You've heard of them, seen them linked around. If you've been lucky, you've participated. If you're psychotic, you may have run one. Ficathons are known by many names: fanfic exchanges, Secret Santas, challenges, or fic fests, just to name a few. The organizational structure changes per type of ficathon, but the desire to see more well-written fanfic on a particular subject remains the same across fandoms.

Fic fests happen whenever someone wants more of something very specific. For example, when Liviapenn wanted to see more Dick and Babs love in the DC Comics fandom, she ran a Commentfic Fest. Writers signed up and were given a prompt, and then had to write a short fanfic about Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon. Because the format was in response to a Livejournal post, the length of a comment field (4300 characters; approximately 775 words) determined the maximum length of the stories. Fic fests provide instant gratification for a desired subject, and require very little in the way of management skills. People participate or not, and they post or not, and everyone gets to read new, if short, stories.

Challenges often run along the same lines as Fic Fests, either choosing a single fandom and/or subject, or else providing multifandom fun. The most well-known challenge in media fandom is Remix Redux. Run by Musesfool, this challenge matches up participants by fandoms already written. After sign-ups are complete, Musesfool matches up writers who then rewrite stories by other participants. As the community says in its info, "Ever read a fic and think, wow, what a fascinating story, but if I had written it, I would have... Well, now here's your chance to do just that. Rewrite someone else's story, tell somebody else's tale. Take the work of another person and wrap it up in your vision and style, just like a remixer does to songs." The plots and characters stay the same, but the stories change, sometimes by point of view, sometimes by setting, sometimes by time. The rewritten stories stand as counterpoints and echoes of the originals.

Other challenges often resemble the Fic Fests: writers sign up for prompts, and then post. The Metamorphosis Titles Rewrite Challenge involved writers offering fandoms (series, movies, books, etc). Challenge moderator Oxoniensis gave participants prompts that were episode titles, chapter titles, and so on from the original media. Writers then created fanworks from fanfics to album mixes to fanart collages incorporating a new perspective on that title prompt.

Fanfic exchanges and Secret Santas are the best-known versions of ficathons. In the finest traditions of fannish interaction, participants post lists of desired stories, either by fandom, pairing, or plot, and the person or persons running the ficathons match requests with writers willing to tackle those topics. A deadline and minimum word count are given, and for writers who don't post on or before the deadline, "pinch-hitters" tend to be grabbed at the last moment to provide stories for those who might otherwise not get them. Fanfic exchanges tend to be high-maintenance on the parts of the people running them, and so aren't for everyone.

Astrogirl has run some small ficathons (10-15 participants instead of 1000). "The hardest thing, for me, was dealing with people who didn't meet the deadline. Or worrying about how to deal with people who didn't meet the deadline. I don't like to see anybody left without a story, so I'm always determined that everybody is going to get one, if I have to write them myself. What I didn't figure on, the first time, was that I'd have people who'd go, 'I'm not quite finished, but it'll be done by the end of the week, promise.' And then, a week later, 'Don't worry, I should be able to finish it tomorrow.' And a week later... Well, you get the idea. That sort of thing is difficult, because you don't want to nag people, and calling in a pinch hitter under those circumstances seems kind of insulting, like you don't really believe they'll finish it. But, of course, when they *don't* finish it, you find you've broken your promise to get everyone a story on a timely basis."

While We Tell of Yuletide Treasure, better known in fandom simply as Yuletide, is one of the largest and best-known ficathons, drawing in over a thousand participants this year.  How does that translate into workload for the moderators? "I'd say it's about the most time-consuming thing in my life from sometime in Sept.-Oct. until the beginning of January, outside of my RL work," said elynross, one of the two Yuletide mods. "And this year it jumped up by a factor of 2-3, with over 1200 participants. Weirdly, it doesn't seem like the actual work level jumped up, for me, I think because so many of our participants are now familiar with how it works. Some even step in and answer questions for me on LJ, if I'm not immediately around. *g* I really don't know how people run ficathons that *aren't* this automated, though. The matching process itself is so incredibly unwieldy, and even automated, it takes astolat a good few hours to get it sorted out to the best possible outcome. And it becomes more time-intensive as we head to the deadline." She added, "astolat has managed to automate so much of it that the collecting of information happens through the programs (gathering the fandom suggestions, the signups, etc.), but there's still quite a lot that has to be done manually: cleaning up the fandoms for duplicates, eliminating non-rare fandoms, etc. We ended up with over 1600 fandoms this year, I think."

As of this writing, 1160 stories in 593 fandoms have been uploaded for this year's Yuletide challenge. How did such a massive undertaking get off the ground in the first place?  The original inspiration was Don We Now Our Gay Apparel, the popslash Secret Santa project.  Instead of boyband members, the original idea behind Yuletide was to showcase rare pairings, later rare fandoms.

"I'd never done anything like this before in terms of fanfiction," said tzikeh, one of the original Yuletide mods.  "The entire thing was astolat's idea. I honestly don't remember doing much more than saying 'Yeah! I agree! Woo!' and the like, but it's a few years ago now so I might have had slightly more to do with it than that. But she came up with the idea and I went along for the ride as a helping hand.  The previous year [2002], astolat had created and organized VividCon, and I was in on the creation and organization of that, and served on the concom. So when she asked if I'd like to help out with Yuletide, I was eager to help out. I'd been in chat rooms with folks who were running other things like this (The Shack Challenge, for  example), and I'd seen how crazy it can get, but still, I had no real idea of what I was in for.  Still, my job was pretty much just to help astolat out in any way I could. She designed the site, and she wrote all of the scripts that run and manage it (which she tweaks and improves on every year). I did a little bit of sleuthing here and there in terms of finding out why a script was bobbling on certain entries but not others, but the lion's share of the pre-challenge work was all astolat's. Then, once the challenge was in progress, I shared owner's access to the fiction archive and the lists of matchups and so forth with her, so that I could help her take care of questions from the participants, act as a go-between in order to clarify requests, and delete stories at the authors' requests when they wanted to re-upload. That kind of thing. Oh--I think I helped write the FAQ that first year. That has also been massively improved upon. :D"

