#sparktober 2024 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sparktober · 12 hours

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Welcome one and all to this year’s Sparktober, the annual celebration of John Sheppard and Elizabeth Weir from Stargate Atlantis. Whether you’ve been here since the beginning or just discovered this ship yesterday, please join in!

discord invite | ao3 | bingo cards | theme days | watch parties

If you're participating in the Sparktober fic exchange, stories are due October 12 at 7 pm EDT. It's too late to sign up and request fics, but anyone can post prompt fills and gifts to the collection.

dreamwidth | ao3 collection | tag set | requests | @swficathon

We're updating the tag system on this blog and will update this post when finished!

Details and a calendar of theme days/events are below the readmore:

What's Sparktober?

Sparktober started on Livejournal as an unofficial lighthearted call for Sheppard/Weir fluff fics in 2007, quickly expanded to all genres of Sheppard/Weir fanfics and other fanworks, and was formalized in 2010 in this vintage lj community. It's now an annual celebration of this ship and a wonderful community of fans that are still making friends and creating fic and other fanworks after all these years.

Where to party:

Discord (invite code): Join the Sparktober server for conversation, events, fanworks, and watch parties. New participants welcome!

Ao3 (Sheppard/Weir tag). You can also add works to the Sparktober collection, or add/claim prompts in the ongoing drabble collection. In addition to new works, this is a great time of year to archive any pre-ao3 fanworks as well, or share a list of recs/bookmarks...

Tumblr: @sparktober. Post in/follow the #sparktober and #john x elizabeth tags.

Activities:

Bingo cards for fanwork inspiration are available for 2024! Info post on tumblr | Card generator

Theme days: New this year, we have theme days, with a topic for each day of the month to inspire discussion/fic recs/new work. (Theme days don't expire; feel free to reply to prompts on other days.)

Watch parties: Each weekend, we have watch-along parties with live chat in the discord. Announcements are tagged #Sparktober Watch Party. We watch two episodes, starting Saturdays at 22:00 UTC [which is 6 pm Eastern time; 5 pm Central time; midnight Sunday Belgian time; and 9 am Sydney time].

Fic Exchange: See the dreamwidth for more info.

Calendar:

Theme Days are in plain text and other events are in bold.

October 1 (Tue): Bingo Card Theme Day.

October 2 (Wed): Earth Setting Theme Day.

October 3 (Thu): Fix-it Fics Day.

October 4 (Fri): SGC Theme Day.

October 5 (Sat): Post a Sparktober bingo card fill (or excerpt). Watch Party (check posts or discord for episodes & times)!

October 6 (Sun): Angst Theme Day.

October 7 (Mon): Fluff Theme Day.

October 8 (Tue): Women of Atlantis Recs / Fanworks Theme Day.

October 9 (Wed): Post a Paragraph of Your WIP Day (as a little treat).

October 10 (Thu): Women of the SGC Recs / Fanworks Theme Day.

October 11 (Fri): Write a drabble from one of the prompts of 2022’s drabblefest.

October 12 (Sat): Post a Sparktober bingo card fill (or excerpt). Sparktober Fic Exchange fics due & Watch Party (check posts or discord for episodes & times).

October 13 (Sun): Elizabeth Weir’s Birthday Theme Day.

October 14 (Mon): Kate Heightmeyer Theme Day.

October 15 (Tue): Post recs or drabbles based on your favorite romance trope.

October 16 (Wed): Teyla Emmagan Theme Day.

October 17 (Thu): Hurt/Comfort Theme Day.

October 18 (Fri): Best Joe Flanigan / John Sheppard Picture Day.

October 19 (Sat): Post a Sparktober bingo card fill (or excerpt). Sparktober Fic Exchange fics revealed & Watch Party (check posts or discord for episodes & times)!

October 20 (Sun): Radek Zelenka Theme Day.

October 21 (Mon): Best Torri Higginson / Elizabeth Weir Picture Day.

October 22 (Tue): AU Theme Day.

October 23 (Wed): Evan Lorne Theme Day.

October 24 (Thu): Favorite Stargate Picture Day.

October 25 (Fri): Offworld Adventure Theme Day.

October 26 (Sat): Post a Sparktober bingo card fill (or excerpt). Sparktober Fic Exchange authors revealed & Watch Party!

October 27 (Sun): Favorite Sparky Fic Theme Day.

October 28 (Mon): Laura Cadman Theme Day.

October 29 (Tue): Pretty Hell Joe/Torri RPF Theme Day.

October 30 (Wed): Filled Bingo Card Theme Day (or however far you got!).

October 31 (Thu): Spooky / Dark Elizabeth/John fic.

