Additional Rule & Schedule Updates

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Hello friends! It’s almost time for us to begin nominations pre-gaming. We have additional updates concerning the schedule, the rules post, and the medium opt-ins.

Time is shifted forward on all deadlines

We are updating the schedule to have an earlier deadline time this year. Last year, we found ourselves pushing checks and deadlines off to the next day on behind-the-scenes things, and realized that we hadn’t left ourselves enough time to do admin-y stuff. The new deadline will hopefully allow us to keep on top of the schedule.

All deadlines are now 10:00 PM EDT except for those in November, which will happen at 10:00 PM EST

(This is two hours earlier than before.)

Rule post updates:

We've significantly revised parts of the rules so that they're clearer to new participants and easier for everyone to find info in. We didn’t add anything we weren't already enforcing). The new rules will be posted by the end of the day July 22nd, and available for your perusal at that time!

The updated sections are:

• Official Communication (under "Participant Expectations")
• Sign Ups (whole section)
• Do Not Match Requests (under "Sign Ups", but calling this out specifically because it has more instructions now!)
• Swaps (whole section)
• Assignments (whole section)

We hope these updates will lead to a smoother experience for everyone!

We have a few more medium tweaks

We thought we were done but we found a couple more lying around, oops.

Illustrated Text (Visual Medium & Text Medium)

We updated this ruleset's description to more clearly explain that when you fill an illustrated text medium, the work as a whole needs to fill a requested relationship-field tag, but the individual parts don't.

For example, if you were filling an A/B relationship tag for a recip who'd opted into Medium Opt-In: Illustrated Text (Art & Writing) - In-Universe Newspaper Front Page then you need to make a newspaper front page that has both text and fanart and which depicts A/B in a romantic and/or sexual light…but the art or text components themselves don't individually need to both be shippy.

Medium Opt-In: Writing - Game Walkthrough
Medium Opt-In: Writing - Translation Analysis
Medium Opt-In: Writing - Product Description

These three mediums will now be updated to have “In-Universe” in front of them. The new tags will be:

• Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Game Walkthrough
• Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Translation Analysis
• Medium Opt-In: Writing - In-Universe Product Description

Medium Opt-In: Writing - TTRPG Supplement

TTRPG Supplements will be moving into the Instructions Ruleset. This will allow any TTRPG Supplement to gain wordcount for included art or photos that may accompany the medium. The updated tag will be “Medium Opt-In: Instructions - TTRPG Supplement”

Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - In-Universe Infographic
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Infographic
Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Meta Infographic

We are condensing the Infographics tags down to two. “In-Universe Infographics” and “Meta Infographics” cover the two types of infographics that have been made in past rounds of the event, and we decided that this is a sufficiently small number of tags that they don’t need an umbrella tag. The “Medium Opt-In: Unique Rules - Infographic” tag will be retired.

Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard
Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard of Canon Scene(s)

We are condensing the Storyboard tags down to one. The “of Canon Scene(s)” specification for the second tag feels more appropriate for the optional details of a request rather than part of a medium tag. We will be retiring the “Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard of Canon Scene(s)” tag, and will retain the “Medium Opt-In: Art - Storyboard” tag.