Mod Post: Happier Times Remembered - Old School in the Here and Now

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

{waves hi to everybody}

Smallville might be on it's 10th and final season on tv, but to many of us, the first few seasons were really the best. Clark was young and learning, Lex wanted to be good and reject his father's learnings, and the Clex made us sit up and take notice. ^^

When the awesome and wonderful Hils first started this comm six years ago, it was an interactive comm based around the early seasons of Smallville, and the Clexiness there within. There were episode discussions, fiction contests, comment fics, and more, in addition to being open to the community to post announcements about any Old School fic, icons, or such.

We're going to hopefully return to some of that early interactiveness, if you all want to. :) I do know that not everybody likes meta, or writes fic, or makes art, but we do all like the Clex, so I want to try and find things that we can all do together, and have fun with it. To that end, a poll! What would you like to do?

[Poll #1705959]

Comments

[ladydreamer.livejournal.com]

*whispers* What are drabble trees and bunny farms?

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

Humm, yes, a bit of explanation about the items is probably in order. Especially since I just invented one of them. ;D

Episode discussions
- Put an episode up with summary, caps, and a poll, and let people discuss it. Not necessarily in order shown.

Character celebrations
- Put up a post about a character, some caps, a poll, and let people fandom to the character - fic, art, discussion, general glee

Meta posts
- Discussions about the show and thoughts upon the show, characters, plots, etc. Meta posts will have specific topics and a set of thinking bullets to get us started.

Challenges (fic, art, ... other - not to overlap with other comms!)
- Challenges can be done in different ways, but generally they're where a topic or set of topics is chosen and people are sent off within a proscribed time frame to create fandom pieces around the topic (fic, art, etc). In some challenges, such as icon challenges, voting is then held afterwards for prizes for the winners (banners). ((No, we won't be doing voting on any fic challenges! o.o))

Caption contests
- A screenshot is posted and people get to make up what the characters are saying in it. Usually a vote is held afterwards for the best caption.

Fandom Recs (around themes)
- Post a theme and people will then comment with their favorite fanworks based around that theme ("socks" "romance" "coffee")

Puzzles (jigsaw, hangman, crossword... etc)
- There are places online where we can submit our own versions of pictures and items to make clexy games. Like the mod puts in a screenshot or a photomanip to a puzzle place, the online breaks it up, and then people can reassemble it. Silly fun items. :) Possibly with rewards for people who finish them.

Comment memes
- A comment fic set where people submit prompts to the post and authors pick prompts and respond with short comment fics on them.

Drabble Trees
- A fic post where one person starts the story in 100-500 words, the next person replies with a continuation of the story, somebody replies to that one... and pretty soon there's a big tree of a story that rambles and changes from what it started as and hopefully everybody had fun.

Bunny Farms
- I just invented that. ;p It's a place where bunnies can be dropped off, petted, fed, given mutating vitamins, and otherwise kept happy until somebody adopts them. In a way, it's a little like a comment meme, but bunnies can be bigger than comments if they get adopted as such. Also, bunnies duplicate, so more than one person can take a bunny home.

Clex Bingo Cards
- a bingo card set based on old school prompts. People fic/art/other based on each of the prompts in the squares. No time limit, just plain fun. ^^ Rewards for bingos (five stories in a line on the bingo card).

Fan Interviews
- sets of questions to fans about why you like clex, what brought you into the fandom, what's your favorite fic, your favorite episode, etc. Can either be done to specific BNF, or put out as general question for all (which can also be a friending meme) - there's different ways it can go.

Random Polls
- pretty much exactly what it says. ;D Periodic polls with clexy questions (who tops?) that all can participate in with a click of the button. Sometimes serious, sometimes silly.

[jlvsclrk.livejournal.com]

I'll be glad to help with puzzles.

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! I'd be happy to have your help on them. ^^

[orlidepp.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see some more fic challenges. I really enjoyed the Clexman Valentine's celebration. However, I'm a bit confused by the way it was proposed on the post. I don't think it would be fair not to allow the writers and artists to share their work with other comms. The actual challenges, no, but the challenge results, even if just after the challenge closes, yes!

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

I meant we wouldn't overlap our challenges if another one was already going on in another clex comm. So no valentines challenges that would take away from clexmas, no themes similar to what clff has out at the moment, etc. We don't want to take away resources from another comm - there aren't enough writers to go around in our fandom.

The reason I made this clarification was because last Christmas there were four separate Christmas challenges all going on at the same time. A few people were able to do more than one... but most of us just picked one and the other three didn't get any Clex fics.

