Ah, Fandom

Another auxilary of the SS/HG Gift Exchange was the Exchange BINGO. This was a feature in several of the last rounds of the Exchange. It was formed as a way to encourage reviews, since, after all, getting reviews of one’s work are a large part of why people take part in online activities like fic exchanges in the first place.

As with any game of BINGO, one is issued a card and attempts to fill a row, or fill enough spaces to make a specific design, or to fill the whole card. The cards for the Exchange BINGO contain random collections of the Exchange partcipant’s names. The spaces are filled when the gift for a named partcipant posts. You review it, and write down the link of where the review is to be found. When you have filled a row, or the design (either an ‘S’ or an ‘H’), or completely fill your card, you contact the moderators of the BINGO and send them the list of the links to your reviews.

The entry fee for the BINGO is to commit to providing a prize for one of the winners.

I signed up for the BINGO for the last of the SS/HG Gift Exchanges, and offered to do a piece of Art for one of the winners. The winner who claimed my offer wanted an illustration for the fic she had written for the Exchange the previous year. This was a story entitled ‘Book Club’ in which Hermione becomes the new Charms teacher at Hogwarts, after Professor Flitwick’s retirement. This coincides with the Board of Governors finally figuring out that it would be to everyone’s advantage for the students to be exposed to some aspects of Muggle culture.

Of course, no one was suggesting that the students be exposed to something so radical without the Professors being conversant in the matter themselves, so for one academic year the Professors were mandated to learn something about Muggles. The new Quidditch instructor, a Muggle-born wizard offers to oversee a sports club. Hermione, the only other Muggle-born on the staff, offers to run a Book Club.

The Book she proposes to use to introduce Muggle literature to wizards is ‘Lord of the Rings.’

This is a solid enough work to keep them occupied through the full year, ending with a party in the Room of Requirement at the end of it.