Intro post/FAQ
Hi, and welcome to lgbtfest, a fest for fanfic that focuses on the experience of being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. This fest is multi-fandom and open to stories about any characters you want to write as LGBT, whether they're canonically LGBT or not.

FAQ

We're looking for stories that deal with issues like:

Coming out (coming out for the first time, or in a hostile environment, or to a heterosexual partner, or negotiating how open to be with various people and in various social worlds).

Figuring out sexual orientation and gender identity (deciding you're LGBT, making a gender transition, moving between labels, dealing with other people's labels that don't necessarily fit you.)

Dealing with prejudice (job discrimination, hostility from family or friends, legal problems, violence, and what characters can or can't do about them.)

Being part of an LGBT community (gay bars, student groups, social groups, activist groups, LGBT neighborhoods, networks within the military or a profession, circles of friends, etc.)

LGBT history and politics in fictional worlds (What real-life history have characters lived through? Who might they see as role models? What's the LGBT history of the future? What are LGBT politics like in the wizarding world or on alien planets?)

And there are plenty of other things you could write about -- we're looking for a wide variety of prompts to give people plenty of choices.

We're not looking for:

PWP smut. Stories can be any rating, and can include or be about sex, but if there's no point to your story other than "these characters having sex is very hot," this isn't the place for it.

Stories that are about straight non-transgender people. If you think your main characters are straight and not transgender, this isn't the place for your story.

ETA: Because of LJ's policies about depictions of underage sex, we also ask that stories not include sex involving pre-adolescent characters, and not include explicit (NC-17) sex involving characters under 18.

What's wrong with slash that doesn't focus on LGBT issues?

Nothing! We like lots of different kinds of slash. We like fluffy romance where there are no hard problems. We like pure smut. We like stories where the characters' sexual orientation is totally irrelevant to the plot. We like stories set in worlds where no one cares about the gender of people's partners. We like crack!fic where aliens make everybody have sex.

We just also like stories about what it's like to be an LGBT wizard, or mutant, or space pilot, and that's what we want to see for this challenge.

Can I write gen?

Absolutely. Or slash, or femslash, or polyfic, or het in which at least one partner is LGBT and that's a central issue in the story.

What about characters who wouldn't use these labels (for instance, characters in historical/alien settings)?

You can certainly write about characters who wouldn't describe themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (for instance, because their culture doesn't have those terms available). If your main character is attracted to people of the same gender, or doesn't identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, and faces some of the issues above, you're fine. If none of these issues are relevant to your main characters at all, this probably isn't the place for your story.

Schedule

Prompt submission: February 27 through March 7
Prompt claiming: March 8 through March 15
Posting begins: April 10
Posting ends: May 10

When you claim a prompt, you'll also give us your top three choices of posting dates. You'll be assigned a specific date on which to post your story, to spread the stories out throughout the month.

Please feel free to pimp the fest around; we'd like to see a lot of fandoms represented here!

Please don't submit your prompts to this post; submit them here, instead.