unconventionalcourtship | Unconventional Courtship 2025: Sign Up

'Welcome to 'Unconventional Courtship 2025'!
Come join our twelfth round and over a decade of proud trope subversion.

'Unconventional Courtship' is a panfandom fic fest where you write and post a 1000w+ fic based on a M&B/Harlequin plot. Fics will be posted to this community, staggered through June 2025.

This year's mod is

liadt.

How to play:

It's as simple as:

1. Sign up! Sign ups close on June 10 and all you need to do is comment on this post with the day you want to post your fic. You can tell us which summary/pairing you're going with, but you don't have to. You don't need a Dreamwidth to play - just comment with OpenID, although you will need to ask us to post your fic on the com. If you are on DW, please follow the community.

2. Choose a M&B/Harlequin summary (or two etc) - we have hundreds of suggestions here, but there are literally thousands. Our prompt generator may also help (thank you

john_amend_all) You can do more than one fic, if you want. You can also combine prompts, if you like.

3. Replace the names (and pronouns if necessary) with the names (and pronouns) of the pairing of your choice. Any any all fandoms and pairings are welcome in this fest.

You can also replace place names and jobs as long as you keep to the spirit of the prompt. So, if you want to write Kirk/Spock, but you don't want to write a modern day AU, you could replace 'the Sahara desert' with 'a desert planet' and Kirk wouldn't need to be the boss at a law firm, he could be the boss... in the sense that he's the captain.

4. Complete a fic based on your altered summary. You can take the prompt seriously or use it as an improbable basis for lols.

4.5. Pimp the fest far and wide. I'm hardly going to do this at all, so it's up to you - the players! I've re-uploaded the make-your-own banners and of course you can use ready made ones found over here and here.

Please do pimp where ever you think would be appropriate.

5. Post to this community on your assigned day. If you unable to post on your day there is a amnesty week for those that sign up from July 1 - 7.

You can also post to our AO3 collection if you want!

You can read examples of Unconventional Courtship fic by looking through the collection, or by going through masterposts in the comm.

6. ~~Profit!~~ Fics and art for all! I'll post a masterlist once all the entries are in. Crossposting is encouraged.

Any questions? Leave a comment or PM me.

Rules:

1. All fics must be over 1,000 words long. Fics must be complete, no WIPs.

2. You must use a modified Mills & Boon and/or Harlequin summary.

3. You don't have to use a beta.

4. Please use the following header (or similar - the AO3 share function is fine) when you post to the community:

5. Please post on your assigned day. If you can't for whatever reason, please let me know either by commenting on this post or by PM.

6. You can use this fic for another challenge i.e.

trope_bingo

7. You can sign up for any day you like, but if it is possible for you to sign up for a day that nobody else is interested in then that'd be best of all.

1 Jun:

merryghoul
2 Jun:

aflaminghalo
3 Jun:
4 Jun:
5 Jun:
6 Jun:

artemisdart
7 Jun:
8 Jun:

paranoidangel
9 Jun:

shudderings
10 Jun:
11 Jun:

endlesstwanted
12 Jun:

kick_back_80s
13 Jun:

natequarter
14 Jun:

sparkysparky
15 Jun:

hydriotaphia
16 Jun:

glory_jean
17 Jun:

valmouth

tinystarsfic
18 Jun:

unendingwanderlust
19 Jun:

cornerofmadness
20 Jun:

abovetheruins
21 Jun:
22 Jun:

the_kellephant
23 Jun:

lilly_c
24 Jun:

meridian_rose
25 Jun:

stormsyndrome
26 Jun:

melagan
27 Jun:

evandar
28 Jun:

caitis_musings

colisahotnorthernmess
29 Jun:

rubylily

fleetsparrow
30 Jun:

altum_videtur

brokenhighways

If you have questions, feel free to ask! And/or consult the FAQs.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I love this challenge! Could I have June 26 please?

Not sure if I'm actually going to sign up (thinking about it). But I have been wondering if we're not using the Generator, where do we get the summaries?

Hello! This looks really interesting, could I have June 30th?

The "hundreds of suggestions here" link has the original list I based the generator on. Some other ideas:

If you're interested in a particular plot element, you can try Googling for that on the Mills and Boon website. For instance, if you're interested in rugged Highlanders, "highlander inurl:millsandboon" can be helpful.

If you have a charity bookshop nearby, you can wander down there and see if they have any interesting-looking romance novels. That's how I stumbled across the regeneration / reincarnation in prompt 475 for example.

May I have June 28th please?

Thanks for clearing that up. And I suppose Amazon is also an option.

That prompt is one I don't think I'd seen before now. (Fun fact: it gave me Two and Dr Crusher )