Event Layout

Contents

  1. Event Layout
    1. Main Rounds
    2. Collab Round
    3. Round Work Guidelines
    4. Round Media Limitations
    5. Disqualifications
    6. 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:

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!)

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, Homestuck panels or its 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 cannot build off of an already-existing AU such Aquariumstuck or Hemostuck. You can use general AU ideas, such as a memaid AU or a bloodswap AU, as long as you do not take from any specific, already-existing work that uses that AU setting. Crossovers with other fandoms are allowed but not recommended, as they require knowledge of titles which other participants may not be familiar with.

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

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. For more information, read the HSWC Anonymity Policy.

Your team's 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.

Multi-chaptered works are fine, as long as they are not works-in-progress or incomplete.

Collab Round

The Collaborative Round is an extravaganza of togetherness and creativity! It lasts for the entire HSWC, opening one week before Main Round One and closing in August. Generally, all the notes mentioned in the Main Rounds section also apply here (entries must be created new for the challenge, etc.). There are only two notable changes:

The Collab Round entry is meant to be a team's showcase piece to demonstrate the true glory of their ship. Get out there and show us what you've got!

Round Work Guidelines

Because this event is open to fans of a wide variety of ages and backgrounds, we want to make sure that HSWC is a safe and accessible place for all. As such, main and collab round entries must fill out the following info block in its entirety at the top of their post:

If you are using the HTML code layout to create your post, here is a code box for your copy-and-pasting convenience.

After the info block, you must place your round entry behind a cut when posting it to the main round comm. There are two ways of doing this:

You must put all of your work directly into your submission post whenever possible. Writing should be posted directly to the comm and art/photos/video/etc. should be embedded in the post. However, if you must link to an off-DW entry (e.g., a game, a fic that is too long to fit onto a single DW post, a choose-your-own-adventure-style entry, an MSPA fanventure, a website, etc.), you should include a few safe-for-work previews, samples, or screenshots in your entry post along with your link. It's more eye-catching and gives people a better idea of what they're getting into. Also, please kindly warn for pages that auto-play music.

You can use any hosting service for your entries and entry scripts, as long as it does not require a sign-up to view, is safe-for-work, does not break anonymity, and does not include flashing images. Imgur is a highly recommended and anonymous image hosting service, for example. Hosting your entry on an anonymous google doc, DW, or tumblr expressly made for that purpose is fine; hosting it on a team member's tumblr or AO3 account is not.

If you're submitting a game, you should seriously consider including a video walkthrough of your entry. That way, people who have trouble loading or playing your game can still get an idea of what your entry is like.

If you're having trouble imagining what your round entry post should look like, check out last year's collab round for examples.

There is no penalty for submitting your entry after the round closes, though we strongly recommend you get it in before voting begins. However, there is a bonus for submitting your work on time. For more information, see Scoring.

We discourage editing your round submission after it's posted because it puts your team at a disadvantage: people may have already read/viewed your team’s entry and made their voting decision, and thus would not see your new content. However, if you do wish to edit your entry, you must edit the current post before voting opens for that round. Never delete and resubmit your round entry.

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! (Multiple photos of the same object count as a single image with relation to media limits.)

Round Media Limitations

The Homestuck Shipping World Cup implements these length restrictions on entries:

Writing: 1,000 (min) to 4,000 (max) words.

Art (without words): 20 images.

Combination Art/Writing Entries (any work that includes both, including comics and games): up to 1,000 words and 20 images, OR up to 4,000 words and 5 images.

Gifs/animations included in a larger work (such as a game, fic or comic): 20 seconds in total.

Video/Audio: 4 minutes max runtime (this applies for both animated and live-action video, as well as music and voice acting).

Cosplay: Costumes should be made/assembled at least 50% new for the challenge.

You can combine these: for example you can have 4,000 words of fic and 5 images, two of which are cosplay photos, one which is a photo of a sculpture, one a static art piece, and one a gif. However, each individual piece of media must conform to its specific limitations.

If a main round entry exceeds any of these limitations in any medium by 5% or less, it will be penalized 50 points. If it exceeds the limitation by more than 5%, the entry will be disqualified from advancing to the final vote. For more information, see the Disqualifications section.

The Collab Round has no hard work limits. Go nuts. If you want a guideline for how long your entry should be, double all the main round work limitations (for example, 8,000 words/10 images). If you go over them, though, there's no penalty.

Disqualifications

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

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.

After a bonus round ends, it will be closed for a short period while the mods count up the points. Then it will be opened again to prompts and fills, though entries to that bonus round won't receive points anymore.

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, reply to your original comment with the rest of your fill, and change your comment's subject title to "Part 2 of X" where X is however many parts your fill will be. If you're not sure, you can replace the X with a question mark until you finish your fill: for example, my four part fill might be "Part 2 of ?," "Part 3 of ?," "Part 4 of 4." At the very least, just make sure your team name isn't in the rest of your comment subjects so we don't think you're trying to fish for points.