Event Layout

Contents

  1. Event Layout
    1. Main Rounds
      1. Main Round Work Guidelines
    2. Collab Round
      1. Collab Round Work Guidelines
    3. Disqualifications
    4. Anonymity Policy
    5. Bonus Rounds
      1. Bonus Round Work Guidelines

The main bulk of the HSWC is made up by two Main Rounds and one Collab Round. There are also seven (or eight) Bonus Rounds that run throughout the event.

All rounds (whether Main, Collab, or Bonus) present a prompt to the community. Teams and participants then do their best to fulfill the prompt challenge.

Main Rounds

There are two main rounds. Each main round has its own Dreamwidth community where teams will post their round submissions.

This is how main rounds generally go:

All submissions must be created new for the challenge. No fan-created content is allowed that has not been made by members of your team specifically in response to the prompt. Mainstream creative content is fine (e.g. popular music, well-known art pieces, the Homestuck soundtrack), but not fanart, fan music, etc.

For example, you can create a parody of a song on the radio but you cannot use an already-existing fan song in your entry, and you cannot take someone else’s fanart and use it to make a graphics set unless said art was made by someone on your team specifically for that round. This is largely to ensure that the original content in your entry is clearly identifiable as distinct from the borrowed content. In a similar vein, you also cannot build off of already-existing AUs, such as taking characterizations from Aquariumstuck or Hemostuck. (You can use general AU ideas, such as petstuck or a bloodswap AU, as long as you do not imitate or take from any already-existing work that uses that AU setting.) For more information on work caps and requirements, please check the Main Round Work Guidelines.

Although a team may create many works in response to a main round prompt, each team may only submit one cohesive entry to each main round. This entry can be multimedia, and can be created by multiple team members. After (not before) the round's voting is complete you may post unused round entries anywhere you want, such as tumblr or our Archive Of Our Own collection.

Your team's main round entry must focus on the ship you are representing, though there may be mentions of other ships, and even mentions of your team's characters being in other ships (gotta fill those quadrants, after all).

Do not post your HSWC creations publicly (i.e., on tumblr, AO3, etc.) until voting ends, whether or not they are chosen as part of the team submission. For more information, read the HSWC Anonymity Policy.

All work for the HSWC must be made exclusively by that team. You cannot ask people outside of your team for help.

Multi-chaptered works are fine, as long as they are not works-in-progress or incomplete. Crossovers are allowed but are not recommended, as they require knowledge of titles which other participants may not be familiar with. However, if it is a well known story, such as a fairy tale, it should be okay.

Main Round Work Guidelines

If you are submitting anything with text such as a game, a choose-your-own-adventure style entry, voiceacting, music, etc. you must include a full script with your entry or you will not be eligible for that round's final vote. For games, you should also seriously consider including a video walkthrough of your game. That way, if people have trouble loading or playing your game, they can still get an idea of what you entry is like.

If you are submitting photos of things, please try to make sure they are decently clear/well-lit! We will not be doing image/color correction for you, and it will not be our fault if people can't make out what your submission is. Also, we suggest but do not require that you submit 3-5 photos of whatever it is from different angles, just so we can get a better look at it!

A round's theme should inform the work as a theme or as a plot device, but it does not have to be an intense focus of the work. We need to see the influence, but you don’t have to beat us over the head with it. (Unless of course you want to!)

Collab Round

Collab Round Work Guidelines

Disqualifications

Your main/collab round entry will be accepted to the round, but not eligible to move on to final vote if:

Anonymity Policy

Bonus Rounds

Bonus rounds are like candy in-between the main round meals to help keep participants going. Each bonus round has a theme that participants must follow. Participants can post ships and prompts that follow the bonus round theme, and other participants can post fills for these prompts.

All bonus rounds are posted on the HSWC DW Community and each one lasts for two weeks, as noted on the Schedule. To participate, members leave comments to the bonus round post with prompts, and others comment to the prompts to leave fills. For more information, see our DW Walkthrough.

Bonus Round Work Guidelines

Please link to NSFW fills and very high-resolution images instead of posting them directly to the bonus round, as you cannot use cuts in comments. You may include a small safe-for-work sample (e.g., image thumbnail, 100 words of fic) if you would like to give a preview.

If your fill is too long to fit in a single comment, submit the second half of the fill as a reply to the first half of the fill, either replacing the subject line with something like “CONTINUED” or “Part 2 of X” or making sure that the “Re:” is present so that it is obvious that this is a reply/continuation and that you aren’t attempting to sneak in a second fill for your team.

You will receive points as long as your prompt or fill follows the guidelines below, regardless of whether the prompt you are filling for isn't formatted correctly or if a fill submitted to your prompt isn't formatted correctly.