SPN J2 Big Bang

History

The biggest fanfiction event in Supernatural fandom Big Bang challenge asks authors to write a 20,000+ word Supernatural or RPF story, while artists and vidders create pieces of artwork or trailer vids to accompany the stories

The first SPN J2 Big Bang challenge was held in 2007, moderated by wendy, audrarose, and estrella30. The idea came from similar challenges run in Harry Potter and Smallville fandoms, although the minimum requirement there was for 50,000+ words.

The 2007 Big Bang was declared officially over on July 5. There were 49 story contributions, 70 pieces of fan art, 5 vids and approximately one million words written.

From 2007-2012 years of the challenge, over 1000 stories with artwork have been produced, totaling over 25 million words. The average story is around 40,000 words long. Most entries are now made available in downloadable forms for e-readers. Besides the authors and artists, many more fans are involved as betas and cheerleaders through the challenge, and of course as readers.

• Schedule for signup and postings for 2015

As fandom has grown other Big Bang style challenges have arisen:

• SNcross Bigbang is a challenge for Supernatural fics which crossover with another text. Stories are greater than 20,000 words
• Dean/Castiel Big Bang started in 2010 and features stories with Dean/Castiel as the central pairing, or Dean and Castiel as the central characters in a Gen fic.
• SPN reverse Big Bang started in 2010 and reversed the usual process. In this challenge Artists produced work, for which writers than produced stories of at least 5,000 words.
• Crowley Big Bang started in 2011. Story minimum length 15,000
• Gabriel Big Bang started in 2010/11. Story minimum length 15,000
• Gen Big Bang started in 2011. Story minimum length 15,000
• SPN Slash Big Bang started in 2010. Stories must have a central slash or femmeslash pairing. Story minimum length 15,000
• Sassy Minibang - a fic challenge for >10K words fics with accompanying art centering around Sam and Castiel (aka Sassy)or Jared and Misha.
• John Winchester Big Bang
• Adam Milligan Big Bang
• SuperWho Big Bang - for SuperWho fic - Supernatural/Doctor Who crossover.
• J2-Kane Big Bang - minimum 10,000 words. Stories must feature Jared, Jensen, Chris Kane or one of the characters they played.
• Before or After Big Bang. Minimum 5,000 word challenge featuring stories set before or after the main Supernatural canon.
• SPN Hardcore Big Bang - Stories from moderately kinky to extreme hardcore. Mini bang of 5K, Big Bang 15 k.
• SPN Femmeslash Big Bang Minimum 10,000 word fic either canon or RPF featuring female characters in slash relationships.
• Wincest Big Bang started in 2013, 20k word minimum. main pairing must be a Winchester - does include Adam.
• Sastiel Big Bang started in 2013, 15k word minimum for stories with Sam/Castiel or Jared/Misha.
• Sammy Big Bang - started 2014. Both Big Bang and Mini Bang format for Sam-centric stories.

See also Fanfic challenges & exchanges

For news of Big Bangs in all fandoms check BigBang Index on Livejournal, BigBangIndex on Dreamwidth (includes many LJ communities as well), and The Big Bang Blog Project on Tumblr. You can also check Big Bang tags on AO3, though not everyone tags, and many challenges may use a collection instead.

Stats for Big bang stories 2007-2011

There have been 908 entries of fic and art in the Big Bang over 5 years.

The Big Bang started with Supernatural canon-based stories stories in the majority, and this swung around to RPF stories dominating, and in 2011 it was a 50/50 split.

Unsurprisingly within SPN fic, slash is the dominant genre, although as is typical of SPN fic overall, there is a significant Gen component, with these stories making up from 21 to 33% of stories. This is actually pretty reflective of the proportion of Gen fic in SPN fandom, although it was decreased in the last couple of years, not in absolute numbers but as a percentage of all SPN fic, as the arrival and huge popularity of Dean/Castiel fic swelled the ranks of slash.

When we start to break the categories down a bit further, we see a definite increase in the variety of fics.

This graph shows actual numbers of stories rather than percentages, and illustrates the rise in diversity in the last couple of years. This obviously reflects the rise in secondary recurring characters on the show since season 4.

There were 19 Dean/Cas stories in 2010, and 15 this year. This category is obviously heavily influenced by the Dean/Castiel Big Bang which started very successfully in 2010 and had 52 stories and art posted in its first year and 53 in 2011.

Links

• Video celebrating Big bang and promoting the 2010 challenge
• spn_j2_bigbang lj community
  
• 2007 Master list of stories
• 2008 Master list of stories
• 2009 Master list of stories
• 2010 Master list of stories
• 2011 Masterlist of stories
• 2012 Masterlist of stories
• All Big Bang stories and art tagged on Delicious
• Unofficial Big Bang Collection on Archive of Our Own
• A list of Big Bang challenges in other fandoms
• Supernatural bangs and other challenges on Tumblr (and LJ too), only current challenges as of 2016.
• Analysis of stories and art produced for the Big Bang from 2007-2010 by missyjack
• Analysis of stories and art produced for the Big Bang in 2011 by missyjack