Camelot Remix

So, how did the Remix go for you?

This post is open for discussion on anything to do with the challenge - remixing meta and strategies, suggestions for the mods, AO3 issues, observations, questions, etc. I'll start a few discussion threads, but other people should feel free to start others if there are other topics they want to bring up. We welcome comments from readers, watchers, and defaulters as well as the people who ended up turning in fic. Dreamwidth users, if you wouldn't mind clicking on the crosspost link to the LJ side of this post, it would be nice to keep all the discussion in one place.

Hi everyone! Hope you're still enjoying reading the remixes. We're still collecting recs on LJ and on Dreamwidth. We're planning to reveal authors' names Thursday morning (Central US time) and to have a post for discussing how the challenge went for everybody on Thursday evening. Please let us know if you have any concerns.

In the meantime, how about some guesses as to who wrote what? Here's a list of the fics and a list of author names, both in alphabetical order:

( fics )

( authors )

The comments for camelotremix fics are trickling in. Keep them coming, people! (You don't need an AO3 account to comment)
Again, please remember to thank your remixer.

If you see a problem with the listing/links below, comment here or e-mail camelotremix at gmail. Have fun fic-hopping! =)

Merlin (BBC) RPF

Bradley/Colin: ( Three Bradley/Colin fics )

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Merlin (BBC) FPF

Threesomes and multiple pairings: ( Four fics )

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Gen: ( Six gen fics )

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Femmeslash

Gwen/Morgana: ( Four Gwen/Morgana fics )

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Boyslash

Merlin/Will: ( One Merlin/Will fic )

Arthur/Merlin: ( Eighteen Arthur/Merlin fics )

Remixers and remix enthusiasts! We expect the CamelotRemix collection to go live with at least one remix for everybody in about twelve hours! It's possible that another story or two might get added over the next few days, since we've doubled up some assignments and pinch hits this week.

If you still have edits to make, please make them now!

Eeeeeeee!!

Hello, remixers! We’ve reached October 9th, the deadline for uploading your stories to the CamelotRemix Collection at the AO3! So far we have stories (or drafts) for 14 out of 30 participants. The posts are looking great (love the funky titles especialy) and the fics netgirl_y2k and I have had a chance to read so far are made of awesome and win. We can’t wait for them to go live.

The rest of you are getting ready to post tonight (or have contacted us to say when you will), right? It looks like we never got around to specifying a time zone, so we’ll wait to until tomorrow to see who still needs a remix and start assigning pinch hitters.

Here’s a link to the posting instructions and here are a few reminders:

• The AO3 will allow you to keep editing after you submit. If you’re still revising your fic, please go ahead and post your draft now so we mods can see that you’ve written a story and we don’t need to assign a pinch hitter. Fics won’t go public until Wednesday at the earliest (we should have a better idea tomorrow) so you can keep editing until then.


• Please leave out beta thanks and other potential identifying information from now. You’ll be able to add them in later, after the author reveal.


• Additional Tags aren’t required but they help readers find your story.

If you are the kind of person who likes shaking the boxes before you open your presents, you can play with filters on the side of the CamelotRemix Works page or take a look at the Additional Tags cloud. If you’re logged in at the AO3 you can also check on your Gifts in the left sidebar to see if a remix of your fic has been posted yet. If you don’t want to have any clue, forget I said anything!

Best of luck to those of you who are rushing to finish your fics and post tonight. Please let us know if there’s anything we can help with!

-sophinisba

How's it going, Remixers? The deadline is coming up on October 9, two weeks two days from today. The minimum word count is 1000. We can do it!

Are you finished? Are you close? I know of one person who's their remix already. We'll try to get detailed posting instructions up this weekend, but if anyone's eager to post it should be pretty easy, especially if you've used the AO3 before. You go to the Camelot Remix collection, click on "Post to Collection", and fill out all the fields, including "Recipient" and the fields that come up when you check the "This work is a remix". Once it's posted you'll be able to see and edit it, but it won't go public until the mods unlock all the fics together.

Are you not finished? Have yet to start? You're not alone! I (sophinisba) had planned to set a good modly example and free myself up for pinch hits by finishing early. Instead I made a couple of short attempts that didn't go anywhere, and at this point I haven't touched it in two weeks and still don't know which story I'm going to remix. Um.

