge:

"The other day I was thinking about how terribly sad it was that no one ever mentions Peter Grodin anymore. This got me thinking about Abrams and Gaul, Aiden, Kate, and Elizabeth. So, how about an In Memoriam challenge? Visiting with families, or AUs where lost characters never left, or fics where there's a little quiet remembrance of past characters?"

Feel free to interpret the challenge broadly: there's a lot of mental mileage in memory, remembering, In Memoriam ("It is better to have love and lost...") etc.

Today's September 1; the challenge will stay open until at least Sept 18, 2009.

Welcome to DW's home of sga_flashfic. I'm not sure what you were expecting when you subbed here, but in an attempt to make this community interoperable with the LJ version of the community, I'm trying something experimental this month rather than just using this site as a mirror.

If you're here on DW, you were probably a member of the LJ version: sga_flashfic, and you probably still are. But I have created a feed to that community here on dreamwidth. It's here: sga-flashfic-feed. This is for reading LJ's sga_flashfic comm on your DW reading list if you don't want to read two separate flists/reading lists.

(I have also created a feed of THIS comm, the DREAMWIDTH version of sga_flashfic, for use on LJ: it's sga_flashfic_dw. This is for reading this Dreamwidth sga flashfiction comm on your LJ flist, if you're still using that.)

Please note that this means that there are now FOUR SEPARATE LINKS connected with sga_flashfic: a LJ community, a DW community, a feed to the LJ community, and a feed to the DW community.

Here's what I--in my crack-addled state--am suggesting for this month's challenge:

1) If you have a primary reading page (LJ or DW), subscribe to the COMMUNITY housed on that site and to the FEED of the opposite site.

That is to say, if you're reading on LJ, subscribe to sga_flashfic and to the flashfic FEED on DW sga_flashfic_dw. This will let you get all stories on both sites.

If you're reading on DW, subscribe to sga_flashfic on Dreamwidth and to the FEED of the LJ version: sga-flashfic-feed. This will also let you get all stories on both sites.

If you do not want to have a primary reading page, which is to say, you're reading two flist/reading pages, you can just subscribe to both comms and no feeds: sga_flashfic and sga_flashfic. You'll see the DW stories on your DW reading page and the LJ stories on your LJ page.

With me so far?

2) All ADMIN posts will be posted to BOTH COMMUNITIES, and this is important: only ADMIN posts will be crossposted. Why? Because seeing double of everything SUCKS, so we want to keep it to a minimum on the feeds. Which leads me to #3.

3) Challenge responses--i.e. stories!--can be posted to EITHER community but NOT to BOTH communities. In other words: pick ONE: post EITHER to LJ's sga_flashfic OR to DW's sga_flashfic. Why? Because if everyone does what they're supposed to vis a vis #1, everyone will get ONE COPY of every story posted to THE GREATER ENTITY OF SGA_FLASHFIC on either community on their flist/reading list of choice. Comments will be centralized at one place, too, because there will only be ONE POST for every story.

Everybody with me on this? The goal here--let me be totally clear!--is for people to be able to pick the journaling platform they're happiest with and not have to deal with the other one if you don't want to. If you're a LJ person, one click and you get all the DW stories posted here without having to pay any attention otherwise to DW. If you want to be a DW person, one click and you can get the stories posted to LJ's sga_flashfic community delivered to your door and never deal with Frank the Goat again.

OK, problems I can already forsee: DW version.

Q: But I have both LJ and DW accounts! and now I don't know where to post my flashfic! Where will more people see my story? Where will I get more comments?
A: Dude, I don't know; this is all pretty experimental. If you're really worried, post to LJ the way you've always done; I haven't seen many unsubbers, and with the feed, you should get read by the DW converts too. Or might I suggest writing two stories for the next challenge and posting one to each community if you've got both as a sort of test? *g*

I'm sure I've missed a bunch of other potential problems, but I'm in a "nothing ventured, nothing have" kind of mood. So let's give this a shot. I'm going to post a version of this also to LJ, and then shortly after, we'll get the next challenge posted to BOTH communities and see how it goes. Please please do give me feedback over the course of the challenge--and I'll be requesting it specifically at the end--to see if this works and maybe shows a way forward or was just a colossal pain in the ass. Thanks for your patience and <3 you all.


Edited to add: I'm sure this list will keep growing, as you guys are smart and know things I did not!

1) Don't comment on the feeds! Ideally, the feed will take you to the story, and you should comment there. That is a tricky thing, but I'm sure we'll get used to it!

2) There is some question as to whether LJ feed will respect DW-cut tags (I've set the DW community to respect the LJ cut tags already). I haven't had anything to test it on, and it could be a real dealbreaker if it doesn't: nobody wants a whole big story cluttering your flist. I'm hoping that as with other feeds, LJ might just cut DW stories into a para and a "read more", but hopefully there's a code wank for this, because this could bring down the whole house of cards. *shakes fist at the sky*. Update: A couple of solutions--including using the LJ-cut tag at DW--look possible; stay tuned.

3) I'm already wondering if I made the wrong choice about posting ADMIN to both places, or if its only because I just made two large posts (mostly challenge and closing posts are pretty small.) I want the ADMIN to be NEUTRAL, dammit, but even doubles of two posts a challenge might be too many! Maybe I can alternate in the interests of fairness...? Feel free to weigh in.