Penny

(hiiiiii wynnyfryd here i cannot believe my baby is THREE 🥹🥹😭😭 thank you thank you thank you to everyone who still participates and to mick and lex for being such hot and effective and consistent mods, i love you and this community so much let’s kiss let’s fucking kiss!!!)

For July, we're celebrating 3 years of the Steddie Microfic Challenge!

Because it's such a big milestone, we're shaking things up a bit. Instead of one word and word count for the month, we will be doing 4 words and 4 word counts throughout the month!

July 1-8: | three, 333 words | three years since the incident, three pointer, threesome, three more minutes

July 9-16: | years, 444 words | years later, through the years, haven't seen someone in years

July 17-24: | micro, 555 words | microfiche, microbiology, micro--*ahem*

July 25-31: | steady, 666 words | steady beat, steady hands, steady income

As a reminder, the word count for the prompt should be exact according to wordcounter.net. Make sure to copy and paste it there first before tagging us! We will comment with '🥧' when the word count has been confirmed and the post has been added to our queue.

All posts are due at 11:59 PM EDT on the day before the last day of that prompt's week (for example, all posts for the prompt 'three' should be submitted by 11:59 PM EDT on July 7th). Please don't submit for a prompt early! Part of the fun with this month's challenge is keeping the prompt posts separate each week.

This week's Featured Article is Crack Van!

Active from 2003 to 2014, Crack Van was a multifandom fanfiction and vid rec community on LiveJournal that became, for a generation of fans, the first stop when exploring a new fandom. At its peak, it was one of the most organised and wide-ranging rec communities the internet had ever seen, with nearly 25,000 recs over ten years.

The community worked by recruiting volunteers from individual fandoms to "drive the van" for a month at a time, posting regular recommendations and writing fandom primers: overviews designed to help total newcomers understand the source material, the characters, the ships, and where to find the good stuff.

Crack Van closed permanently in January 2014, signalling a broader shift in fandom culture, as Tumblr, AO3, and Twitter had changed how fans discovered fanworks and connected with each other, making the curated, collaborative structure of Crack Van feel like a different era entirely. Many fans mourned it as the end of something irreplaceable.

Crack Van also inspired a wave of fandom-specific rec communities in its image, like Crack Impala for Supernatural.

Curious about the community that helped hundreds of thousands of fans find their footing in new fandoms? Head over to Fanlore to learn more!

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i was screaming into a discord call. i was pacing nervously around my apartment like i was being ordered to shelter in place. he got a standing ovation when he walked on stage for, i’m pretty sure, absolutely no reason except the montreal crowd saw him and got hit with a pheromone blast so powerful even gary bettman was flirting with him.

jesus christ. and then he announces our draft pick and he’s so soft-spoken and french about it. de pittsburg’ penguin are proud to selek… owen pick-er-ing. if i was owen pickering you’d have just heard a loud thump echo around the arena as i fainted at the sound of my name coming out of this man’s mouth.