The Sky is Falling Festival

Sycophant Hex's "The Sky Is Falling" Festival In honor of the upcoming release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this summer, Sycophant Hex would like to invite all authors to participate in our "The Sky Is Falling" Festival. The special part of this Festival is that during the initial posting and voting process, all authors will remain anonymous, and you, the readers, will get to vote for the three best stories on each archive. A festival is Sycophant Hex's way of gathering authors to write stories based on certain circumstances. It’s similar to a challenge, but a broader range of authors can participate because it is for all of our archives. The staff of Sycophant Hex has created a number of options for authors to pick from when entering the Festival. Some are vaguer than others, letting the author take greater control of the destination of the story, while others have more specific rules attached to them. There are rules for entering the competition; please view them before writing any story. Now, everyone enjoy the competition and let the writing begin! Any questions about the Festival can be posted on our Forums, or you may email sh.userhelp [at] gmail.com. Festival Rules: - All the entries will be strictly anonymous. - All entries are to be posted strictly at Sycophant Hex until we reveal who the authors are. To preserve anonymity, if an entry is posted at another archive it will be disqualified and removed from the Festival submissions. - All entries are subject to Sycophant Hex Submission Rules. We strongly suggest that all authors use a beta reader. - Participants must be at least 18 years old. - The author must be a registered member of every archive they submit a story for. Please be sure to register before sending in your submission, or we will not be able to post your story. - Submissions must be at least 1000 words and no longer than 20,000 words. If the story is 20,001, it will not be a valid entry to the Festival. We do request that all entries be complete at the time of posting. Multi-chapter fics are allowed, but all chapters must be complete at the time of submission. - Entries must be attached in an emailed to sycophanthexfestival [at] gmail.com. Please use the title of the story as the filename. Any Festival entry posted to the archives will be deleted, then returned to the author with directions to email their submission to sycophanthexfestival [at] gmail.com. - Because all entries will be posted under an anonymous name until the author reveal, authors will not be able to edit their submissions for the duration of the contest. If you wish to make changes, you are, of course, allowed to do so, but you will need to email those changes to sycophanthexfestival [at] gmail.com, and we will implement them for you. At the time of the reveal, stories and their reviews will be reposted under the individual authors' accounts. - We accept all file formats of: *.txt / *.rtf / *.html / *.doc. Please make sure to include all html tags. We will not format any stories; if they are not correct the submission will be sent back to the author. - In the body of the email, as well as in the story file itself, please include the following information: Author: Archive: Title: Genres: Ratings: Warnings: Character(s): Summary: - Only one entry per author, per archive will be allowed. - Please, do not thank your betas in your author's notes until the big reveal, as certain authors use particular betas and that would be a give-away. - Stories will be loaded to the queue under an anonymous account like normal chapter submissions. If you are issued a corrections letter for your story/chapter, it will not be posted. Instead, we will return the story/chapter to you with the corrections letter. Please make those corrections to the chapter(s) and resubmit to sycophanthexfestival [at] gmail.com before the deadline. - All submissions must be completed before the deadline, 11:59 PM EST on July 20, 2007, to be officially considered for the competition. - Members will have from July 20th until August 20th to vote for the stories they believe should win. - Winners will be announced and revealed the weekend of August 24-26th. The judging panel a.k.a. Wizengamot: You! Each entry will be posted anonymously, and the readers will vote for the stories in each archive that they believe are the best of the best. - You can vote for as many stories as you wish, however, we do request that you do not vote for the same story more than once. - While you do not need to be a member of Sycophant Hex to vote, some of the stories will be of an adult rating, and you will have to register at Sycophant Hex to read those. As they are uploaded to the archives, all stories will be added to our Festival Master List. The Master List can be found here. The Prompts I. Missing Albus Dumbledore We've (somewhat) seen Harry's reaction to Dumbledore's death, but what about everyone else? How does the rest of the Order react? How does McGonagall react to the death of Dumbledore, the one man who seemed to hold everything together? Or how does Snape react to his own actions? What about the various members of Voldemort's camp, including Voldemort himself? II. The Most Believable Porn Write a PWP that you think is the most believable, most in character, and the most real. III. Best Non-Conventional Pairing Write a PWP based on the best non-conventional pairing you can think of. Some examples would include Lucius/Hermione, Charlie/Tonks, Remus/Molly Weasley and yes, this does include slash pairings. Try to keep the story as close to canon as possible in terms of characterization and such. Rules 1. No original characters may be used. IV. Voyeurism Write a PWP from the second person point of view. Keep in mind that it isn't only witches and wizards who show signs of having a conscious, sentient mind in the Wizarding world. V. Bared! Public sex. Exhibitionism. Enough said, but there are a few rules that go along with this particular challenge. Does your naughty couple of choice get caught? If they don't, how do they pull it off without using any ingenious magic as a disguise? Rules You may not use any of the following to hide your naughty couples...um, habits: 1. No potions. 