Most certainly the results can be posted and promoted elsewhere!

[orlidepp.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I forgot to say that that makes total sense. I'm all for it and surely wouldn't want to distract fans from any other inspiring avenue. Thanks again for clarifying, and also for taking the reins and steering us to more great Clex!

[orlidepp.livejournal.com]

After reading the comments, I wanted to add that I'm not really interested in fic challenges where prizes would be rewarded. I've learned the hard way that that's a good way to kill an otherwise excellent comm.

I would like to add, also, that I'm interested in the puzzles, but I don't know if I'd have the time to participate in them, thus my lack of marking them on the actual poll.

Looking forward to some more Clex activity! :-)

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

The comment said specifically icon challenges. I didn't mean to imply fic challenges would be treated similarly. Icon challenges normally have voting; fic challenges almost never do.

The puzzles are usually simple. We might toss out a few harder ones, but generally they can be completed in less than 10 minutes - just something fun and silly to do.

[orlidepp.livejournal.com]

Thanks for clarifying. I'll be looking forward to the fic challenges then, and also the puzzles. :-)

Sorry if I've been a pain, but I really didn't want to see this comm go the way another I used to love went. They started with voting on the icons, and then voting just seemed to take over the whole community and the fun and original love for the fandom kind of got sucked out. I just don't want that to happen to this comm.

Too often, when a fandom becomes old or moves away from the pairing in question, the fans for that pairing start to fall off, and too often, with all fandoms/pairings, the majority of the fans seem a bit, er, noob even if they're not, to try to put it in a nice way. The Clex fans here on LJ definitely have not had that happen to us yet. Somehow, we've managed to maintain semi-activity, good writers, and intelligent conversations, and I'm definitely enjoying getting to be a part of all of this. Looking forward to more good Clex things to come! :-)

I'd partake in the fic rec, but I can't seem to think of any Clex stories involving food other than one I wrote myself and am loathe to rec myself. Regardless, it's great to have some more Clex activity, and I look forward to finding some new, good stories to enjoy!

[lexalicious70.livejournal.com]

Honestly? This is the only SV community I stayed a member of because I love it so much! Welcome as mod, and I hope some of these ideas come to light.

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :) Old School is just such a wonderful idea... I really love the comm too, which is why I volunteered. I'm glad you're here and staying on! ^_^

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

BTW... what's a Clex Macro? :)

[lexalicious70.livejournal.com]

Forgive my late reply. A macro is like an LOLcat picture. I ran a comm briefly called LOLville that had SV macro. They can be really fun to caption.

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

Ah yes! :) Those sound great. I'll definitely add them to the list, thank you.

[ciaan]

I think all those ideas sound like fun, though obviously not running all of them at once. :) This is one of my top 3 SV comms and it would be nice to have some interactive stuff. (Even though I often suck at being around at the right time for things.)

I do have to say that I don't like contests, though; I wouldn't really want to enter anything with voting and prizes. It's less fun because then people lose. Games like hangman are different, but I don't want to write for a contest.

[seagull2eagle.livejournal.com]

Thank you! LOL, no, not all at once. That's mostly why the poll - I wanted to see what things struck people as more interesting so we can get going with something everybody wants.

Icons are really the only ones that traditionally vote. Fic challanges almost never have voting and I wasn't suggesting they would. I agree about winners and losers and I would never, for instance, run or participate in a "last icon standing" challenge or similar where people vote on the worst (I think that's kindof rude, personally). I've clarified that a bit in the comment section.

With the game prizes, those are more 'participation' prizes as encouragement to submit the entries, rather than who got more (if someone finishes a puzzle, they finish it - there's no better way to finish it or not). Since we're from all over the world, I wouldn't do a 'timed' game for "first response wins"... though if we do a live bingo game (not the fic cards), that would necessarily have to be. We'd announce the schedule ahead of time on something like that.

They're all ideas. We'll see what works for this comm. :)

[sheliana.livejournal.com]

Too bad I can't contribute anything of value to this community because I'm not a creative person, but I have to say I'd LOVE it if this wonderful comm became more active! I've been in SV fandom for less than two years, and my love for CLex is still very intense.:) I think episodes dicussions (early seasons episodes, of course), fic recs and character celebrations are my favorite options of the poll, although I'd love this comm to have absolutely everything!:) Smallville is and always will be about its first few seasons and the magic of CLex to me, and it would be so cool to talk about it with all of you!