It's a bird! It's a plane! ... It's HPFT's Super Duper Year in Review!  

It is officially 2019 and your prefects would like to present The 2018 Super Duper Year in Review! The past year has been a big one for all of us over here at HPFT and we'd like to take a look back at some of our biggest moments here on the forums and the archives. We've had a great year on the archives with a lot of incredible stories, many wonderful events on the forums, and some super fun stats to highlight, so prepare yourselves for a wild ride, because it's been one incredible year!

First up: the Archives!

 

In 2018, the Archives saw a huge influx of new stories. Most of these stories were added during the months of March and April, in what has been dubbed "The Great Transfer".  The Transfer consisted of 1046 validations, of which 789 chapters were validated in April alone. There was a total of 2906 validations this year total, meaning "The Great Transfer" was approximately one-third of the total validated this year! This was all accomplished by a very small team of dedicated Aurors, with the help of the Admins, who gave up their time to read everyone's work and help grow the site to what it is now. We owe them a huge gratitude for all of their voluntary efforts! We look forward to seeing what magic they will continue to bring in 2019. 

 

 

Sometimes finishing something can feel pretty super-human -- especially when it comes to completed novels! We'd like to give it up for the following individuals who took on such a great feat in the year 2018! You all truly are heroic! (Note: for the purpose of this collection, we chose stories marked as completed in 2018 on the HPFT archives that were greater than 25,000 words.)  We would like to present you with this little "I Completed a Novel in 2018" token graphic as a momento of your great achievement:

Congratulations!

• Icarus by @Stella Blue
• Raising a Hero by  @Tantrum 
• Home by @adorably cute
• An Inspector Calls by @PendleWizard
• The Rise of the A.W.L. by @Margaret
• Complicated by  @ShadowRose
• The Art of Surviving by  @esmeraude
• The Shenanigans of Lily Luna Potter by @greisful
• A Rollercoaster Called Life by @missclaire17
• The Harder They Fall by  @victoria_anne
• Tess Covenshire & the Highcross Scandal by @KJ Cartmell
• Curiosity Is Not a Sin by Beeezie / @abhorsen.
• Ignite by Slide / @Wolfgirl
• Rabbit Heart by  @Pixileanin
• Even the Best Laid Plans by @potionspartner
• The Beasts Within by @Bardic Magic
• A New Life For Hermione - Version 1 by @Elena
• Liam Wren and the Dragon Wand by @KJ Cartmell
• A Little Bit of Hope by @CharmHazel 
• An Open Secret by @CharmHazel
• Keep Away by @Mistress
• Put Your Curse in Reverse by @frombluetored
• Delilah's Black Book of Poems by @Dark Whisper
• Have No Fear by Bardic Magic @Bardic Magic
• Put Your Guns Away, It's Tea Time by @frombluetored
• A New Normal by @CharmHazel
• Chicks Before Broomsticks by @banshee
• Rainfall [M] by @Leo
• Chasing Life, Seeking Love, Keeping Hope by @Bardic Magic
• Seek and Chase by @BellaLestrange87
• Albus Potter and Slytherin's Office by  @Phoenix Potioneer
• Behind the Curtain by Cassius / @Cassius Alcindor
• The Joker and Her by @Illuminate
• The Fred Weasley Memorial Scholarship by @sapphicsunrise

 

 

Another type of super-heroics can be found in those who have a great sense of altruism. We would like to recognize the Top Five Reviewers of 2018, who left an extraordinarily long list of reviews to their fellow HPFT'ers, effectively spreading love and good-faith across our wonderful community!  @Stella Blue, @just.a.willow.tree, @Felpata_Lupin, @nott theodore, and @victoria_anne have all shown their true identities as superhumans (and who are quite possibly radioactively powered or have been bitten by some sort of reading spider in order to leave so many wonderful, loving reviews).  These heroes of written feedback have certainly vanquished the archnemesis, brevity  . 

We'd also like to take a moment to recognize that of the five top reviewers, FOUR members hailed from Hufflepuff. These SuperPuffs are truly living up to Hufflepuff expectations, all in the name of love. There was a valiant attempt from the Puffs to get a monopoly on these spots (and during the year they achieved it for a time), but Sian held firm!

Congratulations and thank you, Super-Reviewers! 

