Is it time to announce the next event already? Shockingly, the answer is YES!!

As we all know, the Spuffy community loves us some artists! Ever since Sunnydale After Dark began, we knew we wanted to lift up our artists and celebrate their hard work and creativity, too.

So what better way to do that than to put the artists in the driver’s seat for this summer’s Pen & Paint event? 

Often, our beloved artists are called upon to fulfill our writers’ story dreams. The artists graciously bring to life someone else’s vision. For this event, we want to reverse that and let the artists prompt the writers using their own creations. 

Artwork could include drawings, paintings, video edits, comics, movie posters, banners, manipulations, whatever else you can dream up! The artist will post their new art and the authors will write a corresponding scene or story inspired by the artwork. The length of the writing is up to each author. It could be as short as a drabble. It could be a poem. It could be a scene disconnected from a larger narrative. It could be an entire one-shot story. Just please keep it under 15,000 words as that is the maximum length of a chapter/one-shot.

How will all this work?

First, artists, post your artwork like normal, including a banner if you wish! Make sure you check the Pen & Paint event box! 

Then create an open series.

Title your series and your artwork however you wish. Once your series has been created you can add your artwork to the series. 

You are finished! Let the fic roll in and wash you in pretty words!

Now, writers, here is how you add your story to an artist’s open series. 

First, post your story like normal, making sure you check the Pen & Paint event box.

Go to the artwork you wish to add a story to. Click on the series link. In this example it is highlighted in orange:

Once on the series page, click Add to Series.

A list of your stories will appear, and you can add the correct one to the open series.

Trust us, it isn’t as complicated as it may initially sound!

Artists and authors, you are welcome to post as many submissions as you like. If an artist wants to respond to a different artist by adding more art to their series, that’s fine! Maybe a writer would like to continue a scene that another writer responded to the initial artwork with. That is also fine! We just ask that every series begins with artwork first. 

Warning: If you add a story to the wrong series, you will be unable to remove it yourself. An admin (or the author of the series) can remove it for you. Please get in touch! We would hate for you to accidentally delete your story in an effort to remove it from a series you didn’t mean to attach it to.

All submissions must be connected to a series in order to qualify for the event. The series format will make it clear which artwork inspired what creations. Our hope is that we’ll get to see a variety of interpretations of each piece of art, and it will be a fun experience for the reader to go to a series and enjoy all the different results.

Now, because this event requires some tag-teaming that might take a little extra time… we’re going to start the event May 1 and keep this event open for two months to give everyone as much time as possible to participate. When the event is over, you will still be welcome to continue, but at the end of June we will calculate awards for Artists, Authors, credited Betas, and Commenters who posted 15+ comments of 15 words or more for both May and for June (minimum 30 comments in total).

We hope this event will be a blast for everyone! Every year as we approach the anniversary of this site in June, we think about why we started this archive in the first place and how to best celebrate collaboration and fun and Spuffy in a fresh new way!

Please post your questions in the comments or get in touch with an admin here or on Discord. 

Happy penning and painting!