A: A Big Bang is a fandom event where authors and artists commit to putting time and energy into a longer project: writers develop a very long fic and artists sign on to illustrate that work. Early Big Bangs were 50k or more. Ours has been running continuously since 2009 and our wordcount requirement remains 20k (technically novella-length). Of all the events run by Cap-IM, this is the event with the biggest time and creative investment. It’s a celebration of many, many words and the art inspired by those words.
Q: 20k. That is so many words. Am I ready for this?
A: As with any event, consider your available time and energy. We’re hopeful that the longer creation period and several new measures to support our fannish creators will make it easier for our participants! If you’re unsure of your readiness to work on a longer fic, ask yourself:
Are you comfortable writing 5k? 10k?
Do you think about plot structure and what it’s doing to your story?
Do you have an idea that demands a longer wordcount, or, alternately, an idea that is eating you alive from the inside out?
Do you want to work on one project for a really long time?
If you’ve never written before, or you’re brand new to Steve/Tony, or you find yourself (over)committing to a ton of fandom events during the year, consider first trying one of our more accessible, lower-pressure events: Bingo, HE, our Summer Event, or, if you're looking for a collaborative event, RBB.
Q: What if I don't think I can read an entire long fic, but I want to sign up as an artist?
A: Fundamentally, the purpose of the Big Bang is to celebrate long fic and to create art inspired by long fic. To celebrate long fic, artists must be willing to read long fic. You will be able to see the estimated length of fics at claims sign-up, and writers are required to submit 50% of their estimated total wordcount, complete. Fics vary in length: some are 20k, some are 80k. You will have 3-4 months to read the fic and collaborate with your writer on your art pieces. Do not overcommit; ask yourself kindly and honestly if you have the time/energy for the investment. Other Cap-IM events such as Reverse Big Bang or Holiday Exchange do not require reading investment.
Q: Can I do art AND fic in the same year?
A: 
No, you may participate once. Please choose your project intentionally. Artists may choose ONE writing project. Writers may submit ONE work OR, if they are writer-artists, may claim one writing project as an artist. Two different artists may claim one writing project in the event we open second claims. One artist cannot claim two different writing projects.
Q: How can I know if my art is "good enough" to sign up as an artist?
A: There is no metric for artistic skill required for the Big Bang. This is your task to approach bravely. You should be able to complete two thoughtful artistic pieces that you are proud of, in 3-4 months. If drawing/creating something from someone else's descriptions is difficult for you, this is not the project for you. We will host art-hangs where artists can ask for feedback on pieces/art resources/advice throughout the creation period. Remember: this is a voluntary, collaborative effort purely designed to bring you and your partner joy and accomplishment, NOT an unpaid commission.
Q: Must my fic be beta-read?
A: Yes. You must have someone who is not you review your fic before final posting! Beta readers make your work better and they make you a better writer. Even if this is just a cursory read-through done by someone whose eyeballs are not yours, it is required.
Q: I have an idea, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to make a novel.
A: Ultimately, only you can decide this. Here are some things to consider:
Have you written fic before? If yes, how long?
Have you written longfic before?
Do you regularly struggle to build fics out longer than 5-10k, OR do you regularly find yourself brainstorming concepts and premises that end up too long for other events, exchanges, and short fics?
Is there an idea already burning inside you, OR is it like pulling teeth to find an idea that you can round out into a longer fic?
Do you struggle to manage long-term projects, OR do you write like the wind?
What is the most you can sustainably write in a month?
Q: Can I use a sequel or derivative fanwork/remix?
A: Sequels are fine. If you want to write a remix-y work based on someone else’s fanwork, you must adhere to best derivative works practices and secure their permission or adhere to their transformative works statement. Your artist will not be required to read pre-existing works, so temper your expectations.
Q: I want to write a piece involving polyamory, is this allowed?
A: Yes; the only criteria is that the relationship between Steve and Tony must be central and not incidental in your fic. Some examples:
YES - Steve and Tony break up in chapter one; the rest of the fic is dedicated to their slow burn reconciliation.
NO - Steve/Tony/Rhodey are in a situationship. Steve appears only briefly and Tony’s relationship with Rhodey is central.
