#khbigbang

[victorychords]

Calling All Kingdom Hearts Big Bang Writers!

Are you itching to get started on your entry? Want to get the first draft out of the way? Or maybe just want to be social while you start working on your fic? Consider Camp NaNo!

Camp NaNoWriMo is the laid-back companion to National Novel Writing Month. Instead of writing 50k in 30 days, camp participants can set their own word goals (say, 25k or higher?). Camp participants also have the option to join “cabins,” or private forums where they can chat and otherwise socialize with up to 19 other participants. See here for more information about Camp NaNo, and here for more information about cabins.

There are camp sessions in both April and July. This post is focused on the April camp session.

That’s great, but what does this have to do with the big bang?

The moderators of the big bang and I are currently working to gauge interest in a big bang cabin! The goal is to have a private cabin set up for writers who want to work on their big bang pieces early through Camp NaNo. 

The cabin would operate under the same general rules as the big bang, listed here. Basically, be excellent to each other and respect other peoples’ boundaries.

Sounds cool! As an interested writer, how do I get in on this?

First, you’ll need an account on the Camp NaNo website. Then, you’ll have to announce your project (”My Writing Projects” found in the My Camp NaNo drop-down menu). Then, go to your cabin settings page (found in the Cabins drop-down menu), select “I don’t want to be included in a cabin” (so you aren’t assigned into a random cabin) and deselect “I don’t want cabin invitations.” See this page for clarification.

Once that’s all done, send me an ask or a message  with your Camp NaNo username and the movie quote embedded in the rules paragraph. (Hint: it has the word “excellent” in it.) This is so I can have some assurance that any prospective participants understand the rules. Once everything checks out, I’ll invite you into the cabin!

Note: because there’s a 20-person limit on cabins, this event is first-come first-served.

General questions about the big bang can be directed toward @kingdomheartsbigbang. I look forward to hearing from everyone!

[cygnahime]

Increasingly concerned that the people running BOTH KH Bangs have never run, nor participated in, a fan creation event of any kind. On the one hand, how can you become an adult in this world without knowing that (straight) people kiss in PG movies, let alone PG-13? On the other hand, have you ever had an original idea in your life?

This is depressing me deeply. I was so excited to have fun as a fandom, but I’m not sure anyone is having fun anymore.

[kaoru-chibimaster]

How Not to Run an Event

Don’t Do What The Kingdom Hearts Big Bang Did.

Just Don’t.

Rant under the cut, so like... Seriously, scroll past this. This is me letting my feelings out and I doubt anyone’s interested in that.

-o-o-o-o-

So basically this event started out pretty hype. I was super excited to join in with something related to the Kingdom Hearts community. Before this, I just wrote fic. Like, I was so far in my bubble, I wasn’t aware of zines, I wasn’t aware of other collabs, I wasn’t even aware of some BNFs (so I’m sure I got weird looks for asking who some people were when basically everyone knew who these “some people” were). I just wanted to write and I crossed my fingers and hoped at least someone might enjoy it when I posted it. 

Joining fandom was not a sudden life-changing event for me or anything like that. I was 13 and just getting into forums and had essentially only had knowledge of the KH fanbase through gamefaqs, youtube, kh-vids and kh13 (and fanfiction.net a little later). Before then, my “fandom” was my close friends and I all being fans of the games. I saw posts and read fics and sometimes commented in forums but I was not involved. For the longest time I’d never really been involved.

Big Bang felt like a way to change that. I was so looking forward to the people I’d meet and the art and fics I’d get to see. I’d made friends over the past few months and I’m so, so grateful to BB for that. I was excited for all of the up and coming events planned for Dreamwidth. I’d started out in DW for FFXV related stuff but I’d never actually used my account, so I’m thankful for the opportunity to really learn DW and start using it more extensively. I loved the little events and activities like the posts where we could share our works in progress. That’s another thing I’m grateful for; there are a number of fics of mine that would’ve never gotten off the ground if not for WIP Wednesdays. I also really appreciated that this was set up as a pro-shipping community and that it emphasized that participants could ship what they wanted without being harassed.

Aside from that? 

Downhill. 

Like, at first it was a slow roll down the hill: the discord server would have some channels overrun with discussion I was either uninterested in or outright made me uncomfortable. I’m not going to name drop what these discussions were and who had started them but I muted them one by one until there were only maybe three or four channels (out of a good chunk, I didn’t count but it was a hell of a lot more than three or four) that were unmuted. It’d devolved from a lot of genuine and interesting discussions where we helped each other out with fics/art and just had general fun talking to each other into channels full of the same handful of people talking over each other or venting. Not at all what I was interested in from a community. It wasn’t too bad though because the server wasn’t necessary for the BB so if the people still there needed that space then it’s not my right to give them shit for it. It was, however, totally within my right to remove myself from it, just as it was my right to feel uncomfortable with it.

That was then though.

Right here and now? 

It’s a shitshow. It’s a dumpster fire. It’s basically anarchy.

My discomfort with the direction the server went in was hand in hand with my loss of motivation for my participation. I can’t even look at the fic I was writing for this event without feeling upset and stressed over it. So I dropped. 

And apparently, so did a good number of other people.

