Hello Shakespearians,

Stage of Fools makes its return to the boards of LJ and Dreamwidth for a third year!

Please find below our schedule for this year's shenanigans. The sign-up form, rules, and technologically enhanced portrait of Bill will be up in separate posts shortly.

Schedule:

Sign-ups: July 22 through August 18, 2018
Assignments go out: around August 20, 2018
Assignments due: October 21, 2018
Madness/prompt claiming time: October 22 through 31, 2018 - as soon as all assignments are in, all unwritten prompts will be revealed for everyone to write fic of any length. You don't have to sign up as a Stage of Fools participant to participate in Madness.
Go-live: November 1, 2018
Author reveal: November 5, 2018

Hello lovely groundlings! I hope you are all well on the way with writing your stories for people, or at least have an idea about what you want to do and just need to find time to transfer it from your head to the page.

This might also be the time where people get ready to post their stories. Currently the deadline is:


OCTOBER 21, 2017, 23.59 GMT. What time is that for me?


So I thought it would be good to make a reminder post about how to do it. I've included screenshots so am putting this under a cut for length. I've set the collection to "open" and "unrevealed" so people can post their fics, and they won't be seen by anyone except me until the reveal. Many thanks to those who already got their stories in! Relax, lovelies!

( How to post to Stage of Fools 2016 )

I hope this makes sense, and enables you to post your fics. If you have any technical trouble with doing this, or if you are running a bit behind schedule and would like an extension, please let me know.

All assignments have now gone out. Let me know if you haven't received one.

Happy writing all!

The sign-up form is now live!

Please GO HERE TO SIGN UP. Sign-ups will close on FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, at 23.59 UK time.

What time is that for me?

Countdown timer

If you have any questions please comment on this post or PM me.

If you would like to press-gang your friends into joining promote the exchange, you can use this handy graphic. Just copy and paste the html code from the text box underneath it.



<a href="http://stageoffools.dreamwidth.org"><img src="https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/lexigent/76586369/1493/1493_300.jpg" alt="" title="stage of fools 2017"></a>

The Basic Mechanics

The exchange will be run on an offer/request basis, like yuletide and other similar exchanges. Each participant will get to request a number of plays that they'd like to receive fic for, and offer a number of plays that they feel comfortable writing fic for. Based on this, participants will be matched up. You'll also have an opportunity to leave specific prompts for what kind of fic you want and about which characters, and tell your writer about any triggers/dislikes/DNWs so they can work around this. This is done either by writing a "dear writer" letter, or by specifying "optional details" in your request, or both.


1. Eligible Plays

There's a separate exchange for the Histories. I am including the Greek & Roman plays in Stage of Fools this time as there hasn't been an exchange for them since 2014.

Which leaves us with this list:

Comedies

All's Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Cymbeline
Love's Labours Lost
Measure for Measure
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merchant of Venice
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Troilus and Cressida
Twelfth Night
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Winter's Tale

Tragedies (& Romances if you call them that)

Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Hamlet
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Macbeth
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus

Important stuff: (rules mostly adapted from thisengland)

a) In addition to the list above, Cardenio/Double Falsehood and The Two Noble Kinsmen were probably at least partly written by Shakespeare, so they can also be requested and offered.

b) AUs (Alternate Universes): Requests for radical AUs (i.e. AUs set in completely different time periods and/or locations) are allowed and encouraged.

c) Crossovers: Crossovers of the plays with each other or with other early modern texts are fine, but everything else isn't. So, a fic wherein Benvolio and Horatio discuss what it's like to survive a Shakespearean tragedy = fine; a fic wherein Hamlet meets the Doctor from Doctor Who = not fine. You may request a crossover in your optional details if you want one, but please be gentle to your author and give an alternative prompt as well - they may not be familiar with the crossover property you want.

d) RPF: It's fine to request fic based on specific productions, but please do not request actor RPF based on contemporary productions/about living people. Requesting fic about actors who have passed - say, about Shakespeare playing the Ghost of Old Hamlet - is fine.

e) Specific productions or films: Fics inspired by or based on specific productions or films are welcome. The RSC and the Globe have both released DVDs of their recent productions, and other theatres are following suit (who's excited about the Stratford Festival releasing their recent season on demand?). A film version has to use a version of the Shakespearean text to count - so, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo+Juliet or Michael Almereyda's Hamlet would be fine, My Own Private Idaho or any of the ShakespeaRetold films wouldn't. You are welcome to include optional details based on a specific production in your request, but be aware that your writer may or may not be able to accommodate them, as not everyone may have access to the specific production or film version you have in mind.

TL;DR: If you're not clear whether something is acceptable, please ask!

2. While rule #1 allows requests for AU fic, please don't request fic in pre-existing AUs. Fic taking place in pre-existing AUs may be written for Madness, but not for the main exchange. If you wish to write in an AU not your own, please make sure you have permission from the original author(s). If they don't have a permission statement please get in touch with the mod.

