#bag.prompt

T-minus: three weeks! Be A Goldfish is back and better than ever. Are you as excited as we are?

In an effort to encourage regular participation, as well as to provide structure to those who thrive on it, we’ve prepared weekly prompts to inspire you throughout the course of the event. As follows:

WEEK ONE: New Year, New Fandom

WEEK TWO: New Medium, No Tedium

WEEK THREE: Don’t Dodge the Draft

WEEK FOUR: An Oldie But a Goodie

WEEK FIVE: On Thursdays We Try Tropes

WEEK SIX: Girls, Girls, Girls

WEEK SEVEN: Valentine’s, Galentine’s, & Palentine’s

WEEK EIGHT: Favorite Character Fiesta

You may follow this schedule as rigidly or loosely as you wish: you are welcome to fulfill every prompt to the letter, or to ignore them entirely. Engage as suits! Have fun with it! We will post each prompt weekly, too, to keep them fresh on the mind.

Additionally, we've prepared four bonus prompts, which you are free to swap or combine with any scheduled week as desired:

Bonus One: Epic Crossover Event

Bonus Two: Back to the BAGBang

Bonus Three: Tactile Touchables Tea Party

Bonus Four: Meta & Margaritas

Questions, comments, concerns? Check out our prompt document for details, suggestions, and further inspiration. Want more? Try this list of prompting blogs on tumblr, or this compilation of prompting communities on Dreamwidth. Don't forget to give our FAQ a look too! It's got all the key details, dates, and links.

Sunday, funday! Let’s beat the heat, or the creative block, with a fresh and funky prompt drawn from the deep end of the Be A Goldfish pool. Dive in! 

WEEK TWO: Can We Get Her Out? + Playlists & Podfic & Music

Let’s hear it for the girls! Fuck misogyny in fandom: unbury, unfridge, or otherwise return a dead wife, fridged woman, or neglected female character to the land of the living. Who is she? What is she like? Why do you love her? Tell us everything. We’re all ears. Relatedly, our sommelier suggests pairing this prompt with an audible expression of fannish creation. Perhaps a mixtape which nails her vibe, or an original track which challenges her canonical fate? Tune in: we’ve got a bit of inspiration for you. 

Make a playlist or fanmix. Whether you work on Spotify or YouTube, list tracks on tumblr, Dreamwidth, or Pillowfort, or make CDs or cassettes, share your fan soundtrack. Annotations, lyric snippets, and cool covers are highly encouraged! Draw inspiration from our #playlist tag, or read The Death and Resurrection of the Fanmix.

Create a fannish audiobook: a podfic! Whilst it can take a bit of bravery to put your voice out there, it’s a fantastic way to contribute to the fannish community by making fics more accessible. Long-time listener, first-time caller? Not to worry. On tumblr, check out A Beginner’s Guide to Making Podfics, and on AO3, try A Newbie’s Guide to Podficcing, A step-by-step guide to your first (tenth, hundredth) podfic, or Keep it Simple: A Highly Biased Podfic Guide For Absolute Beginners. For tips on hosting your podfic, give A Breakdown of Podfic Hosting Options a read, and don’t forget to check out this site which offers a fairly comprehensive resource on all things podfic. 

Write a songfic. Whilst controversial in some spaces, we think it’s a fantastic way to blend music and fanfiction! Give How to Write a Songfic a read, though please note that we at Be A Goldfish are big fans of fangirls and thus do not endorse the misogynistic language present in the how-to, or check out The Soundtrack for advice on picking the perfect tune. 

Mix your own music. Get crazy in GarageBand, demonstrate your cunning lyricism, adapt a favourite song to fit your fandom, or bang out the tunes a la Neil! A filk, which is a fannish folk song either originally composed or adapted from an existing tune, might be a fun choice. Hone your skills: read How I Filk and A Guide to Multivoice Filking, or listen to the FilkCast podcast. Don’t forget to check out The Lightning Bolt and Into This New Hell, filks shared during BAG26A! 

