2022 Posting Guidelines

[hetbang_mod]

(Date Claiming will open on Saturday, October 1st at 12PM (Noon) (Pacific Time/UTC-6). The DreamWidth post is the only one that will be unlocked for comments; the LiveJournal post will be updated with claims for reference only, but it will not be unlocked for comments to avoid confusion.)

Hello everyone! Here are the HetBang 2022 posting guidelines!

Remember to be in contact with your author/fanworker partners and discuss when the best date to post will be for everyone! Date Claiming is first come, first served, so please reach out to your group and start discussing when would be the best time for everyone to post.

Posting Date Claims will open October 1st and run through October 15th. Posting will begin October 16th and run through November 19th. November 20th-30th will be the Amnesty Period, which is for any author or fanworker to post their work, if they missed their posting date!


General Posting Information

Works must not be posted before October 16th. This includes authors that choose to do chaptered posting. Chaptered Posting Guidelines. Works can be drafted before October 16th, so long as they are not posted. Please also note that Ao3 automatically deletes unposted drafts after 30 days.

All stories must be posted to The Het Big Bang 2022 Ao3 Collection. This is so mods can check works off!

All accompanying fanworks must either be posted to Ao3 and added to The Het Big Bang 2022 Ao3 Collection, OR linked/embedded in the story. Fanworks will need to be hosted off-site and then linked/embedded on Ao3. See Fanworker Posting Guidelines for more information.

Chaptered posting is allowed. Chaptered Posting Guidelines

Once your work has been posted to Ao3 and added to the The Het Big Bang 2022 Ao3 Collection, you’re free to post your stories and fanworks wherever else you want to!

You can gift your work to your author/fanworker partner, if you have one, but this is optional. You can also gift your work to anyone else you wish! To gift a work, find “Gift this work to” in the “Associations” section and fill out their Ao3 username.

If you do not have an Ao3 already, please contact us ASAP!!! We have some invites, so if you need an account, please let us know so you can get one right away! Send a DM to LuciferxDamien or Jesterlady on Discord, or an email to thehetbigbang@gmail.com.

Here is this year’s Ao3 Collection:
The Het Big Bang 2022 Ao3 Collection


Chaptered Posting Guidelines

Starting this year, chaptered posting is allowed. Authors can start posting their works on October 16th, and they have until their chosen posting date to have their work posted in its entirety. Posting before Sunday, October 16th is not allowed. Authors choosing to post chapters separately do not need to claim additional dates, just a final posting date when they intend to post their last chapter. Authors do not need to inform mods of their intended posting schedule, mods will only be checking for completed works based on the date claims.

Example:
Author A has 4 chapters to post and wants to update their fic twice a week. Author A will need to select a final posting date about 2 weeks after posting begins. Author A wants to post chapter updates Sundays and Wednesdays, and starts posting their story October 16th, followed by the 19th and 23rd. October 26th is the date they need to claim and is the date that mods will be checking their work for completion.

Fanworks can be coordinated with their posted chapter, even if that falls before the chosen posting date. Mods will only be checking that fanworks have been posted based on the date claims.

Example:
Fanworker A’s author has chosen to do chaptered posting and the fanwork they created correlates with chapter 3 out of 4 chapters. Fanworker A can post their fanwork when their author posts chapter 3 of their work.


Author Posting Guidelines

All stories must be posted to The Het Big Bang 2022 Ao3 Collection. This is so mods can check works off!

Stories must be beta read. If you do not have a beta reader already, you can check out het_banghelp, which has a post set up for beta readers and authors seeking a beta. The HetBang Discord Server has a channel set up for finding a beta reader. There's also betaplease on DW, and for LJ, find_me_a_beta and beta_search.

Stories must be completed and posted by the end of the Amnesty Period, November 30th, in order to count as completed. If you’re working with a fanworker, posting an incomplete work can result in consequences. Solo Authors can still drop out at any time, even on November 30th.

If you’re working with a fanworker, try to coordinate a time of day to post. Mods do not expect for stories and fanworks to be posted at the same time, however!

If you're an author that has never used Ao3 before, here is Ao3's guide to posting on the Archive! Please reach out to the mods as well if you require help!

To post, go to The Het Big Bang 2022 Ao3 Collection, and click on “Post to Collection”. From there, fill out the form with your work, and make sure the “Post to Collections / Challenges” section has “TheHetBigBang2022”. If your work isn’t in the collection, we can’t approve it! You can also post regularly, from the top of the screen and input “TheHetBigBang2022” (without quotes) into “Post to Collections / Challenges” and it will appear in the collection. Once you have everything filled out the way you want, select “Preview”. In the preview window, make sure everything is formatted how you want, and then select “Post” at the bottom!

Embedding Fanworks:
If you and your fanworker partner would like to embed the fanwork directly into the story, Ao3’s instructions are here, Fanworker Posting Guidelines.


Fanworker Posting Guidelines

All accompanying fanworks must either be posted to Ao3 and added to The Het Big Bang 2022 Ao3 Collection, OR linked/embedded in the story. Ao3 does not currently have a way to directly upload anything other than text to the site. This means that fanworks need to be hosted on another site and embedded on Ao3.

Fanworkers can choose to embed their work into the author’s story only, without creating their own post, or they can choose to just make their own post, or both embed their fanwork into the story and create their own Ao3. We recommend fanworkers make their own post, so they get the attention they deserve as well!

Fanworks can be coordinated with their posted chapter, even if that falls before the chosen posting date. Mods will only be checking that fanworks have been posted based on the date claims. See Chaptered Posting Guidelines for more information.

If you're a fanworker that has never posted to Ao3 before, here's a quick guide to follow! We recommend using the HTML editor, not the Rich Text editor, as it has a tendency to mess things up. The Ao3 links below have the HTML code required to post and instructions on how to use it. If you need help with HTML, please reach out and mods will assist you!

Images, gif sets, etc.:
We recommend reading through both of these links, as they contain different information.
Posting Images to Ao3 with HTML
Embedding Images on Ao3
Make sure the url has a file extension, such as .jpg, .png, .gif, etc! Without that, the image will not display. Please reach out to us if you need help with this!

Video, audio, etc.:
Podfic, vids, and fanmixes can also be embedded to Ao3! For more information on how to do that, and what sites are whitelisted to embed from on Ao3, follow the links below:
Ao3 Whitelisted Hostsites
How to Post a video
How to Post Audio files, Podfic, or a Playlist

Please reach out to mods if you need help with any of this!


If you have any questions or concerns, here is the Page-A Mod Post. You can also contact the mods via email, thehetbigbang@gmail.com, or by messaging LuciferxDamien or Jesterlady on the HetBang Discord server.