Hii I had a question about the schedule. Is today the last day for sign ups or did they just open? I'm just a wee bit confused by the dates listed. Thank you so much for running this event!
Hello! 🥰 Sign ups for 2026 have just opened (yesterday!) but the schedule may have had the 2025 dates when you checked it :3
I mentioned in the sign up post tags that the schedule wasn't fully updated when the sign ups were posted, but I plan to update them now!
Would writing a Smallville fic count, or is this comics only?
That's perfectly fine! Comics, cartoons, movies, AUs--so long as the central character is a Super, it's fair game. We get a little more specific in the FAQ, but you're good to go for a Smallville fic~
I'll be real I'm a firm believer in "no dumb questions, only information you don't know yet" 💪🥰 so here is info!
A big bang is an event where artists and authors team up to make a fic with art that illustrates a scene or scenes from the fic. The fic is normally long (hence the "big"! part of a big bang) and the bang refers to the fact that all the projects for the event are kept 100% secret until posting dates arrive. Thus, an influx of long fics about a particular theme or for a particular fandom!
There's also this really great description from the fanlore wiki page (https://fanlore.org/wiki/Big_Bang) if you like reading about fandom history:
"Writers sign up to take part in the challenge and begin writing stories. When the early drafts of the stories are available, each one is assigned one or more artists, or artists might claim stories from posted summaries. Artists create fanart to go along with the story. This art can take the form of illustrations, manips, photo collages, vids, icon sets, etc."
For our event, the word count is going to be 20k, with almost a full year (about 10 months) to write the fic, and at least one fully illustrated art piece to go along with it. The fics will be allocated via the artists picking from anonymous fic summaries, with a little bit of mod tweaking to make sure everyone gets a partner. You can check the schedule here.
If you're on desktop - or want to open it via a browser - you can also check out our FAQ! It has information on requirements, limitations, and how the Superfam Big Bang mods will be running the event.
Hi! I was wondering what kinda art is allowed for the bang! Is it just traditional art or can we create moodboards and manips and such?
Hi nonnie!!
We have an overview of the art expectations in the SFBB FAQ (mobile link). The basic gist is that moodboards or manips are absolutely considered art for our standards! But that we expect more than just one per project ('cause you're not making them from scratch).
Hey! Never done a big bang so a question about how it works for artists - do we get a choice of what fic we get paired with? E.g., if I’m only interested in drawing a few superfam characters, can I request this or are we matched randomly?
It can differ per event, but our particular bang runs off a ranking system!
What this means is:
Authors will pass their pitch ideas through to the mod team pre-matchups (I'll post an example under the cut), and all the pitch ideas will then be collected in one document with a number to anonymize them. Artists then rank their favourite idea at number 1! And proceed down their preference list until they've picked at least five projects they'd be interested in (*dependent on number of projects & number of artists).
Mods then go through the list and try and match everyone to their highest preference. It means you may get your first pick (if you pick something not everyone has indicated interest on!), but at minimum you will get something as high as we can match.
I think last year we only had one project with a five-match; everyone else got first or second preference, and a few got their third preference :) I can post the (anonymous) statistics if you're interested in what it looks like from a mod perspective/the ranking data, but it also does depend on what projects people are most drawn to 🤭
I think the thing to keep in mind, too; if you have specific characters you like to draw for, nothing is stopping you from picking a scene from your author's fic that has that character! Or, because this is a collab, sneaking in your own agenda ;3c (I know in a few of my fics for previous bangs, I gave extra characters more prominent roles because I knew my art partner liked them!)
Example of pitch summary:
Fic Title: eight legs hit the wall
Primary character focus: Kon-el, Kon-el & Young Justice, Timkon
Rating: T
Projected word count: 35k
Summary:
The creation of Spiderboy; or, what's in a name? Kon's not entirely sure how he got his; or, Bart and Cassie blackmail Lex Luthor into allowing his genetic experiment/son to have a life of his own and/or an internship as a normal boy; or, aka "The Incident".
It's a lot of things to a lot of people, but Kon mostly just thinks of it as the first day he met his friends.
Extract: (500 words or less):
"Don’t go in there,” he orders.
Cassie scowls, brilliant and sharp, with teeth bared. “Why?” she demands, “Does Lex have more metahumans on lockdown in his literal personality-muck around lab-"
"What? No. That's my bedroom. There's like-” implanted knowledge says 'underwear' is the embarrassing answer, even if it's true, so- “dead bodies and stuff. On the floor.”
They do not look comforted. He’s starting to think TV and the tube have not given him a great deal of social skills.
I really want to sign up for the bang as an artist but I haven't made art in a while and worry that it might not be good enough. Any advice?
Hmm. Honestly, I think my advice, as someone who's been suffering from art block/creative block for a while, is that events like this are a really good way to get inspired to get you out of your rut! It can be fun to find a new community to inspire you and encourage you to try some new (and difficult!) things.
This bang doesn't have a "limit" on skill - the whole point is to pair up and have fun making a story together. Kinda honestly, I've done a few bangs at this point!! Mini bangs, big bangs, reverse bangs, round robins and mix-and-match fics. Throughout them, I've had a full mix of artists - some who do it professionally, and some who'd only been doing art for a year or so. Out of all of them, my favourites weren't necessarily the ones who drew the "best" art works. It was the people who engaged with my fic and who got really excited as we shared ideas. The ones who helped me brainstorm, and sent silly stick figure doodles of my fic-related memes (and who sent me fic related memes back!!! 🤭)
So my advice is just go for it!!!!! Maybe the scene you're inspired by will teach you something new about art, and maybe, even better, you'll come out of the event with a new friend :3
It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be fun ❤️
What exactly is a big bang event? I want to join as a writer, but I'm not entirely sure what I'm getting myself into.
We've answered this question in depth here but a basic overview is that a big bang is a form of writing/art event where writers & artists pair up to make an illustrated (complete) fic!
This particular big bang is for works that primarily feature members of the Superfam, and has a word count minimum of 20k for writers. It runs from the start of June 2025 to January 2026 (7 months / 214 days / 21 words a day!) and artist match ups are in September ❤️
You can check out our pinned FAQ/Schedule or our asks tag (#FAQ) for other details :3