The mods made a post about how We’re Committed (which no one can find now because they deleted all their social media but I’ll get to that). They urged other people within the server to stay dedicated to the event. A rebuttal was made that pointed out the sort of environment they’d created that’d made a lot of people feel the same way as me: uncomfortable. The event mods were understaffed and constantly diverting attention to other/future events and one of them didn’t even communicate with the rest of the server save to make announcements, and the cherry on top? 

They expected the participants to make the effort. They expected to create a server and essentially let everyone grope around in the dark until they found a handhold. They outright told us they wouldn’t hold anyone’s hands, which was as condescending a statement as one could get, and then somehow expected the whole thing to work out? When the rest of the server occupants, including people who hadn’t spoken for ages and people who hadn’t spoken at all, started voicing their complaints, the mods acted like they were being backed into a corner they’d already placed themselves in.

They lashed out. Like children. Like a little kid on the playground confronted by their teacher after they pushed another kid and then loudly proclaimed “He pushed me first!”.

They backed out of the event and left it to the server mods. They, after having made a big deal out of commitment to the event, dropped it like a hot potato. 

And then they sent this nonsense:

Just. Out of nowhere.

It might’ve been salvaged if they left it in the hands of the other mods, but they cancelled it. They fucking cancelled all the people who put hard work into making fics and art and put time into this. Every single participant wasted their time on this. And it wasn’t just a few weeks, this fucking event started in April and they had the gall to just up and cancel it.

The rest of the email below, which is just as much a wall of text as this rant is, is essentially an overly worded temper tantrum in which the mods blame the participants for everything that went wrong. Like, I get it. You’re only human. You’re stressed too. You suffer anxiety like the rest of us. I get it. Yes, it was on us to communicate with our partners. But when we come to the mods for help? The last fucking thing you should ever tell us is “we don’t hold your hands”. No wonder no one ever came to you guys for help. 

But what really gets me is the fact that not every participant in this event was in the discord. Not everyone saw the drama that went down. Not everyone saw this coming. Imagine having joined this event only to find an email in your inbox a month before we were supposed to start posting telling you that the event is cancelled and it’s all your fault.

Makes the mods come across as incompetent at best. Malicious at worst.

And seriously, regardless of what’s going on in your life, what sort of hangups or problems you might have...

YOU DO NOT START AN EVENT LIKE THIS WITHOUT BEING READY TO FULLY COMMIT YOURSELF TO IT. IF YOU CAN’T HANDLE CRITICISM, IF YOU AREN’T GOOD AT COMMUNICATING WITH PEOPLE, IF YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE IDEA OF MODDING FOR AN EVENT THAT YOU STARTED THEN MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE STARTED IT.

This is common sense. Seriously. I’d never put myself in a position of leadership without being able to accept the responsibility that comes with it. Because it leads to shit like this.

I’m upset. I’d dropped the event a few weeks ago and still I’m genuinely upset. Because nobody deserved this. None of the participants deserved to have their time wasted like this. Nobody deserved the drama and the bullshit that was dredged up from this. Nobody deserved to have this bomb dropped on them literally a month before posting was going to start.

It was supposed to be fun. For me, a chance to finally contribute something in the Kingdom Hearts fandom as part of a fandom effort. A chance to reach outside of my bubble and make friends and create. And while I did get to reach out, I did get to create, and I’m going to continue to contribute on my own as I always did, I can’t say anything good about the Big Bang beyond that. All good will there might’ve been for it was ruined the moment the former mods sent that passive aggressive email.

Who the hell wants to see that nonsense in their email anyway. Aren’t they grown ass adults? They ought to know better. A simple “We regret to inform you that we’re cancelling this event” would have been enough. The rest was unnecessary and, quite frankly, downright nasty and that was honestly what pissed me off enough to make this rant. 

In the end if it had silently died, I wouldn’t have even minded at this point.

But, well...

The Big Bang had to go out with a bang, I guess.

Too bad it was a shit grenade and now there’s shit all over the walls and I’m just glad I’m not the one who has to clean all that shit up.

[savaagenymph]

hi!! I saw your post about doing a KH Big Bang, and I wanted to let you know grievercloud and I have been planning out a collab together (they're writing, and I'm doing the art). if you go through with it, I'm 99% sure we'll be able to join in with what we're planning/outlining! just thought I'd let you know, because I think doing a Big Bang would be so cool! c:

Hi! Sure. I was thinking about that too, if there was anyone who already had a partner or would like to partner with someone specific, to make it so you could sign up with them instead of being assigned to someone. 

I still don’t know when this would happen though. October seems too soon for me, and I wouldn’t want it to overlap with NaNoWriMo…. and there’s also a proposal for a secret santa for December so… probably, it would be scheduled for the second half of January or February next year.

Unless there’s enough people who wouldn’t mind doing this for November?

[savaagenymph]

I would seriously love a KH Big Bang! There have been a few attempts in recent years to get together collaborations on a similar scale to a Big Bang but every one I've been apart of has just flopped tremendously. So I really do hope this could become a thing! That would be so awesome. Thank you for taking the initiative to start something! :)

Me too! Hopefully with the recent announcements the fandom will be more active. I’ve never participated on a Big Bang myself but I always enjoy the ones made for the other fandoms I’m in… That got me curios, so I wanted to know if there was a regular Big Bang for KH and when I saw that was not the case, that prompted me to want to make one. Because I think Big Bang challenges are a great way to contribute to the fandoms. 

I really, really hope to be successful in the making of this in the near future. Thanks for the support!♥