 

 

 

January:

• The Second Annual FROGS awards took place in January! The top three winners in each of the 15 categories were presented with a chocolate frog card! A summary of the 2018 FROGS Award winners can be found HERE+
• The Queue became unlimited, allowing for authors to post as many chapters at a time as they wanted to on the HPFT archives.
• We had a THREE-WAY TIE for First Place in the FROGS “Best Reviewer” Category; with @just.a.willow.tree, @Stella Blue, and @Felpata_Lupin - and this will forever be remembered as one of "the most Hufflepuff things ever"! (called as such by Maggie/Levana.) 

February:

• We had 26 Participants in our 2018 Secret Cupid event, making up for a total of 13 matches. Participants spent the month of February spreading love to their secret-admirers, and several members went above and beyond for their partners.  Our #1 Gifter for the month was @TidalDragon, the #2 Gifter was @just.a.willow.tree, and our two most creative Secret Cupids were @WriteYourHeartOut and @Ignatia. 
• Slytherin House brought back their Common Room Newsletter: The Silver Quill, after it had been on hiatus since October of 2016, and @RoxiMalfoy broke the emoji limit here on the forums, lol! (Fun Fact: There USED to be a limit of ONLY 75 emojis allowed in a single post.)  The SQ Newsletter is now published on a quarterly basis (every 3 months) in the Slytherin Common Room. 
• Hufflepuff Staff/Prefect/Newsletter crew ( @Felpata_Lupin, @dreamgazer220, @LadyL8, and @Renacerá at the time) teamed up to leave every Badger on the HPFT archives a review under the secret reviewer name "Be My Badger" 

March:

• Staff hosted the Spring Writing Event of 2018: Fic Feud!! During this event, participants in the competition were assigned a partner,  whom they had to write a 2-4 chaptered story with. Each match-up then had 4 elements chosen for them per each chapter. To make thing even more interesting, they were also able to sabotage another team by either assigning or blocking certain elements. There were 12 participants altogether, for a total of 6 collaborative stories written… 
  And the Winners of our 2018 HPFT Fic Feud were:

  • @pookha & @Levana, with their story: A Rescue in Space and Time. - Their assigned elements were:

    • Chapter 1: Space Opera [theme], Humor [genre], Person of Color [inclusivity], and “It sounded like a good idea at the time.” [sentence]

    • Chapter 2: Time-Travel [theme], Angst [genre], Anxiety [inclusivity], and “All great failures start with one spectacularly bad idea.” [sentence]

  • Our Fic Feud runners-up were @Rumpelstiltskin & @victoria_anne, with their story: Mask of Truth. - Their assigned elements were as follows:

    • Chapter 1: Fluff [genre], Angst [genre], Infidelity [theme], “I didn’t realize you actually had feelings. I’m going to have to reset my entire mental image of you.” [sentence]

    • Chapter 2: Parody [genre], Dark/Horror [genre], Star-Crossed Romance [theme], “That’s all well and good, but I’m pretty sure she’s dead.” [sentence]

April:

• Gryffindor House also gained several active new members during this time-frame, and made a HUGE comeback in both their Common Room and the House Cup from there-on-out ( @PaulaTheProkaryote has even now dubbed this happening as “The Great Gryffindor Revival of 2018”)  

May:

• In the spring, each of the four Common Rooms hosted their Annual Awards, giving all kinds or recognition to the amazing authors that can be found throughout our site! You can check out wrap-ups of each of the Common Room Awards here: Hufflepuff Gryffindor Ravenclaw Slytherin
  • Slytherin livestream can be found HERE+ 
  • Gryffindor livestream can be found HERE+
• Hufflepuff prepared for their CR awards with two review events: Badger Reveal and Badger Bingo, which saw 'Puffs teaming up to leave hundreds of reviews for each other
• @toomanycurls created the Review Transfer Tool; making it possible for members to save reviews from other sites back onto their stories, that might have otherwise been lost.
• HPFT spread to the wide-world of Facebook!! You can like our Facebook page +HERE, if you haven’t done so already - and don’t worry, it is set up as a private/closed community page, and the ML Team takes the security of our members here very seriously. Due to the nature of this platform, we do not use anyone’s real names or tag people in ANY posts on Facebook at all.
• The Muggle Liaison Team posted the very first Featured Fics Blog(s) as a way to create new custom content for the site’s social media outlets each month, and promote all of our wonderful stories that are featured here on the HPFT Archives!!

June:

• The Graphics Talk section was added to the site, making it possible for members to request graphics, make new graphics, and offer pre-made graphics to members for use on both the forums & archives!! 

