Misses Clause 2017: aka -- the Year we Remember to Post to Dreamwidth

[hauntedd]

Hi fellow Yuletiders! Noms close in less than 24 hours (or maybe they've already closed by the time this is approved?) and as we move into signups and writing and reading, freneticfloetry and I wanted to give a small reminder/invitation (ok honestly, it's a copy/paste job with minor edits... #efficiency) to participate in the Misses Clause Challenge*.

Now in its seventh year, the Misses Clause Challenge was created to promote the inclusion, expansion, and celebration of women in fanfiction. We'd like to challenge you all to think about the ways women are represented in fanworks, and write fic either centered on female characters or fic within a fandom with a rich and diverse cast of characters that includes valuable and important female voices.

Participation is easy! Initially, the challenge set out to include more female characters in fic using the Bechdel Test as a barometer. But honestly, plenty of sources can (and do) successfully pass without putting female characters anywhere near the forefront. So the general rule for participating in the Misses Clause Challenge is simple:

Write women.

That's it! Write women who are celebrated, who are unsung, who are the heroes of their own stories or the unfortunate victims of circumstance. Write women talking, fighting, saving the day, or just going about their business. Write women of all ages, shapes, sizes, races, creeds, sexual orientations, mental and physical abilities, or moral fiber. Write women, full stop.

Easy enough, right? So if you’re willing, and we hope you are…

· Write a Yuletide assignment or treat with one or more women as the focus. Femslash, female POV, ensemble fic, whatever works for you — as long as there's a female character front and center, your fic fulfills the challenge.
· Tag your finished fic with "Misses Clause Challenge".

There is still maybe time to nominate women, if you're so inclined. And there is definitely time to think about requesting prompts that feature female characters so that the letters post is full of options.

From there, search out those that request women, maybe bookmark one for later, or even start a treat. There's a lot of female characters nominated annually and a number of requests will coincide with that. Maybe one of the letters might start or keep the creative juices flowing.

And to all of those who have taken up the challenge, or who are considering doing so this year, I just want to say, on behalf of both myself and freneticfloetry, Thank You. We try to keep this very low key with absolutely no pressure to participate, and yet we're continually blown away by the support and the number of folks who take on the challenge as well as the types of awesome fic that you guys create year after year. So, thank you, again, for your participation, your openness to the challenge, your totally legitimate concerns and critiques. Here’s to Yuletide 2017, and another great wave of new Misses Clause stories.

Sincerely,

G (hauntedd) & Court (freneticfloetry)

*The challenge name was meant to be a punny play on the fic season and a bad movie, and was not meant to be exclusionary in any way. (And yes, the "e" was intentional.)

ps. If you're looking for femslash, also consider Femslash Festivus.

Comments

[rosehiptea]

It's been years since I wrote any extras. Maybe this year I'll be able to.

[hauntedd]

Awesome! :)

[chelseagirl]

Thanks for doing this! One of my noms was four female characters, and the other was three women and a trans man. *fingers crossed* that someone requests them . . .

[hauntedd]

Yeah, seriously, that's one of the gambles, but Yuletide tends to be pretty diverse in the variety of fandoms that accompany everyone's sign ups. I'll keep my fingers crossed for ya!

[maeve_of_winter]

I had so much fun writing for Misses Clause last year, and I can't wait to do it again this year! Thanks so much for running this challenge. :)

[hauntedd]

Oh, great! I'm so happy that you enjoyed yourself last year so much you'll tackle it again this year. It's our pleasure :)

[kore]

Thank you for reminding me!

[freneticfloetry]

No problem!

[paradisi]

Lots of fun with this last year :) looking forward to plotting out Mrs. Clause treats again...

[freneticfloetry]

That's always great to hear. :) Happy to have you again this year!

[aunt_zelda]

The fandom I was most concerned about nominating (it required an evidence post) has been approved, and within it I nominated three ladies. Hoping to attract some people with the promise of love, betrayal, and badass halfling wlw.

I got lucky last year, my assignment was all about a female character I was already very interested in exploring and I wrote a long fic (well, long for me that is). But if my assignment doesn't allow for a Misses Clause applicable fic, there's always treats! Last year I wrote 10 treats, I'm hoping to break my record this year.

[(Anonymous)]

"But if my assignment doesn't allow for a Misses Clause applicable fic"

I don't understand. If you only offer female characters, you can't get matched to someone who didn't request them.

[aunt_zelda]

I mean it depends on what the tagset looks like, but inevitably I'm gonna offer something that includes male characters. I could offer 9 fandoms of all female characters, and get matched on the one where I said "any characters" and it's someone who wants a specific male character centered fic. That's not a bad thing, just means my assignment won't be applicable for Misses Clause! Every year there's plenty of fandoms I offer that only have female characters nominated, or I only offer to write female characters. It's been a pretty even split on whether I get an assignment that's Misses Clause applicable or not.

Regardless of my assignment, I go through the letters and find the other fandoms I was interested in, and make a list of prompts that look like fun, and write treats as inspiration strikes. In the years when I don't have a Misses Clause applicable fic I try to write more treats that are Misses Clause applicable.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

Isn't the best solution here not to offer Any?

[aunt_zelda]

I mean if all the fandoms I'm interested in only have women nominated, then great, but it doesn't always work out that way for Yuletide. Misses Clause encourages nominating, offering, requesting, AND writing women: there's ways to participate at every step of Yuletide. If my assignment doesn't allow for women, then there's always plenty of treats to be written.

I don't understand why you're being pedantic about this. I've done Yuletide for 5 years now, I'm well aware of how it works.

[(Anonymous)]

Don't you have to offer a minimum of only four fandoms? I'm sure you can find four fandoms that will allow you to offer only female characters. Especially considering that I'm already 99% sure (just from looking at the confirmed nominations spreadsheet) that my offers will be 100% female characters.

[aunt_zelda]

Yeah, but I tend to offer a lot more than 4 fandoms.

I'm not sure why you keep harping on this? All I said was I'm excited to either get something assigned, or make sure to seek out more treats this year. There's no call for you to be pushy and rude and anonymous in response to someone who's getting hyped for Yuletide 2017.

[hauntedd]

That’s awesome, good luck!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi! Can there be men in the fic as well in order to apply for this?
I'm planning to write something with a female protagonist, so definitely centered around her, but the rest of the characters will be men (no other women).

[hauntedd]

Hi there! It's not a requirement that the fic is solely comprised of female characters, but that the story is about female characters.

So, without knowing what you're writing, I'd say the guideline is if the story is about the female character, it's totally fine. But if the story is more about the male characters and their relationship with the female character, then that'd probably fall outside the spirit of the challenge.

[(Anonymous)]

Ok, thanks! Then I think it applies :-)