Prosfic Bingo: X is for X Marks the Spot

[tinturtle]

Today I read X Marks the Spot by O Yardley, a shortish story that is part casefic and part slightly weird Christmas fluff. It's an established-relationship story, which was a nice change of pace, but it didn't make any very deep impression on me. It's just fine, you might say. 4,556 words. B/D slash.


M: Masquerade by Tarot / Chris_Quinton (46,299 words)
T: Tea for Two by Alexandra (70,187 words)
X: X Marks the Spot by O Yardley (4,556 words)

Total words: 121,042

Comments

[fiorenza-a.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be sooo absent this year. RL demands getting in the way.

But a Prosfic bingo challenge sounds like a fab idea. I really hope you have fun completing it 😊

[tinturtle]

I hope the RL demands will prove manageable. I am sad that you will not be around.

[fiorenza-a.livejournal.com]

Me too, but on the upside, it won't be forever.

I am going to try my level best to drop by from time to time, but realistically, after this month, my allegedly free time is pretty much accounted for.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I always think of O. Yardley as a good solid writer - even her less good fics are generally worth reading. *g* And I did indeed get sucked into going and reading this one to remind myself - and giggled. *g*

[tinturtle]

Will you use X Marks the Spot for the X entry on your bingo board? It's not clear to me whether or not people are expected to find unique fics in the Prosfic bingo game. In MFU fic bingo, which I instigated, I've made it explicit that unique fics are not expected. I think one of the benefits of the game is the chance to discover interesting fics via others' reading, and it seems to me that not being able to use them on their own bingo boards would discourage people from checking out fics that intrigue them, especially long ones.

Even if unique fics are the goal in Prosfic bingo, people will have to make an exception for the letter X, I think. I was only able to find three stories starting with X in a search of The Circuit Archive, The Hatstand, The Automated Hatstand, Prosfanfic, Proslib, and A03. That's not enough to go 'round.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I probably won't use it, at least right now, because I like the game of hunting for fics to fit the letters. *g* As you say though, there's not so many fics for some letters, like X, that we can be too choosey about what we use!

It honestly never occured to me to say something like "You have to use a fic that no one else has used" (I think that's what you mean by "unique fics"?) for all the reasons that you give! It's fun reading fics that other people have posted to their Bingo cards, and half the point of the game is finding fics that other people might have talked about, and because there's not enough for some letters to "go round" everyone! *g* People should read what they want to, as far as I'm concerned - I certainly plan to! *vbg*

ETA - also, I'm not big on restricting people in what they do. My preference is for minimum rules, except where they're needed to keep people safe/do something efficiently etc. So for instance we have a timing rule for posts at the Dialj Christmas calendar game, for the very practical reason that everyone's in different time zones, and their posts could clash without specifying a time zone (and the lads' time zone makes sense!) And we have rules about not adding big spoiler-y warnings etc. out in the open where people are forced to see them, because that upsets some people - but people are absolutely free to add spoilers etc. if they want to in a way that doesn't affect/upset others, in the trailer that goes at the end of a story. And we say that's how it works on the User Info page, so everyone knows where to find the information if they want to. I can't see any practical reason for restricting people in what they want to read, though! *g*