Back to Middle-earth Month

The Multific community on Dreamwidth is sponsoring a Finish-a-Thon for finishing your works-in-progress. Finish-a-Thon is not affiliated officially with B2MeM, but I know from reading the comments on B2MeM posts that a lot of you have acquired a pile of WiPs this month, so it seemed a good opportunity for those of you not yet exhausted from March looking for something to do after B2MeM to get some of those finished! :)

Sign-ups are only open for five more days, so make sure to sign up soon if you want to participate. This post has more information on this year's Finish-a-Thon.

Players have been earning BINGOs left and right for the past few days, but it's been One of Those Weeks for me, and I haven't had a chance to make a proper post acknowledging and congratulating them! I've also not had a chance to get the winners' banners sent out, but I hope to remedy that today as well. :)

Please remember that we are playing until the end of March; just because folks are winning BINGO does not mean that the game stops or that future winners won't get banners. We've got one week left, so let's keep those muses hopping!

If you've won a BINGO and I've not listed you here, please let me know so that I can add you and send you your banner!

Second Place: Congratulations to Idle Leaves, Sivan Shemesh, Zhie, Arwen75, Dwim, havamahal, Febobe, and Gwenniel, who won on B4! (Winning cards were Aspects of Aragorn and Favorite Couples.)

Third Place: Congratulations to Silver Trails, Keiliss, Erulisse, Lyra, Iavalir, and Lady Brooke, who won on B14! (Winning card was Maglor in History 1.)

(Also, Rhapsody had a "secret BINGO" for this number. As the keepers of the BINGO numbers, Rhapsy and I removed ourselves from being able to win. However, I want to give her a shout-out anyway because I do not know how she does all that she does and still finds time for enough writing to win a BINGO! :)

Fourth Place: Congratulations to Zhie, Naurring, Foxrafer, Erulisse, and Lady Brooke, who won on N32! (Winning card was Art Supplies.)

Fifth Place: Congratulations to Lyra, Elleth, lbilover, Linda Hoyland, Zdenka, and Lady Brooke who won on O64! (Winning cards were Crossovers 1, The Alternate Universe Card [AU1], and Book Titles.) This number is still open, so I hope to be adding to this list as the day goes on! :)

We're now into the second day of the challenge, and what a wild and wonderful two days it has been! :)

Text-Only Player Pages

Those of you who requested text-only player pages, they are ready. (Access text only player pages here.) I am still putting the final stamps on cards there, but you can get the idea of what they will look like.

Satisfying Two Days' Prompts in One Piece

Now that we have two BINGO numbers posted, I've been asked this question a few times, which the teacher in me knows means that more of you are wondering but haven't asked. :)

Is it okay to use prompts from both days' numbers in a single story?

Yes! Absolutely! If you want to combine "Maglor the Mighty" for I18 (Sons of Feanor card) with Thuringwethil and Other Vampires for O72 (Horror card), you are welcome to do so. However, please remember that you'd need to observe the deadline for both numbers. So you'd need to claim your stamp for I18 today; there is no extension because you're also working on the O72 prompts in the same piece.

Please also make sure you request stamps on both relevant posts, meaning you need to comment on the I18 post with the cards you need stamped for I18, and again on the O72 post with the cards you need stamped for O72. We currently have almost 90 participants signed up for this challenge. We have five volunteers stamping cards. It's really important that they have one place where they can see whose cards need stamping. Requests made in the wrong place won't be fulfilled.

Player Page Updates

Several participants requested cards shortly before the challenge started or after the challenge started. This is fine; you can continue to request new cards throughout the challenge, if you'd like. Several of you have asked me when your player pages will be ready or updated, so that again tells me many more of you are wondering but haven't asked! :)

I initially set a soft deadline for card requests to be in by the end of last weekend (Feb. 26) in order to guarantee your player page would be ready for the first day of the challenge. I ended up satisfying requests through Tuesday morning EST, so that deadline was extended by almost two days. That allowed five days to choose from the full list, and some of the cards have been posted for over a month.

