Fanstuck: Drone Season with Bean

So if that's not your thing , feel free to skip or listen And learn about a really fun big swap that sign up start this Sunday . As of releasing the episode not if you're listening to the future , i mean eventually , maybe one day again , it will be open on Sunday in the future , but unlikely .

Anyway , just wanted to give you a warning because I forgot to do that in the actual episode . Thank you to my editor for pointing that out . Ok , bye , enjoy the show . Hello and welcome back to Live Laugh Stuck . I am Jackie , aka Jax , and I am here to talk about drone season , and here to help me talk about it is Bean .

It is hosted on Archive of our own , but while obviously a lot of that composes fan fiction , it is basically a secret Santa exchange sans the Christmas part for homestuck art writing I think we've had gifts and things like that basically any theoretically any type of content , but specifically porn , Yeah .

They were , and I guess still are , a really big name in the homestuck fandom . They , i believe , stepped down and then it was restarted in 2018 by Lizardlicks and thescyfychannel , and I participated that first year . I may have participated an additional year And then I hopped on to the mod team And here we are in 2023 .

So it's been interesting as both a participant and a moderator to see it kind of I wouldn't say dwindle . Yeah , i think that's maybe a mean word , but you know it kind of has settled that down as Homestuck , you know , is settling into a less current fandom , i guess . But no , i love it .

I obviously I love the event , i love the things that it creates , but no , i am really glad and really proud to be part of this event . That you know was something that I loved , you know , in my formative years as a Homestuck fan and now can kind of help orchestrate for other people as well .

But so , basically , how it works with drone season is you hop on archive of our own , you write up some prompts for things that you would like to see .

So it may be like Oh , you know this character and that character doing Sex with this sort of kink involved , or it might be you know this character and that character You know just doing whatever , i don't care . Or it might be like oh , i have this really cool a you . I have all this world building planned out .

I would love to see something in that setting . So , essentially , whatever you want prompt , wise , ideally erotic . And then you also write hey , i am willing to create content Involving these characters . I can do art , i can do writing . Please do not match me with things with these kinks in them . I will happily write these other kinks .

And then All of that well , first it goes into a o3's . It has like a system to match people . Essentially it'll say okay , this person said they'll write John and Dave and this person wants John and Dave in one of their prompts . So boom , they are now matched as a pair .

But that does not usually work super well , so we then have to go in by hand and basically hand match everybody you know to to the best degree possible . And then on Prompt release day you get an email saying hey , here's your , your , you know , secret Santa giftee .

Basically , you get all their prompts , you get to see them , you get to pick one to either write for , draw for whatever , and then that thing that you create gets gifted to the person secretly and anonymously at first , and it's great and it's fun and everybody has a good time , while the matchmaking process is Stressful and obnoxious .

It is really fun too , because you get to kind of put all the puzzle pieces together and say , okay , this person doesn't like that character , but this person yeah , so it's . It's a whole big process . We have this massive Excel spreadsheet that we use every year . So that is both my favorite and least favorite part , i guess . But no , i do .

I mean people have written like I don't know if it's gotten to novel point yet . But it is . we've literally had some novellas written in the space of a month for transseason . I And that kind of stuff , just beautiful art and just like really creative , heartfelt things of all types that people create for no , i mean for no reason .

It's literally just like hey , you know , there's this person on the other end of the internet who wants something and I'm going to custom make them present because I want to Like that's a really beautiful thing , even if it is about , like you know , penises and vaginas .

So , just like , whenever all the authors got revealed , i just got like six notifications in my inbox because I'm subscribed to her .

If you have not checked other stuff , you should . They are a fucking phenomenal writer . I've gotten matched with them I think six times And I have not guessed correctly once .