#mod post #sparktober #sparktober 2024

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sparktober · 1 day

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Sparktober Watch Party - Oct 5, 2024

We're kicking off the month with episodes that match two of this week's Themes - Earth Setting and the SGC! That's right, it's The Return Pt 1 & 2.

**Starting at 5:00pm Saturday, Oct 5, US Central Time (UTC-05) ** 12:00am Sunday Oct 6, Brussels, Belgium (UTC+2) 9:00am Sunday, Oct 6, Sydney, Australia (UTC+10)

5:00pm - S3 E10 - The Return Pt 1 - https://uofi.box.com/v/sgaS3-ReturnPt1 6:00pm - S3 E11 - The Return Pt 2 - https://uofi.box.com/v/sgaS3-ReturnPt2

If you don't have Hulu, Amazon Prime, or the DVDs, feel free to use the links above to stream or download. Links are good through 10/31, pwd is Sparktober

Use the #ep-discussion channel in the Discord for text-based reactions and chatting. We’ll do a countdown so we can all start at the same time.

Hope to see you there!

#Sparktober #Sparktober Watch Party #Stargate Atlantis #Sheppard and Weir #SGA #Sparktober 2024

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sparktober · 1 day

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Sparktober Theme Days Schedule!

2024 Sparktober Theme Days Schedule below the cut. Join us in the Discord!

10/1/2024

Bingo Card Theme Day - Get a bingo card from @mylittleredgirl or resurrect an old bingo card

10/2/2024

Earth Setting Theme Day

10/3/2024

Fix-it Fics Day

10/4/2024

SGC Theme Day

10/5/2024

Post a Sparktober bingo card fill (or excerpt)

10/6/2024

Angst Theme Day

10/7/2024

Fluff Theme Day

10/8/2024

Women of Atlantis Recs / Fanworks Theme Day

10/9/2024

Post a Paragraph of Your WIP Day (as a little treat)

10/10/2024

Women of the SGC Recs / Fanworks Theme Day

10/11/2024

Write a drabble from one of the prompts of 2022’s drabblefest

10/12/2024

Post a Sparktober bingo card fill (or excerpt)

10/13/2024

Elizabeth Weir’s Birthday Theme Day

10/14/2024

Kate Heightmeyer Theme Day

10/15/2024

Post recs or drabbles based on your favorite romance trope

10/16/2024

Teyla Emmagan Theme Day

10/17/2024

Hurt/Comfort Theme Day

10/18/2024

Best Joe Flanigan / John Sheppard Picture Day

10/19/2024

Post a Sparktober bingo card fill (or excerpt)

10/20/2024

Radek Zelenka Theme Day

10/21/2024

Best Torri Higginson / Elizabeth Weir Picture Day

10/22/2024

AU Theme Day

10/23/2024

Evan Lorne Theme Day

10/24/2024

Favorite Stargate Picture Day

10/25/2024

Offworld Adventure Theme Day

10/26/2024

Post a Sparktober bingo card fill (or excerpt)

10/27/2024

Favorite Sparky Fic Theme Day

10/28/2024

Laura Cadman Theme Day

10/29/2024

Pretty Hell Joe/Torri RPF Theme Day

10/30/2024

Filled Bingo Card Theme Day (or however far you got!)

10/31/2024

Spooky / Dark Elizabeth/John fic

#Sparktober #Stargate Atlantis #SGA #Sparktober Theme Days #Sheppard and Weir #Stargate fandom #fandom events #Sparktober 2024

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starliteradio · 4 days

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(I'm SO sorry to anyone who's seeing this yet again but I'm a huge flake who keeps deleting my own fanart then deciding I want to archive it here after all. This is the last time I'm posting this and it'll stay here. I SWEAR!!)

Anyway...I didn't paint any new Sparky stuff for this year so here's this again and maybe I'll end up doing something before the end of the month, who knows 😵‍💫 I honestly like the sketch version of this better but included the final since it took a bunch of time etc...happy Sparktober!✨

#sparktober #sparktober 2024 #stargate atlantis #john x elizabeth

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starliteradio · 10 hours

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Sparktober bingo prompt: first kiss. Somehow what was supposed to be a fluffy <1000 word snippet morphed into something longer with angst 🙃 (with a hopeful ending). Also, my personal rules are to finish a piece in one sitting with minimal editing, and just flow with my stream of consciousness so if these seem a bit meandering, that’s why. Trying to keep it as relaxed as possible!

Credit to @thecalvarys (Quibilah on ao3) who wrote a great set of lines that subconsciously inspired the last part of this.

Summertime, and the living’s easy ~ or so it seems, sitting in the sand and watching the last vestiges of light over calm waters. John squints his eyes against the sun, takes a sip of something deep burgundy, a gin-like spice within the elderberry flavor. He’s not entirely convinced the drink lacks mind-altering properties.