Check out our Prompt Doc for the entire list of this round's prompts, and don't forget to use the #beagoldfish 2026 tag and optionally tag us @bag-bang so that we can see and share it!

T-minus: two weeks! Be A Goldfish is back in the water and ready to pull a Jaws.

In an effort to encourage weekly participation, as well as to provide structure and inspiration to those who thrive on it, we’ve prepared prompts to inspire you throughout the course of the event. Each weekly prompt will consist of both a traditional prompt and a medium, and we will provide links to inspirational and educational content to support you creatively should you choose to explore the medium. As follows:

WEEK ONE: Build-A-World + Recipes & Food

WEEK TWO: Can We Get Her Out? + Playlists & Podfic & Music

WEEK THREE: A Moment To Discuss Our Lord and Saviour + Fanfiction

WEEK FOUR: True Blue AUs + Gifs

WEEK FIVE: Conversations Rule The Nation + Graphics

WEEK SIX: Pepe Silvia + Meta & Fannish Nonfiction

WEEK SEVEN: Her, Him, They, Them + Zines

WEEK EIGHT: A Little Treat + Fanvids

You may follow this schedule as rigidly or loosely as you wish: you are welcome to fulfill every prompt to the letter, to engage with just the medium or just the prompt, or to ignore them entirely. Whilst we will be sharing a prompt and a medium on a weekly basis, you are welcome to engage with them at any time and in any order. Mix and match! The world is your oyster.

Additionally, we've prepared two bonus prompts, which you are free to swap or combine with any scheduled week as desired: 

BONUS ONE: Beg, Borrow, & Steal

BONUS TWO: Support Your Local Gunfighter

We’ve selected two bonus mediums, too:

Painting, Drawing, & Printmaking

Arts & Crafts

Questions, comments, concerns? Check out our Prompt Document for details, suggestions, and further inspiration. Don’t forget to give our RuleDoc a read for key dates, links, and event details!  

New Year, New Fandom Confetti, fireworks, sparkling beverages: 2026 begins! Let’s get this party started. Create a work for a fandom for which you have never created a work. Get out of your comfort zone. Paint a picture of a brand-new blorbo! Write meta for a fandom you’ve only ever lurked in! Anything will do so long as it’s new, or at least not yet shared.

Feel free to brainstorm, discuss, make friends, or let us know what you're cooking up in the comments here or on Dreamwidth. We're excited to see what you create. Stay curious!

Check out our Prompt Doc for the entire list of this round's prompts.

Another week, another prompt! Are you feeling inspired? We know we are. Just keep swimming!

WEEK THREE: A Moment To Discuss Our Lord and Saviour + Fanfiction

Get evangelical with it. Create a work intended to bring non-fans to the dark side: your fandom. Extol the virtues of your favourite film, harp on the highlights of a video game you can’t stop thinking about, or demonstrate your PhD in The Character. Sell us on it! Please note that we don’t endorse real-world evangelism around here, as it is a driving force behind colonial projects past and present. Whether you’re an old hand or a newbie writer, week three is a great week to explore fanfiction. Write a one-shot, dabble in drabbles, or give poetry a try. Welcome to McGoldfish, what can we get you? Inspiration and fic-writing advice? Pull up to the second window, please. 

Whilst a lot of fannish spaces assume that writing fanfiction is an intuitive practice, we know that’s not always true! Check out A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Fanfics for a thoughtful step-by-step, A Beginner’s Guide to Fanfiction for an introduction to the craft, The Fanfic Help on tumblr for a bit of everything, and this incredibly thorough index of fanfic advice ranging from theoretical to practical as well as tips and tricks.

Traditional writing advice is applicable for fanfiction, too, and can be a great way to improve your craft as a writer of any experience level. Read Stephen King’s On Writing, Anne Lammott’s Bird by Bird, or Constance Hale’s Sin and Syntax, or browse the writing section at your local library. The National Centre for Writing is another great resource.