YES - Steve and Tony are friends and teammates but not romantically involved.
YES - Steve and Tony are in a queerplatonic relationship.
YES - Steve and Tony have an open relationship and are fucking Jan every other weekend.
YES - Steve is in a relationship with Sharon; the narrative focuses on his evolving sexuality and how Tony disrupts his compulsory heterosexual ways of living.
NO - Tony and Bucky are in a relationship; they share a tender moment in the wake of Steve’s death.
If you’re still not sure, ask yourself if your fic would be better placed in the Marvel Bang or in a SteveTony bang.
PARTICIPANT ELIGIBILITY
BASIC STAT REQUIREMENTS
To participate in this Big Bang, you must:
Be 18+ to play!
Have an AO3 account to post.
Have Discord to attend writer/artist chats and workshops.
Check your email regularly to get event updates and mod communications.
At the time of sign up, be ban-free. See [BANS] to see how to lift a ban more expeditiously.
Writers, you must be able to finish a 20k+ fic in the allotted time.
Artists, you must be able to complete at least 2 pieces thematically congruent with the writing project you have claimed in the allotted time.
Meet/respond to check-ins and be prepared to share your work with the mod team at intervals. It doesn’t have to be polished, it just has to exist.
Attend at least one discord hang during the BB creation period: writer chat/write-in for writers OR art-hang for artists.
We encourage brand new writers to try an event with a lower minimum word count before attempting the Big Bang. Check out HE for a super low word requirement or RBB to learn what it’s like to collaborate with another human.
COMMUNICATION AND COLLAB
This event is a collaborative, creative project. It requires you to communicate your thoughts and feelings about your ideas to another person. Every collaboration will look different, as every person has a different communication style and way of making art. At minimum, all writers and artists should communicate clearly and frequently with their partners during the important stages of the event, and let partners know if there will be times of radio silence. A successful collab can lead to long-lasting fannish friendship! Keep your mind and heart open and at barest minimum, keep lines of communication open.
Please keep in mind that:
Your partner is human
Your partner may not be able to meet all your expectations
Graciousness and kindness go a long way
Communication and compromise are key
Your partner is performing serious labor on this project and you should be prepared to meet and respect their effort
Your partner cannot read your mind
Fandom exists outside the framework of capitalism
Let your partner know immediately if you are struggling. Let the mods know if there is a breakdown in communication and we will gladly help you ease back on track.
WRITERS!
Your fic must feature the relationship between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in any universe(s). This now includes polyromantic, explicit, and queerplatonic/aromantic tales alike. Their romance or friendship must be central to the narrative and not incidental.
Your fic must be 20k or more at completion.
You must leave room in your fic for artistic interpretation and be willing to work WITH an artist on visual articulation of ideas; i.e; this is not a commission.
Your fic may not be created in whole or part with generative AI.
WIPs that have not been published in full elsewhere but small portions have been shared (ie. community chatter, snippets, or small excerpts) are encouraged! When returning to an old work, we ask only that writers evaluate their own motivations and make sure the story still lights a fire in you.
ALL-NEW, ALL-DIFFERENT SIGN-UPS
All writers who want to participate in this cycle must sign up during the Sign-Up Period. In previous years, participants could join at the last minute, prior to claims, as long as they had 10k of fic. This cycle, you must declare your intent from the start and commit yourself to spending time on your creative project over the course of months.
To sign-up as a writer, you must have:
One to three ideas, one of which you will develop into a 20k+ fic, OR
A WIP of any length that has previously lived on your hard drive/cloud. WIPs that have been partially published somewhere else as small snippets or fragments are also okay. Fics that are already half-published on AO3 are not okay.
Notes, an outline, or other brainstorming documentation to show us how you’re thinking about your idea as a larger, finished story. This can be as formal as a 5-page outline or as informal as a series of moodboards for each act/beat of your novel.
A roughest estimate of the length of your finished fic.
CLAIMS KIT
Claims are no longer anonymous/silence-coned. This is designed to afford participants more space to talk about their projects in community and generate/maintain creative momentum. Chat freely about your brainworms and progress.
