Question Is this a thing?

Actually, that's a misunderstanding of the G0 project. G0 was proposed/implemented to provide the canon team an opportunity to vet new authors who we are considering recruiting in how those individuals work with the team and with integrating ideas that aren't necessarily their own into their writing. See, we have the ability to determine the quality of an author's work by reading anything they write... fan fic or even outside stories that they submit. But quality of writing skill is not the only ability/trait that is important in being a part of the Whateley team. We also work in a shared environment with a large group of people... that means that sometimes, we are writing material based on ideas that are not our own or working to integrate scenes/segments written by another author... or occasionally writing 'around' those things, being certain to avoid revealing things that our protagonist isn't aware of, even though those events are happening at the same time elsewhere in the universe and the whole team has been plotting them for weeks.

So, a G0 project is something sourced entirely by us. We have a list of 'stories' that are part of the universe... backstory, organization founding, pivotal events, epic battles, and so forth... that we don't NEED to tell to move forward with the primary plotlines, but that we'd like to tell at some point. An author may be invited to choose one of these options from the list and will be assigned a canon author as a mentor/liaison. Once chosen, they'll get a summary, a list of critical characters, some specific scene suggestions, and some general guidance on style and tone... along with some deadlines and a breakdown of how to work with their mentor to ensure that the story stays 'on the rails' and canon. When parts of the story are ready for feedback, the mentor fields feedback from the team and coaches the author on getting things up to speed for canon approval. When complete, the story is evaluated go/no-go... if 'go, it is published as a canon release. With no-go, the author is given another chance to bring it in-line with canon intentions for the piece... if the author can do so, it'll eventually be released... if not, we will decide if it can be released as a non-canon story or if doing so will cause other problems.

SO, as you can see... G0 isn't a marker reflecting the time frame or 'backstory' nature of a story... its a project tag that identifies the author of the piece as a non-canon author writing 'on assignment'.

Is it possible for a random author to submit something to the team that they would like evaluated for canon publication? Yes. But you are far more likely to be successful doing that with a unique story inside the timeline used by Gen 1 or Gen 2 teams than you are with critical events that we've already fleshed out but not published. The reason being that WE probably already have a lot of unreleased details that we've hashed out about those events so that none of us go off the rails when we reference it and so we already have a good idea how we want it to go ... and unless you blow us away with your piece, it's not going to overcome those preconceived ideas.

Also... if you just pick one of those moments on your own and submit something without going through the process, we're not watching you or vetting your progress or testing any of those aspects that was the point in the first place... so you might as well have just written something completely your own.


As to writing shorts, or telling stories outside the two core lines... there's nothing wrong with doing so, but the challenge is that you are working in territory that is less clearly described by the existing canon. That may be good for the purpose of creative work... but it does make it more difficult to stay close to canon. Not a problem if you're just writing WhatIF stuff that isn't concerned with canon deviance... but a big deal if you are hoping to get a piece canonized.

kk. Generally what we recommend is that you just write what you want to write. Good stories will get recognized by the community as good stories whether they are canon or not.

And if your long term goal is to join the cabal, making an effort to write well and pay attention to canon detail on all your projects even when you think we aren't watching... is probably the best way to get there. We don't make that judgement lightly or without a lot of discussion/planning over time... being a part of the team is a long term commitment and leaving has a big impact on internal planning AND the community, so we want to avoid bringing in people who are crazy excited to be involved this month... but three months from now have moved on to a different community/project.