The 2024 Plan Post: "I'm sure there's a logical explanation for this..."

[brightknightie]

FK Fic Fest 2024

 

fkficfest is on for this year! After testing the waters on my own journal a few weeks ago, I'm skipping the traditional pre-game survey and cutting right to the chase.

Almost everything is the same as last year — challenge-style, minimum 500 words, minimum 51% FK for crossovers, 2 months to write, etc. — except that we'll elect our shared pool of 4 prompts via tournament brackets (Wikipedia article). We'll have a poll for prompt nominations, then a poll for ranking the prompts into brackets ("seeding"), and then a sequence of quick bracket eliminations polls to learn the community's favorites. (I hope that folks find this fun! If it doesn't work, we'll revert to ranked-choice voting next year.)

Schedule:

• March 2 (Saturday): Prompt nominations open
• March 7 (Thursday): Prompt nominations close
• March 8 (Friday): Prompt ranking opens
• March 11 (Monday): Prompt ranking closes
• March 12 (Tuesday): Brackets voting begins (to be posted), with one round per day until 4 prompts remain. For example, with "byes" to bring non-ideal totals into line:
  
  • 16 nominated prompts = 2 rounds
  • 32 nominated prompts = 3 rounds
  • 64 nominated prompts = 4 rounds
• Soon after the final round: Prompt pool officially announced & rules posted
• May 25 (Saturday): Stories due in our AO3 collection
• May 27 (Monday, US Memorial Day): Stories begin releasing

About prompts:

• Definition: For our challenge-style game, a prompt is a word, set of words, phrase, sentence, question, stanza, etc. meant to inspire an FK story.
• Success: We'll likely get the most from prompts that can flex across different interpretations of FK, while also being specific enough to spark reactions.
• Limits: 1-30 words. If a prompt is a quotation, include a citation (not part of the word count). And, of course, please, no vulgarity, incivility, that kind of thing.

Questions? Advice? Please share! As always, readers as well as writers are welcome to nominate and vote!

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Update, 7:45pm, March 1: The number of rounds is now better described. Dates to be determined after we have the total number of nominations.
Update, 7:09am, March 2: Your mod lives on Pacific Time. Unless otherwise indicated, all times are Pacific.