kurofai | WE WANT YOU! Expression of Interest: 2017 KuroFai Olympics

You're not dreaming, folks: we're looking to bring back that fandom institution, that fantastical fanfic extravaganza, that fabulous festival that is the KuroFai Olympics back for the seventh year running!

But Clover, I can hear you asking, what exactly are the KuroFai Olympics?

That's a great question! The KuroFai Olympics are a friendly, fan-run fanfiction writing event, where two teams working with paired-but-mirrored themes compete to create fanfiction entries based on a series of prompts. The Olympians for each team write frantically over the course of several weeks to finish their entry for their respectively assigned prompts, and then the teams post according to a roster during the much-anticipated posting week... and then comes the voting! Fans vote for their favourite entries in accordance to a scoring rubric, and at the end of the voting period, the scores are tallied up to name a winner!

Clover, that really sounds more like a writing contest than the Olympics. Don't the Olympics have, like, sports and naked oil wrestling or something?

You have a point - it is a contest in a sense, but the name comes from the concept of the Fandom Olympics, which it was inspired by way back when the very first KuroFai-specific Olympics was held on livejournal. And even though it's technically a contest between teams, there are no winners or losers or medals - just a little friendly competition, and a whole lot of amazing fic to read! Besides, no-one's saying you can't strip Kurogane and Fai, cover them in oil and make them wrestle in your fic - just as long as it fits the theme!

...Thank you for that stunning mental image.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but you're welcome! [wink]

Still, naked oil wrestling or not, it sounds like a lot of fun! When's it being held? Who's running it? What's the theme for the teams, and where's the prompt list? When do we start writing, and when do we vote?

Whoa, whoa, whoa! That's a lot of questions that we don't have the answers to yet... and that's what this post is for.

This is an Expression of Interest: we're looking for volunteers to be the contest moderators (the hardworking peeps that run the show), ideas for themes for the teams to compete in (such as Fantasy vs. Sci Fi, Angst vs. Fluff, Canon vs. AU and so on), and suggestions for what dates we should hold the event on (remembering that we need it to be fair for as many people as possible, and accommodate an international calendar - we've got fans all over the world who'd like to join in the fun!).

If you can supply any of the above, we want to hear from you! I've put together three separate threads for volunteers, themes, and dates respectively down below, as well as a miscellaneous suggestion thread, so if you can, please drop a comment to the appropriate thread with your suggestions!

Hey Clover, didn't you run the event one year? Why can't you just run it again?

You're absolutely right, I sure did - back in 2015. And I don't think I can do it again: I'm a ~~lover~~ writer, not a event-runner, and while I had a blast doing it, it played merry hell with my anxiety. Because of that, it's probably best I stick to doing what I do best: writing about the scowly ninja and his mage husband, and leaving the hard work to other people. Basically, I'm anxious and also lazy, and I wanna write for this year's Olympics - which is a lot harder to do when you're running the whole thing behind the scenes.

That said, I am more than happy to help out to the brave souls that step up to the plate and take their places as event moderators - and as an admin for the comm, I'll lend as much behind-the-scenes help as I possibly can. Now, since I a) work full-time, and b) live in The Land Down Under (aka Australia, aka really bloody far away) it might take me a little bit to get back to you, but please don't hesitate to chat amongst yourselves. I'll chip in when I can to help you out, and I have faith everyone will be polite and friendly to one another! (Because if you're not, then I'll feed you to Mokona [cheerful grin])

SO! Please check out the threads below, and reply to any where you think you have an idea or a suggestion - to make this year's event a successful one, we need all the input we can get!

Thanks, Clover! This sounds really exciting - I can't wait to get involved!

Me too, friend, me too! [finger guns]

EDIT: So far, we have the wonderful

animangod ,

flowerspeaks and

aquarius_galuxy as part of our moderating team - hopefully we can finalise our whole team soon! I'll update the post again once everyone is confirmed!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think sooner is better. Interest has already been generated by opening discussion. It's summer so if we get teams together in the next two weeks people will have most of July and part of August to write before school starts. Can't really avoid work... and if we could all of us would have a different work thing to work around.

Schedule like this?
6.3.17 - 6.6.17 writer sign ups
6.7.17 - 6.9.17 Prompt selection
6.10.17 - 8.6.17 Writing
8.7.17 - 8.11.17 Posting (assuming there's 5 prompts)
8.12.17 - 8.27.17 Voting, people will also be voting during the posting week
8.31 Results announced

Adjust based on extensions.

Sooner might work, but don't be afraid to blow it out to the end of the year as well. From previous experience running this event, I can tell you now you'll definitely need more time than planned for your writers, as pretty much every year this event has gone one people have gotten extensions, ahaha.

Also, please keep in mind that it is an international event - it's not summer break for everyone. I know the community has a lot of US participants, but for planning the Olympics especially we need to think global! :)

Summer school holidays in the southern hemisphere are mostly in December, so planning around a big break only really works for one half of the fandom, ahaha. Though I totally agree with the work thing, especially since a lot of us are working age!

EVERY YEAR! I was one of those people last year. lol. the extensions are inevitable with this competition... as are the international scheduling difficulties. I feel like no matter how much care I see the mods take each year there's always somebody some where that gets the short end of the stick. :/ (damn these time zones! time isn't real!)

Also just to clarify I'm not volunteering to mod! I was just making a suggestion. :3
I would love to do it if running events wasn't my real life job. I don't know if I could keep my 'not work' mentality. Just thinking about work me trying to run a friendly fandom competition is scary. lol.

Having run many of these events in the past, I strongly recommend against having such a long writing period. 1) No matter how long a writing period you give them, 90% of the writing will be done in the last five days of it anyway, and 2) Long writing periods encourage writers to come up with long fics, which is not ideal for this format. One infamous time we had stories averaging about 20k with one topping 50k, nearly impossible for the readers to digest all at once.

Two weeks to write. Three at most. Trust me, that's enough.

This is a really excellent point that I wouldn't have thought of. It makes total sense

WE WANT YOU! Expression of Interest: 2017 KuroFai Olympics

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