b2mem | Posting and Tagging Rules

Here are the rules for posting and tagging your fanworks in this community. Please either comment here or email the mod team at b2mem.mod@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Posting Rules

For the title of your post, use the format "Fanwork Title by Creator" (e.g., A Story About Hobbits by Middle-earth Fan).

Copy and paste the form below into the body of the post. All fields are required, except for the optional notes. If one or more does not apply, please use "none" or N/A or the like. Using an LJ-cut is also required for all works.

Please include the full prompt, including the path color (this will make things much easier for the taggers).

B2MeM Prompt and Path:
Format:
Genre:
Rating:
Warnings:
Characters:
Pairings:
Creator’s Notes (optional):
Summary:

<lj-cut>FANWORK GOES HERE</lj-cut>

You are encouraged to tag your entry for character(s), genre(s), format(s), and prompt(s). If you don’t, a volunteer tagger will do it for you. (Please see below for more info on tagging.)

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If you wish to post a link to your fanwork on another site: you need to fill out the header, but you do not need to use an LJ-cut if you are only linking to your fanwork. Instead, just add the link to your creation after the summary. (If you are both linking to and posting your fanwork here, you still need to use an LJ-cut.)

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Explanation of the form's fields:

B2MeM Prompt: the prompt the piece was created for, including the path color

Format: short story, drabble, photomanip, poem, sketch, et cetera

Genre: the genre(s) of your fanwork. Please see MPTT’s glossary for definitions of most genres.

Rating: use either the G-NC17, General/Teens/Adult, or General/Teens/Mature/Explicit system. If you are unsure how to rate your piece, the ratings guidelines on Many Paths To Tread or the Silmarillion Writers' Guild may be helpful. (Note that the B2MeM event does not follow MPTT's restrictions on rating or content.)

Warnings: reasonable warnings for content that fellow fans might wish to avoid, e.g., violence, blood and gore, graphic sex, profane language, incest, et cetera. You may also put Choose Not to Warn (CNTW) in the warnings field. Choose Not to Warn indicates that the work may contain anything, including potentially triggering or explicit content; participants who wish to avoid certain content should make their own decisions on whether to read or view CNTW entries.

Characters: a list of important characters featured in your piece

Pairings: a list of any important romantic/sexual pairings in your piece

Summary: a brief synopsis of what the piece is about

Tagging Rules

This year's tagging team is myself, Indy, and our tagging volunteer

just_jenni (thanks for joining us, Jenni!). Please don’t hesitate to ask me or email the mod team at b2mem.mod@gmail.com if you have any questions about how or what to tag, if there’s a tag you need deleted, or anything related to this subject.

How to Tag:

There are multiple different ways to tag an entry on LJ.

1) When you’re about to post your entry, to the right side of the tags field there is a link that says “select.” If you click select, it will give you a list of all the tags in the comm, and you can scroll down and click on each of the tags you want. This may be easier for some people than entering the tags manually, and it means you don’t have to worry about typos or misspellings. (It will even enter the commas between tags for you!) If you click on a tag you don’t want, you can click on the X next to it to get rid of it. If you have already posted your entry, you can click on the “edit entry” button to get back here.

2) Start typing a tag in the tags field, and LJ will give you a dropdown of tags to choose from. However, if there are more than a certain number, only the first ones alphabetically will show up.

3) Type in the tag manually (but please remember to check your format and spelling)!

4) Post your entry and then go back to add the tags by clicking the Tags icon at the top of the entry.

A few general guidelines:

~ It’s necessary to have one standardized form of every tag. LJ doesn’t work like AO3; we have no power to “syn” or connect different versions of the same tag behind the scenes. If one person tags as character:sam and another person tags character:samwise gamgee, LJ treats them as two completely separate tags. So please use the existing form of the tag, if there is one. The list of currently existing tags may be found here: http://b2mem.livejournal.com/tag/

~ Please check to see if the tag you want already exists before creating one. You may need to check under more than one name for a character. For example, if your work includes Elu Thingol, you won’t find him under Elu or Elwë, but there is a tag for character:thingol.

~ Please do not use the tags beginning with [year]. These are admin tags.

~ The formatting is no space between the colon and the subject. For example, character:frodo. The same goes for every tag.

~ Tags are not capitalized. We also don’t use accents or diacritical marks of any kind in tags (ë, ú, and so on), since not everyone knows how to do them.

~ Please check your spelling. A misspelled or misformatted tag still appears in the “available tag” list even if you correct it after the fact and must be manually deleted by the mods. (People can and have used misspellings and misformattings before because they appeared first in the list!) If you notice that you've accidentally created a misspelled or superfluous tag, it's helpful to let me or Indy know so we can delete it.

~ If you are typing in the tags, please remember to separate the tags with commas. If you don’t do this, the tags will merge together into one Frankenstein monster tag. (Don’t worry, the tag mods can fix it.)

~ For those more familiar with AO3 and Tumblr: tagging on LJ is solely for organizational purposes within a community or journal. There is no need for tags such as “b2mem” or “tolkien fanfic” or the like.

~ We tag each entry for prompt, characters, format, and genre.

Details and Examples

Prompt

The prompt tag varies year by year. This year, we are tagging for the path on the game board that your prompt(s) came from: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, or purple. This will usually be the path you're currently following, but some game actions may require you to pick a prompt from another path.

EXAMPLES:
path:red, path:yellow

Character

-Please tag for main characters only -- there’s no need to tag for a character who is briefly mentioned or appears in one sentence.

-Please do not create group tags such as character:fellowship, as we prefer you to tag by individual character.

-We do not capitalize characters’ names in tags. We also don’t use accents or diacritical marks (ë, ú, and so on), since not everyone knows how to do them.

EXAMPLES:
character:eowyn, character:finwe

(NOT character:éowyn or character:Finwë)

Format

-This is fairly simple. Is your work fic, poetry, artwork, etc.? Please note that all forms of poetry go under format:poetry. Also note that all drabbles and variations thereof (double, triple, etc.) go under format:drabble. (We use the true drabble definition of exactly 100 words.) There is no format:fic tag.

-For fanfic, the format tag is dictated by length. Ficlets are 999 words or shorter, not including drabbles. Short stories are 1000 to 9999 words. (For reference, because we’ve yet to need these tags, novellas are 10,000 to 39,999 words and novels are 40,000+ words.) Chaptered stories go under format:chaptered regardless of the length of individual updates.

EXAMPLES:
format:ficlet, format:digital art

Genre

-What genre(s) does your work fall under? If you don’t see one you think fits, please add it.

EXAMPLES:
genre:slash, genre:fluff