Need to freak out a little? Need a peptalk? Want to crow about how good it feels to be finished already? Have questions or helpful tips you want to share with the group? Here's the place for it. If you're afraid that what you want to say could give you away, feel free to comment anonymously (but please avoid dissing your remixer or their fics!). If you'd like to communicated just with the mods you can use the Contacting the Mods post (LJ|DW) or e-mail camelotremix at gmail.

Speaking of anonymity, someone asked if they should try to tone down aspects of their remix that would out them as an author. My opinion is that this is up to each author. I think people should be careful about staying anonymous before the fics go up and in things that are not the fic itself. If you post to your journal or comment here about how much you're enjoying writing epic femslash for the first time or if you ask for someone to beta 1400 words of Uther/Lancelot with crossdressing, you're kind of giving away the game.

On the other hand, if the fic itself has a lot of your kinks and quirks, readers who know you are likely to have fun recognizing them. I have three times been remixed by friends whose style I know and recognized (most recently by my co-mod netgirl_y2k) and each time it was really exciting to think, "Oooh, only she could have written that line." Some people get a kick out of trying to disguise themselves in anon exchanges, but I think it's not really necessary, especially in a remix where part of the point is making the story your own.

But, like I said to the author who asked about this, that's just my opinion and not any kind of Remix Rule. I'd love to hear other people's opinions and experiences with this. What have you done to try to keep the magic secret? Did it work? Was it worth it? (Or do you wish you'd told him the truth a long time ago?)

Have fun. I'll be offline most of the day but I hope you have some good discussion and we'll try to answer questions tonight.

Hey everyone, don't forget that tomorrow (Saturday) is the last day you can sign up for camelotremix/camelotremix. We'll be working on matching on Sunday and will do our best to get assignments sent out on Monday. So if you've been putting off signing up or updating you fic listing, please take care of that now!

We've had 28 people sign up so far and hope to get a few more tonight and tomorrow. We're so pleased with the interest in this and the mix of people getting involved. Thanks to everyone who's helped us get the word out, and special thanks to mrs_leary for the banners and icons.

Since it looks like the matching will go fairly smoothly with these numbers, we wanted to open up the option for you to name the one person you really don't want to remix. This might be because you had a kerfuffle with them last year or (a more common situation) because you're close friends and don't know how you'll keep the assignment secret when you're on chat with them every night. Now, sometimes keeping your assignment secret from your remixee BFF is half the fun of a remix! But if you're really worried about this potential situation and want to make sure it doesn't happen, please comment on this post (comments screened) or e-mail us at remixthedrabble@gmail.com before signups close.

Thank you!

In case you missed it, sign-ups are open on Dreamwidth and on LJ!

We'll start promoting the challenge on some fandom comms this weekend. Can you help us out? We'd love it if someone could make a banner with some Merlin characters and/or actors and the information that sign-ups are open until August 21.

If you (like us mods) are not so graphically inclined, you can still help promote camelotremix/camelotremix by posting a note in your journal or a comm where you're active, or talking it up with your friends. Just let us know if you've posted at a comm so we don't end up spamming them with multiple posts. Thank you!!

Have a question or concern about the challenge? Please comment here and let us know how you’d like us to get back to you. Comments on this post are screened. If you want others to see your comment, use another post such as Frequently Asked Questions (LJ|DW). If you’d rather contact us privately, e-mail camelotremix at gmail dot com.

Not going to be able to finish your remix by the deadline? Please let us know as soon as possible so we can find a pinch-hitter and they’ll have time to write a good story. You can comment here or e-mail us. If you’re not sure what to say in your message, “Hi, I won’t be able to write a remix of [remixee]’s fic so I’m dropping out of the challenge” is fine.

Your friendly neighborhood mods are sophinisba/sophinisba, netgirl_y2k/netgirl_y2k, and lilian_cho/lilian_cho. We love remixes and this fandom and we want the challenge to be fun for everyone, so please don’t hesitate to contact us.

