What a difference a few months makes! When last we were setting a contest, we were a dedicated Harry Potter website, with a long-but-quiet history behind us - now, we're taking our first steps into a wider fandomverse, with a greatly-expanded site, forum and archives. Now that we're finally off and running with our new site, and two of our 'featured' fandoms have returned to our screens in 'Heroes' and 'Supernatural', we wanted to give our members - new and old - an opportunity to get their creative juices flowing, leading to this - our first multi-fandom contest.

Since we're starting out in the multi-fandom world, it seemed an appropriate time to look at the starting points of our favourite villains - so, in this, our first multi-fandom contest, we're looking for fanwork that deals with the earliest actions that started them down the path to darkness. This could be something as simple as depicting their first villainous deeds and the earliest devious plans, or could even delve a little deeper, into the motives and causes that led them down this path. Entries can be either fiction or artwork, and can be based around any villain in any fandom - there's no requirement to pick one of our featured fandoms.

As with our previous contest back in February, entries can be submitted to either the TBC Fanwork Archive or TBC LiveJournal Community, in order to open the contest to as wide an audience as possible. (Our other, smaller journal communities may be added to future contests, if they become more active.) The full contest page is here, and contains a small selection of challenges as usual - feel free to check out those available the Challenge Page too, and to add to them. All entries should be submitted by 11.59pm [Forum Default Time/Central US] on the 26th of October, and the winner will then be selected by means of a vote on the TBC forums.

So, what are you all waiting for? We're looking forward to seeing what masterpieces you can all create, so don't let us down... ;)

As visitors to the main website will already be aware, The Basilisk Cafe has recently taken the decision to expand beyond the realms of the Harry Potter fandom, and relaunch as a multi-fandom experience with an emphasis on those darker characters that we all love.  The announcement was recently made identifying our first four 'featured fandoms', which are HP, Supernatural, Heroes, and the universe of Doctor Who - we'll be focusing on these four popular fandoms to begin with, although there will always be a place for fans of others...

Today, we've reorganised the fanwork archive to reflect our new status, as we recently did with the site's discussion forums - you'll see in the category list that there's a 'Harry Potter' and 'Doctor Who' category, each of which is subdivided into smaller subcategories, while there's also a Fanart and Fanfic category for Heroes and Supernatural, as well as categories for Crossovers and Other Fandoms.  (We'll add subcategories in Other Fandoms as necessary, and possibly upgrade popular fandoms to a full category of their own.)

These new fandoms are available to post in now, so feel free to dive in and be the first to share your fanwork from your other favourite fandoms...  We'll be holding a multi-fandom contest in the near future too, so keep your eyes peeled!