• The Prefects hosted their summer writing challenge, entitled the Prefects' Celebration Challenge. There were 12 phenomenal entries, and the full results can be found HERE+

• Ravenclaw House revamped their newsletter "The Ivory Tower" according to members' answers to a poll and now have an established monthly posting!

July:

• House Cup Finale happened, and every single house worked SO HARD to make all of their fabulous newspapers happen!!! Here are a few highlights from the event:
  • All 138 of the incorrect guesses that Gryffindor House made for @teh tarik's Spinner’s End riddle, and the way that @Chemical_Pixie (who was still a rather new member at that time) really jumped in to help rally her house together.  
  • The fact that Slytherin was the house to submit one of the most challenging puzzles/riddles in the first place; even trumping Tanya’s crazy Black Sabbath one - and then just about everyone on the other team's thought that it had to have come from Ravenclaw House too, lol.
  • @potionspartner jumping into the heat of things and sneaking up late to stay online to help Ravenclaw House with all the various tasks that they had to do - talk about dedication!! And the fact that both @galadriel  or @hecate had NEVER MADE PICSPAMS BEFORE, and they totally NAILED every single one of the ones that they made for the Ravenclaw paper!!!  
  • @starbuck and her stealth-ninja-finding-skillz when it came down to the scavenger hunts.  
  • Hufflepuff and their AMAZING layout, and all of the BEAUTIFUL, sparkly designs that @just.a.willow.tree used. @Dojh167, @MuggleMaybe, @Phoenix Potioneer's Founder's comics, and literally everything that was 'punny about that paper of theirs was just SO GOLDEN!  
  • @Dojh167 made absolutely insane spreadsheets for basically every HC event
• Camp NaNoWriMo had a lot of participants -- many of whom reached or exceeded their goals for the month!

August:

• All the houses eagerly anticipated the results of the House Cup Finale and final point tallying for the 2017-2018 House Cup!
  • Ravenclaw House won the House Cup Finale!  
  • Hufflepuff House won the House Cup overall!  
    • House Pride Shoutout from @Renacerá: "Hufflepuff won the House Cup! We could not be more proud to be this year's HC Champions! Every 'Puff involved worked so hard (as we're known to do!) and really turned up for every event. We had a great time participating, and winning is just the icing on the cake (which we'll grab from the kitchens by our common room)!"
• Gryffindor brought back their Story and Member of the Month Awards! The two brand new prefects stepped up to bring back the Featured Fic and Leading Lion awards int he Gryffindor Common Room

September:

• The Prefects opened the 2018-2019 House Cup Season with The Hogwarts Express event!
  • Slytherin House WON the event, leading to their first time taking first place in a major site-wide House Cup activity 
• Slytherin House saw an amazing increase in membership this month, and thus the #SlytherinSquad was formed!! (As dubbed so by Deni, lol!)
• Gryffindor House brought back their newsletter "Printed with Pride" after a long hiatus with great new content to keep the lions in the loop on the goings on about the Den each month.

October:

• We had our very first Choose-Your-Own-Adventure event!!! All throughout the month of October, houses we tasked with finding their way through three CYOA Mazes that were designed by our Staff-Team, and then given various tasks to complete at the end of each maze. If you missed the event, or would like to they your way through the mazes again, they can all be found below... But BEWARE and enter at your own risk!!
  • Halloween Maze Adventure #1: The Dungeon by @toomanycurls
  • Halloween Maze Adventure #2: The Little Hangleton Graveyard by @Alopex
  • Halloween Maze Adventure #3: The Cave by @Renacerá
  • Ravenclaw's @potionspartner made +this incredible map of the mazes! 
• Gryffindor begins their Common Room reviewing game, RvG and all staff are wildly impressed with the sheer number of reviews left on Gryffie stories in the first month of the game.

November:

• NaNoWriMo was one of HPFT's most successful seasons this year! Whether you were a Rebel a full-on Nano’er, the Crazies Cafe was in full swing all month long, and we had something in there for everyone.
  • We had aTON of engagement from the writing community on our SM pages this month - especially Twitter. And it was a lot of fun to see what everyone’s projects were and learn more about their NaNo novels along the way.
• Prefect's Fall Writing Challenge - The [Insert Name Here] Challenge had 11 fantastic entries for their autumn/fall, myths & legends, and spooky prompts.  Full results can be found HERE+

December:

• The Muggle Liaisons opened the brand new Audio Talk section of the site, bringing Podfics back to HPFT via streaming on the brand new Wireless Wizarding Network tumblr page! Members can now request to have their stories read for the WWN - or offer their voices to be a Fic Reader for themselves - in this exciting new addition to the site!  In addition to Podfics, our very own @PaulaTheProkaryote also introduced her first Podcast Series: Fantastic Myths and Where to Find Them as well!