Be cautious accepting drinks on foreign planets, Teyla had warned him. Even amongst friends. Which is the case on this fine evening, here on a planet with a name he can’t ever pronounce – old friends among the Athosians thankfully lacking in nuclear weapons and conniving plots, and abundant in food and wine. But refreshments safely imbibed by the Pegasus galaxy denizens may not be so benign those hailing from Earth, so he must be cautious.

He's been cautious, so far. Just a few sips of this pungent juice and sure, he’s feeling a bit more blissed-out than normal but…hell, after everything they’ve been through…

“Have you tried the fire wine?” He whips his head towards the sudden voice, yet the movement feels like it's in slow motion. Dr. Weir swims before him, a wooden cup in hand.

“Just this.” He raises his cup an inch in turn. “Some…berry drink.”

She sits beside him on the sand blasted log in a blur of seafoam green. She’s wearing a sleeveless shirt he’s seen before, that beautiful calming shade of seafoam and it’s just a casual shirt but he’s so used to seeing her in a damn uniform all the time, and this is different and fun and low-cut enough to stoke his imagination…

He blinks, averts his eyes hopefully not too quickly and takes a nervous sip of elderberry. He shouldn’t be feeling nervous. He focuses on the water, tries to let the drink pull him under into a haze once again.

This is weird though, her sitting here, after being pissed with him for a solid week - upset after another foolhardy stunt he’d pulled to protect them all after a Wraith encounter on another planet. But it’d worked, right? He’d got his team out, he’d come out (relatively) unscathed aside from staring death in the face again for a harrowing moment, and yet she’s been upset…

But she seems to have forgotten that now, sitting next to him on this beautiful night, under a canopy that makes him think of the Earth during the Cretaceous Period, all palms and primitive cedar-like conifers.

“…this fire wine,” she’s saying, her words soft and the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard. “It’s a ceremonial drink for the Athosians, religious rituals and weddings and such. It seems the Chamaenerions have adopted it as well, and have their own variation. You know fire is sacred to the Athosians…?”

He’s trying to hang on to every word, but is just…too distracted, she seems so alive and happy, her eyes shining even in the fading light instead of appearing shadowed.

His stomach suddenly pangs, and it feels so wrong in that moment.

“…John?” Her voice seems miles away.

“I um…” He can’t focus, mind swimming and flickering weirdly. “Sorry. I’m sorry about…you know.”

Her expression sobers, and he’s mentally kicking himself…why the hell are you apologizing now? Where did that even come from…?

“It’s okay,” she says shortly, but there’s a knowing, almost tender look in her expression. “Let’s just…enjoy the night, okay?”

He nods, watching her face blur before him. He won’t throw himself into the fire again, can’t imagine even considering it with her looking at him the way she is now…and he suddenly becomes aware of their hands resting upon the log, how close they’d inadvertently placed them.

He draws a sharp breath.

“Elizabeth!” Teyla’s voice cuts through the night, and the noise of the world suddenly flows in again. “Come…we’re lighting the bonfires…and you too, John…”

He’s not even sure he’ll be steady on his feet, but with Elizabeth’s help, he makes it.

When all is done and if this expedition ever becomes declassified, these are the moments that won’t ever make it into the inevitable documentaries, John figures.

Exploring planets and fighting Wraith makes for some gripping drama, but will anyone ever know of the liminal moments marking the majority of their time? Lunches and meetings and moments just waiting and prepping for the next adventure, sometimes waiting in anxiety for what might hail upon them from the skies. Small, fleeting moments to be sure…but added up, over time, enough to be significant.

Every morning, his new ritual of arriving at her office with their sad excuse for coffee, which becomes weaker with each passing day as they try to stretch their dwindling resources. Coffee morphing to Athosian tea, or lemon in hot water on a particularly unlucky day....but still he’ll arrive at 0600, and they’ll sit and debrief, or sometimes just chat, and she laughs at his jokes sometimes and it gives him that floaty feeling like on that Chamaenerion island with the elderberry wine.

It's a good feeling, but it makes him nervous, makes him near panic sometimes.

Still, he continues the ritual, and finds himself finding other ways to catch a few minutes in her company, even more so as the days pass in growing shadow.

They narrowly escape with their lives. Except the many who aren’t so lucky, Ford among them.

Elizabeth barely talks afterwards. And she has a haunted look in her eye, her “thank yous” tense the two times he offers her tea, before he figures it would be better to leave her be for a while.

Again, he doesn’t get it…they were out of options. He had to do it.

But as he imagines the look in her eyes, a faint voice seems to arise within, questioning his conviction.

Frustrated, he shoves away the bedsheets and stalks into the halls. He has no idea what time it is – could be midnight, could be 0300 for all he cares.