Astrogirl cut her teeth in Farscape fandom for a small ficathon. "The first one I did was the Stark ficathon, and that came about because I saw how much new Aeryn fic got generated for the Aeryn ficathon. I commented on my LJ that I should do one for Stark and get everybody to write stories about *him*, because I love the character and didn't think he got nearly enough attention. A number of people encouraged me and expressed interest in participating, so I went ahead and did it. The Blake's 7 ficathon, I did because there had been a bunch of Farscape ficathons which had generated some excellent stories, leading to conversations with the B7 fans on my flist along the lines of 'Hey, we should do something like that in *our* fandom.' I had the experience, plus I wanted a bit of impetus to keep active in B7 fandom, since I've been gradually slipping away from it over the years. So I ran that one, too."

Fanfiction exchanges provide a lovely encouragement for participants: a story written to their own personal tastes. Also, since fanfic exchanges usually mean giving a story to a stranger – rather than just writing the images in one's own head – there's extra incentive for writers to polish their work more than usual. Yuletide is a well-known source of very high-quality fiction, for example, but it's not alone.

Astrogirl said, "My favorite thing [about fanfiction exchanges] is seeing a whole bunch of new stories about things I like and not only getting to read all of them, but knowing that I had a crucial role in making them happen. That is an utterly awesome thing, and it's made even more awesome by the fact that the general quality of the stories my ficathons got was IMHO very high."

Dr. Merlin has been known to run a ficathon or two herself, always of the small variety. Small ficathons don't have automated systems and require hand-matching of writers to requests, a time-consuming but worthwhile task.

elynross has some advice for aspiring ficathon runners:

"DON'T DOOOOOO EEEEEEEET. Ahem. *g* Have a plan, not only for how you're going to run the thing, but how you're going to handle things like defaults, and people unhappy with their assignments, and the oddwad questions that come up. And know that no matter how fully you think you're prepared, there will always be something that comes at you out of the blue, and you have to figure out as you go. At that point, you just have to be consistent, and if you goof up, admit it, apologize, and try to move on. I'd say to plan up front for at least a 10% default rate. [Dr. Merlin has noticed that same dropout rate, regardless of ficathon size.] Just accept that, off the bat, and have a plan for how to handle it. The best thing you can do is somehow organize a pool of people who are willing to pinch hit, even if they don't sign up.

"[T]ry to remember that whatever type of situation you're dealing with, you aren't really (or you're not *just*) an *individual*, when it comes to your ficathon; you're the Face of the Challenge, and I think you really have to keep that in mind when you're dealing with people, both publicly and privately. Don't bitch publicly about the demands a few participants make, or the crazy ideas they have as to how things should work, or the reasons they give for defaulting, or the handful who are bitchy in turn about the stories they got that they didn't like. But have a trustworthy few that you *can* blow off steam to, although it's probably best to not name names, even then. *g* And try not to take things personally. I find that very hard, myself. Grumbles and complaints about Yuletide *feel* personal, at this point, even if I didn't actually start it. I just have to keep the whole 'you can't please everyone' adage in mind, all the time, as well as "the squeaky wheel," sort of. The vast, *vast* majority of Yuletide participants can be relied upon to get their assignments done, to treat their own gift respectfully, and to be omg SO supportive! It's a very small handful that can kind of sour your day, now and then, and I fight to remember that.

"Get help, if it feels overwhelming. I think most of us who are willing to do this kind of thing have some control issues, so that can be hard, but it can be a lifesaver, too. And do it for the people who genuinely appreciate it, not for those few who think they could do better, or that you're doing it wrong, or that things should just be different. You do what you have to, you try and stay pleasant about it, and you learn (more or less) to shrug off any harsh words or unhappiness -- because there will be both, usually privately.

And finally: "[P]lan on what you're going to do about people who do default: do you say that they're not eligible next year? Do you impose some kind of penalty? Do you wait until they default two years in a row? No matter what you decide to do, unless you're going to just wipe the slate clean each year, you have to figure out how you're going to keep records!"

Ficathon running is not for the faint-hearted. But it's worth it, both as a moderator and a participant.

tzikeh enjoys the fandom-wide pajama party aspect and "[b]eing a part of a collection of HUNDREDS of fans, who otherwise might never have met, have a huge, crazy party of hilarity and panic as the deadline approaches. It really is like a pan-fandom party--and there's a colossal pile of presents that we open at the end of December, and then THOUSANDS of fans go completely batshit looney tunes. Everyone's hopped up on goofballs. Even though (and I'm guessing here) 99% of us are *not* with any other participant when the archive opens, it feels like we're all together, ripping open presents. There's wrapping paper *all over fandom*. I mean, people are recommending stories on their livejournals before I've even gotten up in the morning. And the best part is that each present is for everyone."

"I love how much people love it," said elynross, "and how happy it makes them, just the very *idea* of it. As soon as I announce that it's coming, people start bubbling over! And for the most part they're incredibly supportive and grateful, and it buoys me up during a time of year that can sometimes be difficult." What about as a participant? "I love the challenge of it; the things I get assigned to write for Yuletide are things I would never even think to write on my own, but I'm proud of them."

Astrogirl added, "I have a well-deserved reputation for signing up for nearly every ficathon I come across. They provide inspiration, they motivate me to actually write things and *finish* them, and they can spur me to stretch myself and not just write the same old things over and over. So I participate pretty much every chance I get."

What's your favorite ficathon?