Take a free online course in creative writing from some of the highest-ranked universities in the world! Browse the generous selection of resources curated by Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and the University of York, audit a self-paced course on rhetoric through Harvard, or take self-directed classes on science fiction, fantasy, short stories, or poetry through MIT. 

If YouTube is more your speed, try Brandon Sanderson’s lecture series. 

On tumblr, browse our #bag.prompt tag for inspiration from the ghost of Be A Goldfish past.

Check out our Prompt Doc for the entire list of this round's prompts and don't forget to use the #beagoldfish 2026 tag and optionally tag us @bag-bang so that we can see and share it!

Ahoy, sailors! Raise the anchor, smear on the sun cream, and dive in: Be A Goldfish: A Multifandom Multimedia Microbang 2026-B begins! Let’s get this party started and kick things off with a fun and funky set of prompts. Wade into the deep end!

WEEK ONE: Build-A-World + Recipes & Food

Harken back to days of yore: Minecraft, The Sims, LEGO, or Lincoln Logs. Create a fanwork which engages with worldbuilding, or explore in-universe creations. Fill us in on the gaps in canon, expound upon fanon, explore fictional nonfiction, try a chatfic or social media AU, or draw inspiration from works like NECKZ ‘n THROATS, an in-universe magazine created by the Teen Wolf fandom. Week one is a great week to give fanfood a whirl, too! Try a recipe, or create one of your own. Decorate cupcakes, make a themed meal, or sip blue milk. Need more ideas? We got you.

Browse sites like Feast of Starlight, The Gluttonous Geek, InLiterature, Geeky Chef, and Geeks Who Eat, which curate a generous selection of both individual recipes and themed feasts inspired by a variety of shows, films, games, and books. 

Tumblrinas, rejoice! The Nerdy Recipes index offers a vast selection, Fandom Cocktails curates themed mixed drinks, and our #food and #recipe tags display the fannish food, drinks, and recipes made in rounds past and present. 

Check out published fannish cookbooks like Marvel: Eat the Universe, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Recipes from Sunnydale, A Feast of Ice and Fire, or Supernatural: The Official Cookbook. We strongly recommend searching for these texts and others like them at your local library, through the Internet Archive, on the seven seas, or at secondhand shops before purchasing new at your local bookshop. 

Explore fandom-specific repositories like The Cookbook of Boba Fett, official Disney, Star Wars, and Marvel recipe collections, and The Inn at the Crossroads. 

On YouTube, give Nerdy Nummies or Binging with Babish a watch. 

We’re thrilled to report that a few of our fish friends have already posted their prompt fills for this week! Check out The Sentinel-inspired stew and soup recipes by pattrose, a Ninjago wordbuilding piece by Sparrow1M, a Redwall-inspired food entry by matsushima, or contribute your own prompt-inspired work. Eat, drink, and worldbuild merrily!

Check out our Prompt Doc for the entire list of this round's prompts, and don't forget to use the #beagoldfish 2026 tag and optionally tag us @bag-bang so that we can see and share it!

New Medium, No Tedium January slump? Get inspired. Create a work utilising a new medium. If you’re a writer, try your hand at art; artists, dabble in fic. Give something unusual a whirl: whip up some fanfood, make a craft, or compose a song. The sky is the limit. Check out the Multimedia Entries portion of our FAQ for inspiration. 

Feel free to brainstorm, discuss, make friends, or let us know what you're cooking up in the comments here or on Dreamwidth. We're excited to see what you create. Stay curious!

Check out our Prompt Doc for the entire list of this round's prompts.

WEEK FOUR: An Oldie But a Goodie Halfway there, living on a prayer! Harken back and create a work for your first-ever fandom. What piece of media was the first to spark that special something? Share with the class: perhaps a gifset to demonstrate the appeal of a childhood classic, an essay which extrapolates on the meta you’ve been considering for years, or a craft to connect with your inner fannish child.

Feel free to brainstorm, discuss, make friends, or let us know what you're cooking up in the comments here or on Dreamwidth. We're excited to see what you create. Stay curious!

Check out our Prompt Doc for the entire list of this round's prompts.