His breath catches as he passes through the balcony doors and finds her overlooking the ocean. Though all his senses scream for him to turn right around, he’s drawn inexorably forward.

They stand carefully apart, wordless for the longest three minutes of his life though his mind spins frantically.

“If you’re still upset about me going out there…” he starts quite suddenly, surprising himself, but the words falter just as quickly as she faces him, her expression rather blank.

The silence stretches.

“Why?” she finally asks, soft anger lacing her voice though it's barely audible over the waves. The hard line of her move wavers for just a moment. “Why is it so easy for you to just throw your life away? Is that all you think you’re worth – just some kind of - shield?”

“Elizabeth…there was no other way.” His voice is hard now, his eyes hard upon hers…he knows it, he knows she damn well knows it but won’t accept it, for some reason. One moment she was hugging him in the gate room in fierce relief, and he was some sort of hero in everyone’s eyes. But now, she's upset.

But he can't shake the remorse pooling in the pit of his stomach, the unease he feels realizing that she cares so much.

She shakes her head nearly imperceptibly, mouth thinning. “There’s always another way.”

He opens his mouth to argue, but falters again, now noticing how her eyes shine in the soft golden light. She impatiently swipes at the tears she can’t hold back, cursing under her breath and turning to determinedly face the ocean.

“Elizabeth…” He feels near sick with guilt now, but approaches her, tentatively resting a hand on the back of her shoulder.

He doesn’t know how it happens, both faster than he realizes and so slowly, but she’s In his arms and he’s enveloping her completely, as though to hide her forever from this galaxy and all its horrors. Tears streaming silently down both their faces, neither given to overt displays of emotion but all the anguish of the past weeks finally pouring from them in that moment, released to the wind and sea.

And she’s clinging him back, and she’s looking up with pooling shadowed eyes and his mind’s swimming like on that island…and without thinking, he’s drawing her closer.

And they’re kissing in the shadows of the balcony, late on that night soon after cheating death, and suddenly he’s never felt so alive.

When they break apart, he’s trembling slightly, and he doesn’t fully let go. He can’t.

He doesn’t know what just happened, and after a minute, can’t quite sit comfortably with it, not when he feels like he’s floating on air.

“Want some tea?” It slips out, so terribly mundane, and he cringes.

But her mouth quirks with the ghost of a smile, her eyes soft when she turns to him. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Heart thudding, he follows her back through the door, acutely aware that things will never be quite the same.

#starting a drinking game of how many times i can mention beaches and beverages in my fics #john x elizabeth #sparktober #sparktober 2024 #my fanfic

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sparktober · 4 days

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Sparktober Bingo 2024!

Almost in time for the first Sparktober Theme Day: Get A Bingo Card!

Our standby bingo-creation website is inactive this year, so I have cooked up a homebrew solution that will hopefully work smoothly and also satisfy the primal human urge to tick boxes.

How To Play Sparktober Bingo:

Get yourself a bingo card (instructions below & on the google sheet).

Create Sheppard/Weir fanworks of any kind (fic, art, edits, meta) related to your prompts. A single fanwork can fill as many prompts as you can fit in it.

Prompts this year are sourced from other 2024 'tober lists and some new dialogue prompt posts -- see the "credits" tab for links to all the sources. This year's center square is "completed WIP."

Use the prompts liberally! “The Long Goodbye” could be an episode-related fic or a fic about saying goodbye or inspiration for a Raymond Chandler-esque Noir Detective AU. Go wild!

Tag #sparktober to share your bingo card and creations!

Complete a row/column, corners, or a blackout of your card by November 1, or not! Update as you go. Spontaneously declare victory whenever you feel accomplished.

How To Get A Bingo Card:

Visit https://tinyurl.com/sparktoberbingo2024 with a web browser or the Google Sheets mobile app. All tabs have instructions on them.

The Automatic Bingo Card tab is easy mode. Check off which prompt categories you'd like to include, add your name in the yellow box, and generate a random card!

If you'd like to curate your selection manually, the Manual List Bingo tab has the full prompt list and lets you check/un-check individual prompts and even add new ones of your own. If you want to get even fancier than that, copy the whole document and have fun.

Want to make a card of your own to fit your WIPs or un-filled prompts from previous years? Type your own card on the Blank Template tab.

Screenshot the card to share it. You may need to zoom out in your browser or on mobile if the template is too big to capture on your screen.

Please close out of the browser tab when you're done, so other users don't worry that they will interfere with your changes.

Please let me know how it works, and upload your cards to tumblr and/or the Sparktober discord for all to enjoy!

If you have any issues or this sounds annoying, I'll pre-generate some cards and make a post for folks to pick from. Just let me know!

-mod @mylittleredgirl

#sparktober #sparktober bingo

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