Editor’s Note: When Febuwhump appeared in its original run in 2019, it came at a perfect time in my life. For that reason it will always have a special place in my heart. I was very excited when I discovered (approximately halfway through the event) that it had returned. So thank you to Bethany for bringing back an excellent whump event! As a writer, I’m very grateful.
If you’re like me and you’d like to try the prompts later in the year, you can find them here. –Claire
Tell us a little about yourself! What are your whumpy and fandom interests?
My name’s Bethany (she/her) and I’m a writer from the UK. I work on a lot of original fiction and poetry, but I’m in and out of fandoms all the time – I wrote a lot for The 100 back when it was good, Marvel and The Umbrella Academy most recently, with a lot of other fandoms scattered throughout. I blog, write and tweet under @tempestaurora.
As with all things, I’m very picky about what I like, and whump is only enjoyable for me in a few narrow areas (wild, I know, considering I ran an entire event dedicated to it). I like the tragic, borderline angst areas, mostly – I love when there’s a warning for a major character death, hostage situations that go entirely wrong, or characters getting stuck in accidents that dramatically alter how they can interact with the world. On the other side of things, sometimes I just really like it when two characters rehash their traumatic childhoods and come to a better understanding of each other. I’m flexible that way.
How did you initially hear about Febuwhump? Did you participate in the year(s) prior before stepping up to run the event?
I feel like I heard about it when it was running in 2020, but I have no memory of ever seeing it. I’ve never participated in it, though I’ve completed (the all-mighty, wonderfully run) Whumptober twice now, first in 2018 and then in 2020.
How did you become the mod for Febuwhump 2.0?
Or as I call it, Febuwhump 2: Electric Boogaloo.
It’s actually all down to hailing-stars complaining in my vicinity and me loving to solve problems. When she mentioned that Febuwhump had been deleted and cancelled for 2021, I kind of immediately just decided, I’ll do it. Doesn’t seem very hard.
Which—honestly, it wasn’t.
The febuwhump username had been abandoned so it was free for the taking, I love making graphics and being in charge of things – I just wanted to solve a problem, fill the gap. It all comes under my (totally not real at all) super-secret non-profit bingo card forgery ring, in which I allegedly created fandom bingo cards for people when the creators got too many requests to fill them all. I don’t like to see people missing out on things, I guess.
How did you decide on what prompts and guidelines to use?
Honestly, this was the hardest part of the process. I followed Whumptober’s lead on a lot and changed out anything that I didn’t agree with or thought was too time-consuming/difficult to manage. The tagging system, for example, was pared back as far as humanly possible because there would be way too many mandatory tags to keep track of when it came to choosing what to reblog.
The prompts were generated entirely by whoever was online during a specific forty-five minute timeframe on the Irondad Discord server. I had an open call for prompts, received about fifty of them, then created a poll that I put on the blog to be filled in. As that was all the way at the beginning of the blog, there were seventy responses in total. Hopefully next year’s poll will be more popular. From there, I put the top twenty-eight as the main prompts, and mix-and-matched for the alternate list with the next five most popular and the ones that I just really wanted to use but hadn’t been voted for.
Did you participate in creating this month, or did you focus your energies on moderating?
Oh, entirely moderating, and even that became a Task about halfway through the month. I thought about creating, but with studying for my Masters and writing original fiction and poetry, there really wasn’t enough energy left in me for writing fic this time.
Modding an event like this is both exciting and intimidating for many people — how much work did it take before February to get this event off the ground? How much time did you spend on modding duties during February?
It’s truly not as much work as you think it will be.
But maybe I’m biased, because I kind of co-opted an event.
Febuwhump already had some popularity before I took it on, so maybe that was part of what made it work so easily, but I will give a lot of credit to everyone I pushed the post onto and asked to share so I could get the word out.
I had a lot of people offer help and advice throughout, but for the most part, I already had other events to base the model off, and I enjoy things like designing Tumblr themes and the graphics for the prompt post.
Another big help was also being a non-fandom-specific event. I think as soon as you open up an event to everyone, rather than keeping it to a certain group, you get a lot more interest and attention.
As for modding during February, I’m not a creature of habit, so remembering to go on the blog and share posts became a bit of a chore – so much so that I put it off until midnight almost every day – but otherwise, it really wasn’t that difficult, and I enjoyed practically every aspect of it.
The list of those who “won” the event is quite impressive, as are the notes on the prompts post! Do you have any idea how many people participated, overall?
I have absolutely zero idea how many creators participated, but I’m thinking of doing a survey after the AO3 collection has closed and everyone’s posted their masterposts to gauge reactions and thoughts and see if I can get a ballpark figure.
I’m super proud of how many completionists Febuwhump has. I know from experience that it’s really not easy to be creative daily. Everyone who pushed through the blocks and inevitable days where creating felt like walking through sludge has my total respect and admiration.
What advice would you give to other folks interested in running an event like this?
If you’re worried it will be too much work; it probably won’t be.
Take any help that is offered and thank them profusely afterwards.
Choose a cute colour scheme. It makes everything more enjoyable.
Are you planning on participating in any other whump challenges this year?
Probably not – I’ve got a dissertation coming up, the outline for a novel and another poetry book in the works. Whenever I get into my next fandom kick, though, I’ll be on the lookout.
What’s the future of Febuwhump?
First, I might actually remember to make everything accessible for Tumblr mobile users.
Second, the colour scheme is probably going to be pink. Third, it’s going to be called Febuwhump 3: Tokyo Drift.
wince magazine 