101 Ways To End Up In A Canadian Shack

101 Ways To End Up In A Canadian Shack was a short story challenge created by Speranza in December 2001.
It stemmed from prevalent fanon in due South fandom that had Ray Kowalski and Benton Fraser "shacking up" in northern Canada (sometimes, but not always, literally in a shackTechnically, a cabin; in canon Fraser owned one.) after the series finale, Call of the Wild. Fiction using this trope was called Canadian Shack Fic.
After Speranza joked about this trend with friends, a number of authors across other fandoms were inspired to place characters in the same situation, and so the 101 Ways challenge was born. 
Usually the shack was isolated, and the characters being stuck in a blizzard earned bonus points. Thus, the challenge was an opportunity for deploying tropes like Huddling for Warmth, Cave Story, and Bed Sharing. While the original challenge had a strong focus on due South (including several DS crossover works), the submitted stories and vignettes were from many fandoms.
Speranza continued on to moderate similar ficlet challenges with many fandoms united by the use of a theme, including The Inappropriate Elf Challenge and the Tax Shelters challenge.
==First Hint of the Phrase==
From the author's notes to A Moment of Insight, a due South fanwork from 2001: 
==The Original Challenge: 2001==
This sentence summarizes The Story of This Story, which is a chat log that Speranza preserved with the initial brainstorming for the Canadian Shack ficlet challenge idea. The chat was between a few people including Speranza (using Ces or Cesca in the chat), Anna S, Julad, linbot, Mia from MRKS, resonant, and Terri. It included the participants imagining various pairings in a shack, brainstorming where the shack should be located geographically, and making many jokes about “shacking up”. 
The “Shacked Up page with all the original stories, titled "101 Ways To End Up In A Canadian Shack: A series of short-short stories" and subtitled with the quote from Terri regarding the ubiquity of a Canadian shack, gathered 62 fandoms and 30 authors. All the authors provided bios , and Speranza stored all these pages on trickster.org, where some of the challenge authors also had fan sites, such as Speranza herself, with Arduinna, Kass, Katrina Bowen, and resonant. 
The fandoms ranged from Angel to X-Men: the fandom listing offers an interesting glimpse into what was popular, current, and beloved in this particular corner of media fandom in 2001.
10 years later when Speranza announced the anniversary challenge, she summarized the way the challenge gained steam in 2001:
==The Tenth Anniversary Challenge: 2011-2012==
In January 2012, Tzikeh reminded Speranza that it was the 10th anniversary of the "Shack Thing" in December 2011. Speranza made a Dreamwidth post summarizing the original challenge’s conception, then announced:
New shack fics were quickly contributed in a variety of fandoms which hadn't been part of the original challenge, and in fact hadn’t even been around at the time of the original challenge! Some of the new fandoms included Firefly, the rebooted Hawaii 5-0, Leverage, the Sherlock series on BBC, and Twilight. There were also contributions in fandoms like Shakespeare, which existed at the time of the original challenge but hadn’t had any ficlets written for it.
The 10th anniversary collection was open to anyone who wanted to write their favorite fannish characters (no matter how implausibly) into a shack, or some kind of shack-like structure, in the Canadian wilderness. 101 new vignettes were posted between her post launching the anniversary edition on January 6, 2012, and the moment when the collection reached 101 on January 20. 
The collection remains open for further submissions. As of June 2022, it listed 118 works in 85 fandoms.
==Fan Responses==
===2001===
===2012===
Canadian fan staranise criticised the return of the trope: 
Her post sparked renewed discussion of the trope and challenge on Fandom Wank. Soon after, naraht posted a linkspam of Canadian-shack-meta related links showing that discussion had spread to Fail Fandomanon as well as individual journals.
===2014===
==Example Authors==
While of course many authors only wrote for one or the other challenge, several fan writers who contributed shacks to the original challenge also contributed to the anniversary challenge. 
* astolat wrote ficlets for different pairings that existed at the time for both challenges, such as one with the Harry/Draco pairing in 2001 and a relatively-long shack fic (3500 words) with the Sherlock/John pairing in 2012
* Arduinna wrote 10 ficlets across 9 fandoms for both the original and the anniversary challenges
* Kass wrote 7 ficlets across 8 fandoms (one ficlet being a crossover) in the years after the original (2008) and during the anniversary challenge
* Lanning wrote ficlets spanning many fandoms for both the original (Highlander, Sports Night, Starsky & Hutch) and anniversary challenges (a Doctor Who Smallville crossover)
* resonant wrote ficlets in the due South fandom for both the original and the anniversary challenges, plus one for the anniversary challenge with the Steve Rogers/Tony Stark pairing
* torch wrote ficlets in a couple small fandoms for the original (Nancy Clue, Once a Thief, plus Smallville) then a Bleach ficlet for the anniversary challenge 
==External Links==
===The Challenges===
* 101 Ways To End Up In A Canadian Shack (original challenge from 2001, collection created on AO3 in 2011) at AO3
* Canadian Shack 2011 (tenth anniversary collection created in 2011) at AO3
==Notes==
==References==
Category:2001
Category:2012
Category:2022 Featured ArticlesCategory:Trickster.org
Category:Due South Challenges