If there's no official contest this year, I think we ought to have some sort of informal prize giveaway at the Fanfiction Bedtime Stories.
We definitely have prizes left in the Creation Station collection that could be given away (I actually *just* got them back in May after 2 years), even if we don't go through the official prize room. Totally up to you if you want to have there be prizes, even now that we know there is also a fanfic contest this year.
Honestly, I appreciate the flexibility of room size and location that dissolving the Creation Station has afforded us,
I do believe that flexibility in room size is advantageous, in that some panels had perhaps 15-20 attendees, while others (mainly Mouse's crafts and ChiChan & Sandy's Scenes from a Hat) sometime had lines down the hall, with not everyone able to get in even if they'd been in line for an hour.
but one of the reasons it was put together in the first place (if I remember correctly) was to advance the cause of less-accoladed forms of fan creativity.
You certainly do remember correctly.
What became known as Creation Station began as the Beta Station at Kumoricon 2004 and grew out of our Fanfiction Panel and Content at KC 2003 in Springfield, via a collective decision-making process in the kumoricon_fanfiction yahoo group, which was cofounded by me and original KC fanfic copanelist and cojudge, Amy Unfred. Our fanfic panel attendees had a hard time hearing each other, because our room was right next to console gaming. Our ice breaker for our panel was Story, Story, Die!, so from our earliest origins, performed and improvised fanfic have been part of KC, even before the grand debut of your and my baby, Fanfic Bedtime Stories, at KC 2004. Not having any prior experience at cons, I had no idea that it was going to be considered so (no pun intended) novel, to propose having a set-aside room at a con, dedicated just to fanfic. Fortunately, there was a lot of support amongst the early management, and we got to try it for a year as an experiment. It was so successful that that experiment lasted for a total of 7 years at KC. Such a blessing!
I may be off base here, but it seems to me like ever since the Station was disbanded, fanfiction has dropped right back off the priority list for Kumoricon. Am I the only one feeling this way?
Since I'm not panels staff, I have no idea what has been submitted for this year. The downside of having decentralized fan creations is that they are harder to track throughout the con. Not just in the sense that there's no longer just one physical location for your one-stop-shopping for fan creation fun; but also in the sense that the panels' event descriptions are no longer grouped in one area in the con book.
I know there are happy personal reasons, not related to con, as to why some of the core fanfic staff aren't coming to con this year. It is likely that there are some fan favorite panels that won't run this year, because their regular panelists are elsewhere. It sounds like Jaki is saying there is still the opportunity to offer to add fanfic content, which is a a very generous offer. As you know, last year we added Bedtime Stories towards the end of the process, when we found out no one else had offered to run it, so there might be that little window of opportunity again this year. In particular, I honestly do not know if anyone offered to cover Story, Story, Die! or Scenes from a Hat this year.
Until I know whether I have a cat sitter and get a sense of how hot it will be in the daytimes in my home (if it's over 85 degrees, I don't leave my cat home alone because it gets really hot in my house), it's hard for me to think about whether I can add any additional panels to my plate, personally. What I could offer is that if someone else runs any additional fanfic panels (and I have no idea whether anyone else already submitted panel forms to do so), that if they feel they'd like additional help, and I'm at con and free at the time, I'm happy to be a supportive attendee or to participate as a cofacilitator, spontaneously at the moment.
FYI, there is still a crew of panelists operating as Creation Station; we're just at OryCon, a fantastic science fiction/fantasy con, at our favorite con hotel, the DoubleTree Lloyd Center, November 2-4, instead of at Kumoricon. This will be our 4th year there, and I'm also part of the overall Programming Team there. It's a really fun convention, and the vast majority of the programming is run by and for professional and aspiring authors. While the percentage of programming related to anime is certainly relatively small, it is a fantastic con for those with a passion for prose -- oh, and there's an **entire wing** of Filk Programming! You'd fit right in. In fact, they're looking for folks interested in Kinderfilk (filk concerts for kids).
Thanks to Jaki for posting the link to the contest rules, and to whomever is running it for doing so!
Best wishes to all entrants in the 10th annual Kumoricon Fanfiction Contest, and much love to everyone who entered in the 8 years in which I was a fanfic judge and/or fanfic contest coordinator!