I am not as fluent in all the writers as I should be or as I would like to be , i should say But like people also aren't fluent in my writing , especially because I did the paranoid make and all AO3 account a couple of years ago And so now I just have to deal with having two AO3 accounts So I don't have nearly as much writing on the one I use for

drone season . So it's just like yeah , try to guess me bitch . Yeah , yeah , yeah . So you said this was like way . Earlier I think you said like preferably erotic to people . Try to submit prompts or fix that . Don't follow the drone season sort of like theme .

They're just kind of here along for the ride .

It can be hard to address because it's it's some , you know , excited , you know , bright eyed , bushy tailed person being like , hey , i'd love to see these two people hanging out at the beach . I mean , you have to be like they actually need to be having sex .

Yeah , but no that that actually has happened more times than I can necessarily remember , but like enough that we had to be like explicitly this is for porn , it needs to have porn essentially .

But it also like , on the flip side , it might be oh man , this person they maybe have like very specific characters , they might have kinks that not a lot of people are comfortable with and you're going to have to kind of or somebody has to be like all right , well , this isn't going to fit any other way .

I will step up with that And I do not want to make it out like that's some kind of punishment or anything , but it is . There are benefits and responsibilities to participating in a thing and kind of matching yourself , if that makes sense .

what's funny is I've had folks get matched with me and not realize that I was one of the mods , so they'll pop open a mod chat and be like Hi , i'm here to , you know , ask being some like very confidential questions about his prompts , and I have to just not look And , like you know , we have ways of handling that .

like we will , like one of the other months , be like Hey , don't fucking look in there for his hot sec . But they were like I had answered the chat and they were like Hi , i'm here to , i'm here to ask questions for being , and I'm like never heard of him . Bye .

But I just I try to forget And I am pleasantly surprised , But I also have a bad memory , so that works out for me . Yeah , but yeah no in general , like because you know when , when the , the fills are finished , every they are all hand checked by a mod .

Yeah , we make damn sure that the person you know does not see their fill , that if we have questions or concerns that we need to recheck the person about , you know the , the , the mod whose fill it is does not see them . Like we , we make sure that it's all very secret in a fun way .

like . I recommended my gift or their own pick at one point .

But I was like , yeah they , this person has this headcanon about , like Bretton and porous , like Oh my God , you're going to love it , and they play it off very well . And then I say it's like they're the only fucking person who would write , but whatever .

So basically , a pinch header is , if you know about sports which not a lot of queers do , i don't either A pinch header is somebody , a kind , wonderful , selfless soul who volunteers to essentially create a fill for somebody and not get anything in return .

And this becomes necessary if and this always happens for whatever reason somebody's like hey , i know I signed up for this , but you know , like my , you know I'm having a family emergency , or my work has been so crazy for the past month I have not had any time to sit down , or I have a final that I have to do And we do .

We try to schedule it before college starts , just so folks don't have to worry about that . But either way , somebody is like hey , i am so sorry , i'm not going to be able to finish my fill , i need to drop out . And we're like okay , cool , as long as you do it before the dropout deadline .

If not , then we will have to put you , you , on the list of people who dropped out after the dropout deadline , but normally it's fine At that point , you know . So the person who that person was supposed to gift now is without a gift . So they are like what the heck ? Well , they don't know yet Their prompts .

You know the prompts that were supposed to be filled by the person that get dropped out , get sent to all of the pinch hitters who have their own little channel in the Discord And we're like , hey , here are these prompts . If even one of them is appealing to you , you pinch hitters hop on it and the personal message and say , hey , i'm happy to take this .

And essentially , yeah , they just create a thick or an art or something for this person just because , just because they want it to . And they do it all behind the scenes .

You know , the person who got dropped out on never has to know about it And it's really , you know , it's a wonderful and generous act And also a great way to participate if , like me , you missed the deadline to sign up , but you still want to kind of , you know , dip your toe in .

So the other nice thing is it is completely optional , in that you can sign up for a pinch hitter and then just look at all the prompts and go yeah , no . And just kind of sit in there Like it is solely voluntary as to who takes a pinch hit . whether a given person takes any like it is all up to you .

