#star trek friendshipfest

[cosmic-llin]

So, I’ve realised that I have way too much stuff on my plate right now and I really need to narrow my focus, so I’m cutting back on the amount of fannish organising/curation I do. This means:

- I won’t be running the Star Trek Friendshipfest this year. If anyone else would like to run something similar, that’s fine by me.

- Maintaining the Women of Star Trek AO3 Collection is getting to be too much. I’ve been trying to keep up to date and add all the relevant fic but I just ended up with a huge backlog of Trek fic to read and it started to feel so overwhelming that I couldn’t look at it, and honestly it was kind of making participating in Star Trek fandom in general hard for me. Then the other week my browser crashed and I lost all the tabs for the fics I still wanted to read and it was really stressful. So I’m not closing the collection or anything but I’m going to step back and only add fics that I happen to come across, or that people submit themselves. (I’ll continue to check in now and then to approve submitted fics.) Please do submit your own relevant fics and encourage your friends to do the same, and feel free to message me if you spot that your fic has been waiting for approval for a while!

- Everything not covered above (beta-ing, other challenges I’m currently running, Star Trek Hugs) is business as usual!

[mia-cooper]

Star Trek Friendshipfest 2017

In case you missed it, here’s my Janeway & Tuvok buddyfic. Beta’d by @jhelenoftrek, advised by @carlynroth and inspired by @warp6, which I guess makes it a team effort. <3 Thanks again to @cosmic-llin for running the exchange! Her Constant Companion (AO3, rated G)

[lionowlonao3]

star trek friendshipfest 2017

dear author, i’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with, i’m sure it will be wonderful. i’m pretty open to what kind of story you write. if you are up to it, i would enjoy a story with a lot of plot and technobabble and adventure stuff going on around the actual relationship aspect, and i would also enjoy seeing other characters involved as well as the two main characters. if you can find a way for a cat to show up, that would be awesome (you can harm the humanoids if it’s relevant to the story, i don’t mind that, but please don’t hurt the cat). that said, please do not include any super graphic depictions of violence or medical procedures or other bodily harm as i’m really squeamish. i also dislike power imbalances between characters beyond the normal rank system in starfleet/military-modelled organisations thank you, and i hope you enjoy participating in friendshipfest 2017.

hikaru sulu & nyota uhura (tos) most of the characters on tos don’t get much development to be honest, so there’s not much to go on here, and honestly i just wanted to request a story involving uhura, and i picked sulu because why not? i like to think these two, chekov, chapel, rand and maybe scotty have a lot of shenanigans going on when triumvirate isn’t there. i also love that scene in the film “the final frontier” when sulu and chekov are lost and try to claim theres a storm causing that but she’s like yeah it’s nice and sunny and calm but i’ll keep your secret.

guinan & ro laren & jean luc picard who doesn’t love guinan and her sage advice? i love guinan & ro, guinan & picard AND ro & picard and i couldn’t pick which one to go with, but also i think their triad friendship is very important. after all, picard’s friendship with ro wouldn’t be the case without their friendships with guinan. there’s so much complication here between these three: guinan and picard meeting in time’s arrow and again whenever it was in the 24th century, there’s picard being shocked at guinan calling ro her friend when she doesn’t say that about many and therefore listening to what ro had to say, and i loved how guinan didn’t let what had happened colour her view of ro like everyone else did (i’m sure guinan had heard.

data & julian bashir i really loved the way julian reacted to data in “birthright part 1”, being excited about, and asking about, things like his hair growth and his breathing, things that most people don’t even consider, and how much data really appreciated that.

jake sisko & julian bashir i like to think that julian sees ben and jake as fatherly and brotherly figures, respectively, and i think there was a wasted opportunity not giving these two more screen time and story arcs together. i also think the events of “nor the battle to the strong” play a really important part in that.

