Deathday Festival

Deathday Festival We at Sycophant Hex wish to invite all authors and artists to participate in the Deathday Festival. With the influx of new canon information after the release of the long-awaited Half Blood Prince, there has never been a better time for new ideas and fresh insight. All archives will be included in the Festival. We have tried our very best to come up with options that are not as restrictive as those found in a normal challenge formula, while still encouraging the vast number of different styles found in the Harry Potter fandom. As with our last Festival, we will have some great prizes. A new addition to this Festival is a category solely for artists to try their hand at creating some great art. We want to see what your interpretations are, each and every one of you. We are amazed at the amount of wonderful works that come out of this fandom every day, and we hope that this Festival will be as invigorating as our last. General Rules for Fanfiction and Fanart: 1. All submissions must comply with the Submission Rules and TOU/TOS of Sycophant Hex. 2. All story submissions must be beta read and edited before submission. To ensure submissions meet SH Submission Rules, each entry will be pre-screened. If an entry does not meet the rules, it will not be entered within the competition and we will not return it. No resubmissions are allowed! 3. Participants must be at least 18 years old. We will require birth dates to be sent with all submissions to verify age. 4. Story submissions must be at least 2000 words and no longer than 15,000 words. (If the story is 15,001 it will not be a valid entry to the Festival.) 5. Only two entries per author will be allowed; a maximum of one prize will be awarded per author. 6. All story submissions must be written by one author only; collaborations will not be accepted. 7. All stories submitted must be canon according to HBP, unless specifically stated below. 8. Story submissions must be text file (*.txt) or rich text file (*.rtf) with all HTML tags in place. We will not accept any MS Word or WordPerfect documents. 9. Only two entries per artist will be allowed; a maximum of one prize will be awarded per artist. 10. All artwork submissions must be created by one artist; collaborations will not be accepted. 11. All artwork submitted must be canon according to HBP, unless specifically stated below. 12. All artwork must be original, no photographs are permitted. 13. All artwork file sizes are limited to 1024 pixels on the longest side. All image types are allowed as long as they can be opened by Adobe Photoshop. All images will be submitted to Illusions as jpegs. 14. All submissions must be completed before the deadline, 11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time on November 30, 2005, to be officially considered for the competition. 15. Entries must be submitted to: http://www.sycophanthex.com/deathday/index.php Part I: Art Challenge 1. Create a canon illustration of Nearly Headless Nick's Deathday party from CoS, Chapter 8 “The Deathday Party”. 2. Create a canon illustration from HBP, Chapter 1 “The Other Minister”. 3. Create a canon illustration from GoF, Chapter 1 “The Riddle House”, with Frank Bryce, Voldemort and Peter ‘Wormtail’ Pettigrew. 4. Create a canon illustration from OotP, Chapter 10 “Luna Lovegood”, of Luna with all her unique attributes. 5. Create a canon illustration of Dumbledore or one of the Head of Houses, except Slytherin unless all the Heads of Houses are together. Part II: Story challenges Here are the general challenge requirements for all categories listed below: - No original characters are to be used within the stories. - More than one challenge idea may be combined in one entry. - Interpretations of characters are allowed, as long as the theories are clearly made within the story. - Het, Slash, Femmeslash, and GenFic authors are encouraged for all categories. - Incorporating Halloween or Nearly Headless Nick's Deathday Party is welcomed. Individual story categories, including formulas and requirements: 1. Stories about Malfoy family members: - Narcissa Malfoy story with Narcissa as the central character (1st or 3rd person.) - Lucius Malfoy's reaction in Azkaban after finding out his son's task. - Draco and Narcissa in the aftermath of HBP. - No Pansy Parkinson allowed in this category. 2. Stories about Weasley family members: - How the Weasleys became “blood traitors.” - Bill Weasley story (3rd person). Bill dumps Fleur or their relationship does not exist. Have Bill date at least one character that has been mentioned in the books. Relationship must develop beyond physical and emotional intimacy. - The redemption of Percy Weasley. 3. Stories about Black family members: - How the Black children were raised. - Why does Bellatrix worship Lord Voldemort so much? - Ted and Andromeda— how did they get together? What convinced Andromeda to turn on her family? 4. First person narrative from adult canon character. Note: Must know enough to convincingly create a canon characterization from the books and not the movies. - Create a scene from a book from a living character’s perspective. - Write a story from the viewpoint of a dead character who is observing events of the living. For example, Lily or James watching over Harry and their thoughts on him - his adventures, his downfalls, etc. 5. Ghost stories: - A Day in the Life of Peeves. - Opinions from Nearly Headless Nick or the Bloody Baron on the students in their houses and their antics. 6. Other characters stories: - A story on how the final book could end without including the final battle scenario. - Create the scenes between Tonks and Remus that JKR never showed us, and how it worked out in the end during the summer after Dumbledore’s death. 7. Stories about Voldemort/Death Eaters: - What motivates an individual to become a Death Eater? (Abuse cannot be a reason.) - Describe a meeting of the DEs (cannot be a revel or have sex/torture.) - Show why Voldemort trusts Snape, with the story taking place prior to HBP. 8. Stories about the Marauders: - A story showing the boys in their true light as berks/jerks. - A story showing why Peter Pettigrew turned out to be a traitor (written in the 1st person.) - How James changed Lily's mind, and caused her to fall in love with him. - Why Sirius Black and/or James Potter hated Severus Snape - how it all started. Judging for stories: Spelling, grammar and punctuation Accurate characterizations Strong writing style Originality of interpretation of challenges Use of category, genre and mood Judging for artwork: Accuracy of illustrative interpretation Accurate canonical characterizations Confident and capable execution of media Visual impact from artowrk Festival Prizes include: 3 first-place prizes - wands from Alivan's (with stipulations), to be awarded to winners of the following categories: 1 - overall best art 1 - overall best het/gen story 1 - overall best slash/femslash story 3 second-place prizes - $25 gift certificates from Amazon, to be awarded to winners of the following categories: 1 - second-place, computer graphics art 1 - second-place, non-computer, natural media art 1 - second-place overall story 3 third-place prizes - $15 gift certificates from Amazon, to be awarded to winners of the following categories: 1 - third-place, computer graphics art 1 - third-place, non-computer, natural media art 1 - third-place overall story

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