Masked Ball a pan-canon, all-genre art/ficathon is open once more! We had a great turnout last year, with lots of great stories and art. I hope those of you who participated will come back, and that those of you who missed it the first time around will check us out.

How it works: story and art ideas are submitted, compiled, and claimed anonymously. You'll have until July 13th to write/draw, and the results will be posted, anonymously, throughout the summer. When everything's done, we reveal who did what.

Here's the prompt submission thread, open until noon (New York time) on the 23rd. Keep in mind you can submit prompts even if you don't want to create anything. And please please please spread the word!

First of all, welcome to all our new members! I'm glad to see new stories and names here, lots of which I recognize. Please let me know what I can do to make your experience better.

I've added a button at the bottom of the page to a rudimentary "links" page. Please check it out and give me suggestions for other links. I am not including actor-specific sites do to the volume. Anything relating to Phantom, or Phantom fic, is welcome however.

I also want to bring up the issue of flaming. There has been a little (not much) trouble with personal attacks left as reviews. Not liking a story is a perfectly valid reaction. Leaving a review stating what it is the reader disliked in a reasoned, constructive way is likewise valid. Stating that the author is a bad person or that their story is in some way reprehensible is not. I have not disabled anonymous reviews or censored anything here for a reason, and I don't want to. I encourage discussion and a multitude of opinions--both for and against. If you don't like something, either don't read it or leave a review stating what you think might make the story better. Fandom can be a heated place, and not every topic is something everyone else approves of. That, I think, is what makes it so interesting.

As I said, this problem has been minor, and in all likelihood I am not talking to you. There have been lots of great reviews and author/reader discussion here and that makes me happy. I encourage you to let me know if you have concerns about what you or someone else has written. I want to point out, too, that in the rules I've reserved the right to delete outright flames. I've also reserved the right to delete stories which do not meet with our formatting/grammatical criteria if you do not resolve the issue within two weeks of my contacting you.

Enough business for now. Thanks for all your great stories and your patronage! Keep reading/writing.