I realize that it's a pain in the tail to have to sift through the card claim page, and that it's not as much fun if you can't see your stamps when you earn them. Unfortunately, at this point, player pages are relatively low on my list of priorities. The first few days of a challenge like this always verge on insane, as the other volunteers and I answer questions, fix mistakes on the pages, and of course, stamp cards. This will slow down--it already is--and we'll be free to work on other matters. My hope is to get at least the new players set up this weekend. My fellow stampers have been a huge help in getting player pages created and updated as well. I'd like to get everyone updated, but player pages are made by hand, and I currently have 31 update requests in my inbox from the past few days alone. I very much appreciate everyone's patience as the other volunteers and I work through these.

Community Tags

There are a few tags set up on the community right now for admin purposes, namely 2012:bingo cards and 2012:bingo number. Please don't add these tags to stories, especially the latter, which was set up so that visitors could find the day's number with relative ease.

I'd like to set up a tagging system so that it's possible to find pieces by BINGO number (e.g., all pieces created for I18), BINGO card (e.g., all pieces created for the "All OCs, All the Time" card), and character, genre, pairing, format, et cetera ... the usual stuff people look for. Anyone willing to help with tagging, do let me know.

Again, it's been truly awesome to see this event take off the way it has! To see the number of new fanworks being created, the enthusiasm and support we all show for each other, and the new friendships being forged always make B2MeM well worth the effort. Keep creating and keep having fun! :)

Today was the deadline for new BINGO cards or requests to have cards made. We will no longer be accepting new cards or requests. Many, MANY thanks to those of you who sent in your ideas for cards and made cards! The response to this exceeded our wildest expectations.

The B2MeM mods and volunteers are finishing up on the last batch of card requests, so I hope to have the final round of cards posted in the next day or two. In the meantime, Nath has created another set of icons/banners for participants in this year's challenge. A few of you (you know who you are! ;) have claimed more cards than you know is wise. Perhaps you don't expect to sleep during March? I don't know ... I'll probably be right there with you! Nath had us in mind when making this latest set of banners.

As usual, you can either save the banners to your own storage site (e.g., Photobucket or LJ Scrapbook) or copy the HTML next to the banner you want and use it wherever HTML is accepted.

( New Participant Banners )

Player Page Updated!
At long last, the player pages have been updated! Now we can all see how deep we're in it come March you can see the cards you've signed up to play all in one place. All card requests sent by this point should be reflected on your player page. (You can check your player page on the SWG or check your player page on MPTT.) Please look to make sure that you have all of the cards you've requested. My comods and I have received hundreds of B2MeM-related emails at this point, and mixups are bound to occur. If something doesn't look right, either leave me a comment here or drop me an email at DawnFelagund@gmail.com and I will fix it as soon as possible.

If you want to display your cards someplace (like your journal or personal website), you are welcome to "hotlink" to your player page on our server. If you need help doing this, just ask. As you earn stamps, we will update your player page so that you can see your progress (and everyone else's!).

FAQ: "Can I 'Unclaim' Cards?"
I've been asked by a couple of people now about "unclaiming" cards. Some of us went a little claim-crazy at the start of the challenge without realizing how many more awesome cards our card-creators would dream up. So ... can you "unclaim" a card?

Yes, with caveats. First of all, remember, you don't have to play a card, even if you claim it. You might claim 20 cards that look interesting but only have time or end up wanting to write for 2 or 3 of them. This is perfectly okay! :)

If you're absolutely certain that you don't want to play a card, I can remove it for you. However, I have to be perfectly honest that, with the popularity of this event and the constant backlog of BINGO cards and player page updates, this is a low-priority task for me, and the challenge may well begin with the cards you don't want still on your player page. If you want a card removed from your player page, just drop me an email at DawnFelagund@gmail.com, and I'll do my best to get this done for you.

Any other questions weighing on your mind? Please ask them here or drop me or one of the other B2MeM mods a PM or email! :)

Finally, for the numerically inclined ...

( B2MeM 2012 Stats So Far )