the challenge challenge

[projectcyborg.livejournal.com]

help me out with ideas for season 4 challenges, folks! don't make me steal them all from sga_flashfic :). some examples of what I've been brainstorming:

- Found (make or write about a piece of accidental ephemera)
- Scripture (make a holy text, an exegesis of one, or a fanwork based on one)
- The Wireless (make something that might pass through the Fleet's news service)

the userinfo includes a list of various potential inspirations, but in general and already familiar terms.

or if you have ideas for provocations beyond the weekly challenge format, comment with those too!

Comments

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Those sound great, especially the Scripture one - I'm definitely interested in that one.

I'm not sure if it would work, but my first thought as a prompt, in trying to tie it in to the setting, and themes of the show, is:

Pick a scene from this week's episode. One of the characters in this scene is the final fifth cylon. Rewrite the scene from that character's perspective.

I think that has the potential to create some interesting work as I love the kind of perspective flip that can occur when you realise someone meant something else entirely with that sentence, or at least, had a totally new motivation and agenda while saying it. But I also think that a lot would depend on picking a good scene/section of dialogue...soooo... Yeah. There's that.

Looking through the userinfo, I have to say that I love haiku, and have succeeded in writing some - I thought - quite lovely fandom-based ones. But again, that's hit or miss, and haiku has a tendency to turn into something other than poetry because it's easy to write a seventeen syllable sentence, but not so easy to write a seventeen syllable poem that makes use of line breaks. But I think that could be interesting as a mini-challenge? As twitter is to LJ, maybe?

Stealing inspiration from the userinfo notes about multiple endings/reminaginations of fic, we could perhaps do a similar thing with the episodes themselves? I'm thinking, "rewrite this episode/a scene from this episode, EXCEPT [insert crazy notion]," where [insert crazy notion] could be a free-for-all idea auction/ideas-out-of-a-hat kind of thing.

And I suppose if we wanted to get really meta, there's always fic-inspired-by-meta, where you pick a piece of meta and try to make its argument in a fic? Of course, I also think that's the sort of idea that might end up awesome but has a higher than average chance of just not working if you pick the wrong bit of meta, but I figured considering the focus of this community it was worth mentioning?

Well, anyways, those are my thoughts, for what they're worth. :)

[projectcyborg.livejournal.com]

to review:

1. Scripture it is!

2. I love the idea of working with Cylonicity; a Model One challenge is certainly called for at some point -- but maybe not till later in the season? or heck, maybe your Model One challenge should be FIRST, so people could carry it through every episode if they wanted. also I'd love to incorporate Projection or other unique facets of Cylon consciousness.

3. maybe I could do a combined microscopic challenge, for things smaller than a drabble/icon/vidlet. covering haiku, one-sentence fic, twitter fic, along with like 10-second vids and tiny thumbnails or whatever else people want to make.

4. boy multi-threaded narratives would be fun, and branching from some point in the episode would be a great idea. I mean, if the right situation happened onscreen, we could totally say: write your own continuation, starting from this point, in comments. I would love to get people round-robin-ing, if there are enough of us.

5. I would totally write twitterfic based on your episode reviews, if you're going to keep doing them. :)

6. plus you seem generally interested in POV shifts and other thought experiments ("crazy notions"), so we can keep brainstorming about that.

my plan is to post challenges *after* each episode airs, in case there's something particular that calls for a response.

but, dude, inspiration totally struck about MY little project: I want to make some sort of document or artifact for each episode that inserts the GIRLSLASH GOGGLES into it.

I need to make a girlslash goggles icon out of my Kendra manip...

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

1. Scripture it is!

Yay!

or heck, maybe your Model One challenge should be FIRST, so people could carry it through every episode if they wanted. also I'd love to incorporate Projection or other unique facets of Cylon consciousness.

As a continuing project it could certainly be interesting. Perhaps try it out early and see if it's successful enough to warrant a continuation? Honestly, I'm not sure, as you say, it's a topic we almost have to tackle, but in some ways that makes it a good "staple" - something we can slot in if we're running low on challenges? Ugh. I LACK ANY FORM OF DECISIVENESS! ;)

3. maybe I could do a combined microscopic challenge, for things smaller than a drabble/icon/vidlet. covering haiku, one-sentence fic, twitter fic, along with like 10-second vids and tiny thumbnails or whatever else people want to make.

I confess I have no idea what twitter fic is, but the notion of ten second vidlets fascinates me... I think the main challenge there would be cutting the music down. I have no idea how people manage to do that - get rid of middle verses, etc. But I managed to truncated the Hummingbird Song music without too much difficulty, so, yeah, 10 second vidlets, I like muchly.

I would love to get people round-robin-ing, if there are enough of us.

Round-robin comment fic sounds great. Good length for co-operative, spontaneous narrative, I feel.

I would totally write twitterfic based on your episode reviews, if you're going to keep doing them. :)

Again, I have no idea what twitterfic is, but yes, I do absolutely plan on rambling at length about the episodes as I usually do. Whether that constitutes a "review" I'm not sure. ;)

plus you seem generally interested in POV shifts and other thought experiments ("crazy notions"), so we can keep brainstorming about that.

I think one thing I learned from my not-so-recent writing project is that my mind responds well to challenges, the unusual, and the downright weird. ;)

my plan is to post challenges *after* each episode airs, in case there's something particular that calls for a response.

Honestly, yes, I think this is the best way to do it, mainly because we have no idea what awesomeness awaits. And the point is to organically work from what the text gives us: if we straightjacket ourselves ahead of time, we'll only be distracted by what actually happened this week anyway. Which is a roundabout way of agreeing with you. But it's good to brainstorm some frameworks even if the topics change.

but, dude, inspiration totally struck about MY little project: I want to make some sort of document or artifact for each episode that inserts the GIRLSLASH GOGGLES into it.

----(o)-(o)----

:p

I need to make a girlslash goggles icon out of my Kendra manip...

*anticipates*

[pirateygoodness.livejournal.com]

Overheard - write or otherwise reconstruct the thoughts of characters (familiar or unfamiliar), seen doing something else in the background of a scene from the show. Alternately, create something along the lines of "Overheard in New York (http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/)," within the context of events on the Galactica or elsewhere in the fleet.

[projectcyborg.livejournal.com]

omg, I love it!

and also, this makes me think of Gawker, which makes me think of how much fun a TABLOID challenge would be.

[pirateygoodness.livejournal.com]

Yes, dude! I could get in on a tabloid challenge!

(Although, that assumes that the people we follow in the fleet are in fact the most popular humans in existence, which is something I've always wondered about - I bet there's like an inter-ship pyramid league or something like that which has players much better known by the average surviving colonial than the CAG, no?)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

I second Julie's comments!

Great idea! And the tabloid challenge could be hilarious and awesome. I always wanted to know just how famous Anders would have been in the fleet. He's probably one of their few genuine celebrities left alive, but also, in such a post-apocalyptic society, his low-key profile seems...oddly appropriate? Either way, interesting.