To qualify for claims, your fic must 50% or more complete with the rest thoroughly outlined. Your artist needs this to assess whether or not your fic is a good match. This draft will be given to your artist upon the completion of the claims process.
All writers must fill out The Claims Kit, which will ask for a fic excerpt, tags, warnings, rating, universe, a summary of plotpoints, and an optional vibes description. This info sheet is where you can convey the details and energy to potential artists courting your work. Artists will choose fic to claim only by the content contained in these posts, so be candid about the themes, mood, and tone of your fic here. DO NOT withhold information about common archive warnings. DO tag any common triggers.
FIC POSTING
All finished fic must be beta-read and represent your best effort at storytelling and grammar. Beta readers make your work better and they make you a better writer; you must have one. Check out our beta list or reach out to the mods for help finding one.
Works must be posted to AO3 and submitted to our event collection. Artists and writers are highly encouraged to post their works as 'Inspired By' on AO3, which links the works to each other, but allows single-ownership retention of the work. 'Co-Created' is also an acceptable posting method, to be used with discretion. You must coordinate posting with your artist.
You must warn for any content that requires an archive warning on AO3. CNTW is a valid and complete warning.
Authors may post chapters of their fics serially, weekly, bi-weekly, OR all at once.Your draft must still be complete and submitted by the Big Bang deadline. Cap-IM recognizes that getting eyeballs on long fic has become a substantial challenge in the algorithmic age and this change is intended to help more people see and respond to your hard work.
✨ If you're ready to commit, WRITERS, use this form to sign up! ✨
ARTISTS!
ART REQUIREMENTS
Artists must create at least 2 pieces of art for the writing project they have claimed. You can make more if you are moved to do so.
Artists must also create a banner. The banner must feature the name of the fic, a SFW crop of an art piece created for the fic (or a new art piece), the artist username, and the writer username.
You must READ the fic you claim in its entirety. Make sure you choose something that genuinely interests you!
All materials and styles of art are welcome, including traditional and digital. Art must be at minimum, finished works that use the extent of your skillset, on unlined paper with clean lighting.
Allowed: drawings, paintings, sketch pages, digital renders, dioramas, fabric crafts, and more. Examples: one color half-body drawing of two people with no background, and uncolored linework full-body page with inking shadows of one person and background OR two drawings with one full-body person in full color and simple background.
Not Allowed: moodboards, edits, low-effort digital art, low effort collage, artwork that is not accurate to the fic, and such. Examples: a single rough sketch on lined paper OR low contrast digital art with unclear details.
Art generated in part or whole with AI is strictly not allowed.
Claim summaries will be posted to our Tumblr and Dreamwidth. Claims will be time-logged and submitted through Google Forms when claims open. By claiming a fic, you are signing up for the Big Bang. Be sure; you cannot drop out after claims without penalty.
If we reach a certain participant threshold, claims will be done as ranked-choice preference this year. If we do not meet the threshold, claims will be first-come, first-served as in previous years.
You may participate ONCE (1x) per big bang cycle. If you are writing fic, this precludes you participating as an artist.
You may claim ONE (1) fic per big bang cycle. Please look at the tags, rating, universe, and the other data your author has included in their Claims Kit. It's important to pick a project that motivates and inspires you to invest serious time and effort, in a congruous level to your writer's serious time and effort. BE SURE whatever you’re claiming is tonally consistent with the art you’re comfortable making, and is in line with the fics you like reading.
Claims are no longer fully anonymous in order to afford participants more space to talk about their projects in community and keep up creative momentum. You may encounter fic mentions organically in the wild; that is fine. However, you should claim based on content that interests you, not the author.
Keep in mind your willingness to make art of the content denoted in the writer’s Claims Kit – for example, are you claiming an explicit, porn-heavy fic but you’re uncomfortable drawing NSFW? Are you thinking of claiming fluff when you like to draw exclusively whump? This is the only fandom event format that is intentionally a celebration of long fic. Set you and your partner up for success! Honor the content of your writer's fic whilst enjoying content that most inspires your own creativity!