So yeah , if you want to , if you want the option of participating like that , it is a really good sort of low stakes option .

but you know , if I could just look and see , like oh , maybe not , then yeah , i might actually sign up this year depending on how this year goes , it's been , it's been a year . I understand , yeah , but yeah , no , talk about not knowing sports .

I thought it was pitch hitter because , like I knew , it was like a sports thing , like a baseball thing , right , yeah , but I guess so my brain's like baseball , you know pitch hitter .

Yeah , yeah , it's , it's good stuff . Some of my , some of my here are fixed . I've definitely been made during drone season .

You can go back and see all the prompts and and also , like I mean and you may shouldn't be saying this , cause I'm the drone season person but you know , like it doesn't even have to be a gift , like you can just use it as inspiration , but obviously the person will be very happy if you do .

But yeah , it's , it's a really lovely way to practice writing for someone else , but a little easier . And I will say also , like for myself , i've , i've been a fanfic writer for a hot second . I don't know that I've written a single fanfic that was not for someone else easily Yeah .

Like 90% of my published fix , of which I'm very proud , are almost all through drone season and poly swap . So for me it is not only a great way to motivate me to write , it's like the way to motivate me to write .

We always try to make it a full month of just writing time , or creation time , i guess , and for me it's like , oh sweet , i have a month and then I write an outline and then forget about it for three weeks .

So July 2nd through the 18th is regular signups . September 2nd is the deadline to sign up as a pinch hitter , so that's a good two months extra And the collection opens on September 9th . The authors are revealed September 16th and the treat authors are revealed September 19th .

I am terrible with time , So it's more than that . That's just the month deadline is your deadline to default , So to quit , basically . So if you do it before that deadline , you're fine , no penalty . But if you do it last minute which again we understand , that stuff happens .

But like we would appreciate y'all letting us know sooner rather than later so that we can set up a pinch hitter and so on and so forth .

Because if we can't get a pinch hitter together , it means that the mods have to bang out a fanfic about God knows what , sometimes literally in the wee hours of the morning , which we have done And we'll do it again if we have to , but like we would prefer to not have to do that if we can help .

Yeah , it is a week of me just having to keep a secret , even more than I was keeping a secret before .

But if I don't know which is their stuff , i'm just going to look at the stuff that you know intrigues me , the chips that I like , and I've come across some some really lovely stuff from people that I , you know , maybe had no idea existed or oh my God , i didn't know they drew . That's so crazy .

So , yeah , it's a very what's the word like , i guess a very like sort of free for all kind of like unbiased way to enjoy stuff .

And it is just so nice , like , if you just need like . obviously we don't write for the validation , but sometimes we write for the validation .

but if it's to the point where you're saying , okay , i want you know rows to have this length hair , this color hair , this body type , i want them to do this , that and the other thing in exactly this way .

That's not super cool because it may be that your , your filler really doesn't like you know that particular act or body type , you know whatever people have references . But it's also kind of a dick move because they .

The other thing is , like you know you might be getting writing art , music , like you have no idea what the format's going to be , so being like okay , so this has to happen and that has to happen . It's like and I'm drawing one image , i can't fit all that in there .

So , yeah , we try to help people , you know , be as specific as they need to be for it to be , you know , comfortable and enjoyable , but also not just fucking going in there and being like , okay , so somebody's going to be making me something for free , i'm going to take full advantage that , like no , you need to allow some room for creativity as well .

It's getting rarer to see swaps like this and really events like this in general , as the internet is becoming a little less friendly to erotic content .

So , as a person who enjoys that and also cares about it , like , it makes me happy that this is still going strong and , you know , has so many people who you know really do enjoy it and get something out of it .

Do you have anything to promo of your own ? Like , we'll have all the links to drone season and everything in the the show notes , but do you have , like , a Twitter or anything you want to promote ? Honestly , not really . I mean , my tumbler is just memes .