AvaTrice Big Bang

OCS: THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I HAVE EVER HEARD OF AN EVENT LIKE THIS. CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT IT IS TO PEOPLE NOT IN THE WRITING COMMUNITY?

A Big Bang has been a type of fandom event since 2005. They’re a great way to encourage collaboration between creators in a fandom as it helps pair up a writer and an artist to create a story based on the same prompt. The way the event will run is writers will have to submit a summary of the story they plan to create and then the summaries will all be assigned a number and artists will be given a booklet with all the different summaries. They’ll have a week to look over them all and pick their favourites and then the claims form will open, this is probably one of the most exciting parts of the event as all the artists will be rushing to submit their form so that they hopefully get one of their top 5 picks. None of the artists will know who wrote what summaries, so it eliminates any potential bias towards more popular creators in the fandom as well.

For the AvaTrice Big Bang, one of our mods came up with the idea that we should incorporate social media AUs instead of just fanfiction into the event, given how popular they are within the fandom as well, which I think has only been done in one or two Big Bangs in the past, so it was interesting trying to adapt the rules I had already decided on to help incorporate those incredible writers as well.

LINK TO ANY PREVIOUS BIG BANG PROJECTS AS AN EXAMPLE?

I am currently participating as a writer in the Bumbleby Big Bang for the RWBY fandom, so I’ll share the information for that! Most of it is found on their tumblr page: https://bumblebybigbang.tumblr.com/ but they also have a twitter as well: https://twitter.com/bumblebybigbang. It was also the big bang that I reached out to the mods for advice for running my own one as it’s been running for three years (with a 1 year gap last year) now so they’ve had a lot of experience running things.

OCS: WHERE WILL THE PROJECT BE POSTED?

That’s ultimately up to whoever is posting their work. There’s no restriction on where you post your work as to not limit people who might not want to post their work on certain sites. Wherever you post though, we’ll be sure that everything will be able to be found on our social media. We have plans to also make a collection for fanfiction posted on ao3, and are looking into the best ways to have a way where you can view literally everything that everyone posted with links to who posted what on each day of posting and where you can find it all!

OCS: NAME/TWITTER HANDLE?

Official Account: Twitter @AvaTriceBigBang and Tumblr @avatricebigbang

My name is Erin and I’m @SapphicSnow_ on Twitter or @sapphicneige on Tumblr (so I also go by Snow or Neige if people use them).

OCS: WILL YOU TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF?

It’s hard to know what to say xD. I’m 26 and I live in England. I am a big fan of a lot of nerdy stuff, from TCGs like Pokémon and Magic, TTRPGs like DnD, to video games, and all sorts of other things. My favourite shows other than Warrior Nun are Arcane and RWBY, I’m fairly active, work at a gaming cafe, love nature (particularly water). I also enjoy cosplay, but it’s been a while since I last did some myself. I used to play a bunch of video games, but I’ve just had less and less time for it as I got older. My favourites are Life is Strange: True Colors, Pokémon Rejuvenation, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, Gnosia, and Persona 5, so that should give you a good idea of what I play… the only one I actively play currently though is Honkai: Star Rail.

OCS: HOW DID YOU GET INTO WRITING?

It’s hard to remember a time I wasn’t into writing to be honest. I didn’t grow up with any technology so I’ve been reading from a very young age. Throughout my life, I’ve always been experiencing stories in one way or another.

I started writing fanfiction in 2017 when I was at university. My girlfriend at the time was writing for the Haikyuu and Yuri on Ice Fandoms and I had been planning an original novel for a while, but decided to just jump into fanfiction for a bit… and it turned out to be a little more than a bit. I’ve had a few breaks over the years, but since the end of 2021, after reading some of the stories that I view as some of my favourite fanfiction of all time, I started to really get into it, and have been heavily invested in it ever since.

OCS: WHERE CAN PEOPLE FIND YOUR STORIES?

All my work can be found at Archive of Our Own

OCS: IT SEEMS SO ORGANIZED WITH THE WEBSITE, RULES AND EXPLANATIONS. HAVE YOU HOSTED AN EVENT BEFORE OR HAVE A GROUP HELPING YOU?

