90s au era

The Stranger Things Big Bang is Back!

What is a our big bang? Authors write a 10k word minimum fic (any Stranger Things characters and ships welcome!) and artists create works to accompany the fics. Please read through our information pages below:

Guidelines | FAQ | Warnings Policy

Schedule

February 15th, 2024 — March 15th, 2024 — Author Sign Ups

February 15th, 2024 — May 11th, 2024 — Artist Sign Ups

March 1st, 2024 — Writing begins

April 1st, 2024 — First Author Check-in

May 1st, 2024 — Second Author Check-in (5000 words minimum due)

May 7-8th, 2024 — Art claims, round 1

May 10-11th, 2024 — Art claims, round 2 (if needed)

June 1st, 2024 — Author Check-in #3, Artist Check-in #1

June 15th, 2024 — Author Check-in #4, Artist Check-in #2

July 1st, 2024 — Author Check-in #5, Artist Check-in #3

July 5th, 2024 — Posting begins

Join our mailing list to get an email when sign ups begin!

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

Before I Bury You

Author: justyrae / @astorytotellyourfriends Artist: @starboygrove Beta readers: @romantiquesnouvelles and @cyraclove Characters: Andy, Argyle, Murray Bauman, Fred Benson, Robin Buckley, Jonathan Byers, Joyce Byers, Will Byers, Jason Carver, Henry Creel, Victor Creel, Chrissy Cunningham, Benny Hammond, Billy Hargrove, Steve Harrington, Dustin Henderson, Heather Holloway, Jane Hopper, Jim Hopper, Max Mayfield, Patrick McKinney, Eddie Munson, Erica Sinclair, Lucas Sinclair, Tammy Thompson, Vickie, Mike Wheeler, Nancy Wheeler Relationships: Chrissy Cunningham/Eddie Munson, Jason Carver/Chrissy Cunningham (minor), Joyce Byers/Jim Hopper (minor), Billy Hargrove/Heather Holloway (minor), Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler (minor), Max Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair (minor), Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler (minor), Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington (implied) Rating: Explicit Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, No Vecna, Angst, Blood and Gore, Character Death, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Sexual Content, Murder, Recreational Drug Use, Revenge, Survival Horror, Violence Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death Word count: 43,516

Summary:

When two counselors turn up dead at Camp Hawk and the camp leaders are forced to leave to get help from police, it’s up to the remaining counselors to try and keep both the campers and themselves alive.

if you are going to do a whump- or kink- or ANY-tober or other similar challenges please please please don't post them as one fic with 31 chapters unless it actually is one coherent fic. if they're 31 completely separate fics or ficlets then please just make a collection for them or just post them as separate fics. it doesn't matter if they're only 100 words or if you think they're too small or insignificant to post alone, they're not.

and why this?

because if you post all 31 of them in one fic the tagging is absolutely useless. if I look for things to read on ao3 I'm gonna look at the tags, and if the tags include something that's a dealbreaker for me, i won't even click on the fic. I might not even SEE the fic because I've filtered out the nope-tag! so I'm gonna lose out on reading 30 perfectly nice fics because of one fic that my nope-tag applied to.

ao3 is about archiving. it's about clear tagging and being informative. there is nothing informative about it if the tags in the fic apply to random chapters while others have nothing to do with it. it makes so much more sense to have each work as an individual fic with its own individual tags and warnings, so readers can make informed choices.

of course, you do you. I can't police what other people decide to do. but personally, I find it incredibly frustrating to weed through 31 chapters to find the ones I actually want to read. so I don't. I automatically scroll past all works posted like that. and I know some others do, too.

there is absolutely no shame in posting short things on ao3. there is no minimum word count. no one is going to look at you funny if you post a small ficlet on its own, I promise. it's just going to make some readers very happy when they can actually find the things they want to read.

so, please. at least consider the upsides of posting each work as their own fic.

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

&

The team that created Glaze is from the University of Chicago. Their names are each listed in full on the Glaze download website. (This group of students/professors did this for their SPRING BREAK 😱 so go give them some love lol)

It is free to download. No, they won’t ask for or raise money from/for this project.(stated by one of the lead professors of the project).

Glaze is designed to protect artists’ STYLE--which a bunch of ai people have been deliberately fine-tuning their models to mimic (and specifically of current living artists--small or big).

It currently does not protect against composition/trace-like theft (as seen when run through img-to-img) but that would be protected by copyright anyway while STYLE is not.

The University Team has stated that they are dedicated to continuing to improve the tool, like fixing bugs (like overheating older computers by taking up lots of energy when Glazing--it currently runs on CPU so they’re trying to change that to GPU, I believe) and expanding the type of protection given to artists (like working against img-to-img theft).

It currently only works directly on your computer (phones not advised due to current overheating issue, no tablets, or iPads, and no website runthrough since that would be insecure to breaches/scraping/hacks)

It currently works best on painterly artwork, but can still be used on other forms (team is working on improving this)

IT WORKS BY calculating the changes each image needs for the best protection against style theft by AI, and adds tiny changes throughout the piece, so that your style will, for example, confuse the ai into seeing van gogh. But the ai thieves will see a regular image in your style, feeding it into their model labeled as your work (thus starting the “data poisoning”).

Do not post the original unGlazed piece of your artwork after posting your Glazed version (obviously)

The Team worked directly with over 1,000 artists that were being impacted by the ai theft. Because the team listened to those artists, Glaze accounts for regular art thieves too (i.e. Glaze can’t be removed/cropped etc. like signatures or watermarks when reposted. It’s just part of the image, so even if it ends up on another site and scraped, the Glazing is still in effect)

When you run your artwork through Glaze, no information is sent back to the Team. (Aka, no scraping on their part. The app receives information from the Team (like updates) but no information from you is given to them through the app. Basically Team servers ---> You and NOT Team servers <--->You) One-way data street.

Brief misunderstanding happened over an open-source license for the front-end part of the app. (Used open-source coding for front-end, not knowing that code’s use-license states it is only for other open-source uses, not closed-source (the back-end code of the app is private to prevent counter-counter measure developments)). The Team took down the app until they replaced the front-end code with code written from scratch by the team. They are now not in violation of that open-source license since they are no longer using it. (you have 30 days to remedy a license breach once informed; they did so in 2)

The Team is currently in touch with Japanese artists to better expand the tool for use to protect their art styles

From what I understand of it, Glaze is an AI tool designed to be anti-AI (Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: one Terminator robot vs. all the other Terminators 😂)