In the hours since I learned of the devastating earthquake in Japan, just from watching the live feeds on Google and reading the feeds I follow (I can't make myself look at videos or photos, so I am stuck reading all the text I can find and all the radio I can listen to), I've had the misfortune of witnessing some of the worst behaviour I have come across in months, running the gamut from remarks that dismissed the tragedy in favour of some much less dire concern, to some spectacularly awful comments, to some utter stupidity, all the way through what to me looked like plain sociopathy.
( it is appallingly ugly, racist, xenophobic, you name it; reading these will almost certainly cause your blood pressure to riseCollapse )As a result of these observations, I have come to the conclusion that humanity's rear end has a much worse acne problem than I had suspected.
But no matter! Because fortunately, for every truly awful thing said, there are dozens of messages of support, condolence, prayer, offers of help, words of praise and encouragement for the people trapped or stranded in the areas of Japan affected by the disaster.
A fandom auction hit the ground running hours after the news --
help_japan.
I will offer my awful stick figure crack art and original fic and beta services and meta and whatever else I can think of in the meantime between now and when auctions open. I've spoken at some length in the past about how writing fan fiction for "money" (even though the writer doesn't pocket the money) makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable, still does, always will, so I am still not offering fic.
However,
I will write one word of fic for every dollar raised by help_japan collectively. Everyone who bids at
help_japan (on
anything, for
any amount, whether your bid wins or not) and is for some reason interested in me writing fic for them will be able to submit a prompt of their choosing (along with a link to their bid) once bidding is over on March 26th (I will at that time put up a call for prompts with a list of fandoms I'm willing to write).
I do not expect an overwhelming number of prompts, but I don't want to end up in a situation where I'm making people wait forever for what they were promised, so I'll put the prompts in a poll for each fandom so everyone can pick which one prompt gets written for that fandom (fic length = total
help_japan donations divided by the number of fandoms prompts are submitted for).
Additionally, if a particular prompt grabs me right away, I will write drabbles/ficlets on the spot, but I make no promises there. I decided earlier today that I'm going to skip all the cosplay events I had been planning to attend this year to make time for this.
Also, because stories about auction defaulters make me really sad, if by the end of this calendar year I fail to deliver on any of the fic prompts that I commit to (I will post a list), I will donate the amount of the prompter's original bid to the relief organisation of their choice. Same goes for defaulting on non-fic; if I don't deliver by the deadline we agree on, I will match your donation.
furiosity
rejuvenated
enraged
mischievous
nerdy