Claims posts will look like this sample:
UNIVERSE: 1872
RATING: E
WORD COUNT: 16,500/20,000
WARNINGS: graphic depictions of violence, wounds that don't heal, blood, temporary character death, secondary character death, canonical pig eating references
TAGS: monster!steve, monsterfucking, alcoholism cw, grief and war, unreliable narrator, red wolf, natasha barton, bruce banner, carol danvers, post-canon, nature, character death fallout, horror, gun kink, blood kink, weird biology, open/ambiguous ending, mystery, gore
SUMMARY:
Tony’s a city man, but he garners an appreciation for the wilderness of nature as he tracks Sheriff Rogers missing remains across the land.
Steve came back from the dead as something oh so mightily inhuman and it's up to Tony to decide how much of him as HIMSELF actually remains, and how much of him Tony can love. It turns out to be uh, a lot. Quiet bloodily. Tony and Steve engage in nasty monstrous-sorta undead desperate, you're-alive! sex.
Steve continues his living mission of hunting bad guys across great distances. After Steve fights and kills Bruce, who has become the Hulk, Tony must confront whether or not Steve has gone too far, and ultimately, decides that there is no distance Steve will go to, that Tony will not follow him to.
VIBES: poetic horror western with an instrumental soundtrack, all the gory bits of 1872 amped up, the coffin of Tony's iron man armor fighting monster Steve, unrelenting loyalty in the face of great moral destruction
FIC EXCERPT:
[a full-prose, 1k-5k fic excerpt, so you, the artist, can get a good sense for the piece and whether or not it inspires you!]
Again, writers are required to submit 50% of their completed draft to qualify for Claims. Cap-IM will give you, the artist, access to this draft via link once Claims are complete.
ART POSTING
Works must be posted to AO3 and submitted to our event collection. Artists and writers are highly encouraged to post their works as 'Inspired By' on AO3, which links the works to each other, but allows single-ownership retention of the work. 'Co-Created' is also an acceptable posting method, to be used with discretion. You must coordinate posting with your writer.
You must warn for any content that requires an archive warning on AO3. CNTW is a valid and complete warning.
Artists may post chapters/multiple posts of their art serially, weekly, bi-weekly, OR all at once. Your two artworks must be complete and submitted by the Big Bang deadline. Cap-IM recognizes that getting thoughtful interaction with art pieces has become a substantial challenge in the algorithmic age and this change is intended to help more people have more opportunity to comment on your artworks.
SOMETIMES WE FAIL
OFF-RAMPS
WRITERS, If you are not at ~50% of your wordcount by NOVEMBER 14, consider whether or not you are on track to completing your project with a humane-to-you workload.
If your wordcount is getting away from you as Claims approach, we recommend estimating/re-evaluating your projected final wordcount and dividing it by the number of months remaining. If the resulting figure is more than 10k per month, consider rolling over to the next cycle.
[total projected words] – [words you have right now] / [months left]
Once your fic is put up for claims and claimed, another human is invested in your work. As such, the last day to drop out without penalty is NOVEMBER 14.
EMERGENCIES
Because this is a collaborative event – meaning: another fannish person is investing their time and energy in your work and vice versa – we urge you to be mindful of your capacity and creative energy. That said, life does happen. If you’re having an illness or an emergency or other extreme situation, please just email us, and we will work with you to accommodate your life in any way possible.
DROPPING OUT
If you must drop out before artist claims, be free. No penalties.
If you must drop out after claims, speak up as early as possible. First, let your partner know. Then let us know.
If you must drop out as a writer once your fic has been claimed by an artist:
Both writer and artist may decide to roll the project over into the next BB cycle. No penalty.
If a writer whose artist has already created art drops out, we will source a pinch writer for that artist. The defaulting writer will be banned until the next Big Bang cycle is done.
If an artist drops out after claims, the mods will work to find the writer a pinch artist who is a good match for the project. The defaulting artist will be banned until the next Big Bang cycle is done.
BANS
Big Bang penalties no longer carry over to other Cap-IM events; if you fail the Big Bang and incur a ban, you may still sign up for the next cycle of HE, or RBB, or other non-BB. If you’d like to lift a ban early, you have three options:
Finish your work! Once you post it, the ban is gone.
Step up and complete a pinch hit for any Cap-IM event.
Wait one calendar year, or until the completion of the following Big Bang cycle.
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