Fancake

Journal Community
Name:	Fancake
Date(s):	2010–
Moderator:	Punk, jerakeen
Founder:	jerakeen
Type:	rec community
Fandom:	multifandom
URL:	Fancake comm on Dreamwidth Fancake on Pinboard "Fancake on Tumblr". Archived from the original on 2015-09-29. Fancake on Twitter Fancake on Mastodon
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Fancake is a thematic, multifandom rec community on Dreamwidth. It allows open posting for members, with some limitations laid out in the rules, such as a limit of three recs a day per member and no self-recs or WIPs. On the first of every month, a new theme is announced.

The community's extensive tagging system allows users to search by fandom, story length (in words or minutes), or theme. To allow searching by all of these plus pairing (or gen), character, creator, and reccer, the recs are also tagged at Fancake's Pinboard. Recs are mostly for fic, with podfic and a few vid and fanart recs in the mix.

Jerakeen made the first posts to the comm on December 11, 2010 and the first recs were posted December 15, 2010 after the announcement of the first theme, Amnesia. Fancake celebrated its first year anniversary on December 15, 2011.

Starting with round 20, the mods decided to try a new theme selection process:

Up till now, the potential themes that made up the poll every month were suggested by you (via our official theme suggestion post, which is now defunct) and picked by me - and then again, voted by you. With this new process, we aim to eliminate mod-involvement almost completely. What we want you to do is leave up to three theme ideas in the comments .... after which we will open a monster poll that includes all submitted potential themes and let you vote. The top choice will be next month's theme; top fifteen will be saved for the next four polls - for which they will be randomly selected.

Fancake celebrated its second year anniversary on December 15, 2012. The mod revealed some stats about Fancake in its 2 year run:

• We held 24 rounds, with 24 different themes,
• We posted 2,497 recs,
• We recced fanwork in 405 different fandoms,
• We had 168 different reccers,
• We built our DW membership to 554 members, 864 subscribers,
• We had a lot of cake (no statistics on this one yet, we're working on it.)

In early July 2019, jerakeen expressed the wish to step down as the comm's moderator and asked if anyone would be willing to take over. Punk volunteered and became the comm's new mod. Fancake celebrated its ten year anniversary on December 11, 2020.

Fancake Rounds and Themes

Fancake has monthly rounds. The first round began on December 15th 2011, and the first 36 rounds ran from the middle of one month to the middle of the next. Round 37 was only two weeks long, so that future rounds would start on the first of the month. On January 1, 2014, with round 38, the schedule was changed so that themes would last an entire calendar month.

Themes are voted on by community members. Suggestions for new themes are collected every December and then voted on in a massive Monster Poll. Those that qualify move on to the monthly polls that determine the next theme.

Currently, every round has a single theme. Nine rounds every year have new themes. There are also two (April and August) annual Flashback rounds, which revisit a theme from the comm's early years, and an Amnesty round every December, where works that fit into any theme ever used in the comm's history can be recommended. Between 2013 and 2019, the comm had Cupcake rounds in place of the current Flashback rounds, which had a different theme every week for a month, with the final week devoted to Amnesty.

As of August 2021, there have been 129 rounds, covering 143 themes (four themes have been repeated as flashback rounds, and there have been 21 amnesty rounds or amnesty weeks as part of cupcake rounds). The first Fancake theme was "Amnesia". A full list of Fancake's previous themes is maintained as a Google Doc.

The first 12 Fancake themes, covering the comm's first year of operation, were:

• Round 1 - Amnesia
• Round 2 - Telepathy
• Round 3 - Superpowers
• Round 4 - Crossovers/Fusions
• Round 5 - Genderfuck
• Round 6 - Marriage
• Round 7 - Mythical Creatures
• Round 8 - Polyamory
• Round 9 - Hurt/Comfort
• Round 10 - Rare Pairings
• Round 11 - Science Fiction
• Round 12 - Apocalypse/Dystopia

Fan Comments

2012

"I realise almost nobody here is on Dreamwidth, but I’m going to quickly pimp my favourite reccing community there anyway. Reccing is open to anybody and any fandom or kind of fanwork, and runs on themed months, usually tropes - which is brilliant not only for the way it brings you a whole bunch of hurt/comfort or amnesia fic, but also for the way it actively encourages reccing, since you can’t look at a trope without wanting to find examples for it in your fandom/s and show them off."

2019

"Fancake on Dreamwidth isn't quite Crack Van, but it's active and helpful."

2021

"I just found @fancakeofficial, a thematic, multifandom rec community on #Dreamwidth. It's got some BANGERS of #fanfiction recs. A LOT of the old school writers who thrived on #livejournal are still over on Dreamwidth."

Recced Fics with Fanlore Pages

• Maternal Instinct, a gen Sentinel story by Autumn Skies.
• Jedi Harris, a BtVS/Star Wars crossover by The Dark Scribbler