3. Assignments will go out as soon after the deadline as possible.

4. Request whatever pairing/configuration or lack thereof you fancy - gen, het, slash, femslash, giant hilarious orgies, whatever.

5. All administrative posts will appear here at stageoffools and the mirror comm on LJ, stageoffools.

6. The minimum word count for fics is 1000 words, as in yuletide. All stories posted for the exchange must be finished stories with a beginning, middle, and end. Posting an incomplete story, even one that fulfills the word limit, will be grounds for banning.

7. Fics will be hosted at the Archive Of Our Own.

8. The schedule for 2017's exchange can be found here.

Hello m'dears!

It's that time again - Stage of Fools is returning for its second year. I have decided to open sign-ups a little earlier than last year as I am going on holiday, but timing of assignment due dates and reveals won't change from last year's timing.

Schedule:

Sign-ups: July 22 through August 18, 2017
Assignments go out: around August 20, 2017
Assignments due: October 21, 2017
Madness/prompt claiming time: October 22 through 31 - as soon as all assignments are in, all unwritten prompts will be revealed for everyone to write fic of any length. You don't have to sign up as a Stage of Fools participant to participate in Madness.
Go-live: November 1, 2017
Author reveal: November 5, 2017

As promised, here is the feedback post, intended for you to voice anything good or bad about your experience of the exchange and suggest what I can improve for next time. I am particularly interested in hearing any opinions about:

1. Timing. Did the time of year that I picked for this work for people? I somewhat randomly chose it so that it was between the Histories ficathon and Yuletide and wouldn't overlap with either. However, we hit NaNo planning time with the end date. Any opinions on this? Is there an alternative time of year that you'd like to suggest for next time?

2. Reveal & anon period. Again, my executive decision was to not have an anon period due to the small size of the exchange and the attached assumption that you'd be able to tell who wrote what anyway. Was that a sensible thing? Or would people prefer an anon period next time? If so how long?

3. Minimum word count. Was 1,000 words okay? Would you prefer a smaller word minimum so it's less of a commitment?

4. Mechanism of signing up and matching. I tried to make it so that the sign-up form was more or less in letter format but would you like a letters post in addition to the sign-up form? Anything about the sign-up that chould change, for example would it be useful to have a mandatory field for preferred characters/pairings in addition to requested play?

5. Medium. This time around this was a fic-only exchange. How do people feel about opening it up to other types of fanworks?


I have already had some feedback to suggest that we need a "find a beta" post next time so that is one thing that I will provide next time!

All fics are in! Thank you so much everyone for submitting on time.

This means now is MADNESS TIME! Under the cut are all prompts sorted by requester's AO3 name. Pick one or more, write a story of any length, post to the collection. For a reminder about how to post please see this post.

( All prompts )

The deadline is tonight. As a few fics are still missing, this is just to say, if you need an extension please let me know and I can shift the deadline forward a few days.

Once all stories are in I'll post all prompts here so people can write treats.

Hello lovely groundlings! I hope you are all well on the way with writing your stories for people, or at least have an idea about what you want to do and just need to find time to transfer it from your head to the page.

This might also be the time where people get ready to post their stories. Currently the deadline is:


OCTOBER 21, 2016, 23.59 GMT. What time is that for me?


So I thought it would be good to make a reminder post about how to do it. I've included screenshots so am putting this under a cut for length. I've also remembered to set the collection to "open" and "unrevealed" so people can post their fics, and they won't be seen by anyone except me until the reveal.

( How to post to Stage of Fools 2016 )

I hope this makes sense, and enables you to post your fics. If you have any technical trouble with doing this, or if you are running a bit behind schedule and would like an extension, please let me know.

The sign-up form is now live!

Please GO HERE TO SIGN UP. Sign-ups will close on SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, at 23.59 UK time.

What time is that for me?

Countdown timer

If you have any questions please comment on this post or PM me.

If you would like to press-gang your friends into joining promote the exchange, you can use this handy graphic. Just copy and paste the html code from the text box underneath it.


<a href="http://stageoffools.dreamwidth.org"><img src="http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/lexigent/76586369/1245/1245_600.jpg" alt="" title=""></a>

I'm planning on opening sign-ups on Saturday, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to make a social/chatter post for challenge participants and those who are thinking of participating. I'm including a questions thread so if you have questions about the exchange you can ask there. I may update the Rules post as a result to clarify some stuff, but I doubt anything *major* will change.

Please feel free to introduce yourself in the comments! And/or tell us about your favourite Shakespeare play, or that great (or awful) production of a play that you saw recently, squee about your Shakespearean OTP/3/x... Please remember to be nice to one another: if you wouldn't say it to someone's face, maybe don't say it.