• We brought back the Holiday Wishlists event via the Niffler’s That Stole Christmas, and 48 members signed up to help us come together and spread Holiday cheer throughout the month of December as we rounded up the missing shiny gifts that were stolen by those pesky Nifflers.

• We went out of 2018 with a BANG on our Social Media pages! The Harry Potter Screenshot to see who you’ll be under the Mistletoe with GIF reached over 1,100 views on our Facebook page. And the customized Your 2019 YA Novel quizlet has now reached over 17,000 notes on the HPFT tumblr!

• Gryffindor has broken its own record of RvG reviews each month since starting the game and shows no sign of slowing down #breakthespreadsheet

 

 

Because we all know, with great power comes great responsibility, we would like to recognize all the hardworking members of staff who have absolutely gone above and beyond to help continue to grow our fun and fantastic community! It is because of them that we have such a magnificent site with all manner of exciting events because when there's work to be done, this amazing team is here to save the day!  Thank you, HPFT Super Duper Staff! 

Sidekicks usually don't get as much recognition as the heroes when, really, they're heroes in their own right. So, if the Staff of HPFT are Superheroes, then surely the Prefects are their heroic sidekicks! We'd like to recognize all Prefects who have taken a part in assisting Staff in 2018, helping in growing and maintaining the site! 

Of course, there are also so many of heroes who make up the heart of this community: the members. Without the member's avid support of the site, there would be no HPFT. It is because of all of you that we are all here, being amazing superbeings together! Thank you, super members, for being absolutely amazing!

 

 

 

Upcoming Events

As we look back and celebrate the fantastic year that has passed, we would also like a moment to take a moment to shout out the New Year (hey, 2019 -- how the heck are you?) and look at a few upcoming events and activities that are sure to rock our world!

In the near future, the community is looking at a revival of the +Writing Exercises subforum, with some fun revamping as done by a few Staffers and Prefects who decided to take the task under their wing! The first prompt can be found here! A huge shoutout to @galadriel, @Sleepingbagonthesofa, and @Chelts-rhj and @PaulaTheProkaryote for their hard work in prepping and getting this project off the ground!

Also, according to the +HC Schedule, we're also anticipating the annual reviewing event to prepare for the F.R.O.G.s (the yearly site awards) will be taking place this month! While we don't know what the staff has in store for us yet, they did leave us all a teaser in the +January Bulletin and even gave away that this year's pre-F.R.O.G.s event is called The Magical Menagerie! Keep your eyes peeled -- we're sure to have a zoo of a time.  

We are also excited to continue working on the +Great Collab of 2018-2019 as we move into the new year! This event is sure to put our time-management, creativity, teamwork, and resourcefulness skills to the test as we work together and against one another to write all the words! 

 

A Final Thank You

Firstly, we would like to thank everyone who has managed to make it to the bottom of what can only be described as a magnitude of gratitude. With a little bit of attitude!

As a final note from us Prefects, all we can really say once again is thank you. This has been such a huge year for us! Prefects have come and gone, each one bringing something unique and wonderful to the job. We could not be what we are today without all of their hard work and dedication. This year we ran our opener event, which was the first Prefect run event and was an absolute joy to be a part of - from creation from execution. Each of our writing challenges throughout the year has seen a huge level of participation, and we could not be happier with the feedback we have gotten. To see everyone get so involved and excited for what we bring makes all the work entirely worth it. 

If you'd like to join us on the Prefect team (or join our lovely staff), please put in an application! This month's applications are open until the 10th! Come join us in all our shenanigans- we know the staff would love to see your apps!

2019 is set to be another *super* year. We can't wait - bring it on! 

_________________________

credits:

graphics:
[headers and dividers]: emma
[staff awards and house awards]: deni
[prefect awards | top 5 reviewer awards | completed novel graphic ]: rumpels
If you'd like to post your graphics to your page, please rehost and credit the appropriate artist!

post complied by: madi, rumpels, deni, sarah, emma

 

extra special thanks to @Renacerá, @RoxiMalfoy, @PaulaTheProkaryote, and @Ineke for their submissions and information!