Taemythos

Challenge
Name:	Taemythos
Date(s):	2020-2021; 2022-present
Moderator(s):
Founder:
Type:	fest
Fandom:	SHINee and SuperM
URL:
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Taemythos, previously Taemythological, is an 18+ only Lee Taemin centric SHINee and SuperM fest hosted on Twitter, Carrd and AO3. Although they are SHINee and SuperM focused, they do allow non-main group pairings - such as Taemin and Changmin (TVXQ). The fest focuses on Taemin and mythology. Taemin must be a part of the main characters and one of the varying forms of mythology, such as vampires, werewolves, omegaverse, and more must be featured prominently.

According to the intro on the fest's AO3 collection for Round One this classes as "legends, magic, myth, paranormal, and anything and everything surrounding fantasy".

As of December 2022, it is the only Taemin-centric fic fest and the only SHINee member-centric fest.

Background

Taemythos originally began as Taemythological on Twitter only to be shortly locked by the website and forced to make a new account under a different name - Taemythos. They never regained access to the account and instead kept the Taemythos @. The Archive of Our Own still uses the original taemythological name.

Their original rules as to what is classed as "mythological" are as follows:

What is allowed under the term "mythological"

- Magic aus - this includes Harry Potter AUs and the like

- Vampires

- Demons

- Ghosts (of any and all kinds)

- Sea creatures

- Mermaids

- Witches (including forest witches/sea witches/etc)

- Nymphs, faeries, elves, etc are all allowed

- Werewolves or other transformation based things such as a character can turn into a bird, or a fish, or a cat, etc

- Anything based off a myth or legend including urban legends eg. Taemin could be on the run from a Japanese urban legend such as Kuchisake-onna, or could just be seeing death omens or be a banshee - a death omen - himself

--- Urban Legends, mythos and the like can be from any country of origin. For instance, Taemin may be on the run for La Llorona from Latin America; we only ask if these are not your religion/race/nationality's legends you do treat them with respect in your retelling.

- Aliens - this includes space AUs as along as there is some form of creature that Taemin is or has to contend with that fits under the term "paranormal"

- Any supernatural/etc television show AUs are allowed such as Taemin is a character in Supernatural (US), a Lord of the Rings based story, or is part of a creature hunting team such as Ghostbusters

- Omegaverse is allowed on two conditions:

1 - the a/b/o!humans have some form of transformation (ie, being able to transform into wolves) or it is omegaverse!humans versus vampires, werewolves, etc

2 - any sexual content must be consented. It does not have to be stated 100% out loud in speech, it can be done via actions only, but it must be clear that consent has been given

Taemin does not have to be the supernatural creature in the story - he may be the victim of an incubus, he may be the blood bank owner who donates blood to the local vampire cult, or just chilling with his pet werewolf.

The main ship does not necessarily have to be Taemin-centric and there doesn't have to be a ship at all! SuperM may be a paranormal creature group hunting supernatural!Taemin, or it could be simply Taemin-centric, following him in his life as a new turned vampire/werewolf/etc!

They began promoting their first round on March 20, 2020 - the round began on April 12th.

Ahead of the first round, the moderators also ran a fic rec event, sharing the moderators' favourite works that fit their theme.

First Round

Round One was originally run by three moderators - Chick, Bat and Pumpkin. It is unknown who they are outside of their mod names.

Round One began on April 12th using a Google Form and Google Sheets prompting system.

Eight days into their prompting stage, the fest had received 28 prompts for authors to choose from.

By May 8, they had 62 prompts. Most were SHINee based prompts, with Taemin-centric following closely behind. Taemin and non-SHINee/SuperM ships did not receive any prompts.

Their first round acquired 65 prompts by the end of prompting, showing the want-of-content popularity for the fest - however, this was also partly due to a collaboration with the Summer of 5hinee fest - any unclaimed prompts of theirs that fit the Taemythos theme were shared and allowed to be written as a Taemythos assignment.

The fest paused during June to spread awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement in America. Due to the climate, they opted to postpone the fest for a short period. The mods stated it did not feel right for them to continue the fest at the time, and claimed prompting would remain open but claiming would not open as planned and called for fandom members to use what voice and platform they had.