kira nerys & ben sisko an honestly underrated friendship. things start off awkward as they do with a lot of the friendships on ds9, particularly the tension between sisko, the reluctant emissary and kira, who doesn’t know how to deal with working with someone who is an iconic figure in her beliefs. over time, they both come to accept these roles and become good friends. particularly relevant episodes include “destiny”, “starship down” and “accession”

ben sisko & dax i really love the fact that ben has now been friends with 3 dax hosts in a row, and how their friendship must be a very unique one to each of them. when he first met jadzia, ben struggled to reconcile curzon and this young person he’s never seen before, but it led to a really strong friendship between the two, and when ezri joined the station, he was pretty much the only one (besides quark, but god knows what was going on there) who didn’t find her presence uncomfortable to begin with (nor did jake, but he must have known curzon too and therefore perhaps went through that with jadzia, too. i just find the whole concept very interesting and would love to see further exploration on it.

seven of nine & naomi wildman being the only child on voyager (for a long time) must have been difficult on naomi, and i think part of why she connected with seven is that while seven is an adult, she spent most of her adult life as a borg drone after being assimilated as a child, and as we see in the episode “survival instinct” when she and some other drones were severed from the collective, those who had been assimilated as adults returned to their previous personalities, but seven struggled with this and couldn’t transition back as easily. seven has a lot to learn about society and how to behave with people, as naomi does, but naomi is a child with that luxury, seven has an adult body, adult capabilities and adult responsibilities, and i imagine with naomi it is a space where she can relax from the tremendous pressure of trying to constantly follow social protocols she doesn’t understand.

kathryn janeway & gotana-retz this could really be gotana-retz & any voyager crewmember, but he spent the most time with janeway during the episode, “blink of an eye” which is honestly one of my favourite episodes not only of voyager or star trek, but of any tv show ever. if there’s another voyager character you would like to write him with as well as or instead of janeway, i am open to that. i just love the entire concept of the episode (i always cry in the final scene with elderly gotana-retz sitting on that mountain watching voyager leave) and anything based on it would be awesome!

[warp6]

I absolutely have to share this fic on Tumblr, because the author can’t yet since the Friendshipfest fics are still anonymous and! it’s! so! good! <3

Check it out for a lovely rendition of trans!Janeway, and lots of funny and adorable Tuvok-Janeway friendship. I can already tell I’m going to reread this one often.

@magnetgirl @47lightyears @danakatherinejaneway @fate-motif @weary-hearted-queen @the-bookwyrm 

(Tagging all the Tuvok-and-Janeway fans I know will love this...I didn’t think of this still I started typing but if one of you wrote this uhhh I guess I just rec’d you your own fic ;)

[obstinatecondolement]

The Tuvok & Janeway fic I wrote for Star Trek Friendshipfest 2017

[rattyjol]

Janeway and B'Elanna return from a diplomatic mission to find the ship and crew frozen in time.

the fic I wrote for last year’s star trek friendshipfest, which I’m pretty sure I never got around to putting on tumblr

[cosmic-llin]

Star Trek Friendshipfest - works live!

Fics are now live for the Star Trek Friendshipfest 2017, get over there for piles of friendshippy goodness!

[cosmic-llin]

Star Trek Friendshipfest - authors revealed!

With apologies to anyone who wasn’t done guessing, I’ve revealed the authors a bit early as I wasn’t sure I’d be around this weekend to flick the switch!

Thank you so much to everyone who took part, this was a terrific year with some wonderful stories! If you haven’t had a chance to check the collection out yet, it’s HERE.

[cosmic-llin]

Star Trek Friendshipfest - Signups open!

You can now sign up to participate in the Star Trek Friendshipfest anonymous fic exchange! \o/

Signups are open HERE until the end of 25 June. You can request between 3 and 8 friendships from the tagset, and you can offer between 3 and 15. When you sign up, you agree to write a story of at least 1000 words about one of the friendships your assigned recipient requests by the deadline of 23 July.

Keep your eyes open tomorrow for a detailed post on how exactly signups work, but if you’ve participated in AO3 exchanges before and you know the ropes, feel free to sign up right away!

[cosmic-llin]

Star Trek Friendshipfest 2017 - Nominations Open!

