Masquerade (fanfiction event)

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Synonyms: masq
See also: challenge
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Masquerade can refer to a type of fanfiction writing challenge where the goal is for fanfic authors to conceal their identity in an anonymous work, while fans try to guess who wrote each work. The first iteration of this event was hosted by Gumi in 2019 for the The King's Avatar English-speaking fandom, however, the concept has been independently coined before in different fandoms, going by different names. A similar writing challenge called Guess the Author appeared in comics fandom in 1998[1] and is popular particularly in Good Omens fandom. From 2006 til 2016, Hikaru no Go had Blind Go, inspired by Prince of Tennis's Subrosa Tennis (2004-2009), similar challenges run over Livejournal.

Usually, the event takes place in two stages, writing and guessing, and moderated through a Discord server. Customarily, roughly a month is allocated for authors to write and submit their piece to an anonymous Archive of Our Own collection (which also gives new writers time to obtain an Ao3 account). Once written, authors can submit their piece at any time. After the month of posting, guessing periods take place, where guessing may be split into multiple "rounds" in order to reduce the volume of fics a reader must read. At the end of each guessing round, the authors and the top guessers are revealed, though the collection is usually only de-anonymised at the end of all guessing periods (Some authors may then re-enter their fic into an anonymous collection if they wish to keep the work anonymous).

Polite public speculation, reading through participating fic author's previous works and analysing writing style, use of technology, and a community read-aloud are not necessary parts of the event, but popular and encouraged activities. The event is very much something held as part of a community, as an understanding of the other author's writing style and preferences greatly assists in guessing - naturally, interactions outside of the direct rules also become part of the chaos and fun.

While the first event was timed to overlap with Halloween, the timing of this event is not a requirement.

Origin of the Masquerade

The super core origin story is there was a prince of tennis fic 2 authors co-wrote in parts and they made a guessing game asking people to guess who wrote what

That's what this was all really adapted from, but it was never really like....a "fandom event" before :joy:

my group of friends played a much smaller version before and this was before we had ao3 or anything. So I just redesigned it with ao3/open participation in mind bc i always enjoyed playing these games and wanted some fun :smchehe:

Gumi on the The King's Avatar Alliance discord 02/27/2021

The fanfiction referenced in the above quote is Stalking The Angel on Livejournal by sinnatious and kaorismash.

Format

The task for any writer interested in participating is to write a 1000-2000 word piece. You may not go a single word below 1,000 or a single word above 2,000. This is to ensure you write enough to give people a fair shot at guessing your writing style while also keeping things short for readers going through all the entries.

extract from ao3 rules, 2020 QZGS Masq

An example of the full rules (QZGS Masq 2020)(webarchive) can be found on Tumblr. While the rules may vary per challenge, most events hold the following requirements:

  1. Each writer may only submit 1 fic, and each guesser can only guess 1 time
  2. Fics submitted must adhere to a word limit, and usually language requirements (such as being in English and roman characters only). Works should stand alone.
  3. Fics must be submitted anonymously, and published for the first time during this event during a certain submission period.
  4. After submitting the fic, authors must reveal themselves to the event organiser, so that the event organiser can coordinate the guessing.

Strategies

The stated goal of the Masquerade is for authors to be guessed as little as possible, and for guessers to guess as many authors as possible. Prizes (usually bragging rights, but sometimes discord roles, etc) may be offered for those who hide the best, or guess the most authors. Guessing your own fic does not count against you in hiding. In the Rigel Black Chronicles Masquerade, prizes were also offered lucky-draw style, based on categories of participation.

However, some authors might set their own goals to be the most guessed rather than the least, using the Masq to find out quirks about their writing. Others just enjoy spreading chaos or pushing the limits of what they can do without being guessed. There are many ways to participate, as seen by the quote offered by one masq participant below:

On Options:
  • Option 1: You can write something other than you usually write to disguise yourself.
  • Option 2: You can write exactly what you usually write because "nobody would do that".
  • Option 3: You can pretend to be someone else, copying their style. Option 4: You can drop tells from multiple people.
  • Option 5: You can pretend to be someone pretending, eg. Merc pretends to be Rime pretending to be Tamari.
  • Option 6: You can take Option 5 further, like with 6 or so people worth of tells involved.
  • Option 7: Strange combo of multiple options, such as Grave using Grave's usual content with Rime's tells, or Lir using Grave's usual content with Rime's tells.
  • Option 8: Write the weirdest crossover you can think of.
  • Option 9: You are new and no one knows anything about you so write whatever the hell you want.

brightsaturn on the Harry Get Some Sleep Discord Server

Notable examples of strategies:

  • Hiding:
    • Notable procrastinators might post their fic on the very first day of the event, to deflect suspicion on themselves; those who post early may post their works in the last minute rush.
    • Authors may write pairings or characters they rarely write, especially if others participating often write those pairings or characters
  • Chaos:
    • One author embedded images, of which the first letter of each title corresponded to their username
    • When writing a songfic, this author deliberately seeded each lyric into their conversations in the discord, and then published a lyric video at the end compiling all the times they had hinted at their authorship
    • Collected Poetry of 20th Century Wizarding Britain, an excerpt by rachel614 from the Rigel Black Masquerade 3 contributed to much chaos 1) following the posting of my nayme is fic by nisle very closely, being chaotic poetry with gradually changing fonts published very early, similar to how this author had done so in the previous masquerade 2) Leaving in character comments analysing the written poetry as anonymous comments 3) Using morse code for the dividers of the work
    • Crediting yourself as a beta for your own work
  • Trends. As this is very much a community event, writing what others frequently joke about doing or following trends in posting may help you to hide yourself.
    • An unconventional media or format can throw others off the scent, as you may have less past works which are similar to your masquerade piece. Furthermore, if others have a reputation for unconventional work formats, using an unconventional format also provides a way to hide - and generally, at least a few writers will do so.
      • In some cases, such formatting can make fics difficult or less accessible to read. For example, the earlier examples used many changing font choices. Similarly, is it too late by booksandbreadcrumbs uses a work skin that displays the whole work in all capital letters. Many writers use work-skins so that their formatting can be toggled off.
      • Masquerade is often treated as a time to be experimental. For example, i want to see your happily ever after by FeatheryMinx uses colored text to express whether things are happening in the present, in the narrators thoughts, or in the past. TheDefenestrator wrote Ways to Say I Love You [1] with exactly 1,728 words, a reference to the 1,728 chapters of The King's Avatar webnovel.
    • Taylor Swift lyrics and titles became popular in Rigel Black Chronicles (Fandom), so masquerade participants might lean into the hype and include lyrics or titles that follow that trend.

Accusations, Lies, and Analysing Tells

Part of the fun of the masquerade is the chaos of being able to accuse and counter-accuse the authors in the fandom, and see their response. Whether to share your suspicions, stay silent, or accuse someone else of the fic you wrote is all part of the strategy. Often, guessers become very intense with their sleuthing, building spreadsheets -- which are often shared, after the guessing is over, if desired.

Criteria that has been used to guess fic include writing style (punctuation, wording, structure, choice of words), general likes of the author, metadata (tags, summary, and titling styles), time and date of posting, length of work, spelling (American or British), spacing (after punctuation, between paragraphs and between scenes), cultural tells (for instance, the way Chinese names are written) and more.

However, given the community nature of the event, the number of participants is generally not large, and it is also encouraged to submit randomised guesses if you do not have time to guess everyone. This encourages participation, reduces the number of ties, and reduces the stress of the event. Even randomised guesses become part of the fun, as participants choose to pull names out of a hat, use a random number generator, sort alphabetically, or use other silly strategies to generate random guesses.

During the event, comments and responding to comments is allowed. However, many authors fear this may be used as a tell (after all, you can only comment with your own account on a fic you did not write)! Two popular strategies to circumvent this are as follows:

To all participating authors wondering how to leave their love for other authors without giving yourself away, these are some options!

1. Copy and paste the link of the fic to another browser or to a private window and type in your comment and give kudos as a guest.

2. Write down your comments on a word doc and wait until Feb 8 (when the event is over and everyone is revealed) to give belated kudos and comments to everyone.

TCF 2021 Masq rules

In addition, participants might change their writing style for comments -- as guessers might try to match anonymous comments to the author to eliminate potential authors for that fic. Authors may also shamelessly comment on their own fic, as if they hadn't written it, to throw people off the scent. Others turn their comments into little mini-masquerades, taking on inventive personas where other participants try to guess who might have written the comments.

Guessing & Denouement

Upon submission of the fic to the archive, authors also submit their information to the organiser. This is to allow the organiser to vett the guesses and to avoid penalizing authors for guessing their own fic correctly. When posting closes, the guessing period begins. The guessing period, points, and prizes might vary based on the number and length of fics submitted and the fandom. For example, the Rigel Black Chronicles Masquerade Event allowed you to guess a single author for each ship, with each author being guessed at most twice in total, and the 45 entries being split into two guessing periods (authors in group 1 could only have written fics in group 1). This allowed easier guessing for those participating and reduced the risk of authors going completely unguessed.

In the SOSH Guess The Author challenges, they also have a special tradition:

On reveal day there will be a special "screaming session" before the reveal. A timer in the server will count down THREE MINUTES, and everyone will get to say what they liked about that particular fic before the timer moves us on to the next one. After all fics have been suitably gushed over, the authors will be revealed!

SOSH - Guess The Author rules

After the exchange is over, the authors will be revealed and the statistics compiled of most guessed and least guessed for authors and guessers. A point system might be used.

Organizers might choose to make a round-up post, like so in the QZGS 2020 Roundup: QZGS Masquerade 2020 : Reveals, Analysis, and EXPOSING EVERYONE'S LIES and QZGS Masquerade 2021: Reveals, Analysis, and Tomfoolery in Three Parts. These posts may cover who guessed the most, the least, and compile some of the chaos which may have taken place.

Some authors may also amend their work fics with additional notes or alternate versions which are easier to read. For example, Collected Poetry of 20th Century Wizarding Britain, an excerpt by rachel614 compiled the in-character poetry analysis she had written as comments into an additional chapter, and Caelum Lestrange And The Raven Queen's Emissary by Elsin published a second version of the masq fic with more regular formatting as a second chapter. Notes might also be published on other platforms, such as oakleaf's notes on you are the sun and I am just the planets from QZGS Masquerade 2021 which can be found here on blogspot.

An unfortunate side effect of the masquerade is that it does tend to depress the number of kudos(as you cannot kudos a fic you wrote, all authors tend to withhold kudos until their guessing period ends) and comments when the fic is posted for an extended period of time, especially if the active part of fandom is small.

Examples

Masquerade Examples

Guess The Author Games

Other challenges

Related challenges

While this page refers to events where the main goal is the hiding and the guessing, some exchanges and events may informally include components to guess the author on top of being a gift exchange or remix challenge.

References

  1. ^ Outside the Lines "Feature of the Month" for December, 1998: Jaya's "Guess the Writer" Challenge. (via Wayback Dec 3/01)
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