gonna call it right now -- gonna be just another year of majority larry fics.
Hi! Thank you for your feedback. We’re very sorry that you sound discouraged & disconcerted about the final output of Round Four of the challenge when sign-ups haven’t even opened yet! Here is what we are doing about your concerns:
Following feedback from last round (x, x, x), we are implementing an initiative to spread the word of this challenge more broadly throughout the fandom this round, and we have high hopes that we will have a strong presence for each and every 1D-adjacent ship out there! In the past, certain sects of fandom have been more thorough about spreading the word of the challenge, and sign-ups and final fic output have reflected their outreach. We’re hoping to replicate this effect on a larger scale this round, and encourage everyone to sign up and tell their friends! As we’ve indicated in the past, we love that we have such a strong presence for some ships, and hope to maintain that presence while gaining dozens more fics for other ships out there as well! The more the merrier, and then there’s also more for everyone to enjoy :) We’ve already seen the Big Bang trending toward this. While the change may not be noticeable to people who haven’t poured hours into organizing the posting schedules so that there’s ship diversity on a daily and weekly basis like we have, there were some ships represented in the last round with multiple fics where there had only been one (or zero!) representations at all in previous rounds. To us, this suggests that the Big Bang is slowly percolating into parts of fandom that were previously uninvolved in it, which is really exciting! We want everyone to take part!
However. We here on the One Direction Big Bang mod team want to be clear that we absolutely do not believe in limiting a fandom-wide event that is going into its fourth year of operation to any specific ships, one way or another. That’s just not our style, and there are alternate challenges, fests, and exchanges open for individuals who prefer to see just one specific ship or central character in the works they produce and consume. Our challenge is open for everyone who has an interest in challenging themselves to produce a 20k+ work of fiction over the course of several months, and we celebrate each and every one of our participants. Their effort is monumental, as is the love and care they put into creating works for fandom’s consumption. Everything all of our participants do is so, so appreciated, and we hope that each and every participant in any/all rounds of the Big Bang challenge realizes that the feedback we get regarding their overall accomplishments far outweighs the complaints we receive about the contributions (or lack thereof) centering around certain ships.
As we’ve indicated in the past, the strongest method of ensuring that we reach optimum ship diversity with dozens of representative fics for each and every ship is spreading the word to all the writers you know! Also to friends who haven’t historically written fics, as well! We fully welcome first-time writers interested in challenging themselves to produce a 20k+ work of fiction for any ship between the months of August and January. Be the change you wish to see!
Further, the proportion of ships represented in sign-ups is often not reflected by the proportion of ships represented in final posted fics. So if you see sign-ups for ships that you particularly want represented, encourage those authors however they indicate they prefer to be encouraged! (But please - we don’t endorse encouraging authors by sending anonymous asks along the lines of WHEN WILL YOU BE DONE? HOW FAR ALONG ARE YOU? as that is generally encouraging to exactly no one.)
In conclusion - we hope we’ve mitigated some of your concerns! We are publishing this ask because it was sent anonymously, and we wanted to address your concerns. However, we find it important to note that we have also found that the bulk of sign-ups for other ships following the publication of similar asks about the ship diversity in this challenge indicate a decrease, rather than an increase, of alternate pairings, so we also fervently hope that this message doesn’t discourage anyone from signing up for the ships that they love! Every single ship (or gen!) contribution to the Big Bang, as long as it includes at least one past or present member of One Direction, is not only welcomed in this challenge, but encouraged and celebrated by all of us here on the mod team, as well as by the broader fandom :).