2. No spells (this includes a Disillusionment Charm, as well as any spells you make up). 3. No Invisibility Cloaks. VI. Most Original Place Write a PWP using at least two canon characters getting down and dirty in the most original and/or unusual place you can think of. Rules The following places CANNOT be used: 1. Snape's Dungeons (this includes the Potions classroom, Snape's office, and his quarters) 2. The Great Hall 3. Room of Requirement 4. Astronomy Tower 5. Broom Closet 6. Hogwarts Grounds (i.e. by the lake, etc. If you think of somewhere you deem original, you may use it.) 7. Forbidden Forest 8. Charms Classroom 9. Abandoned Classrooms 10. Grimmauld Place 11. The Burrow VII. Snape Resurrected Snape is killed, but to finish off Voldemort, Harry still needs his help. How would he (or any of the Order members) go about resurrecting him? What sort of loopholes can there be to negate his death? VIII. The Eighth Horcrux Everyone assumes that there were only seven Horcruxes created by Voldemort, only he created one more. On the eve of battle, Harry, Ron and Hermione discover this fact, and scramble to take care of it before they lose everything. What is it and how can it be destroyed? IX. Death Becomes Her/Him How to kill the most annoying character. We all have a character we secretly (and not so secretly) hope dies in book seven. This is your chance to kill that character yourself in the most imaginative way possible. X. Crisis Write a short story focusing on the progress of any kind of crisis--personal or otherwise--using any narrative point of view. Rules 1. The story can revolve around any type of crisis (i.e. internal/external) the author chooses. 2. The author chooses the narrative type and point of view. 3. The story cannot follow chronological order. 4. There must be some form of connection or order to the story. Seemingly random scenes must fit together in some reasonable way: theme, character, language-use, etc. XI. Links to the Past The war has been fought and won, by the Order, and now Harry has decided that it is time for him to learn more about his parents--truly learn about them. In his search for everything there is to know about James and Lily Potter, Harry turns to the only two people left who can possibly shed any light on the lesser known aspects of the Potters' short-lived lives: Remus Lupin and Severus Snape. Rules 1. The story must take place after the war. 2. The Order must have won the war. 3. Harry must approach both Lupin and Snape requesting information on his parents. 4. The story must be told from either Harry's first person proper point of view or a general third person proper point of view. 5. The story must stick to canon with regards to Dumbledore being dead. 6. Peter Pettigrew must be dead - the details of how or why are up to the author, if he/she wishes to incorporate that. 7. No Time-Turners are allowed. Notes 1. Harry's relationship with both Snape and Lupin is at the author's discretion (i.e. Does Harry hate Snape? What are his true thoughts about Lupin?). 2. How Harry goes about gathering the information and approaching Lupin and Snape is up to the author. 3. While the author is not allowed to make use of a Time-Turner, Pensieves and other means of collecting memories and/or information may be used. 4. Any romantic entanglements, whether between Harry, Lupin, Snape, or any other canon characters, is at the author's discretion. XII. Crossover Heaven Create a believable crossover between Harry Potter and the fandom of your choice. XIII. The Affair Two characters, one married, must fall in love with one another. How is this situation handled? Is it only torrid, illicit sex hidden from the world at large, or does it develop into something more? The married one's partner is not abusive, and in fact is very much in love with his/her spouse. How does the cheating pair resolve this? Does the spouse find out? XIV. Snape Abroad After the final battle, Snape disappears into the Muggle World without a trace. He is still wanted in by the British Ministry of Magic for crimes against the Wizarding world. Someone finds him. Who is it, and how do they deal with the situation? XV. Fenrir Greyback How did he become the vicious psychotic werewolf? Was he bitten as a child or as an adult? Was he always a vicious, cruel person, or was that something he developed after being bit? XVI. Get Out of Your Box This is the final book; let your imagination run wild! Pick an archive you've never posted to or read at and write a story that would fit there. Never wrote a Draco fic? Try and write something for Pureblood! Don't think you can wing a Weasley? Write something for The Burrow! If you're an author that posts to all archives, try the one you've written the least for or are the least comfortable with. XVII. History of Magic This is your chance to develop a bit of history; put Professor Binns to shame with your historical knowledge. Take an event or a character from the Wizarding past and expound. These events/people must be canon (from the books themselves, the Harry Potter Lexicon, or JK Rowling's site)! You must go at least 200 years into the past, though how far after that initial 200 years is entirely up to you. Original characters are allowed, but they cannot be the main character of your story.

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