Ultimate guide to bang etiquette

allspnships

This post is based on my experiences participating in over a dozen bangs in the Supernatural fandom as either a writer or an artist, on my experience as a bang moderator, and on bang experiences shared with me by acquaintances.

Despite the title, this guide isn’t definitive, but it should give you an idea as either a writer or an artist on how not to be a bad bang (or fest) participant, and whether bangs are for you.

The basics

For those of you who don’t know:

Bangs are fan creation events where writers and artists work together.

For most bangs, a writer (or a pair of writers) will write a fanfic, create a summary of that fanfic, and then the fanfic is claimed by an artist who has read this summary, who will then create art related to that fanfic after having read a copy of the fanfic.

In reverse bangs, the process is different, with the artist creating a piece of art first, which is then claimed by a writer who writes a story based on the artist’s art.

And some bangs are in fact collaborative from almost the start, with author and artist paired early, and working together in tandem to create a story and art.

How long stories should be and how many pieces of art should be created are set down in a bang’s rules.

What kind of content is permitted will also be described in the bang’s rules, as well as required ages for participants.

The finished fanfic and art are posted on websites like AO3, Tumblr, LiveJournal or Dreamwidth (where’s okay to post and how, is normally described in bang rules, as well as follow up emails/blog posts).

All of this is normally co-ordinated by a bang’s moderators. These volunteers will keep things running in terms of maintaining the schedule, enabling claims and arranging posting dates, potentially enabling promotions of fanfic before posting, as well as distributing (not submitting) what is a masterpost that links to both the finished story and art. They will also weigh in on any disputes that may arise, or help find another artist (or writer in reverse bangs) when one side drops out.

So far, so good - right?

Okay, now buckle up. We got a lot more to get through and I ain’t sugar coating this.

What follows looks at regular bangs and reverse bangs, and discusses etiquette for writers and artists.

Keep reading