I’ve never actually run a Big Bang before, however back when I was a part of the Love Live fandom I did run a Ship Week, where people post fics for a certain ship each day for a week and have different prompts to choose from for each day.

I definitely have had help throughout this process though. Firstly, I have an amazing team of mods that have helped me with figuring out a schedule, finalizing the rules, etc. Some of them are just going to be helping with the discord server when it becomes public and helping manage that. I also am currently participating in the Bumbleby Big Bang for the RWBY fandom. One of my friends is a moderator of the event. She and the admin of the event both helped me get an idea of what I’d need to do to actually get this whole thing started and then I also have a good friend in the fandom who has been a massive help with pushing me to actually get everything started, helping me reach out to people to help with stuff, and also like just being an excellent motivator into pushing me to doing this. There are other people who have helped out with stuff like making it easier to pair everyone up once the artist claims happens, and so on.

OCS: DO YOU HAVE A PROJECTED GOAL OF WRITERS AND ARTISTS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE PARTICIPATE?

No, I specifically went into this being like “I want anyone who wants to sign up to do so, and I’m not going to expect X or Y to join.” I know a lot of people have a lot of commitments, and some people are just way too busy to actually commit to an event like this so I am absolutely fine if people decide that they’re not able to participate.

OCS: HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING ON THIS IDEA? HOW MANY HOURS HAVE YOU PUT INTO THE PROJECT SO FAR?

I’ve been actively working on it heavily ever since the announcement that the show got renewed for S3. It basically served as the catalyst that pushed me to really heavily throw everything I could at this project. Before that, I had had the idea in my head for about a month or so, and had been slowly working on things here and there, but I was still unsure if I was actually going to follow through with it.

As for how many hours I’ve put in… Just on my own… probably nearing like 100-150 at the moment… but it’s really hard to actually say. Time just kind of… flies past whenever I’m working on it.

OCS: I know that @bleissu did the art for the project. was it a collaboration?

Bleissu is one of the mods for the event! I gave her some idea of what I was after for the initial art, but I did leave it mostly up to her for what she wanted to draw exactly and I was blown away by how much she did and also how quickly she did it in. She’s an incredible artist and has been a big help with the event so far!

THE OCS NEWSLETTER LOVES FANART. FOR YOU AND THIS ADVENTURE, WHY IS THE ART SO IMPORTANT FOR THE STORY?

I also love fanart! I have always been amazed by the incredible fanart I’ve seen for any fandom I’ve been a part of and the dedication of artists to learn how to draw, paint, animate, or whatever other form their art takes.

But for this event specifically, I wouldn’t say it’s the art that’s so important for the story, and more the artist. From my own experience with these events as a writer having that artist there who is paired with you because they think the premise for your story is good is not only a motivational thing to get it done, but they’re there to bounce ideas off of, to help reshape something that could’ve just been good into something amazing. It’s the way the two different kinds of artists weave together, both creating something based on the same idea that is almost beautiful on its own.

OCS: WHAT MADE YOU TAKE ON A TASK THIS BIG IN THE WARRIOR NUN FANDOM?

To put it simply, I love this show, I love these characters, I love this fandom, and I wanted to do something to celebrate it.

We’ve already achieved so much, and in some ways I kinda feel like I could’ve done more to help with the fight to save the show, so now I’m trying to throw my all into this event because it deserves an event like this to just show how incredibly talented the writers and artists we have in the fandom are.

OCS: Personal reaction to the Trilogy news?

I am very excited to see what comes from it. There’s so much potential we can get with those movies and also the potential for spin-off movies revolving around characters like Mary, Lilith, or maybe even seeing more of Shannon would be so cool and I can’t wait to see what happens. I am obviously hoping we keep all the same cast, because I don’t know how they’d feel without the familiar faces, but I will definitely watch them no matter what.

I’m also really hoping for them to actually be released in theaters and not just on streaming sites because going to big meetups to watch the films would be so cool.

Ready to participate in the AvaTrice Big Bang? Sign up here