Felony Fest

It’s come to our attention that our previous plans (see Felony Fest and Felony Zine, which are both totally still going to happen just not right at this exact moment in time or any precise foreseeable future moments in time, but definitely a vague undefined someday) all kind of require a lot of work and organization to pull off. I mean actually, not necessarily, because as long as we throw in enough enthusiasm and excuses people will basically forgive any amount of drinking on the job and failing to provide promised updates for a week with no explanation. That way you don’t get to have any expectations of them in return, see, and we all know how much people don’t like to be held to any sort of basic standard of human decency.

Here at Felony Fest we cannot abide gatekeeping. No gates, no bars, no consequences for actions or acknowledgement that people have a fundamental right to not be forced to interact with every asshole who demands attention all the time. We are well verse in the Ancient Fandom Code that states that as soon as we decided to talk about running one of five thousand and a half fandom challenges, we gave up all pretense of being real people and only exist for the ever-changing and ever-conflicting whims of the masses, both collectively and individually.

(And we would certainly never want to be the kind of dickheads who cause all sorts of fuss about that sort of thing and talk shit on how we’re going to do so much better, inviting the meek and wounded and afraid newcomers to our fandom to reach out to us for support only to drop our promises as soon as we’re done getting the attention our pearl-clutching deserves. That would be some bullshit if someone did that. We <3 fest follow through here at Felony Fest.)

SO WITH ALL THAT SAID, on to my point.

We’re not actually sure we have our shit together enough for the other projects, but we’re not going to back down from them or ghost without explanation, that would be ridiculous. No, we’re going to do a trial run of a lower stress challenge! Which is why I have the pleasure of announcing

SPN Bingo Bingo!

(AKA Not Another Supernatural Bingo)

We thought we’d get in on this trend plus take advantage of everyone else doing the work for us, so here’s how it works: We make you a card with each square being the name of another SPN bingo challenge. In order to fill the square, you have to sign up for that bingo and complete a bingo for it. It’s like a meta bingo, because we all love meta shit, right? You won’t have to do any more writing than you would’ve otherwise, since you’ve almost certainly signed up for all of them already anyway, you just get double credit! Or triple or octuple, depending on how many different bingo challenges you manage to combine in a single fill.

Stay tuned for the sign-up post for SPNBB to get rolling and bingo your bingos!

Also keep an eye out for the announcement of our next upcoming fest, which we will announce before doing any work on any of the aforementioned things, the Coda Project! One coda written for every single episode of Supernatural, posted one day at a time in chronological order. We’ll post more info about that soon. Claims day after tomorrow.

It’s time to clarify that, although we celebrate the commission of felonies in our moniker, we actually appreciate any and all crime. Especially solicitation. Solicitation is our favorite. In fact, since we don’t have enough signups, we are going to shamelessly try to solicit talent from Big Names by sliding into their DM’s as though we’re an anonymous user just blithely making a suggestion that merely occurred to us out of nowhere!

This tactic is in no way transparent or desperate. It is merely a means of A) living our core values, B) drumming up interest, and C) recruiting these people who clearly aren’t participating already ONLY BECAUSE they are too ignorant to be aware of us. Because who wouldn’t want to hang out with US? Certainly all these enormously popular artists and authors don’t have anything else to do, or any personal preference. They’re merely tools that exist for our own self-promotion, so all we need to do is give them a gentle nudge. And then: PROFIT. Surely the only reason our unique challenge has been overlooked by these Important Creators is that they live in a hole. It can’t possibly have anything to do with the glut of boringly similar challenges recently started because people who couldn’t hack an existing challenge with rules decided they could do it better.

@deancasbigbang - here's the deal. I'm gonna copy your rules, okay? Actually just all of your documentation. Like, verbatim. Straight up plagiarism. The kind of shit that would get me flunked on a homework assignment or fired from my job as a journalist.

But it's cool because I'm not getting anything out of it, right? I mean, other than not having to spend the hours of work writing them, years of adjusting them based on people trying their damnedest to find every loophole because they want to be the next big thing (or think they're already the next big thing so rules don't really apply to them), etc.

But it's not like I'm making money off your intellectual property or anything.

Welcome back, thanks for your question! It’s no problem to get an extension here at Felony Fest, since we don’t have anything even resembling a due date. Nope, no benchmarks of any kind, because fuck the man! Deadlines are the tools of the oppressor! We refuse to stifle your creativity! Just keep writing until you’re done, skip the spellcheck, flirt with idea of a beta and then just post that shit! POST IT. Who cares if it’s a mess? Call it artistic license and have a smoke. You can submit a draft if you want, but who’s even looking at those? All we want to see are words. Words words words. Proper grammar and punctuation are optional. It worked for ee cummings, goddammit, and clearly you’re way better than them since the only kind of exposure you can get is in this free fic challenge that no one is paid to moderate. 

Maybe while you’re at it you should also tell us about what you will and will not read in a fic. Make sure you post it on your social media so we can all benefit from your expertise, since clearly whatever you decide should apply to everyone. That’s just a random thought I had. Not related to anything. Swearsies.

We're running a zine! No, not the other one I posted about, that had some personnel issues but your money was already completely legitimately spent on the production costs so you won't be getting it back. But you know what they say: if you fall off the horse, maybe try stealing a scooter instead next time, you don't know how to fucking ride a horse.

So we're taking applications from artists and authors who want to be in FelonZine! Look out for submission guidelines in our next post to see what we want from you, but this one is about what you want from us: accountability.

We've incorporated in New Jersey as FelonCorp LLC to make it easier to launder money evade taxes lay out our exact costs and profits to you, our talent and consumers. Here's the breakdown:

Printing will be $1.50-$3 per copy, depending on final production volume

$100 flat rate for each accepted artist or author (in addition to one free copy); 25 artists + 15 authors = $4,060 - $4,120 total depending on printing price

$200 flat rate to our layout designer, who does this for a living and is taking a hilariously steep pay cut for the hundreds of hours of work this will be so I don’t want to hear any of you bitching about it

$200 flat rate to our editor (that’s me) who does not do this for a living but still needs to eat, and since we’re paying our content producers and this is all the money from the entire zine that will go into our pockets I don’t feel the least bit guilty

$7 shipping per copy

We went back and forth on this for a long time, but in the end we decided on this instead of having each person pay separately for shipping depending on where they are. We’re both in the best state in the best country and will be sending the zines out from here, but fandom is global, so we’re expecting (hoping!) to see a lot of international interest, and we don’t want to $30 shipping to a. stop someone from being able to buy this or b. be a surprise after pre-orders have already been made. So yes, a lot of you may end up paying more than you would for shipping if we broke it out and we could just have Vinnie and Todo drive it down the block to you, but many will pay less, too, and we’re feeling socialist today.

$1500 for business expenses, which covers the lawyer and accountant we’ve consulted to help us set this up and the actual cost of founding FelonCorp LLC.

Do you have high expectations of someone being at your beck and call? Are you terrible at reading directions, and even worse at retaining information? Do you go into Tumblr hysterics when you don’t get your way? 

Then Felony Fest is for you! Our laissez-faire attitude presents the perfect opportunity for your histrionic meltdown! What’s more, we will continue to not give the smallest flying fuck about what you want, allowing you to further express your infantile rage on all your social media platforms!

Rules post!

No, just kidding. Kind of.

So, here's the thing: making this shit is hard. There's, like, a lot of stuff to cover and we're inevitably going to miss important things and all you unique creative talents out there are going to ignore them anyway and then whine about it... I'm just not feeling like it right now. So instead of doing the work or asking my co-mod, I've found the perfect solution. We're gonna crowdsource this motherfucker.