Coordinated By: Judges and Creation Manager, Ellen Klowden
Judged By: Audrey Wood, Sandi Farmer, and Nicole DesRosiers

Deadlines

Entries will be accepted from the moment these rules are posted.

Novellas and novel-length fics must be submitted by one month pre-con (August 1).

All other forms of text-only fanfic must be submitted by August 22.

Web-comic links/online manga links must be submitted by this same deadline of August 22.

However, manga created offline may be submitted through 11:59 pm Saturday, September 2, and multimedia forms of parody are to be submitted at the beginning of the Fanfiction Bedtime Stories event (see pocket guide for schedule). Any manga entries submitted during Con must be hand-delivered to the Contest Coordinator within the Creation Station and must be submitted in hard copy, i.e., printed on paper, or possibly on disc. Multimedia parody entries, if you wish, may be pre-screened by the Judges and Coordinator prior to FFBS, by arrangement. We regret that we do not yet know if we will have online access at the convention.

Please do everything in your power to have your submissions in by the pre-con deadlines. Fics are welcome after that time, but may not be eligible for entry other than when read or performed for our Fanfiction Bedtime Stories event. Exceptions can be made, but only in extraordinary circumstances, and not for novella nor for novel-length fics.

Methods of Submission:

• You may submit your entries online, in person, or by snail mail.
• To submit online, email to fanficcontest@kumoricon.org.
• To submit in person, come to a Kumoricon General Meeting prior to deadline or submit at the Creation Station at Anime Evolution (making clear whether your submission is for AE, KC, or both). See also deadline section, above. (Email fanficcontest@kumoricon.org to make arrangements; other possibilities may emerge.)
• To submit by snail mail, mail to Creation Station c/o Ellen Klowden, P.O. Box 5098, Eugene, OR 97405.

General Rules

Failure to follow these rules will get you disqualified from the contest, so read carefully!

Materials that have already won prizes from Creation Station judges for the overall fanfiction/novella or manga/webcomic contests at Kumoricon, Sakura-Con, or Anime Evolution may not be submitted for this contest. Nor may materials beta read by any of the Fanfic Judges and/or the Contest Coordinator. However, any of those may be read or cosplayed at Fanfiction Bedtime Stories and win prizes therein, as audience response selects the winners.

Kumoricon judges will be using the Fiction Rating system on Fictionratings.com. Please check the site to see where your fic falls. Anything with a rating of MA cannot be considered for the general fanfiction contest, but may be eligible to be read at the after-hours bedtime stories and considered for an on-site contest. These are the rating rules on Fanfiction.net and are for the safety and equal participation of all contestants (not just the adults).

If you are a minor submitting a fic with an M rating, please have a signed parental permission form saying that your parent knows you’ve written this and gives you permission to submit it.

Attempting to pass someone else’s work off as your own is plagiarism and will not be tolerated in this contest. If you are writing or drawing in another ficcer’s universe, please cite that. If you worked on this with another person, please cite that. If your work is a parody of another’s work, please cite that. An example of that is here: http://gwaddiction.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12273. Please remember to cite any reference materials, as it will put you into consideration for Best Authenticity, but also remember to share the credit if you worked with another person.

Acceptable source materials include but are not limited to: Anime series, movies, or OVA; manga; doujinshi; Web comics; dating sims/visual novels/ren’ai gaming; anime-inspired video, computer, console, and table-top, board, RPG, LARP, or other games; and for the one non-anime category, anything with a fan base.

While we encourage entries of original content webcomics and original content manga, no works of original text-only fiction will be accepted. However, original fiction will be welcome at Bedtime Stories.

Fanfic works submitted do not need to be in prose. They may be poems. Songfics and filks are welcome. For the most part, these take the form of prose fics into which song lyrics are interwoven. However, fics in the form of song lyrics themselves would also be welcome, as would filks.

Volunteers and staff are welcome to participate in any program at the Creation Station, including these contests, as long as it does not interfere with staffing or volunteering duties.

Authors may submit multiple pieces, but please limit to your best 3 pieces per genre. This limit will be enforced for the novella category, to ensure time to get to everyone’s work. Works of novel length will be limited to one per author.

Works of multiple chapters, or over twelve typed pages in length, shall be evaluated as novellas. For the purposes of this contest, there will be a page limit to the novella category. Works in excess of 100 pages will be accepted, but will be considered novel-length, and authors will be limited to one submission of this length. There is no minimum length for a submission for any category. Single-page works will be accepted, as will works in progress, by popular demand. However, this year, works in progress will not be evaluated as their own, separate, cross-genre category. Rather, works in progress will be evaluated in the genres they fit.