At the end of June, on the 30th, they stated they would return and continue the round. They stated that some of the mods - Pumpkin and Bat - left during the hiatus due to the events leading to the June 2020 BLM protests. Their schedule was pushed back a month, with all initial dates being the same - claiming initially was to close on August 1st but was pushed to September 1st due to the hiatus.

On July 5th, the fest asked participants about the potential creation of a new fest - the two options on offer were the SHINee Rebanded fest and the GIRLnee fest - SHINee Rebanded won the inital Taemythos poll, however, both fests ended up being created.

Claiming for the fest also opened on July 5.

On July 8, the fest posted some polls asking for fandom opinion - initially, the fest was created to start posting the written stories during the Halloween period, but this was not a possibility due to the hiatus. The Mods asked if a Halloween round would be something that fest participants would be interested in and the poll voted in favour for this. The polls had to be redone due to mod error - claimed to be after studying brain fog. Shortly after this, the fest also tweeted about receiving anonymous abuse via their Curious Cat The creator themselves confirmed anyone found to be doing this would be banned from the fest.

This abuse continued into late July, with the fest answering a handful of questions. The fest turned the anonymous feature off on their Curious Cat later the same day. They later turned resumed anonymous asking capacity on the 23rd.

Similar to the Summer of 5hinee and Taemythos prompt collaboration, Taemythos and SHINee Rebanded also looked at sharing prompts - although SHINee Rebanded never reached their prompting stage. It's unknown if the fests shared the prompts.

Claiming for the fest officially closed on August 17.

The round ended in December with postings being delayed due to behind the scenes issues. The postings began on January 06, 2021.

The first round of Taemythos ended up with seven works shared that can be found on the fest's collection for the challenge.

The fest unofficially ended the round and went on hiatus shortly after some fic promotions.

SHINeeween - The Halloween Round

On July 19, the fest began their Halloween Special Round.

An August 18th, the fest asked if participants would want a bingo sheet for the Halloween round. The poll finished with 9 votes - 88.9% yes and 11.1% no. The sheet was shared later on the 19th.

The Halloween Round writing period ended on October 19th.

The SHINeeween postings began on October 24th and accumulated in three fanfics.

daddy, there's someone in my room - a Minho/Kibum story featuring child Taemin

The Black Candy - a Jinki/Taemin story

it's just a capitalist scam - a Jonghyun/Taemin story

Special Rounds

On July 31st, it was announced that the fest would run five month-long special rounds from December-April. These rounds never saw fruition, however. From their Archive, it was deduced this may have been SHINee-ship specific rounds, however, these collections have since been deleted. From a tweet shared by Mod Chick, it was assumed the rounds would have focused on Jinki/Taemin, Jonghyun/Taemin, Minho/Taemin, Kibum/Taemin and Jongin/Taemin - Taemin's most popular SuperM ship.

Unnamed SHINee Novella Fest

On September 30th, 2020, Taemythos tweeted asking for moderators for an unnamed new SHINee fest. The creator reached out to them asking for help to find moderators and any potential moderators were asked to contact Taemythos. The fest was to be a novella length fest with a minimum of 15,000 words.

The Taemythos tweet referencing the novella length fest.

This was the only mention of this novella fest, however, and no accounts were ever made for it. The project is considered cancelled in 2022.

2022 Return and Potential Second Round

In June 2022, Taemythos returned to the Twitter account, retweeting some social media AUs and new SHINee fests. On June 28, they prepared an interest check for potential participants to ask if they wanted further rounds from the fest.These polls asked for a week-two week prompt list and ship-specific months were voted out, with participants voting they'd prefer a Round Two.

The fest celebrated 1,000 days of SuperM on June 29.

During July, they shared some other fests featuring Taemin, highlighting writing opportunities for authors. The account went quiet again after this.

An AO3 Collection entitled "Taemythos Round Two" was created on 21 December 2022.

The fest returned once more in December and began an interest check for a Round Two with a starting date of April 2023 and an end date of October 2023. It has yet to be stated if Round Two will happen.

The Twitter biography currently only states Mod Bat as an active moderator of the fest.

Round Two

On December 29, 2022, the interest checks for a Round Two finished, with a 100% vote (of 9 votes) answering "Would sign up". The fest announced that they will "set up, revamp our account and get ready for round two in April 2023".

An Archive Collection entitled "Archive" was set up a few hours after this, being made the parent collection for all other event-specific collections.