It’s that time of year again! The Star Trek Friendshipfest is open for friendship nominations! The Friendshipfest is a fic exchange in which authors write and receive stories of at least 1000 words about friendships in the Star Trek universe.

Also, new for this year, you can now nominate AOS friendships! If you’d like to nominate a pairing that features in both the Prime universe and the Kelvin timeline, please just add (TOS) or (AOS) at the end of the pairing name to make it clear which one you’re nominating. Any friendships without either will be assumed by default to be TOS.

Go HERE to nominate up to eight friendships for inclusion in this year’s exchange. Go HERE if you want more information about the exchange.

Nominations are open until 11 June, signups will be open from 11 June to 25 June, and the deadline will be 23 July, with stories going live on 29 July.

If you have any questions, give me a shout! 

[cosmic-llin]

Star Trek Friendshipfest - Signups open now

Signups are still open for the Star Trek Friendshipfest, an anonymous fic exchange taking place on the AO3! \o/

Signups are open HERE until the end of 25 June. You can request between 3 and 8 friendships from the tagset, and you can offer between 3 and 15. When you sign up, you agree to write a story of at least 1000 words about one of the friendships your assigned recipient requests by the deadline of 23 July.

If you’d like to know more about signups, check out the Guide to Signing Up. If you want to know more about what happens after you sign up, take a look at the Guide to Assignments. And let me know if you have any questions that aren’t answered in these or the Collection Page!

[cosmic-llin]

Star Trek Friendshipfest - nominations open until end of Saturday/early Sunday!

The Star Trek Friendshipfest is still open for friendship nominations! The Friendshipfest is a fic exchange in which authors write and receive stories of at least 1000 words about friendships in the Star Trek universe.

Also, new for this year, you can now nominate AOS friendships! If you’d like to nominate a pairing that features in both the Prime universe and the Kelvin timeline, please just add (TOS) or (AOS) at the end of the pairing name to make it clear which one you’re nominating. Any friendships without either will be assumed by default to be TOS.

Go HERE to nominate up to eight friendships for inclusion in this year’s exchange. Go HERE if you want more information about the exchange.

Nominations are open until early on 11 June, signups will be open from the afternoon of 11 June to 25 June, and the deadline will be 23 July, with stories going live on 29 July.

If you have any questions, give me a shout!

[cosmic-llin]

Star Trek Friendshipfest - last couple of days to sign up!

Signups for the Star Trek Friendshipfest, an anonymous fic exchange taking place on the AO3, are open HERE until the end of 25 June. You can request between 3 and 8 friendships from the tagset, and you can offer between 3 and 15. When you sign up, you agree to write a story of at least 1000 words about one of the friendships your assigned recipient requests by the deadline of 23 July.

If you’d like to know more about signups, check out the Guide to Signing Up. If you want to know more about what happens after you sign up, take a look at the Guide to Assignments. And let me know if you have any questions that aren’t answered in these or the Collection Page!

[cosmic-llin]

Guide to Signing Up for Star Trek Friendshipfest

The Star Trek Friendshipfest is an anonymous fic exchange in which you write minimum 1000 words about a friendship someone else requests, and you receive minimum 1000 words about a friendship you have requested! Here’s how to sign up.

First of all, you will need an AO3 account to participate. You can get one by going to the AO3 homepage HERE and clicking on Get Invited! You can then add your email address to the waiting list. It can take several days for your invitation to come through, so if you don’t have an account and you want to participate in this exchange, make sure you request your invitation as early as possible. (Message me if you are worried you won’t get it in time.)

Once you have an account, you need to go to the profile page of the exchange, HERE. There’s an FAQ and Rules there, as well as useful dates. The page should look a bit like this:

Click where it says, Sign-up Form, circled on the left. You will see a page that looks something like this:

The row with the heading circled in red is where you will make your requests - the friendships you want to receive a story about. Since this is a Star Trek-only exchange, and you’re only requesting relationships, not characters, you don’t need to put anything in the top two rows, just in Relationships. 