What is this?
A remix is a challenge where you write a new version of a story by another participant. Keep the basics of the story the same (including the basic plot, characters, pairings or lack thereof), but change the style, structure, focus, or something else. Our "What's a remix?" post (LJ|DW) explains some more about what remixing means and some of the different approaches people have used. You can get a quick idea by checking out the Merlin stories at Remix…Redux 2010. Camelot Remix fics will be posted in a similar format at the same archive.

camelotremix/camelotremix is a remix challenge for Merlin and Merlin RPF fic. In your signup you can specify whether you're willing to write FPF, RPF, or both. Beyond that, we won't be matching people by pairings or genre, so before you sign up make sure you're open to writing different kinds of stories.

What are the dates and deadlines?
A sign-up post will go up by August 7 and will be open until August 21. Assignments will go out a few days later, and you'll have until October 9 to write a remix of at least 1000 words. Fics will go public on October 16 or as soon as we have one remix for everybody, and they will stay anonymous for one week.

What are the eligibility requirements?
In order to sign up as a regular participant, you need to have at least five remixable fics of at least 500 words each for your remixer to choose from. These five fics
-must be posted publicly.
-must be complete (no works in progress).
-can be FPF, RPF, or a combination of both (for example, two Gwen/Morgana fics and four Bradley/Colin fics), but not crossovers with other fandoms.
-should stand on their own – five parts of one story counts as one story, not five.
-should not be collaborative projects or remixes of other people's work.

You'll have the option of designating a "safe story" that cannot be remixed. This story won't count toward the five fics you need in order to qualify.

Crossovers and fics of less than 500 words are fair game for remixing even though they don’t count toward the eligibility requirement.

If you don't have enough qualifying fics, you can still sign up as a pinch-hitter and we'll contact you if we need someone to write an extra story.

What do I have to write?
You need to write one story of at least 1000 words that remixes one story by your assigned remixee. There is no upper wordcount limit.

The story you choose to remix can be any length and can be a crossover with another fandom, but it can’t be a work in progress, a remix, a collaboration, or the remixee’s "safe story".

We will e-mail you with your remixee's name and a link to their fics, and you'll have about six weeks to write and post your story.

Note that the word minimum on the remix is higher than on the qualifying fics, and the writing period is shorter than with some other challenges. If you think you might have trouble remixing a short fic into a slightly longer one in this time period, you might not want to sign up.

How do I sign up?
There will be a sign-ups post here on the camelotremix/camelotremix journal by August 7. You can sign up on LJ or Dreamwidth, and if you don't have an account you can comment anonymously or with OpenID. We will e-mail you your assignment, which we'll ask you to keep secret until a week after the fics are posted.

In the sign-ups post, we'll ask you to post a link to a list of all your Merlin fics; this could be a website, a journal post or a fic journal with tags, or a page at the AO3 or another archive. If you don't have your fic listed or organized somewhere, please try to take care of that before you sign up.

Where will the fics be posted?
The fics will be posted to the CamelotRemix collection at the Archive of Our Own. This will make it possible for each author to edit their own fic whenever they need. It will also make it easy for the mods to control when the fics go public and when the authors' names are revealed.

If you don't have an AO3 account, you'll need to set one up in order to post. Sign up at the Invitation Queue and you should get a code within a few days.

We'll put up more details about how to post after assignments go out. ETA: Posting to the AO3 is easy!. /ETA

What if I need to drop out?
We hope you'll only sign up if you're confident you can get a fic written by the deadline, but we understand that these things don't always work out. If you need to drop out of the challenge, just let us know as soon as possible so we'll have time to find a pinch-hitter and they'll have some time to write. You can e-mail us or leave a comment at the Contacting the Mods post on LJ or Dreamwidth.

What about this other thing?
Have other questions or concerns? Feel free to comment here or e-mail or PM sophinisba/sophinisba. We'll edit this post as more questions come up and as details get worked out.

How can I keep up with announcements?
On Dreamwidth, you can subscribe to camelotremix; on LJ, you can friend or track camelotremix. This is set up as an individual journal rather than a community in order to make cross-posting easier; you can always comment on either side and there will be links between corresponding entries.

If you’re an LJ user and would prefer not to friend this account, you can subscribe to the syndicated feed camelot_remix to see announcements. But for linking or commenting please use either camelotremix or camelotremix.