SHINee Rebanded

SHINee Rebanded - otherwise known as The SHINee AU Fest - was a Twitter focused SHINee fic fest. They debuted on Twitter in July 2020 with the theme of "Alternate Universe - No Band" - an Archive of Our Own tag that focuses on bands and musical groups in an alternate universe outside of their group. The aim was to increase the amount of fan fics using the fandom tag "SHINee" and the Additional Tag "Alternate Universe - No Band". 
Rebanded is a pun on the No Band theme. 
As of December 26, 2022, there are only 13 fics tagged with both "SHINee" and "Alternate Universe - No Band" on AO3.https://archiveofourown.org/works?commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=Alternate+Universe+-+No+Band&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&tag_id=SHINee 
== Background ==
On July 5th, 2020, Taemythos debuted a pollhttps://twitter.com/taemythos/status/1279780324017348608?s=20&t=7mwosfWyaOoT7qhl93ADQg asking if people would want new fests for SHINee - one being a fest focusing on alternate universes, being SHINee Rebanded, and one asking about a fest for GIRLnee - being The GIRLnee Fest. SHINee Rebanded won with 51.5% of a 105 vote pull. 
SHINee Rebanded then debuted on July 6thhttps://twitter.com/SHINeeRebanded/status/1280135945954758656?s=20&t=aZWxCNy9OR-aD12PDr93eA to an excited community with a never before seen theming for SHINee RPF - at the time, only Summer of 5hinee and Taemythos were available as SHINee fests. 
On July 6, 2020, they posted their first tweet promoting the festhttps://twitter.com/SHINeeRebanded/status/1280135945954758656?s=20&t=Va43_IIXZbANkgn00l08AQ. Summer of 5hinee was already in a fest round when they began, and would-be participants voted to have the first Rebanded round to begin after their round had finishedhttps://twitter.com/SHINeeRebanded/status/1280166774932221952?s=20&t=Va43_IIXZbANkgn00l08AQ. 
On July 17, 2020 and afterwards, the fest started posting countdowns for "D-9"https://twitter.com/SHINeeRebanded/status/1284134600298696704?s=20&t=Va43_IIXZbANkgn00l08AQ and "8 days until your first briefing"https://twitter.com/SHINeeRebanded/status/1284435881667985408?s=20&t=Va43_IIXZbANkgn00l08AQ. All the countdown tweets contained gifs of members of SHINee in their acting jobs, and not as SHINee members or gifs from music videos that could be seen as non-SHINee band content. 
== First Round ==
=== Introduction ===
The SHINee Rebanded fest used Carrd to give out 'briefings' to would-be authors, explaining the situation. 
This concept was somewhat inspired by the top!soo movie festhttps://twitter.com/soo_tops/status/1287383412865527808?s=20&t=Va43_IIXZbANkgn00l08AQ - a EXO fest focusing on Dyo Kyungsoo as the top in his ships with differing themes - and the top!soo fest gave permission for Rebanded to use the concept. 
Although unconfirmed, it was likely Rebanded did this due to a slowly encroaching toxic fest culture at the time where many fests were being accused of copying others and abuse was prevalent in a handful of fest fandoms. 
=== Theme ===
The theme was annouced on a Carrd and was as follows:
SHINee had been recording in a lab for their latest comeback and Taemin had used his "magic hand curse" - a fandom term for Taemin's penchant of losing and/or breaking things - had pressed the wrong button and sent them to alternate universes. This was first announced by 'MS Entertainment' - a play on SM Entertainment, SHINee's label.https://shineerebanded.carrd.co/#section01 The scientists needed to collect data from the fandom to load into the machine - this would be done by the fandom "researching where SHINee could have gone" - by creating a prompt archive and writing fan fiction. The scientists would then load this data into a machine to teleport SHINee back to the universe where they are a group. https://shineerebanded.carrd.co/#work
They mentioned that Lee Jinki, or Onew, was tracked to some form of "medical facility, perhaps a hospital", referencing Jinki's work in Descendants of the Sun. Choi Minho was in "some form of battle", referencing Battle of Jangsari. Kim Jonghyun "seems to be in a recording studio" but not musical recording; this was believed to be a reference to Jonghyun's radio show host work on MBC FM4U's Blue Night. Lee Taemin was "tracked to a police department or detective agency", referencing Taemin's acting debut in Final Life. The statement said that they did not know where Kim Kibum, or Key, was. 
The round was to set up and focus on Medical AUs, Radio AUs, wars/battles and police/detective AUs. This would help them locate which specific universe that Jinki, Minho, Jonghyun and Taemin was in their specific alternate world jobs. For Kibum, they encouraged the writing of all potential alternate universes so that they may be able to locate where he was working. 
The fest blamed Taemin's magic hands of "short-circuiting the system" and explained it would take them time to set themselves up and 'fix their machines' - giving a meta reason for the fest to be quiet and slow-building whilst the Summer of 5hinee round finished. 
== Hiatus and Archiving ==
=== Abrupt Round End and Hiatus ===
From July 30-August 28, the fest stayed silent with no updates. On August 29th, they tweeted apologising for the silence and that they were looking forward to the Summer of 5hinee round postings and wished authors luckhttps://twitter.com/SHINeeRebanded/status/1297500722955780097?s=20&t=Va43_IIXZbANkgn00l08AQ. 
This was the last tweet from the account, with no moderators mentioned. It has since been decided by the fandom this fest has closed. 
=== Archiving & Speculation ===
In December 2022, a SHINee archival project - SHINee AO3 - began. The project looks to archive fandom content for SHINee since debut (2008) to ensure nothing gets lost to time. On their Carrd, they host a SHINee fic fest page to give all authors a chance to find all possible SHINee writing events.
This page states that "any fests not listed either have not given consent to be shared here or have not yet replied", meaning, fest owners must give permission for them to list the fest on their Carrd. SHINee Rebanded appears on the list under "Civis Illustris - gone but not forgotten", meaning the owner of the fest has given permission for the project to host them on their Carrd and to archive the fest. 
This has lead to speculation that the Rebanded fest may come back in the future, although, nothing is confirmed as of December 26, 2022 and the account remains silent and no moderator has come forward to claim ownership for the fest publicly.
On December 26, SHINee AO3 announced that a fest moderator was looking to get a second moderator to be able to run their first round. https://twitter.com/SHINeeAO3/status/1607353330543611906?s=20&t=Va43_IIXZbANkgn00l08AQ. No further details were shared, past that the event would be "writing only".https://twitter.com/SHINeeAO3/status/1607353608671985666?s=20&t=ie6czfYlU7jbf9CeYP4a4g It is unsure if this is for SHINee Rebanded, SHINee Shorts or a new SHINee fest that has yet to announce itself.
==References==
Category:2020 Challenges
Category:SHINee