You need to request a minimum of 3 friendships, but you can request up to 8. Your writer will write you a story about ONE of these friendships. You can only request friendships that are in the tagset, which is the list of nominated friendships that was made before the exchange began. You can see the whole list by clicking on the button on the right of the requests box that says List 140 Relationships, or you can see it HERE. Browse through the list and choose 3-8 of them that you’d want to receive a story about.

When you know what friendships you want to request and you’re ready to complete your signup, start typing each friendship into the box as it appears in the tagset - it should pop up as you type, so that you can select it. Once you’ve typed in your friendships, they should look like this:

This is the compulsory part of the requests half of your signup. You’ll notice there are also two other boxes - Prompt URL and Description. You can use these to give extra information about what you want, and it’s highly recommended that you do because it helps your writer to know what to write. The Prompt URL box is for a link - if you write a Dear Author letter, you can include the link in this box. 

(A Dear Author letter is just what it sounds like - a letter to the person writing for you, explaining a bit more about what you’d like. It can contain anything from your favourite tropes, your squicks, and stuff you’d like them to avoid, to explanations of why you like each friendship, suggestions for what they might want to write, and more. Your letter should help your writer decide what story to write for you, but it should give them plenty of options and freedom, so make sure you don’t say something like “I only want X” or “the only thing that will make me happy is a story about Y”. If you’d like to see and example, go HERE to look at my letter from last year.)

The Description box will probably contain similar things - if you’ve said everything you want to say in your letter, you can leave it blank, or you can put your letter in there instead, or you can put the same information in both. Basically as long as your writer gets the info about what you’d like, you’re all good.

The next part of the signup process is Offers. The bottom half of the signup page looks like this:

A very similar set-up to Requests, except that now you’re choosing the friendships you want to WRITE about for somebody else. You can offer a minimum of 3 friendships, and a maximum of 15. Follow the same process to add them that you did for your requests, and make sure you’re comfortable writing everything you offer - you might only match with your recipient on one friendship!

(You can also tick the box to offer Any Relationship if you’re REALLY confident that you can write all of the 140 pairings on the list.)

Once that’s done, click submit. You can check on your signup by going to My Signup from the exchange page, and you can also edit it at any time before signups close on 25 June.

Let me know if you have any questions, and stay tuned for another post soon about what to do once you receive your assignment!

[cosmic-llin]

hi i have a question about friendshipfest — see like it says the works will be revealed a week before the authors are revealed, does that mean it's anonymous? how do we submit it if it has to be anon? i just planned to post on ao³ the way i normally do...

Hello! Yes, the exchange is anonymous - AO3 has special settings for anonymous exchanges and it pretty much takes care of the whole thing for you. There are two ways you can do it:

1) Go to My Signups, go to the Friendshipfest collection, there’ll be a button that says something like “Fulfill”. Clicking on that takes you to a posting page with all the collection details already filled in, so you just need to post your story as normal and it will make it anonymous automatically and gift it to the right recipient.

2) Start posting a story as normal. Under Associations, under “Does this fulfill a challenge assignment”, tick the right box. I’m not sure if it fills in the recipient for you but you can add them yourself under “Gift this work to” if not!

You pretty much can’t go wrong as long as you post to the collection, as the whole collection is anonymous and won’t be revealed until I reveal it manually! But let me know if you have trouble closer to the time. (This applies to anyone participating, I’m always here to answer questions!)

[cosmic-llin]

Hey, I'm so excited to be writing for the FriendshipFest - just a couple of newbie q's. Do we have to wait until 23 July to post? And do we post anonymously (somehow) or just post under our AO3 name and gift the story to the recipient? Thanks :)

Hello! There’s a bit more info in the Guide to Assignments, but basically you can post whenever you’re ready - as long as you tell AO3 that you’re posting your assignment for this exchange, it automatically makes you anonymous and hides the story.

All of the stories will stay hidden until I reveal them, and all of them will be anonymous for a week after that so nobody knows at first who wrote what!