Kink Bingo
| Journal Community | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Kink Bingo |
| Date(s): | May 17, 2008 - 2013 (on hiatus) |
| Moderator: | eruthros, thingswithwings |
| Founder: | eruthros, thingswithwings |
| Type: | Fanfiction Challenge |
| Fandom: | Pan Fandom |
| URL: | Kink Bingo on LiveJournal (original comm), Kink Bingo on Dreamwidth (current comm), Kink Wiki (resources comm), KB Cafe (unofficial discussion comm), Kink Bingo Collection on AO3 |
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Kink Bingo is a pan-fandom challenge community. It was designed to both encourage fanfiction, fanart, vids, crafts, songs, poetry, and other fanworks that include or explore kink, and to give players a space to challenge themselves and push their own boundaries.
The first challenge started in 2008 and they took place yearly until 2013, with other mini-challenges throughout the year after the 2009 challenge. It ran on Livejournal in its first year, and moved to Dreamwidth in its second. It proved very popular, with around 250 people signing up in its first year, 600 in its second year, and 1000 in the third and fourth years. After Round Six in 2013 the challenge went on hiatus - "or, no, not hiatus; let's think of it as a fallow period."[1] It was originally meant to last one year, with round seven to start in 2015, but as of mid-2020 the hiatus is on-going.
Each participant receives a 'bingo card', which contains 24 randomly selected kinks (plus a wildcard) from a list of 100. The list of kinks, exhaustively researched by the co-mods [2] include more 'mainstream' kinks to fanfiction (e.g. 'bondage: wrist and ankle restraints'), less 'mainstream' kinks (e.g. 'watersports'), and kinks that were given new names by the mods to cover broad spectrums of kink practice (e.g. 'consent play'). The kinks are defined in the affiliated kink wiki community, which contains definitions and descriptions, quotes, links to resources, and fannish media illustrating the kinks.[3]
Participants then have several ways to call bingo and complete the challenge, either by 'finishing a line' (making five fanworks, one per kink, following a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line of the card) or completing a 'blackout' (25 fanworks for their 25 kinks), with several additional challenges for those who finish a line. Kink Bingo currently works on an achievement system, in which different kinds of bingos and extras count as different achievements, and prizes are given to participants who finish certain achievements or make the most bingos, extras, or blackouts.[4] Prior to 2011, each way of obtaining a 'bingo' won the participant a certain number of points, which were tallied at the end of the challenge, and those with the highest number of points won prizes (usually banners, art, fic or podfics) made by the mods and other volunteers.[5] There are also 'mod prizes' awarded to particularly notable stories, chosen by the mods.[6]
The nature of the challenge ensures that participants have limited choice of which kinks they can make fanworks for (although they may make works in any fandom, including original fandoms, and for any characters); this encourages participants to challenge themselves and others to explore these kinks less usual within fanfiction.
Kink Bingo has proved an influential format, and has inspired several other multifandom Bingo challenges, including Cliche Bingo, Death Bingo and Talk Bingo, and some fandom-specific challenges, including Heroes Bingo.[7] It has arguably also made kink fic in general more popular and visible within fandom, particularly in the rise of kink memes.
Kink Bingo has also provided a focus for discussion of the way kink is treated and discussed within fandom, particularly the tendency to denigrate certain kinks without consciousness of insulting/alienating those who hold that kinky identity. [8]
Eruthros and Thingswithwings were outspoken opponents of the fanfiction survey which became the subject of surveyfail, after being contacted in their capacity as co-mods of Kink Bingo by the survey's authors in August 2009.[9]
Notes
- ^ ANNOUNCEMENT: Round Seven in 2015 by kink_bingo_mods, 30.6.2013, accessed 13.6.2018
- ^ Kink Discussion Post Accessed: 10th January 2010.
- ^ Kink Wiki
- ^ Achievements Post "Accessed 20 September 2011"
- ^ Rules Post (second round, summer 2009). Accessed 10th January 2010
- ^ Very Official Mod Prizes post (second round, summer 2009). Accessed January 10th 2010.
- ^ Cliche Bingo, Death Bingo, Talk Bingo, Heroes Bingo
- ^ I'm not posting fic - you can relax! Excerpt: "Here is an example of a comment, a type FREQUENTLY used to reply to kink stories, that drives me a bit up the wall: "I normally hate enemas/watersports/bondage/tickling/uniform fetish stories, because they're disgusting, but this story was SO GREAT that I loved it and thought it was ttly hot even though normally I'd be throwing up!" I exaggerate for effect, but like, NOT BY MUCH GUYS." Posted: September 1st 2009. Accessed: 10th January 2010.
- ^ don't take the fanfiction survey posted by thingswithwings on August 31st 2009. please don't take the fanfiction survey posted by eruthros on August 31st 2009 (includes her and thingswithwings' email exchange with the survey authors). Both links accessed 10th January 2010.