Fics accompanied by original illustrations, be they hand-done or computer-generated, may additionally be evaluated in the Manga category. Illustrators must also be credited.

Entries in the Manga category may be sole-person productions or team productions, but all contributors must be credited (e.g., storyboard, outlining, coloring). Art may be black and white or color, handmade or computer-generated. Format may be left to right or right to left.

Manga and webcomics which were previously entered in the overarching Kumoricon Fanfic contest may be re-entered only if they did not win when first submitted and have been substantively rewritten/redrawn since previously submitted.

Materials generated during other parts of Kumoricon (or other convention) programming (e.g., during Scenes From a Hat or drabbles composed in the Creation Station) may be submitted. Materials read at Bedtime Stories or presented as part of Fanfic Theatre, but not previously submitted in this contest, may be submitted. Also welcome are extensions from prior On-Site Mini-Manga contests.

No new rules will be introduced without explicit mention on the forums.

Contestants must attend the con to receive any prizes.

Submissions may be typed/printed, hand printed, or handwritten in cursive. However, they must be legible.

Include the following at the beginning of each submission:

Your full name: (your name as it will appear on your badge)
Pen name: (as you would want it printed/announced if you are a winner)
Names of anyone else collaborating on the work:
Your name on the forums (if any):
Fandom:
Genres to which you are submitting each piece (limit 3 per piece):
Any spoilers:
Rating:
Home contact info: (email and/or phone)
Age if minor (for special prize for submissions from folks 16 & under)
Is this your first contest?:
Notes:

Your sources are either put in the notes section of the header or in endnotes. If they are in endnotes, please mention such in the Notes. If there are footnotes, please put that in your Notes.

For the purposes of this contest, a “newbie” is one who has not previously entered any work in any contest (online, at school, at a con, etc.). One need not be a first-time author, just a first-time competitor.

It will not matter what you use for font, type of paper, margins, spacing, etc., so long as the judges can read your work. Please remember that, just like any form of art, presentation is an important part of writing, and visual presentation can affect how a judge feels.

Original characters, alternate universes, crossovers and fusion are welcome, but particularly for crossovers, be sure to credit all canonic sources.

Works entered in this contest are welcome as pieces that may be beta-read at the Beta Station table in the Creation Station. Manga entered in this contest may likewise be enhanced via the networking and supplies at the Artists’ Den table in the Creation Station.

Award categories are:

Best Technical Writing Skills
Best Newbie
Best Creator—Age 16 & Under
Best Drama
Best Comedy
Best Romance
Best Songfic/Filk
Best Crossover/Fusion
Best Canon
Best Fanon
Best Parody—Written
Best Parody—Multimedia (see below)
Best Novella—Humorous
Best Novella—Serious
Best Manga—Black & White, Hand-Drawn
Best Manga—Color, Hand-Drawn
Best Manga—Black & White, Computer-Generated
Best Manga—Color, Computer-Generated
Best Web-comic/Online Manga
Best Authenticity (see below)
Best Backstory (see below)
Best Presentation (see below)

Best Technical Writing: Writing skills: (e.g., spelling, punctuation, grammar, paragraphing, etc.) will be noticed, and will be rewarded via the Best Technical Writing Skills category. However, in all other categories, your judges will be more invested in character continuity and storyline.

Best Authenticity will be awarded to the author and/or illustrator who uses their work to explain or show something about another culture. Culture can be anything from a subculture (such as the Shinjuku kids or American-style punk) to a completely different country (the most common here would be Japan, but in an AU you can put these characters anywhere). Authenticity is an essential tool for a writer’s believability, and seamless incorporation of all of your research is important.

“Best Backstory” will be awarded to the author and/or illustrator who takes the time to best explicate (a) what inspired the work; (b) how it relates to his/her personal life and/or what it meant to her/him to write; (c) how it relates to the canonic material; and (d) what the judge needs to know to comprehend the choices characters make, their interactions, their actions, and their universe. Links to canonic illustrations will be given brownie points, but will not suffice to constitute back-story.

Best Presentation will be awarded to an author and/or artist who takes the time to provide extras alongside her/his submission that explicate and showcase the submission in a captivating and professional light. Examples include full glossary, bibliography, etc.

“Parody—Multimedia”. Anyone who intends to work on such an ambitious project must alert the Contest Coordinator and/or Judges to it prior to the start of the con, but works of this magnitude will be accepted through the beginning of Fanfic Bedtime Stories (see Pocket Guide for Schedule). Any works submitted in this category will be viewed and appraised by the Fanfic Bedtime Stories audience.