Days of Awesome: A Jewish Characters Ficathon

What is Days of Awesome?

Days of Awesome is a annual Jewish character ficathon in honor of the Jewish high holiday season.

Originally founded by Livejournal user jadelennox in 2007, the goal of this project is to create a venue for fans of all backgrounds to write fic about Jewish characters and their Jewish identities–which are all-too-often under-represented in canon and fanon, and, when they are represented, they’re often represented as Jewish in name only.

We’re also here because while we love other holiday fic challenges, they so frequently don’t correspond with holidays that are important on the Jewish calendar. We wanted to change that with a festive little celebration around the Jewish holiday season!

How It Works

We’re keeping it really casual.

We’ll have a collection on Archive of Our Own that will open on Erev Rosh HaShana (Monday, September 6, this year), and stay open through the Hebrew month of Tishrei (until October 6)–a length which spans the entire Jewish high holiday season, and includes the holidays of Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Sheminei Atzeret, and Simchat Torah!

You can feel free to upload any fic, ficlet, or podfic that you write that fits the requirements to the collection within that time frame. Please just tag it with the tag Community: daysofawesome!

And, if all goes according to plan, we’ll have a few optional prompts too, peppered and shared throughout the month.

What are the requirements for fic?

The only firm requirement is that your focal character be Jewish.

If they’re canonically Jewish–great!

If they’re not canonically Jewish, that’s okay too. But we would ask that if it is a situation in which you headcanon a particular character as Jewish, or are writing an AU in which they are Jewish, you please make the fic about their Jewishness.

If you have a Jewish OC that you want to write about–if, for instance, you want to explore what it would be like to be a Jewish character in the world of the Hunger Games, or His Dark Materials–go for it! Again, we would just ask that the fic be about that character’s (or those characters’) Jewish experiences.

If you wanted to be extra festive and seasonal, you could write about some of the characters celebrating one of the seasonal holiday, or a fic on one of the themes that is explored throughout one of these days.

All fandoms are game, and there are no length requirements, and you can upload as many pieces as you’d like within the month.

Questions?

I’m here to help!

Feel free to send me a message or an email at daysofawesomefic@gmail.com

• Stranger Things


• The Old Guard


• Gravity Falls

• Characters go apple (or date!) picking (or honey harvesting!) to get ready for Rosh Hashanah
• Characters attempt to build a Sukkah. Shenanigans ensue.
• There is a Sukkot tradition that people have of inviting guests into their sukkah. This includes literal guests, but also figurative guest–biblical characters, ancestors, people who cannot be with them. Who is your character inviting into their sukkah?

• The Days of Awe are a period of repentance, culminating in Yom Kippur–the Day of Atonement. Write about your character and repentance.
• Rosh HaShana is a period of renewal and rebirth–new beginnings. Write about your character and rebirth, their new beginnings.
• There is a Rosh HaShana tradition people have of Tashlich–which involves casting bread crumbs into the water to symbolize things about the previous year you like to cast away. What is your character trying to cast away?